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Study Disputes Secondhand-Smoke Risks, Prompting Furor
Playboy was all over this about 2 years ago.Anyone who reads Playboy for the articles --like moi-- will have been privy to the junk science and statistic fudging that led to the Draconian anti-smoking movement in the US and other countries. For those who haven't: A new report suggests that secondhand smoke does not cause health problems for nonsmokers, but the study prompted an immediate backlash from critics who called it biased and inaccurate. The Los Angeles Times reported May 16 that the study led by a UCLA epidemiologist concluded that secondhand smoke does not up the risk for lung cancer and heart disease. Researchers James Enstrom and co-author Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York at Stony Brook looked at data on more than 35,000 California residents who had enrolled in a 1959 cancer-prevention study who did not smoke, but who had spouses who did. The researchers found no significant increase in the death rate from heart disease, lung cancer, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all linked to smoking. Of course, since some of the funding for this study came from the tobacco industry, the science behind the study HAS to be faulty... But critics sharply challenged the findings, noting that the research was partially underwritten by the tobacco industry. "We are appalled that the tobacco industry has succeeded in giving visibility to a study with so many problems it literally failed to get a government grant," said Michael Thun, national vice president of the American Cancer Society. "This study is neither reliable nor independent." Researchers questioned the study's methodology, saying it failed to take into account the fact that all study participants would have been exposed to secondhand smoke in public places during the early years of the study, which would have blurred the impact of smoking at home. Also, they said data on the spouses' smoking was incomplete, since it wasn't collected comprehensively until 1972. Of course, none of these critics were around when the EPA and the WHO combined studies, fudged numbers, and out and out lied to get the second-hand smoke numbers they needed to start the tempest in a teapot. The study contradicts other recent reports, notably by the World Health Organization, that found a link between secondhand smoke and health problems. The study was published in the May 17 issue of the British Medical Journal.
Posted by: Celissa (as seen on my blog) 2003-05-16 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=14353 |