Much research is politically contaminated. The Australian research
organisation CSIRO is now employing a Director of Communications (Ms
Donna Staunton) for $264K a year. The selection criteria says nothing
about a background of science or its communication. She was a lawyer
working for a tobacco firm.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1090774.htm
"She was a lawyer with Clayton Utz where she handled briefs for
tobacco cases and then became Chief Executive Officer of the Tobacco
Institute of Australia and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the
Philip Morris Group."

Her work is in "risk management and reputation management".

I may be a little old fashioned or naive but I have always thought
that the reputation of a scientific organisation should rise or fall
on the quality of the science done, not on the expertise of a spin
doctor. Her salary is 3 Xs that of a senior research scientist. Is she
a parasite or what?

I guess that what happens when a scientific organisation becomes a
"corporate business". It is all symptomatic of what Don Watson talks
about in his book "Death Sentence" about the public language of
managerialism.

On Sat, 01 May 2004 22:10:57 GMT the ET form known as

On Sat, 01 May 2004 11:24:07 GMT, Christopher A. Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:

On Sat, 01 May 2004 10:57:38 GMT,

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 07:43:13 -0600, quibbler <quibbler247@yahoo.com>
wrote:

In article <5p24909amnigj7p2hpoqflumqvdou70lic@4ax.com>, JJ < ~> says...

Yes, I hate to be accosted by the smell of cigarette smoke when I'm
eating at a restaurant.

It's not just the smell. If I'm around a smoker in a restaurant for an
hour or two then the next day my throat usually feels raw and sore.
It's not as bad as a viral infection, but sometimes the next day I even
find myself coughing. I know that smokers are so desensitized to the
whole thing that they can't conceive of their habit having any
measurable effect on other people. But they would be wrong.

As for the research claiming second hand smoke does or does not cause
cancer I don't believe in this politically charged world that any of
it can be trusted.

Much research is politically contaminated. The Australian research
organisation CSIRO is now employing a Director of Communications (Ms
Donna Staunton) for $264K a year. The selection criteria says nothing
about a background of science or its communication. She was a lawyer
working for a tobacco firm.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1090774.htm
"She was a lawyer with Clayton Utz where she handled briefs for
tobacco cases and then became Chief Executive Officer of the Tobacco
Institute of Australia and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the
Philip Morris Group."

Her work is in "risk management and reputation management".

I may be a little old fashioned or naive but I have always thought
that the reputation of a scientific organisation should rise or fall
on the quality of the science done, not on the expertise of a spin
doctor. Her salary is 3 Xs that of a senior research scientist. Is she
a parasite or what?

I guess that what happens when a scientific organisation becomes a
"corporate business". It is all symptomatic of what Don Watson talks
about in his book "Death Sentence" about the public language of
managerialism.

In article <qnqo909643h51hpml5guusgcbtr4j2b54h@4ax.com>, JJ < ~> says...

[snip]

Ok, but where's the definitive proof that second hand smoke is
directly (provably) responsible for a single death? Is there a single
coroner's report or other proof available for scrutinization that
proves your assertion?

What would you count as "definitive proof"? Would one have to die
seconds after entering a smoke filled room? No, the evidence is more
like that linking smoking to cancer. A statistically significant
difference in life span between those exposed to second hand smoke and
those not exposed. A statistically significant difference in the
hospitalization rate between children exposed to smoke and these not
exposed. This is the nature of evidence in medical studies.

Ok, that's my point, albeit indirectly. Truth be told, no one can
examine the effects of smoking under a microscope to such an extent
that they can claim: "AHA! I've discovered how smoking causes cancer
on the molecular level!"

So, therefore, scientifically speaking, there is no proof that smoking
itself causes cancer, much less than whether second hand smoke does
either. (Unless you have a link proving the contrary.)

Wrong! Get a clue! Statistics DO give us scientific proof, proof that
the observed phenomenon is extremely unlikely to be due to chance alone.

So, what we have left on the smoking/cancer issue is statistics. And
statistics is a shaky field on which to base scientific facts, as
statistics are largely suspect to scrutiny. This is not to say that
statistics have no place here, but that they must be closely examined
prior to being accepted as fact.

Of course the statistical analysis must be carefully scrutinized, like
the rest of the experiment. You are trying to separate experiment from
the statistics that describe the results. They are not to different
things! The statistics are as vital a part of the experiment as the
chemicals or lab rats.

Not unlike the "cancer cluster" scares (remember the people claiming
that their local powerlines were causing cancer in their community
(based on "statistics", mind you)) of past. Yes, it all turned out to
be BS (since subsequent scientific examination discarded the
hypothesis), but that didn't stop the media from cramming the gloom &
doom/fear thoughts into the general publics' minds, now did it?

Subsequent STATISTICAL analysis disproved many of these cancer clusters.
The answer to any question is more research.

Again, is there a single, documented, case of death attributed to
second hand smoke? If you have proof of this, many professionals
would love to see it.

Is there a single documented case of smoking causing death? No. After
all, those cases of lung cancer might have occurred anyway, right?

Again, what data do you have to provide that second-hand smoke has
ever caused a single death? Yes, second-hand smoke is a serious
emotional irritant to others in the room, but does it cause them harm?
If you think so, do you have definitive proof to back up that
thinking?

I provided links to studies that have or are currently addressing this
issue. Clearly, you did not read them

Are you arguing from aggravation with smokers' here, or are you
arguing from fact?

Read the studies. I provided the facts, you claim we need to inform
ourselves. Do it.

If, in fact, SHS isn't harmful (as there's never been a single
documented case (much less evidence for umpteen thousands of deaths
each year)), what am I to think should the media suddenly deem that
potato chips and french fries give people cancer (via Acrylamide)??

But their are documented health risks do to second hand smoke.

Are there? Really? Have you even considered the possibility that
second-hand smoke (while annoying) is, in fact, harmless?

Yes, but studies HAVE documented its harmful effects, especially on
children. Google for children, asthma, cigarette, CDC. Then read, and
don;t dismiss out of hand anything that disagrees with your current
position that second hand smoke is harmless.

Truth be told on Acrylamide is that yes, lab rats did get cancer from
it. However, what the media won't be so quick to reveal is that the
dose that was given to the lab rats was equivalent to a human being
consuming some ridiculous amount of it each and every day (the exact
number escapes me at present, but it was on the order of a few hundred
bags of potato chips per day, if memory serves). Hell, you could kill
a rat by "feeding" it too much water, or even air if you wanted to.

If a given dose were to cause one cancer death in 10,000 people who eat
a substance (a very high rate), how else would you test for it?

Good question. How would one test for it? Or, more importantly,
prove it? Define "given dose" - what is the dose that we're talking
about here, after all? Additionally, are we discussing laboratory
rats or humans on the street?

You ask for "proof", yet don't understand the word. "Proof" in the life
sciences is statistical in nature. Everyone who smokes needn't get
cancer for smoking to cause cancer.

Actually, statistics are a slippery slope to deal with. Many people
who drive cars are killed everyday. Does driving, therefore, cause
death? Silly question, you might say. But, consider this: They say
that drunk drives are responsible for 50% of all traffic fatalities on
the road. Ok, but does anyone ever stop to think about where the
other 50% come from? The SOBER drivers.

You can't be this stupid. Of course statistics can be manipulated.
LANGUAGE can be manipulated. Everything can be manipulated. That
doesn't mean we throw out everything. It mean we watch for it, we check
our facts and our statistics carefully.

I realize the futility in that argument, but I align it to some degree
with our argument here.

It's just dumb. If only 1% of drivers are drunk, but 50% of accidents
involve a driver who is drunk, statistics don't lie, they tell you that
alcohol contributes to a hell of a lot of accidents.

Simple fact is: It's the dose that makes the poison.

It's not true that the dose makes the carcinogen or terotogen. The work
at the level of the DNA or RNA, and damage to a single cell can start a
cancer. The more cells affected, the more substance in the body, the
greater chance that the one terrible mutation will happen, and will slip
by the body's immune system.

Please elaborate on why you think that these evil mutations have gone
unnoticed (thereby freely causing horrible deaths to the masses) by
medical science.

More attention to detail.

Please elaborate.

Detailed data collection, detailed analysis of the data.

Also, how many deaths per year do you attribute to this, as you put
it, "terrible mutation?"

Every cancer death is due to a mutation.

Please educate me here. I'm not a student of medicine.

Then perhaps you should become one, or you should cease pontificating on
topics you don't understand.

Look, no need for hostilities here. I'm simply trying to engage in a
mature discussion here.

But you are unwilling to consider that you may be wrong, you slam
statistics as useless because they can be misused, you make claims like
"it's the dose that makes the poison" followed by "Please educate me
here. I'm not a student of medicine."

Take a statistics class.