The Bogus 'Science' of Secondhand Smoke

Gio Batta Gori
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, January 30, 2007; 12:00 AM

Smoking cigarettes is a clear health risk, as most everyone knows. But lately, people have begun to worry about the health risks of secondhand smoke. Some policymakers and activists are even claiming that the government should crack down on secondhand smoke exposure, given what "the science" indicates about such exposure.

Last July, introducing his office's latest report on secondhand smoke, then-U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona asserted that "there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure," that "breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can damage cells and set the cancer process in motion," and that children exposed to secondhand smoke will "eventually . . . develop cardiovascular disease and cancers over time."

Such claims are certainly alarming. But do the studies Carmona references support his claims, and are their findings as sound as he suggests?

Lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases develop at advancing ages. Estimating the risk of those diseases posed by secondhand smoke requires knowing the sum of momentary secondhand smoke doses that nonsmokers have internalized over their lifetimes. Such lifetime summations of instant doses are obviously impossible, because concentrations of secondhand smoke in the air, individual rates of inhalation, and metabolic transformations vary from moment to moment, year after year, location to location.

In an effort to circumvent this capital obstacle, all secondhand smoke studies have estimated risk using a misleading marker of "lifetime exposure." Yet, instant exposures also vary uncontrollably over time, so lifetime summations of exposure could not be, and were not, measured.

Typically, the studies asked 60--70 year-old self-declared nonsmokers to recall how many cigarettes, cigars or pipes might have been smoked in their presence during their lifetimes, how thick the smoke might have been in the rooms, whether the windows were open, and similar vagaries. Obtained mostly during brief phone interviews, answers were then recorded as precise measures of lifetime individual exposures.

In reality, it is impossible to summarize accurately from momentary and vague recalls, and with an absurd expectation of precision, the total exposure to secondhand smoke over more than a half-century of a person's lifetime. No measure of cumulative lifetime secondhand smoke exposure was ever possible, so the epidemiologic studies estimated risk based not only on an improper marker of exposure, but also on exposure data that are illusory.

Adding confusion, people with lung cancer or cardiovascular disease are prone to amplify their recall of secondhand smoke exposure. Others will fib about being nonsmokers and will contaminate the results. More than two dozen causes of lung cancer are reported in the professional literature, and over 200 for cardiovascular diseases; their likely intrusions have never been credibly measured and controlled in secondhand smoke studies. Thus, the claimed risks are doubly deceptive because of interferences that could not be calculated and corrected.

In addition, results are not consistently reproducible. The majority of studies do not report a statistically significant change in risk from secondhand smoke exposure, some studies show an increase in risk, and ¿ astoundingly ¿ some show a reduction of risk.

Some prominent anti-smokers have been quietly forthcoming on what "the science" does and does not show. Asked to quantify secondhand smoke risks at a 2006 hearing at the UK House of Lords, Oxford epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto ¿ a leader of the secondhand smoke crusade ¿ replied, "I am sorry not to be more helpful; you want numbers and I could give you numbers..., but what does one make of them? ...These hazards cannot be directly measured."

It has been fashionable to ignore the weakness of "the science" on secondhand smoke, perhaps in the belief that claiming "the science is settled" will lead to policies and public attitudes that will reduce the prevalence of smoking. But such a Faustian bargain is an ominous precedent in public health and political ethics. Consider how minimally such policies as smoking bans in bars and restaurants really reduce the prevalence of smoking, and yet how odious and socially unfair such prohibitions are.

By any sensible account, the anachronism of tobacco use should eventually vanish in an advancing civilization. Why must we promote this process under the tyranny of deception?

Presumably, we are grown-up people, with a civilized sense of fair play, and dedicated to disciplined and rational discourse. We are fortunate enough to live in a free country that is respectful of individual choices and rights, including the right to honest public policies. Still, while much is voiced about the merits of forceful advocacy, not enough is said about the fundamental requisite of advancing public health with sustainable evidence, rather than by dangerous, wanton conjectures.

A frank discussion is needed to restore straight thinking in the legitimate uses of "the science" of epidemiology ¿ uses that go well beyond secondhand smoke issues. Today, health rights command high priority on many agendas, as they should. It is not admissible to presume that people expect those rights to be served less than truthfully.

Gio Batta Gori, an epidemiologist and toxicologist, is a fellow of the Health Policy Center in Bethesda. He is a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, and he received the U.S. Public Health Service Superior Service Award in 1976 for his efforts to define less hazardous cigarettes. Gori's article "The Surgeon General's Doctored Opinion" will appear in the spring issue of the Cato Institute's Regulation Magazine.

quote:

Gio Batta Gori, an epidemiologist and toxicologist, is a fellow of the Health Policy Center in Bethesda. He is a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, and he received the U.S. Public Health Service Superior Service Award in 1976 for his efforts to define less hazardous cigarettes. Gori's article "The Surgeon General's Doctored Opinion" will appear in the spring issue of the Cato Institute's Regulation Magazine.

I believe that this guy has, or had ties to tobacco companies. I read this in some of the comments that were posted after the article in the Washington Post. I didn't do any research, but apparently some of the anti posters did. So, even though every word he writes is probably true, it's not going to make one iota of difference to the antis. Big Pharma has more power than big tobacco.

I would bet that a thirty minute Fireworks show in a typical town on the 4th of July will put more toxins into the air than what every single smoker in the United States would do in their entire lifetimes. I'd love to do the math.

Regardless of any affiliation to a past with the tobacco industry, he was enployed by the same groups passing on this information as indisputable facts now.

The trust of the studies is the participants where looking for a scapgoat for their conditions at the time. Sine "the time" was 30 years ago, the times covered by the participants included a period when smoke stacks filled the air with toxins the current generation of antis can not imagine. They also lived thru two world wars, the great depression, and the dust bowl of the 1930's.

They were raised before the advent of health departments and meat inspections, antiviral drugs, packaged foods, widespread use of the automobile, and current knowledge about eating domestic livestock.

They worked in factories and lived in towns covered in coal dust.

No other factor was considered and the studies are based on the recolections of cigarette smoke exposure over the course of their 70 years of life.

Can you remember how many glasses of tap water you have consumbed over the course of your life?

How many fast food hamburgers you have eaten since birth? How many cola drinks you have consumbed since birth? How many times you have eaten baloney since birth?

Can you remember how many dates you have had and with whom?

quote:

Originally posted by snowbird:
Smoking cigarettes is a clear health risk, as most everyone knows.

It is a "risk" in the statistical sense, in the same sense that wearing a bra is a huge "risk" for breast cancer (wearing a bra increases the "risk" of breast cancer 12500 times; note that some men can get breast cancer, too).

quote:

Lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases develop at advancing ages. Estimating the risk of those diseases posed by secondhand smoke requires knowing the sum of momentary secondhand smoke doses that nonsmokers have internalized over their lifetimes. Such lifetime summations of instant doses are obviously impossible, because concentrations of secondhand smoke in the air, individual rates of inhalation, and metabolic transformations vary from moment to moment, year after year, location to location.

This kind of argument against ETS danger is like a cop stopping bank robbers as they are running out of the bank with bags of money and masks still on, and then after a short conversation tickets them for illegal parking and lets them go. If you were to see a cop doing that, you would justifiably suspect that the cop was bribed by the robbers to let them go. The argument in this article is of the same kind -- it gives the antismoking con artists the pass on their main sleight of hand (the leap from a statistical "risk" to a "cause"), and attacks them on irrelevant bits.

As if their claims would be perfectly fine, if only they could determine more accurately the level of past ETS exposure. By that logic, measuring accurately the lifetime use of bra, and establishing that such figure correlates very strongly with breast cancers (which is far stronger correlation than anything smoking correleates with), proves that bras cause breast cancers.

In other words, this argument which on its face seems pro-smoker is in fact anti-smoker since it supports and reinforces the core of the antismoking swindle, while conceding to smokers only a minor point. Arguing about dangers of secondary smoke at all, pro or con, while accepting anything about primary smoke, is contrary to interests of smokers. Once you reject their basic leap (the logic of which would allow one to equally well "conclude" that wearing bra causes breast cancer), the secondary smoke is non-issue. You can't let them get away with their main sleight of hand, otherwise they have already won (damaged your health and set you up for extortion), whatever the outcome of the side debate on quality of secondary smoke statistcs.

WIth "friends" like that, who needs enemies. Of course, one shouldn't expect to have Washington Post or any other establishment media come to our side, against the big bucks of pharmaceutical & medical industry. All that this WP article is doing is a precautionary damage control -- concede a tiny bit to smokers to keep them from finally snapping (enough is enough, we have had it with this antismoking ripoff), while reinforcing their main poison pill (instilled delusion that we are doing a bad thing) which keeps smokers paralyzed and submissive to the parasite.

Michael Siegel's blog
Washington Post Op-Ed Challenges the "Bogus" Science of Secondhand Smoke An op-ed column published Tuesday in the Washington Post challenges what it calls the "bogus" science behind claims of the extreme dangers of secondhand smoke.

The column, written by Dr. Gio Gori, a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention and former paid tobacco industry consultant,The Rest of the Story

It is with great misfortune that I find myself in a position where I must agree with two of the basic premises of this column (obviously I don't agree with the suggestion that all claims of the hazards of secondhand smoke are fallacious).

First, I agree that many of the claims being publicly disseminated by anti-smoking groups, including the Surgeon General's office, are based on bogus science.

Second, I agree that pubic policy should be based on an honest and accurate representation of the science, that health rights should be served truthfully, and that a frank discussion (particularly within the tobacco control movement) is needed to restore straight thinking regarding the way in which "science" is being used or misused to promote public policy. Dr. Gori is absolutely correct in suggesting that two of the major claims made by the Surgeon General regarding the effects of secondhand smoke are based on bogus science. First, there is no evidence that merely a brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer. All of the evidence upon which the conclusion that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer is based involve subjects with chronic exposure to secondhand smoke, usually at very high levels and for many, many years. Most of these studies involve people who lived with smokers for many years, or who worked in a workplace where they were exposed daily to secondhand smoke for many years.Simply put, there is no adequate basis to support the Surgeon General's statement that a brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer. Second, it is inaccurate to state that children exposed to secondhand smoke will eventually develop heart disease or cancer. The overwhelming majority of them will, of course, not develop heart disease or cancer due to their secondhand smoke exposure.As I noted previously, "by making secondhand smoke exposure sound so bad, such that even a tiny and brief exposure is hazardous and such that if you are exposed you are doomed to disease, aren't we taking away an incentive for people who cannot eliminate their exposure entirely to reduce it? Are we not taking away an incentive for smokers to quit smoking if they know that they will still hang out in the same smoky bars and be exposed to secondhand smoke? What's the point of their quitting smoking if the secondhand smoke in these bars is going to kill them anyway and there is no perceived benefit of reducing the level of their exposure? "Public policy should be based on accurate and well-documented science, not based on mere conjecture. It should be based on the truth, not on deceptive propaganda.Right now, there is a lot of deceptive propaganda that is being spewed forth by anti-smoking groups. It is not just isolated groups; there is a widespread effort to sensationalize the health effects of secondhand smoke and it pervades the movement, going all the way to the top - to the office of the Surgeon General.Anti-smoking groups can't stop every columnist from questioning the basis for the claims that there is any danger to secondhand smoke at all. But they should, at a minimum, not give opponents of smoke-free policies like Dr. Gori red-hot ammunition by making claims that really are bogus. Dr. Gori has always criticized the science behind secondhand smoke, but by actually making absurd and bogus claims, the Surgeon General's office and anti-smoking groups have given him the opportunity to have a field day.And that field day, on the pages of the highly-read and highly reputed Washington Post, comes at the expense of a blow to the credibility of the anti-smoking movement.As well it should.

smokers are the ones full of bogus because they are so addicted to their drug they call smoking

quote:

Originally posted by Pee-Wee:
smokers are the ones full of bogus because they are so addicted to their drug they call smoking

Attaboy there Pee-Wee...

You keep right on tellin' em.

lol...