Hat tip Michael McFadden.
Prof Simon Chapman is an anti smoker from Sydney Australia who is credited with the draconian smoking bans there and the Far East. Here he is from 1995 with his pants down trying to lie and manipulate the press as a study into second hand smoke (SHS) did not indicate any risk.
“..look at Table 7 in the way any journalist would … a reasonable conclusion will be that the idea that there is ANY lung cancer caused by ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) in Australia will be seen as a huge joke.”
” I think we had better get out a thesaurus and find a lot of words to express the words ‘conservative estimate’ in hundreds of different ways…. We are looking down the barrel of a MAJOR public relations problem …”
http://members.iinet.net.au/~ray/ETS1.jpg
Hat tip Xopher the other page.
LifestyleReviews 
Also http://members.iinet.net.au/~ray/ETS2.jpg
The other side of this letter is at http://members.iinet.net.au/~ray/ETS2.jpg
Antis are rather fond of pointing out that there are a great number of toxic/poisonous/disease causing chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Antis claim there is NO SAFE level of exposure to SHS; but, have you ever wondered how many cigarettes it takes to ’cause’ a person’s death from a smoking related disease?
In America, most smokers start by the age of 18 and the average(median) age of the smoking related deaths is 73.
If a smoker was to die from a smoking ’caused’ death; at a pack/day over 55 years, that is 401,500 cigarettes smoked and our smoker still has a 50% chance their smoking related death would not have occurred.
Of course, each smoker is exposed to the SHS from their cigarettes.
Let’s say it takes about 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette and each smoker takes about 15 breaths per minute, that is 75 breaths per cigarette.
401,500 X 75 = 30,112,500
Our smoker could take 30,112,500 SHS laden breaths and still have a 50% chance their smoking related death would not have occurred.
30 million is a nice number; but, let’s go for some BIG numbers!!!!
CDC says there are NO smoking related disease deaths below the age of 35. There are about 16 million smokers(USA) between the ages of 18-35.
If each of those 16 million smoked 15 cigarettes/day, that is 88 BILLION DOSES of TOXIC/DISEASE CAUSING CHEMICALS being self-administered per year without causing a single death.
88 billion cigarettes X 75 breaths/cigarette = 6.6 trillion(6,600,000,000,000) breaths of SHS laden air without there being ONE smoking related death!!!!
Actually the ultimate hat tip on this goes to Ray Johnstone, an early (1990s) Free Choice activist in Australia. His homepage is at http://members.iinet.net.au/~ray/ and if you go to Australia’s “Tobacco Control Supersite” you’ll find the usual type of backhanded smear Antismokers use against anyone who’s effective in fighting them but not connected to Big Tobacco on their page about “front groups and spokespeople”: “Ray Johnstone : Johnstone is a Western Australian academic with views widely applauded by the tobacco industry”
It’s rather serendipitous that you put this up today since just yesterday I’d sent Dr. Chapman an email with a question about his recent PLoS article on smoking cessation! LOL! We must be channeling each other in our sleep!
:>
Michael
You clowns are such amazing researchers. So you’ve “discovered” this, eh! Only 14 years after it was published in the Canberra Times on April 21, 1997. Here’s my letter that was published the next day.
***
Alan Gale’s report and your headline (“Passive smoking results were doctored, documents say” (CT April 21) defames all the members of the NH&MRC’s working party in its claim that we
“massaged” research results and deleted those “which did not suit recommendations”. The ordinary reader, and especially our colleagues in public health research throughout Australia and internationally would be highly likely to form the view that we were scientifically dishonest and engaged in deceptive practices that should bring us into gross disrepute within our
professions.
Gale bases his claims on a fax I sent to other members of the group in 1995 where I raised two concerns about an early working draft chapter. First, I argued that “fractional” annual deaths (ie: death rates of less than one per age band) would prove difficult for journalists and the public to understand. When Gale interviewed me for the article, I put to him the simplest of questions that sought to test his ability as a journalist to decipher what “0.5” deaths per annum meant. His struggled reply was incomplete, thus demonstrating my point. There are many perfectly correct ways of expressing the same data in more comprehensible forms, and my fax urged nothing more than that we should realise that the table would cause unnecessary confusion. I subsequently argued in the committee that we should recast the data in a more
understandable way (for example one death every 9 months).
His claim that this means we then “doctored” the data is grossly offensive, damaging to our reputations as researchers and wrong, as the publication of the final report will reveal. It
is standard procedure for all draft papers to undergo changes and editing. Often these are to improve clarity.
Second, I pointed out that our very conservative methodology estimated there to be some 93 annual deaths from ischaemic heart disease caused by passive smoking in Australia, whereas
a recent American estimate put the US figure at 62,000. Since then the US Environmental Protection Agency has published an 8 volume report (http://www.calepa.calnet.gov/) showing some 65,000 deaths. I advised the committee — correctly — that our report would be therefore “out of step with every international review’s conclusion on this subject”. Without offering a shred of evidence, Gale then implies that the committee somehow as a consequence of this then “deleted” or “doctored” material. In fact, the final report includes the same very conservative estimates which resulted from our only considering domestic (spousal) exposure data in people who have never smoked. We did not factor in workplace exposures, nor deaths among ex-smokers.
My fax rehearsed the sort of questions that we were likely to get from those who were familiar with the much higher US mortality estimates. If we had really wanted to “massage results to suit recommendations” why then would we have persisted in using our ultra-conservative methodology which was guaranteed to produce low estimates of deaths?
Significantly, Gale’s article was run in the week that two private member’s bills on passive smoking are due to be debated in the NSW parliament. The Canberra Times should know
better.
***
I’m sorry if my posting on this list has caused any of you too much excitement. Just have a lie down. It should pass.
Simon Chapman
Professor Chapman, I hope you are well and thanks for taking time to reply to my post.
My point on SHS and lung cancer you would need thesaurus and a PHD in spin to find any correlation. The first link is over 80 of them, hardly any reach statistical significance.
The penultimate paper The Neuberger found an inverse number and statistically significantly. “A significant inverse association was found for those with some college education (OR=0.63, 95% CI=0.48-0.81) and for those with adult passive smoke exposure at home (OR=0.37, 95% CI=0.26-0.54). “
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1876736/
The last one I am aware of is the Brenner paper published in October 2010 which concluded:
“Among never smokers in our population, we observed no association between either exposure to ETS at home or at the workplace and lung cancer risk (Table 2). In general, the effect estimates for ETS exposure were similar between the total population and only among never smokers.”
The RR was 1.2 and CI 0.7-2.1
Professor Chapman I am in the process of writing a paper based mainly from papers from the WHO/IRAC. From initial calculations worst case is that the LC/SHS incident rate is 1.31 per 200,000, I can prove that now if you tell me the general lung cancer rate for Australia. The figure of 1.31 means as a comparison in the UK that you are 10x more likely to die on the roads. I am currently researching benzo(a)pyrene levels from BBQs, solid fuel fires and exhaust emissions. Radon too induces the p53 transversion in non smokers. The figure of 1.31 may tend to zero.
Another back of a fag packet calculation can be done. I am sure you agree that lung cancer and active smoking is dose respondent and linear. If you double your cigarette consumption you not double your chances of LC but triple or quadruple the incidence. Surely it is implied that the opposite is true. A smoker’s lifetime risk of getting LC is 8%. Even in the smokiest bars the equivalent the non smoker is breathing in is 1%.
Hence 1% x 8% plus the linear reduction again more than implies the figure must tend to zero.
Professor Chapman you and your colleagues in tobacco control stopped me from smoking in a bar, one of my greatest joys in life. My way of fighting against it is by learning as much as I can about how I have been misled.
While I can understand health professionals wanting to reduce smoking, I am sincerely perturbed that educated people knowingly and wilfully lying about SHS to advance their agendas. The perversion of science in a democracy has no place.
Actually Dr. Chapman, I wrote about it back in 2004 in “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains.” Check page 84. You’ll note that I made no claim of “doctoring” results, but presented the case quite clearly and honestly of being a statement of how inconsequential the risks would appear to people unless they were presented in very specific ways. We’ve seen similar sorts of things done by antismoking advocates for years, some more blatant than others (e.g. headlining studies showing “Bar and Restaurant Employment” unharmed by bans when the data fairly clearly showed bar employment decimated after the studied ban. The word “AND” was used in the combinatorial fashion that hid that inconvenient fact.) and actually I’ve always considered your efforts in that fax to be fairly innocent in comparison to such things.
From what I’ve seen of your work Dr. Chapman you’re one of the “Idealists” that I outlined in Brains and that I’ve warned of more recently in discussing the bias of antismoking research. In most research areas there are problems with a certain amount of research being either outright fraudulent or simply bent almost unconsciously toward a desired result due to greed, either for money or prestige and career advancement. In antismoking advocacy however there’s a very powerful second factor at work: Idealism. The idealism of wanting to save the world, to have one’s results create conditions that are “better” for other people (whether they like them or not). Most medical researchers strongly believe that many people are harmed by their smoking and would be healthier if they didn’t smoke. I happen to agree with that belief, though to a lesser extreme.
Where we separate is that the idealistic antismoking researcher is willing, either consciously or unconsciously, to “bend” their research in various ways, either through data selection, study design, or presentation of the results to the scientific community and/or the media, in order to advance the goal of reducing smoking — rather than to simply present scientific truth. I firmly believe that fifty years from now researchers will look back and discover that at least as much “bad science” in the antismoking area was produced by such idealism as was produced by the greed engendered by the massive amounts of money and prestige available in the area. The 10 or 15% of suspected fraud or misrepresentation thought to exist in research by pharmaceutical scientists helping companies pitch particular drugs as safe and effective in return for nothing more than money may well be doubled or tripled when the element of idealism is applied. After all, who’s hurt if a study makes parents fearful that their children will get cancer from a neighbor smoking next door? Maybe it will “help” the neighbor to quit smoking and live a longer and healthier life, right? But in reality, the social harm and even the harm to such neighbors and to the worried parents themselves probably immensely outweighs any conceivably likely benefit — and this is something most antismoking researchers are completely oblivious to.
Michael J. McFadden,
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Btw, I’m a bit puzzled that while you responded to this, you have not responded to a fairly simple and straightforward question I asked you in an email 24 hours earlier. It’s possible you are having difficulty accessing your email for some reason, so I’ll reproduce it here so that you’ll be sure to see it and can respond:
===
Hello Dr. Chapman! 🙂
You’ve probably seen me around on the internet or run across my book in the past: Michael McFadden here.
And you’re probably also aware that I am usually strongly critical of the research and methods that drive smoking bans. Despite that seeming bias however, I *do* take great care not criticize things without careful examination.
I noted in your article, “The global research neglect of unassisted smoking cessation: causes and consequences,” that you led off with this: “As with problem drinking, gambling, and narcotics use [1]–[9] population studies show consistently that a large majority of smokers who permanently stop smoking do so without any form of assistance[10]–[15].”
When I checked the references though I did not see any real support for the implied statement that “a large majority of [narcotics users] who permanently stop [narcotics use] do so without any form of assistance.” Now, while that statement is undoubtedly true in a technical sense when one includes such cases as post-operative hospital patients, I seriously doubt that it is true for the standard public image of the heroin-shooting narcotics addict. And since it is that sort of use that would normally be classified as “problem … narcotics use” it would seem to be important to make such a distinction.
Did I simply miss seeing the proper reference that would support a claim that the majority of heroin addicts who quit permanently “do so without any form of assistance”? Neither of the two most seemingly relevant references (2 and 3) would seem to support such a statement.
Thank you for your attention.
====
And I should note, since I imagine you may be wondering, no, the blog editor did not write this blog entry due to any urgings or emails from me that I’m aware of. Just to be sure, I checked back a few months in my emails and while I found some interesting materials — one email noting your praise of using the “pig’s blood in filters” press release as showing ” the power of press releases to ignite major interest in tobacco control issues.”; and another about your quite correct criticism of unreasonable exploitation of people’s fears about “Third Hand Smoke” in a letter to Tobacco Control saying:
“It is important that research documents residuals from tobacco smoke. But it is equally important that consumers and policy makers are not led to believe that the chemical compounds thus located are somehow unique to tobacco smoke. Unless in the extremely unlikely event that residents burn copious quantities of solanaceous vegetables (aubergine, tomato) which contain small amounts of nicotine, tobacco is going to be the only source of nicotine in homes. But it will not by any means be the only source of many of the ingredients of “third hand smoke” that the unwitting or the fumophobic may believe are attributable only to smoking. The omission of this information in such reports risks harming the credibility of tobacco control.”
— I found nothing relating to this 15 year old fax. You’re quite correct though in pointing out that omissions and/or distortions such as regard the thirdhand smoke silliness hurt tobacco control more than help it.
In any event, may I ask for an answer to my emailed question?
Thank you.
– MJM
Dr. Chapman–
I, too, was impressed with your reasonable approach to the hyped delusion of “thirdhand smoke,” and I enter this fray only to call attention to your apparent 1995 belief that 62,000 annual heart attacks are actually caused by ETS in America.
The original number (38,000- 53,000 ETS-related deaths from all causes) was first presented in Congressional testimony by the AMA, and was scathingly debunked by, among others, the nonpartisan US Congressional Research Service, which was subsequently asked to trace the number to its source. To read its report, see: http://www.nycclash.com/Cabinet/CRSDiscusses_50000_Deaths.html
The number was shown to have been based on a single, flawed and assumptive study by A. Judson Wells done in 1988 (“An estimate of adult mortality in the US from passive smoking”) and from there made the rounds like a bad game of telephone, getting bigger with every call..
To wit: In 1994, Wells published another study, based, he wrote, “on an analysis of 1985 data,” presumably the same data he’d used in 1988. This time, however, he claimed a total of 62,000 American ETS deaths a year. His study was picked up by the California EPA which then, in its 1997 report, estimated an annual range of heart attacks “associated” with ETS as being in a range of 35,000 to 62,000– that’s 62,000 from heart attacks alone.(!) The NCI in its Monograph 10, reprinted this range, again, apparently accepting Wells’ word.
Next, the CDC picked up the number, but quoted it flatly at its upper plank only: 62,000. So now it was “official.” A scientifically unquestionable 62,000. Period. End of report. And the press took it from there.
All of this, of course, was statistical blather–GIGO from nicely compliant computer– but the choice to quote only its outer projections was, and remains, scientific malpractice. On the other hand, hey, it made sensational headlines (or what’s a study for?)
OTOH:
The American Cancer Society studies (CPS-1 in 1981 and CPS-2 in 1988) each studying over a million Americans, found no correlation between ETS and heart disease. The statistical results were 1.0 (95%: 0.977-1.04 and 95%: 0.90-1.07) . And when the California CPS cohort was followed until 1998, Entrom and Kabat found no connection either.
Nor did the World Health Organization’s MONICA study of 21 countries, which included Australia.
And while of course you can cite meta-analyses like Law’s, He’s, and Glantz’s, all of them suffer not only from the authors’ philosophical biases, but pronounced methodological flim-flam and flaws. (And I’ll be happy to back that up.)
Or to put this another way: perhaps you might want to look into these Numbers before you believe, or continue to cite, them.
Walt The November 1994 Congressional Health Sub-Committee report into SHS/ETS under anti smoker Congressman Henry Waxwan was published in November of 1994 its conclusions were:
“The statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking;
It is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS;
If there are any lung cancer deaths from ETS exposure, they are likely to be concentrated among those subjected to the highest exposure levels… primarily among those nonsmokers subjected to significant spousal ETS.
‘Even when overall risk is considered, it is a very small risk and is not statistically significant at a conventional 95% level.”
http://www.legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oio50c00/pdf?search=%22crs
Mr. Chapman, a number of smokers’ rights advocates can be considered “new” — having joined the discussion only once a smoking ban was at their own doorstep — some many years after the early anti-smoker material was first made available. Therefore, they are less aware of some older pieces of material that long-time advocates had already reviewed, discussed and filed away many years ago. In my case I’ve been aware of your fax for the last 11 years. 11 years ago there was just so much (as in less) material. In the convening years the number of manufactured studies, papers and discussion by the anti-smokers exploded and provided tons of material for vetting. The “newer” advocates can be quite forgiven for having little need to know about your much earlier fax that us older advocates had already dug into.
Finally, I do not buy your argument now for a minute. First of all, we are not reading a newspaper article on your fax that a reporter can narrate any way he wants. We are looking at the ORIGINAL fax itself from you. I do not need to much care what occured after (a “final” report?) this fax — whether you changed figures which resulted in an article that called them “doctored” or “massaged” — to arrive at an opinion that your intention was to produce a study that proved harm from SHS but was utterly alarmed when it didn’t. The results didn’t match the dogma. Instead of being content that your study failed to prove it and saying so, all you saw is how it didn’t match the results of your U.S. counterpart in order to be in sync with the SHS agenda. Rather than own up to your own weak results your suggestion to your fellows was to “get out a thesaurus” to find “in hundreds of different ways” a way to make your final figure appear more meaningful than it was so that it could line up with the U.S.
Lastly, you mislead by saying the US Environmental Protection Agency has published an 8 volume report showing some 65,000 deaths. The link you provide is to CALEPA which is NOT the U.S. It’s California ONLY. As far as I know, the U.S. EPA had in fact REFUSED those figures. By the way, the link you provide is dead. I believe this would be what you were attempting to present: http://oehha.ca.gov/pdf/exec.pdf
Founder, Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (C.L.A.S.H.)
The thing that gets me about the ‘evidence’ against smoking is that by focussing so much on it medical sceince has ignored other factors. Some researchers have been saying for years there is a strong posibility that HPV may be implicated in far more cancers blamed on smoking than we imagine. Now that is being proven; and could have been much earlier; could it not be said that many lives have been lost as a direct result of ignoring that? Smoking may contribute to diseases but it cannot cause a prolific cancer causing virus as far as I am aware. The low by anyone’s assesment of risk from second hand smoke next to HPV in cancer should make those trying to slant such statistics hang their head in shame instead of having such a condescending attitude.
Indeed David.
If you want dodgy figures on smoking and epidemiology look at cervical cancer and smoking. One study came up with these figures: 2.74 (2.18–3.45). Even I would have to say smoking seems statistically significant here. However smoking being a cause of CC is rubbish it is entirely caused by Human Papillomavirus (HPV) versions 16 and 18 (genital warts.) The correlation is that promiscuous women tend to get HPV and promiscuous people tend to smoke.
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/cervix/riskfactors/#source6
Over exaggerating the potential harm of SHS seems to be a vital tactic in order to alienate smokers, but this form of scaremongering is unfair and unethical with regard to non smokers (let alone smokers). With regard to passive smoking, the tobacco control agenda appears to have scant respect for all people. Nobody with some knowledge of this issue can deny that even the claimed risks are very low. Shouldn’t this fact be clearly explained to the general public? The longer term effects will be extremely damaging – if professional advisers continue to over politicise health issues sooner or later they will lose all trust (NB – it happens to real politicians all the time). Indeed, this is already happening. For example, the recent publicity surrounding the BMA gaffe regarding the toxicity levels of tobacco smoke in cars. The BMA knew, or should have, that the 23x claim was anecdotal. Unfortunately for them, they were challenged and had to issue a highly embarrassing and unconvincing retraction. The knock on effect is that other claims may undergo closer scrutiny (such the highly inaccurate Pell study re Scottish heart attacks that continues to be referenced in official documents). Truth is, if they lose the backing of the media it’ll be game over.
Well,theres one big diference today than 11 years ago:
Lung Cancer a Different Disease in Smokers and Nonsmokers
PHILADELPHIA — Lung cancer that develops in smokers is not the same disease as lung cancer that develops in people who’ve never touched a cigarette, a new study finds.
There are nearly twice as many DNA changes in the tumors of people who have never smoked than in the tumors of people who smoke, which suggests the cancer of “never-smokers” is different from smokers’ cancer, said Kelsie Thu, a Ph.D. candidate at the BC Cancer Research Center in Canada.
“We think this finding provides evidence that never-smoker and smoker lung cancers are different, and suggests they arise through different molecular pathways,” Thu told MyHealthNewsDaily. “Never-smokers might be exposed to a carcinogen, not from cigarettes, that causes their tumors to have more DNA alterations and promotes lung cancer development.”
http://www.livescience.com/11090-lung-cancer-disease-smokers-nonsmokers.html
OT but important
France, Germany to propose new EU treaty: Sarkozy
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/05/us-eurozone-idUSTRE7B30AO20111205
Simon: “You clowns are such amazing researchers.”
This is a bit “rich” coming from one of the chief clown/shysters of Tobacco Control, Simple Simon Chapman. Simple Simon is the originator of the Chapman Trick in TC. He did not invent the trick, but certainly popularized it in TC.
For those not familiar with the Chapman Trick: We’ve all seen some variation of this “information”:
Acetone (nail varnish remover), Ammonia (cleaning agent), Arsenic (ant poison in the USA), Benzene (petrol fumes), Cadmium (car battery fluid), DDT (insecticide), Ethanol (anti-freeze), Formaldehyde (embalming fluid), Hydrogen Cyanide (industrial pollutant), Lead (batteries, petrol fumes), Methanol (rocket fuel), Tar (road surface tar).
Few, however, are familiar with where this nonsense originated. This trick was suggested by Simon Chapman (a prominent Australian antismoker) at the Fifth World Conference on Smoking & Health (1983) while presenting his “manual of underhanded tricks & tactics”.
“A glance through any copy of the Smoking and Health Bulletin of the U S Department of Health and Human Services shows an entire indexed, section on ‘Tobacco Product Additives’ . Citations are included from patent office registrations of new chemical applications to tobacco processing and from the specialist chemical literature. Both these sources are virtually unintelligible, let alone normally accessible to the average person but are rich in potential for anyone willing to translate them into news items with popular interest . Polysyllabic chemical names should be checked through a reference book that lists common usages and toxicological data for chemicals . Look for usages that will connote revulsion or concern . For example, well known chemicals found in tobacco include cadmium (as in car batteries), ammonia (as in toilet cleaners), cyanides, formaldehyde and so on ……” (p.15)
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/gjq72f00
This Chapman Trick is to remove tobacco smoke from any coherent context and to associate trace levels of particular chemicals in tobacco smoke with industrial-type uses of the same chemicals that involve extraordinarily larger quantities of these chemicals. It violates, brutalizes, the toxicological maxim of “the dose makes the toxicity”. The only purpose of this trick is to deceive. It is intended to promote outrage or revulsion in, particularly, gullible nonsmokers at whom it’s directed. This trick has been used (even by governments), ad nauseam, since the mid-1980’s because it is highly effective. It is highly effective because, like most antismoking propaganda, it is inflammatory and false: It outrages BECAUSE it is misleading. Its ONLY PURPOSE is to mislead, i.e., inflammatory propaganda.
(Pretty much the same chemicals are released from cooking/heating smoke and candles)
Just to be sure, the air (smokefree) we typically breathe has many of the same chemicals as in tobacco smoke, and more, and in higher concentrations.
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/nata/mapconc.html
Again, these chemicals are typically at trace and barely-trace levels and are not problematic.
If you do a google search, you’ll find similar chemicals in raw food and from cooking, and in drinking water.
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm
Chapman is a fanatic in the “world fixer” lineage. He is very much like his Temperance and Eugenics predecessors of early last century. Simple Simon is a propagandist, ever-ready to contort information to advance the ideological [antismoking] agenda. Simon is a master of, particularly, incoherent analogy.
Chapman was a Member, Expert Advisory Panel on Tobacco and Health (1985-2000) for the World Health Organization –
http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/site/supersite/contact/pdfs/CV_Chapman.doc
Chapman praised by ex-New South Wales Premier Carr – “Carr praised Chapman’s bravery in raising public awareness of the dangers of smoking, and for his work
in ‘denormalising’ smoking itself.”
http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newscategoryid=1&newsstoryid=1910
Chapman’s paper on the ‘markers of denormalization’ and how they can further be exploited – http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/17/1/25
From memory, the book “Rampant Antismoking Signifies Grave Danger” – http://www.rampant-antismoking.com – has quite a number of entries for Simple Simon; just use the “find” function to get a feel for just how much trash the Simple One has generated over the years.
This is the CDC Consumer Manual based on Surgeon General 2010.
It begins (p.3) with the Chapman Trick, i.e., inflammatory propaganda. How seriously can the remainder of the “report” be taken?
Click to access consumer.pdf
Interesting that Chapman deigned to reply at all. Judging by his opening tone you must have got under his skin…
Right Gary.
So we read this:
“….in only two age groups (females 60 – 64 and 65 – 69) do these ESTIMATES go over one death. The lung cancer AGGREGATE must consist of ADDING UP FRACTIONS of one death in different age groups.” [Quote from fax – my capitals]
So the stats consist of added estimates of fractions of deaths….? Or perhaps the prof is saying that it just looks as though that is the case when it isn’t.
One of the things that I would like to know is this:
Are there figures concerning dead people which show signs of lung cancer at some early stage? It is hard for me to believe that such investigations have not been done. There are some interesting ideas there – for example, do almost all very old people who die have some form or some degree of lung cancer? Or some other ‘diseases’ which are not actually the cause of their deaths?
Does anyone know how to find the text of the professor’s actual report?
Without an autopsy it is hard to say anything about people having had some form of cancer and there a few autopsies done these days.
Along those lines:
http://www.forces.org/writers/hatton/files/lies.htm
A joint report by the Royal Colleges of Pathologists Surgeons and Physicians (“The Autopsy and Audit”, 1991), says: “In autopsies (post-mortems) performed on patients thought to have died of malignant disease (cancer) there was only 75% agreement that malignancy was the cause of the death and in only 56% was the primary site identified correctly.”
(So if you are told you have cancer there is a one in four chance that you haven’t, and even if you have there is almost a fifty-fifty chance that you’re being treated for one in the wrong place).
Very interesting comments. Professor Chapman appears to have no answers and/or is unwilling to debate here. Of course, he is hardly likely to concur with many of the points raised – his hands are tied, as are those of all tobacco control professionals. Not withstanding that, I suppose his personal anti sentiments would predispose any admission that the public, governments and health workers have been misled.
@ db
Chapman and the whole lot of them refuse to debate honestly and the rare times they feel the urge to attempt to defend their shoddy ”science” and destructive anti-smoker philosophy to informed opponents, they make all traces of the discussions disappear and run hiding in private ”on invitation only” groups: http://cagecanada.blogspot.com/2011/09/you-can-run-but-you-cannot-hide.html
Readers might also enjoy the ”discussion” with James Repace (the tornado man) here: http://greenbelt.patch.com/articles/witness-testimony-ends-in-secondhand-smoke-trial
It’s not so much an unwillingness to debate after making an initial extensive posting, but a seeming unwillingness to even communicate as a responsible researcher. I sent Dr. Chapman an email almost a hundred hours ago, reproduced it above in case he’d somehow missed it, and I *STILL* have not heard back from him. My request was very simple: simply seeking a clarification of a reference he had claimed in one of his recent scientific papers. Putting it here again at the bottom of this discussion so that there can clearly be no question as to whether he has seen it:
===
Hello Dr. Chapman!
You’ve probably seen me around on the internet or run across my book in the past: Michael McFadden here.
And you’re probably also aware that I am usually strongly critical of the research and methods that drive smoking bans. Despite that seeming bias however, I *do* take great care not criticize things without careful examination.
I noted in your article, “The global research neglect of unassisted smoking cessation: causes and consequences,” that you led off with this: “As with problem drinking, gambling, and narcotics use [1]–[9] population studies show consistently that a large majority of smokers who permanently stop smoking do so without any form of assistance[10]–[15].”
When I checked the references though I did not see any real support for the implied statement that “a large majority of [narcotics users] who permanently stop [narcotics use] do so without any form of assistance.” Now, while that statement is undoubtedly true in a technical sense when one includes such cases as post-operative hospital patients, I seriously doubt that it is true for the standard public image of the heroin-shooting narcotics addict. And since it is that sort of use that would normally be classified as “problem … narcotics use” it would seem to be important to make such a distinction.
Did I simply miss seeing the proper reference that would support a claim that the majority of heroin addicts who quit permanently “do so without any form of assistance”? Neither of the two most seemingly relevant references (2 and 3) would seem to support such a statement.
Thank you for your attention.
– Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
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I’m sure Dr. Chapman wouldn’t want to leave a public impression that he mis-sourced a statement in a formally published article without attempting to correct any mistake that may have been made.
– MJM
Four years later… and still no response from Dr. Chapman. Although by this point he’s probably long forgotten that he refused to respond in the first place.
– MJM
Junican, I believe you can find the full text of the study I was referring to at:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000216
As for the text that Dave referred to in this blog it’s simply the text of the referenced fax. No idea what study Chapman was referring to (and I think actually that it’s that study you were asking about!)
– MJM
Mr Chapman…..If an innocent man (ETS) is arrested for murder, the real killer is still out there…..but now, nobody is looking for him….and more lives will be lost.
Hang your head in shame sir.