It's been such a busy week that I've hardly had time to do anything other than read a couple of blogs and post a few links on Facebook.
THIS ONE from Simon Clark is important because it presents the truth about SHS - or passive smoking - and how and why it came to be the stick that hysterical bigots beat smokers with.
A smokerphobe called Simon Crompton - who loosely describes himself as a "journalist" when he's obviously more of a propagandist - hasn't got a clue about the true science - but he knows for sure the hate he wants to spread about those he fears and dislikes.
By coincidence his bile came up just after I finished reading THIS from Terry Simpson MD who says:
The Surgeon General also stated that 49,000 deaths per year were caused by second hand smoke. As a surgeon, I was stunned, because I had never seen an autopsy report listing second hand smoke as the cause of death. Nor had I seen this as a secondary cause of death. So I asked six pathologists if they had ever listed second hand smoke as a cause of death – not one had. In my years of clinical practice, I have seen patients die from many devastating diseases, and yet I have never seen anyone who has been disabled by, or has died as a result of, second hand smoke. This was my first clue that perhaps there was more hyperbole than science involved in the reports issuing from the Surgeon General’s Office. To give a contrast: 33,000 people die per year of pancreatic cancer – all of the pathologists have listed pancreatic cancer as a cause of death.
If second hand smoke exposure is a significant risk factor for developing lung cancer, then we should expect to see increased numbers of cancer cases in non-smokers who are exposed to regular doses of second hand smoke. Has there been an increase in the incidence of lung cancer among nonsmokers over the last 40 years? The answer is quite simply… No.
I've also been reading Frank Davis's Blog and the fascinating debate on the link between active smoking and lung cancer with three posts from contributors that I admire, Chris Snowdon, Rich White and Dave Atherton.
I like Frank's latest post about Junican's game with Tobacco Control who were asking their employees to come up with new ways to shame, humiliate, abuse and insult smokers which was also featured over at Dick Puddlecote's place.
Tobacco control lunatics have to believe that people like Junican are tobacco industry lobbyists. They can't bear the thought that the little people are so pissed off at the anti-smoking industry's manipulation of their lives, and control of their Govt, that they have moved into a position of self defence and preservation.
Junican - who says he is just a 71 year old who looks after a 69 year old who can't enjoy the pub anymore - is like the rest of us who post on forums and other sites. We're just ordinary ignored people who don't get paid, are branded in some of the most inhumane and derogatory ways, and are fighting simply for the right to be left alone.
We don't promote tobacco and don't care if people smoke or not as long as we can be left in peace. We've heard the propaganda, we've scrutinised it and we've discarded it. We don't deserve to be punished and abused just because we won't do as tobacco control says.
We do promote choice - a concept that tobacco control can't grasp. The other thing we fight to prevent is not people quitting smoking if they choose - but criminalisation of those who choose not to.
The anti-smoking industry is pushing things that way through propaganda untruths which get picked up and promoted as truth by useful idiots like Crompton to incite further hatred and keep the funding ball rolling.
None of us fought or cared a damn about tobacco control methods until they conned a stupid Govt into excluding us from every public place four years ago. (The link shows the NuGovt is just as bigoted, blind and incapable of intellectual and independent thinking on this subject as the last.)
Since the ban, which was the first step before the rest could follow, tobacco control, part of the anti-smoking industry, have moved on to label us as child abusers, parents of criminals, and not worthy of more than being left to die if we need operations. Despite the fact that we cost the state less than healthy people
That rent-a-quote celebrity quack Dr Hillary Jones should be struck off in my opinion. Any doctor that takes this stance must be breaking the Hippocratic Oath. I think he should, perhaps, remind himself of this bit:
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
If he really is a GP, and I don't know as I've only ever seen him on GMTV and in trashy papers, he should be reported to the General Medical Council for his lack of sympathy to patients and his promotion of inequality of care.
The other thing I saw this week was the story about how two smokers were sacked for smoking in the open air. What a rotten thing for Morriosn's to do just before Christmas. Scrooge would be proud. I'm boycotting that store's branch here. I hope others do the same.
This all comes as a result of years of Denormalisation a public health tool promoted by the bigots at ASH which has only recently come out into the open because it is so unethical they tried to hide they were using it.
The other thing that has kept me from blogging apart from real life work this week has been the dentist. I finally got one after years of being without a decent NHS dentist. This one, a Greek Cypriot, seems OK but I hate sitting in health related waiting rooms and having to look at lying posters exaggerating the propaganda myths of smoking and smokers.
One poster promoted that it was better to give up and get fat. "Weight can be lost - lungs cannot" it screamed. I wondered who among the denormalised smokers would quit and fear then getting denormalised and excluded further because they become "obese." It seems you can't win either way.
My dentist had a suggestion box. I wrote on a piece of paper that nice pictures on the wall would be far more relaxing that all the smoking signs. I won't hold my breath that my next visit will see any change.
There has literally been loads of suppressed rants this week but they'll have to wait. I didn't intend to blog this evening and my admin has taken a back seat as a result so I don't know if I'll be blogging again before Christmas. My last working day is tomorrow and I've still got all that shopping to do before Saturday.
It's not a pleasant thing to do anymore. It's no fun trudging through town and shops and not even being able to stop for a cup of tea in the warm with a smoke - something that used to be the highlight of the whole experience.