{"id":34609,"date":"2017-11-26T01:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34609"},"modified":"2017-11-15T08:11:13","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T13:11:13","slug":"qotd-the-dangers-of-second-hand-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/26\/qotd-the-dangers-of-second-hand-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The dangers of second-hand smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke. <\/p>\n

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was \u201cresponsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults,\u201d and that it \u201cimpairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people.\u201d In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second-hand smoke as a Group-A Carcinogen. <\/p>\n

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor<\/em> was saying that \u201cSecond-hand smoke is the nation\u2019s third-leading preventable cause of death.\u201d The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent. <\/p>\n

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had \u201ccommitted to a conclusion before research had begun,\u201d and had \u201cdisregarded information and made findings on selective information.\u201d The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: \u201cWe stand by our science; there\u2019s wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings a whole host of health problems.\u201d Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn\u2019t even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It\u2019s the consensus of the American people. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second-hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke. <\/p>\n

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don\u2019t want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you\u2019ll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we\u2019ve given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We\u2019ve told them that cheating is the way to succeed. <\/p>\n

Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming”: the Caltech Michelin Lecture<\/a>, 2003-01-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,28,41,16],"tags":[427,39,51],"class_list":["post-34609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-media","category-quotations","category-science","tag-epa","tag-junkscience","tag-pr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-90d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34610,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34609\/revisions\/34610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}