Smoke Screens: The Truth About Tobacco

http://www.smokescreens.org/

Buy the book if you like it please.

Contents

Foreword by Dr Ian Dunbar vi
Introduction: Where it all began x
Chapter 1: The Black Lung Myth 1
Chapter 2: Chemicals In Tobacco 7
Chapter 3: Smoking and Socio-Economic Status (SES) 23
Chapter 4: Detection Bias 31
Chapter 5: Smoking and Cancer 39
Chapter 6: Passive Smoking 116
Chapter 7: Smoking and Emphysema 178
Chapter 8: Smoking and Heart Disease 184
Chapter 9: Smoking and Asthma 195
Chapter 10: Smoking and Low Birth Weight 202
Chapter 11: The Truth About Nicotine 206
Chapter 12: Government Health Warnings On Tobacco Products 215
Chapter 13: Health Benefits Of Smoking 218
- The World’s Oldest People 235
Chapter 14: Past Attacks on Smoking 241
Chapter 15: The Pharmaceutical Connection 247
Chapter 16: The Cancer Research Institutes 256
Summation 276
Appendix 1 281
Appendix 2 287
Appendix 3 288
Appendix 4 290

It is a common student experience to be taught things one knows
deep down are just not true.
In the 1950s, when Professor Richard Doll published his
research linking smoking and lung cancer, I was a medical student.
Everyone in the class scoffed. If smoking caused lung cancer why
did so many smokers die of old age? Since those early days I have
viewed each new statistical revelation with a pinch of salt.
In this conscientious, painstaking and scholarly review of
the literature, Richard White has validated my scepticism. The book
is encyclopaedic in its content. Among the many topics embraced is
‘detection bias’ whereby the notion that smoking causes cancer is
now so ingrained that the possibility of lung cancer when doctors
examine non-smokers is overlooked; they are not expecting to find
cancer and so do not investigate appropriately. Researchers still do
not know precisely how, or indeed whether, smoking causes cancer
or any of the other diseases attributed to it; they have struggled with
weird and wonderful experiments to try and produce tumours in
laboratory animals and failed dismally. The chemicals in tobacco
smoke are similar to those in traffic fumes, except that in traffic
fumes the concentration is much higher; cigarette smoke is
therefore less toxic than the air we ordinarily breathe. In the final
analysis, all that researchers have accomplished is to produce
tenuous statistical links that they regard as ‘significant’. Examples of
the disordered thought that has lain behind these tenuous links are
also outlined.
Often forgotten is the fact that tobacco itself warns of its
hazards. All smokers can recall that first puff that made them cough
and splutter; indeed it made some vomit. The first lesson tobacco
teaches is to take care when inhaling. Like all such experiences it is a
question of moderation. Smoke too much for too long and the
result is a smoker’s cough. But an excess of abstinence is equally
hazardous; the fanaticism of the anti-smoking lobby graphically
illustrates this.
The medical profession possesses more knowledge than one
individual can master in a lifetime of learning. Professional
organisation has evolved to cope by a division of labour into
researchers, consultants and general practitioners. Researchers and
consultants specialise in small areas of medical knowledge, studying
in depth. General practitioners, on the other hand, acquire a more
general knowledge of medicine, studying in breadth. Had they been
better organised, researchers, consultants and general practitioners,
working together as a team, could have made medical knowledge
available to society both in depth and in perspective.
Unfortunately, researchers and consultants see themselves
as superior and take a disparaging view of general clinical practice.
In the National Health Service they routinely keep family doctors
waiting weeks, even months, for a second opinion. But good family
doctors really want that opinion by tomorrow. This is because they
realise that their patients are anxious to know the result and seek to
minimise that anxiety.
The General Medical Council’s own rules regard
‘disparagement’ as ‘professional misconduct’. But Council has
routinely turned a blind eye so that professional misconduct has
become institutionalised. The result is that the medical profession
has lost all sense of proportion; researchers and consultants have no
idea of the problems presenting in the family doctor’s consulting
room from the world at large.
If one looks more closely at those problems, one finds that
some 75% of cases are the physical symptoms of anxiety such as
headaches, indigestion, diarrhoea, palpitations and general aches
and pains. These symptoms mimic more serious physical illness and
it is the clinical judgement of the family doctor that determines
whether indigestion is caused by anxiety or cancer of the stomach,
for example. About 24% of cases are minor infections such as
coughs and sore throats. Serious physical illnesses of the kind
described in medical text books, such as pneumonia, cancer and
heart disease are very rare. Modern medical science is in fact totally
ignorant of the causes and cures of most of the illness in the
community. Over the years, ever more resources have been devoted
to studying rarer and rarer conditions. But propaganda in the media
would have people believe that medical science is on the brink of
knowing it all.
There are two scientific methods: one is appropriate for
studying inanimate objects like tobacco; the other is appropriate for
studying animate objects such as people. The difference between
them is that the study of inanimate objects excludes all reference to
non-material or metaphysical states such as the mind. But to be
scientific, all the variables affecting any given situation must be
considered. Much of the confusion surrounding research into the
effects of tobacco arises from the fact that a scientific method
appropriate for studying inanimate objects such as tobacco has been
deployed to study the effects of tobacco on animate objects such as
people.
In effect, researchers have been overlooking the fact that
there are two realities in the everyday lives of people: there is the
shared objective reality of the world around us and there is the
personal subjective reality of our own thoughts and feelings.
However, subjective reality is not actually all in the mind. It is
modulated by powerful hormones such as adrenaline, which has
wide-ranging effects on both the mind and the body. For example,
adrenaline not only causes the subjective reality of apprehension
and anxiety which are difficult to measure, it also affects objective
reality by raising pulse rate and blood pressure which are easy to
measure.
For most people, most of the time, subjective reality is
preoccupied by hopes, fears, jealousies, grievances, and suchlike.
Only rarely does it cause the physical symptoms for which a family
doctor is consulted. These hopes and fears merely distract people
and can be referred to as the chattering apes of consciousness.
Numerous studies have shown that plasma b-endorphin
concentrations (natural opiates in the body) increase in a dose-
related manner after administration of nicotine. This means that
nicotine has a sedative effect. But this effect is very mild and in no
way compares to the sedative effect of ingested opiates. It is
therefore easily overlooked. But the reason why people smoke is to
obtain this mild sedative effect.
The more insecure people are, the more they will smoke.
But the more insecure people are the greater the amount of
adrenaline that will be produced. The greater the amount of
adrenaline produced the higher the blood pressure and pulse rate
are likely to be raised, and the greater the chances of suffering a
stroke. Chronic insecurity is therefore likely to ultimately result in
heart disease and strokes. This is illustrated by the fact that while
poorer people tend to smoke heavily, single parents in particular,
their lives are more fraught; they are therefore more likely to die
younger anyway.
In the final analysis, heart disease, strokes and smoking all
have a common causative denominator in insecurity. It is this
common denominator that creates the illusion of a significant
statistical link.

Ian Dunbar M.B.Ch.B