Science andSecondhandSmokeThe Need fora Good Puff of Skepticism

S I D N E Y Z I O N

THERE IS NOTHING MORE POWERFLIL THAN Alie whose time has come. Thus, the smoking bars.

The experts proclaim that 63,000 Americansare killed yeady by secondhand smoke, morethan the victims of AIDS, drunk drivers, the Iraqwar, and Hurricane Katrina, put together. If it'strue here, imagine the death toll in China.

One would think such a strong assertionwould be followed by demands for strong evi-dence by the scientific establishment, the medicalcommunity, the media and the man in the street.Instead, with very few exceptions, scientists anddoctors have remained silent, the media have led

the orchestra, and the citizens have waltzed tothe music.

But the claims about the deleterious effects ofsecond hand smoke are based on nothing morethan cooked statistics--there are no bodies, noautopsy reports. But they have led to draconiansmoking bans imposed by govemments fromCalifomia to New York to Ireland to Israel toAustralia to England. ln the process, civil libertieshave been trampled and smokers demonized,driven into the streets and lately, in some places,off the streets as anti-smoke zealors promote thenotion that outdoor smoking is virtually as irnidi-ous as indoor smoking.

The blueprint for this campaign dates to 1975when British delegate Sir George Godberirntnrcted the World Hsalth Organzauon on howto get smokers to quit.l As reported in "Passive

Smoking: How Great theHazard", Sir Georgesaid, "it would be essential to foster an atmos-phere where it was perceived ttrat active smok-

ers would injure those around them, especiallytheir family and infants or young children whowould be exposed involuntarily to the smoke inthe air." Eleven years had passed since the U.S.Surgeon General stunned the tobacco industrywittr a 387-page report linking cigarene smokingand lung cztncer. It was an hisoric event, rankingamong the top news stories of 79(A.z But peopleweren't kicking the habit because they didn'tthjnk cancer would happen to them. Sir Georgeunderstood what it would take to overcome thismindset. Make the nicotine addicts believe theydelivered death to innocent bystanders.

For the mother of all guilt trips to take hold.what was needed was an official imprimarur. TheU.S. Surgeon General delivered it in 19U6 with areport concluding that secondhand smoke "can

cause lung cancer in norsmokers." The data"suggest" *rat nonsmokers are exposed to levelsof environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) that"would be expected to generate a lung cancerrisk," wrote Surgeon General C. Everen Koop(emphasis added). Put together it spelled."maytx," but two paragraphs later, Dr. Koopwrcte; "It is certain that a substantial proportionof the lung cancers that occur in nonsmokers aredue to ETS exposure."3

This sleightof-hand went unnoticed by thepopular media, which promoted the report astruth itself. But throughout the next decade,experts repeatedly critic2ed Dr. Koop's conclu-sions. After reviewing the Surgeon General'srepoft, the Intemational Agenry of Research onCancer (an offshoot of the \(orld HealthOrganization) concluded that, as far as the risk oflung cancer was concemed: "The observationson nonsmokers that have been made so far arecompatible with either an increased risk frompassive smoking or an absence of risk."+

Dr. Enrst Wlndea president of the AmericanHealth Foundation, a pioneer who in 7957 tr^dconnected active smoking and lung cancer, askeda question unanswered to this day: "If passiveinhalation in fact incre"ases our risk of lung czmcrer.there should have been a seady incre'ase in theincidence of h.rng cmc€r among nonsmokers. Thiswould have been observed in the female popttla-tion for the last forty years. As more and moremen smoke, more women passivety inhale thesmoke of their htrsbands. [Yet] ttrere has beqr nosignificant increase of lung cancer in male orfemale nonsmokers. In this case we have a

v o L U M E r 3 N U M B E R 3 2 O O 7

non-fit."5 Exactly. Daa from national mortality sur-veys show ttrat lung clncer rates among never-smoking women remained stable between the1950s and the mid-1%0s; lung cancer rates amongwomen didn't rise until decades afterwomenstarted smoking.

\fhy this emphasis on married womerr2Because the statisical studies relied upon by theSurgeon General (and ever since) were mainlybased on the incidence of cancer among non-smoking manied women who lived with smok-ing husbands. As compared to nonsmokers rnar-ried to nonsmokers. Linda Stewat, in her semi-nal article "How to Read a Studv." lavs out theflaw in this approach:

All it does is, it counts things up, and thenrelates one set of numbers to another:

ln a group of 10 people, 6 have a cold.Of the 6 who have a cold, 3 own a cat.Of the 4 without a cold, 1 orilms a cat.Epidemiology can then grve you a formula:

People who own crts have twice the rate of colds.Vhat it can't do is offer a connection: "Cats causecolds."6

\Vhich brings us to *re first rule of epidemiol-ogy: Correlation does not prove causation. Thelate Dr. Alvan Feinstein, for 40 years Steding pro-fessor of medicine and epidemiology at Yale, tes-ti$'ing before the Congress on secondhandsmoke, related a challenge he gave his seminareach year: "Go hto the satistical abstract of theUnited States...and pluck out data to support themost outrageously silly contention you c:ln comeup with." The winner was somebody who founda strong satistical relationship between the saleof VCRs and the incidence of AIDS. "A wonder-frrl statistical relationship," said Dr. Feinstein."And then if you want plausibility, well, what arethey dorrg while they're watching VCRs, and soon and so fonh."7

If Feinstein had published this "prooP' thatVCRs caused AIDS, he'd have been consigned tothe cuckoo's nest. Using the same analysis tomake the case against secondhand smoke...well,here's what happened after the Surgeon Generalnrmed conelation into causation.ln 1987,Congress banned smoking on all U.S. domesticflights of two hours or less. This was donebefore airline cabin air was measured; there waszero evidence that secondhand smoke endan-gered passengers or crews. Three years later,

after the U.S. Department of Transportationreported that nicotine levels were virtually thesarne on planes that did and did not allow smok-ing, the ban was extended to six hour flights andby 1998 to all flights worldwide.

In 1988, New York City Mayor Ed Kochbanned smoking h all public buildings andrequired nonsmoking sections in restaurants. Inthe same year, J80 ordinances nationwidebanned smoking in various venues, a four-foldincre-ase in the two years since the SurgeonGeneral's report. The anti-smoking brigade gnrm-bled. Too many people still puffing.

ln 1992, the Federal Environmental ProtectionAgency came through, labeling secondhandsmoke a Class A carcinogen that caused lungczrlcer and killed 3,000 Americarn annually.8 Thereport received Class A support from mainstreammedia. Newsrooms, once the smoking fields ofreporters and editors, fell for it with few exceptions. They embraced regulations that sent smok-ers into closed rooms or to the street. Old ink-stained wretches shook their heads but had nochance against the young lions of joumalism,who eschewed cigarenes and saloons for healthclubs and home cooking. Here was irony writlarge: The famous baby boomers, who broughtus hard drugs, hard rock and hard pom, mor-phed into the new prohibitionists.

Out of *nt generation came First tady HillaryRodham Clinton, who responded to the EPAreport by hnning smoking in tlre \(/hite House.Her action rnade page one, above the fold, in TbeNeutYo*Tim6. And so went the nation. The

' $ T I V l � T . S K E P T I C . C O M

headline-grabberwas the My{ount-not part of

the Surgeon General's report. Three thousanddead of secondhand smoke was a trophy for edi-tors, a quotable number. But it was a computer-generated estimate, and there were no bodies. Ifenvironmental tobacco causes lung cancer, thecomputer was asked, how many deaths does itcause? Linda Stewart "The operative word is f Asn (f pip could fly, rhen 47 a year would crash."

Had the press explained this to the public,the EPA report would have had the life-span ofpigs who try to fly. Instead the press ignored that*re EPA never did is own study but cherry-picked among eleven epidemiological snrdies tofind one that yielded a connection between sec-ondhand smoke and cancer. And they had tomove the goal posts to get even ttrat weak link.At the established sutistical "confidence level" of

951/o-meanng *rat there is only a five-percentchance that the findings could be random--+heycouldn't connect passive smoke and lung cancetperid. So they downgraded to a 90lo confi-dence level, doubling ttre possibility that the find-ings were statistically flawed.

In L993, to bolster the case, CongressmanHenry A. V'axman (D-CA), chairman of theHouse subcommittee on Health and theEnvironment, commissioned the universally credi-ble Congressional Research Service to producethe final, definitive study on the perils of second-hand smoke. For nearly two years, CRS consid-ered the whole canon of snrdies and interpreta-tions, reporting:

. The statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantialhealth effects of passive smoking.

. It is possible that very few or even no deaths canbe arributed to ETS.

. Ifthere are ̂ iy lung cancer dea*s from ETSexposure, they are likely to be concentratedamong those subjected to the highest exposurelevels... primarily among those non-smokerszubiected to significant spousal ETS.

. The results are not definitive. And even at thegreatest exposr[e levels, the measured risks arestill zubpct to uncertainty.

CRS reiected the very foundation of the EPA'shypothesis--+hat the smoke inhaled by a smokerand the smoke inhaled secondhand are so chem-ically similar that if one is carcinogenic, then logi-cally so is the other. Secondhand smoke, it said,

is "substantially diluted...when compared toeven low levels of active smoking."9

How did Mr. Waxman react to *ris dwastatingreportr He viewed it as a slamdunk for his anti-smoking cmsade! "NE!7 CONGRESSIONAISTI.]DY CONFIRMS DANGERS OF EI\TVIRON-MENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE," headlined hispress release. The CRS report'Vindicates the con-clusions that secondhand smoke is a dangeroushuman lung carcinogen," and presents a "major

finding" that "the lung cancer risl<s from exposureto EtS are exceptionally high."to But CRS ficundthe opposite: "Even when overall risk is consid-ered, it is a very small risk and is not statisticallysignificant at a conventional 950/o level."

Using the data from the hairiest sntdy itreviewed, the CRS said someone exposed tospousal and background ETS has about a2/76hof one percent chance of dying of lung czncerfrom ETS over a lifetime. Exposure only to back-ground ETS (as in workplaces or bars) drops thenumber to about 7/1UJrh of one percent. Thanksto \?'axman and a compliant press coqps, the CRSfindings were ignored by the media. \flhen theEPA report got to cout, it was thrornm out as anoutright fraud. Federal Judge \Tilliam Osteeninterviewed a range of scientists for four years,writing a)4page opinion in 1998. He found:

The Agency disregarded information and madefindings trased on selective information...deviatedfrom its risk assessment guidelines; failed to dis-close important [opposingl findings and reasoning;and left significant questions without answers....Gathering all relevant information, researching anddisseminating findings, were subordinate to EPA'sdemonstrating ETS was a Group A carcinogen.... lnthis case, EPA publicly committed to a conclusionbefore research had begun; adiusted establishedprocedure and scientific norrns to validate theAgenry's public conclusion, and aggressively uti-lzed the Act's authority to disseminate findings toesablish a de facto regulatory scheme...and toinfluence public opinion.... V/hile doing so, it preduced limited evidence, then daimed the weight ofthe Agency's researched evidence demonstratedETS causes cancer.ll

Tbe Nant York Tims, which played the EPAreport above the fold on page one in lD3, arfiacross the years supported its conclusions ineditorials and news stories, ran the iudicialdestmction of the report deep irnide ttt p"p..,

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no editorial, no follow-up stories.No congressional investigation, either. No com-

mittees vying for iurisdiction. Here was a rcspect-ed federal iudge-a famous anti-tobacco iudge-accusing a federal agency of comrption, of using

iunk science to influence public opinion and mak-ing it work ttrough regulations, of actually dtang-ing the way Americars could live their lives.

But ttris was 1998, and this was smoking.Everyone "knew" secondhand smoke killed.Laws were based on this specious knowledge.Careers tHaxFrdyer grants were rolling in topatently biased investigators. Vhen the CityCouncil of New York was about to pass a lawrestricting smoking ln bars-rough enough butbefore Michael Bloomberg's absolute prohibi-tion-I mentioned Ostecn's ruling to variousCouncil members. The answer always: "A NorthCarolina judge, are you kidding?"

But one year before his ruling on the EPAreport, Judge Osteen handed down the worst-ever defeat for Big Tobacco, deciding that thesale, manufacture, and distribution of cigarettescould be controlled by the Federal DrugAdministration. The anti-smoking brigade lovedhim then, he was a hero, a fair-minded judge outof North Carclina, no less.

Four years later ttre Fourth Circuit Court ofeppeals reversed Osteen's indictment on a tech-nicality: the EPA report was "advisory''and not a"regulatory'' fi.nction under the AdministtztiveProcedure Act, thus not reviewable by ttre courts.The anti-smoking crusadets hailed the ruling,saying the court had exonerated the EPA science.They did no zuch ttring-4steen's shanering dis-missal of ttre science was untouched by the cir-cuit court and rernains standing as facL.L2

In March 1998, *ree months beforeJudgeOsteen's decision, the Vodd HedthOrganization's lntemational Agency on Researchon Cancer published a study that ran for 10years, covering 7 Europe'an countries. The con-clusion: no sati*ically significant risk for non-smokers *tro lived or worked with smokers.l3

It's impcsible to imagine a more damningreport out of zuch an anti-smoking force as\(/HO. One might have thought that the second-hand snroke campaign found its watedoo. Whenthe story broke in ttre London press I obainedthe fi:ll report ard published an accrcunt in myNeuYo*MilyAhrx column, hurrying to scoopthe American press. I needn't hu.veworried. The

NanYorkTimadrdn't touch it, exemplifying thestandand of censorship in the media.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Oepanrnent of Energywired up bartenders and waitersworking in smoke-filled bars and restaurants in 16cities, with a device that measured the amount ofinhalation of secondhand smoke. Nothing like thishad been done before; all other studies were sta-tistical. The conclusion across the board: inhalationwas so low as to render health hazands negligibleto improbable. And yet, this bre'akhrough repofiwas buried alive like all other challenges to thenotion ttrat secondhand smoke buries its victims.l4

Still, Americans smoked, and the zealotsfumed. They needed a bigger number than 3,000lung cancer deaths. As the millenniumapproached, the heart became the ticket, justnext door but 50,000 deaths a year more thanthe poor old lung. Enter Stanton Glanz, Ph.D.,who morphed from aerospace engineer to prGfessor at the University of Califomia, SanFrancisco school of medicine. Glanz, self-described '1unatic" anti-smoker, founded theBerkeley-based "Americans for Non-SmokersRights' in the late 7970s, a group whose avowedpurpose was to tum smokers into "social out-casts." In the 1980s he successfully lobbied for atax hike on Califomia smokers (Proposition 99),with the stipulation ttrat a portion of the revenuebe eamarked for anti-smoking groups like his.

Glanz's initial take was close to $500.000,which put him on the map. Once there, he gotanother $4 million from the state. Across theyears, he has raised fortunes for the cn:sade,using a combination of political pressure andjunk science to achieve a smoke-free America(and wodd). His advice to his troops on dealingwith potticians who oppose smoking bans: "As

soon as these politicians start floating trial bal-loons, they should be attacked publicly. If theycan be bloodied, it could well scare the othersoff. Fear is a grvat motivator for politicians."t5

Sarting in 1985, Glanz tried to get the EPA toaccept secondhand smoke as the cause of car-diovascular disease with the death rate of 50,000per annurn-a figure that was originally DOA atthe EPA-rejected by the same EPA that hadcreated ttre discredited 3,000 lung crlcer dea*rs.And in a report dated March 23, 1994, theCongressional Research Service, which (aswe have seen) fully deconstructed the EPA'slung cancer finding, called Glantz's hearr

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numbers "implausibls. " to

But Glanz persisted throughout the !0s, andthe bogus combination death toll of 53,000became a mafixa, reverently repe'ated by themedia on any exct$e. Glanz's qmical bypass ofmorality and science has brought us to wherewe are tda''

* * *

New York, New York. Ban it here, you can banit anywhere. By the eve of the 2001 mayoralelection, the crty fathers had incremenally madesmoking more difficult. Public buildings and pri-vate offices were under the ban, as were thebrallparks and race tracks. In restaurants, smokerswere relegated to the bars. But there wereexceptions. RestauranB with 35 or fewer ableswere exempt. Sand-up bars with no food werefree-fire zones. Private clubs, from Yale to theVeterans of Foreign'Wats, were O.K.

Then came 9/1.1. and the elevation of RudyGuiliani to national hero. His endorsement ofMichael Bloomberg slipped the billionafe mogulinto City Hall. And in a New York minute, wewere the poster city for the new prohibition.Bloomberg never mentioned smoking in hiscampaigrr, for good reason. There were two mil-lion smokers in ttre city, including Rudy. Butwithin a year, abened by Health CommissionerThomas Frieden, Bloomberg banned smoking inbars, private clubs, outdoor cafes...the whole tenyards. "One thousand New Yorkers a year dtefrom secondhand smoke," announced Frieden,which Bloombery said was "literally true," whenhe signed the ban into law, December 2N2.17

A year later, Bloomberg, in an interview withVanity Fair, said ttrat as many New Yorkers dieeach year from secondhand smoke as the 3,100victims of the \forld Trade Crnter. \fhen I askedFrieden why he didn't go wittr *rat numbeq hechanged the subfect. "The evidence ttrat second-hand smoke kills is clear and consistent," Friedentold the City Council. "There is no scientificdoubt about the matter,"

No scientific doubtz Only long years of mediacensorship saved him from being hooted out ofthe chamber where Bloomberg was derided forinsisting the bar patrons would drink more ifthey couldnt smoke.

True scientists embrace doubt. The higttlycredentialed Frieden surely knew the real unlike-lihood was that secondhand smoke killed any-

body. In December 2001, weeks before he tookoffice as New York's health commissioner, thefederal Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration had finally refused anti+mokingadvocates' 72-year-old petition that OSHA bansmoking in all indoor workplaces. They couldntfind ttre scientific grounds to do so, and theyremained oMurate *roughout *re Clintonadministration.ls Fnrstrated, a group called ASH(Action on Smoking and Health) peritioned thefederal court in \Tashington D.C. to mandamu-forceOSFIA to ban smoking in all ttre nation'sworkplaces. ASH founding president JohnBanztaf is on record as wanting to removehealthy children from intact homes if even oneof their family members smokes. He sells litiga-tion kits to help landlords evict smoking neigh-bors. OSFIA's answer to the mandamus lawzuit:If you want us to issue regulations, we will. Butttre best we'll do is set some official sandards forpermissible levels of smoking in the workplace.Banzlnf panicked. Permissible levels? Heresy.Nothing would satisff but zero tolerance.

Finally ASH wiftdrew its lawsuit in renrm forOSFIA's agreement to do nothing. Its pressrelease announced: 'ASH has agreed to dismissits lawsuit to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers'rights movement from adverse actionOSHA had ttueatened...we might now be evenmore successfi.rl in persuading states and localitiesto ban smoking on their own, once they nolonger have OSHA rule-making to hide behind."leln other words, OSFIA caved, allowing the lie ofsecondhand smoke to go unchecked, and ASHspun reality, leaving states and municipalities ftreeof official standards or limits on credulity.

Before the City Council, Frieden made nomention of OSFIA's repeatd refusal to banworkplace smoking. The last thing he wantedwas to brgach the received opinion. Secondhandsmoking kills; science says so. Even a half-hourexposure to secondhand smoke could cause aheart attack. And Mayor Bloomberg chimed in,as if invoking a law of physics, that ttre averagebartender inhaled half a pack a day from his ctts-tomers.

Frieden's half-hour was based on aJaganesestudy of 30 people-half of them smokers, halfnon-smokers--{hat acnrally proved the oppciteof what Frieden and others loudly claim.2o t!(/trile

the Oruka study showed "an effect"--platelastickiness----on the non-smokers. the studv

V O L U M E I 3 N U M B E R 3 2 O O 7

concluded, far more significantly, that there wasno reduced blood flow to the heart. A definitivesn-rdy conducted in Europe and published inLondon showed *rat bartenders inhaled theequivalent of six cigarettes annually, no daily halfpack.zt The aforementioned U.S. Department ofEnergy sudy came to a similar conclusion. Noscientfic doubt: Secondhand smoke kills.

Political correc:tness and fqar of retributionsilenced doctors and scientists who knew better.Every lung specialist and cardiologist I ques-

tioned across the years scoffed at the story thatsecondhand smoke caused death. "But don'tquote me, or I'11 be dsad." Dr. Elizabeth V{helan,president of the prestigious American Council onScience and Health, is made of stronger stuff.She denounced Bloomberg's claim that his banwould save a thousand lives a year. "Patently

absurd," she wrote. "There is no evidence thatany New Yorker-patron or employee--has everdied as a result of exposure to smoke in a Lrar orrestaurant."

\Ttrelan is no Big Tobacco shill. A wodd-classepidemiologist out of Harvard and Yale, \flhelanis a leading foe of smoking, oft quoted in theestablishment press. Her direct attack on themayor and implicitly on his health commissionwas a natural for headlines. But her pronounce-mens never zurfaced beyond the blogosphere.ttre Tima and the rest of the press ignored\Vhelan, 1us as they had ignoredJudge Osteen,the Congressional Research Service, theDepartrnent of Energy, and OSHA.

Nwertheless, thanks to the power of the blo-gosphere the controversy is alive and kicking,and the anti-smoke brigade wasted no time trash-ing Whelan. 'The hatred was palpable," she toldme, "or-rt of control. The intolerance is scary. Theyrefi.rse to perrnit any dissent. I've been agains thetobacco frdustry and smoking forever. But nowI'm the enemy, because I won't buy the hype onsecondhand smoke, which I made plain I totallydislike.' On her website, 'Whelan wrote:"secondhand smoke is annoying, it makes yourdothes and hair stink and can ruin an otherwisedelighdrl dining operience. The maiority of NewYorken will welcome a smoking ban primarilyfor aeshetic reasons, not for health reasons."z

Tbe she qla lnn of the smoke-free enter-prise is that somebody else's addiction will kjllyou and your loved ones. Aesthetics is nevermentioned, for good reason: It leads inexorably

into questions about freedom of choice. If it'sabout shampoos and cleaning bills and ranksmells, saloons and restaurants could post signs.No smoking. All smoking. Bar smoking. Sectionsmoking. Prohibition then would work nowhereexcept maybe a onediner town. To play NewYork, with its 36,000 restaurants and famous tol-erance, it had to be to protect the bartenders andwaiters. life and death. no choice.

A few months later, \Thelan came out for asmokeless tobacco product, in the form of a teabag fiat gives a similar hit to nicotine, which shebelieves could reduce direct smoking deaths to5,000 from an estimated 400,000. 'That did it,'she told me. "The next day I got an email froman old comrade. It said, You are now ex-com-municated'!" I asked her why she put herself andher oryanization in the line of fire.

"Look." she said. "I like the ends. I'm for asmoke-free world. I don't agree ttrat the ends jus-

tiff the means. The means here amount to junk

science, and once junk science gets accepted asscience in one field, it threatens to pollute otherfields. Science must always strive to be pure,

unencumbered by ideology. This secondhandsmoke business, with its preposterous claims,fails every test. I can't be silent." And herCouncil? "we have 380 scientists here and they'rein accord, or I wouldn't be speaking in the nameof the C.ouncil."

Dr. Michael Siegel was ex<ommunicated inlate February 2M. Amomentous event in theannals of anti-smoking militanry, for Siegel wasa pioneer in the long fight to bar smoking inrestaurants. He's a physician and a professor inBoston University's School of Public Hedth. Ifthe Movement had a College of Cardinals, he'dhave been among the first to wear the red hat.These credentials availed him nothing, for hecommitted the Mortal Sin of Criticism against theInfallible ASH and its pontiff, John Banzhaf.

\Vhat brought Siegel to the aposasy was hisrevulsion at ASH's "farn;tcal positions: that ourdoor smoking be Lranned, that companies shouldfire all smokers, that cities that permitted outdoorsmoking would likely be sued by nonsmokerswho keeled over from heart attacks, and forboasting that they were going to brsak the finalfrontier, by banning smoking in private homes.

The means to these ends was ASH's claimthat 30 minutes of secondhand smoke couldcause fatal heart attacks in otherwise healthv

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nonsmokers. "ln science and medicine,'Siegelwrote in his blog, "we have a technical term ttratcan be used to describe such a contention: abunch of traq."z3

Since ASH was promoting this line in thecontext of outdoor smoking, I asked Siegel if hethought they were right about half-hour heartattacks from indoor smoking. "Of course not," hesaid. "As for outdoor smoking, IVe never seen acredible study that has ever killed anybody inany amount of time. If 30 minutes can cause fatalheart attacks, we'd have noticed it. Pmple wouldbe dyng like flies."

On Augrst 27,2W2, the eve of theBloomberg ban proposal , Jane E. Brody, theTilrr,rshe�Ith guru, headlined a column "A

Jubilant Banoorn Toast to Smoke-Free Air."2a Shewrote: "Heart disease deaths from passive smok-ing is ttre third leading preventable cause ofdeath, after active smoking and alcohol...rivalingdeaths from traffic accidents in this country eachyear." She then declared: "I for one refuse todine in any restaurant *rat permits smoking ormakes me walk through a smoky bar to reachmy table or the restroom. The stink quicklydestroys the most delectable of meals."

Note that a week earher, in a column head-lined "In a V'orld of Hazards,

'Worries Are Often

Misplaced," Bnrdy wamed her readers that 'too

often, the risks people worryr about are out ofproportion to the actual dangers involved." As anexample, she wrote *rat, "despite widespreadbelief and laboratory studies in rats that link pol-lution to breast cancer on Long Island, thismonth an $8 million federal srudy found no evi-dence that environmental contamination frompesticides and industrial chemicals was responsi-ble." She went on to explain: "A cardinal rule oftoxicology is ttrat the dose makes the poison."zsLike many others, when it came to secondhandsmoke, Jane Brody went A\(OL from science.Thirty minutes of exposure to constituents ofsmoke so small they can't be measured candestnoy your health.

Tbe Bftish MedicalJatnnl (BMI n 2m3published a snrdy conducted by tv''o world-classepidemiologists, James Enstrom and GeofteyKabat, ttrat put to bed----or should have--rhereceived wMom that passive smoke kills.26 Thisstudy of 35,000 Califomians showed that lifelongexposure to a husband's or wife's smoke pro-duced no increased risk of coronary hsart dis-

ease or lung cancer among the people whonever smoked. It's one of the laryest studies everdone, subjected to peer review and scrupulouseditorial evaluation. And immediately con-demned by the American Cancer Society, which,as it happened, had sponsored the originalunderlying survey and had, for many years, bothfunded and approved Enstrom's work.

The tale gros/s stranger. ln ongoing surveyssince the 1950s, ACS had sn:died over two mil-lion people, attempting to discover the effect oftobacco smoke--4rst and secondhand. The rawdata never yielded a connection between second-hand smoke and lung clncer or heart disease.ACS didnt publish their findings but financedfurther explorations, including Enstrom's andKabat's, until 1998, when it abruptly terminatedfunding because of their unacceptable thinking.

ln order to complete his research, Enstromtumed to Philip Morris, with the proviso ttrat thecompany not even see the study until publica-tion. The BMI srtory brought forth all the usualsuspects, from the Cancer Society downward.'Just a Big Tobacco propaganda hit," they said,

ttrat ttre BMJ run a front-page editori-al denouncing itself. The Timanever mentionedthe report, or the attacks. One moming thepaper printed a letter to the editor noting theBMJ sudy and Tima readers could be forgivenfor wondering what the author was talkingabout. The BMJ refuied to retract, but they shookoff a succeeding report by Enstrom and I9bat.The investigators nrmed to Inbalntian Toxbolag,a scientific joumal that published their reportafter full peer review.27

Is it too late for mere truttrz Can sane voicesand legitimate studies halt the rush of govem-ments to impose ever more sweeping barn onsmoking? Not if the curcnt U.S. Surgeon General,Richard Carmona, has his way. Secondhandsmoke kills 49,000 Americans a yar, he reportedin the zummer of 2M. But his T0Gpage reportreflected not one fresh snrdy; it merely recydeddecades of anti-smoking zsalary.n

"Nothing but junk science," I was told bychest and vascular surgeon Robert Madden, MD,former president of the New York C.ancer Society.The media bought the lies all over agilr-andneglected to tell the public that in2m3, Carmonaasked Congress to outlaw toLracco.

Nothing more powerfi.rl ttran a lie whosetime has come. V

V O L U M E 1 3 N U M B E R 3 2 O O 7

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