Read this in Skeptic this month.
Full article here in pdf.
http://www.nycclash.com/Zion-Skeptic-Science_And_SHS.PDF
List of sources are here.
http://www.nycclash.com/Zion-Skeptic-Science_And_SHS.html
THERE IS NOTHING MORE POWERFULL THAN A lie whose time has come. Thus, the smoking bans. The experts proclaim that 63,000 Americans are killed yearly by secondhand smoke, more than the victims of AIDS, drunk drivers, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina, put together. If it's true here, imagine the death toll in China. One would think such a strong assertion would be followed by demands for strong evidence by the scientific establishment, the medical community, the media and the man in the street.
Instead, with very few exceptions, scientists and doctors have remained silent, the media have led the orchestra, and the citizens have waltzed to
the music.
But the claims about the deleterious effects of second hand smoke are based on nothing more than cooked statistics--there are no bodies, no autopsy reports. But they have led to draconian smoking bans imposed by govemments from Califomia to New York to Ireland to Israel to Australia to England. ln the process, civil liberties have been trampled and smokers demonized, driven into the streets and lately, in some places, off the streets as anti-smoke zealots promote the notion that outdoor smoking is virtually as pernicious as indoor smoking.
Full article here in pdf.
http://www.nycclash.com/Zion-Skeptic-Science_And_SHS.PDF
List of sources are here.
http://www.nycclash.com/Zion-Skeptic-Science_And_SHS.html
THERE IS NOTHING MORE POWERFULL THAN A lie whose time has come. Thus, the smoking bans. The experts proclaim that 63,000 Americans are killed yearly by secondhand smoke, more than the victims of AIDS, drunk drivers, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina, put together. If it's true here, imagine the death toll in China. One would think such a strong assertion would be followed by demands for strong evidence by the scientific establishment, the medical community, the media and the man in the street.
Instead, with very few exceptions, scientists and doctors have remained silent, the media have led the orchestra, and the citizens have waltzed to
the music.
But the claims about the deleterious effects of second hand smoke are based on nothing more than cooked statistics--there are no bodies, no autopsy reports. But they have led to draconian smoking bans imposed by govemments from Califomia to New York to Ireland to Israel to Australia to England. ln the process, civil liberties have been trampled and smokers demonized, driven into the streets and lately, in some places, off the streets as anti-smoke zealots promote the notion that outdoor smoking is virtually as pernicious as indoor smoking.
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