Originally posted by Euronymous@Aug 17 2005, 11:57 AM
Especially as the dangers of passive smoking is media contrived bullshit.
Really? The fact that what is published in the media comes from tghe work of respected scientists and people who have spent many years of their life qualifying in medicine seems to have escaped your attention.
What was extensively covered in the media was the publication of a study claiming that secondhand smoke might not be as harmful as previously believed.
Coverage of the story appeared in all the major newspapers, with reports ranging from lengthy analysis, to short and brief mentions.
Among the many headlines were, "Claim that passive smoking does no harm ignites tobacco row", "Passive smoking may not damage your health after all, says research", "Passive smoking isn't such a peril, say researchers" and "Fury at 'smoke screen'".
This study appeared in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and was based on research by James Enstrom, from the University of California, and Geoffrey Kabat, from the State University of New York. They analysed data from the American Cancer Society's (ACS) Cancer Prevention Study, which was started in 1959 and ended in 1998. In total 118,094 Californian adults had been studied, and Enstrom and Kabat focused on the 35,561 nonsmokers who were married to partners who smoked.
The researchers chose this subgroup of nonsmokers because they reasoned that being married to smokers meant that this group was exposed to secondhand smoke. According to their analysis of this group, passive smoking (by inhaling a spouse's cigarette smoke) wasn't significantly associated with an increased risk of death from coronary heart disease or lung cancer at any time or at any level of exposure. From this finding, the study's authors, suggest that passive smoking cannot cause the 30 per cent increased risk of coronary heart disease that it is currently believed to cause. Instead, they argue that it might cause a much smaller effect.
However, they couldn't rule out the possibility of a 20 per cent increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
But the American Cancer Society (ACS) - the organisation whose data was used - has strongly criticised the study.
Not least because Enstrom and Kabat's research was funded by the tobacco industry and supported by the now defunct Centre for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) - a group funded and founded by cigarette companies.
I haven't voted in the poll but just thought that a little factual information wouldn't do any harm.