A Christmas Epistle
As I said in my ‘Last Post’ I am taking a ‘sabbatical’ from PM Forums in order not to be distracted from a major research and writing exercise that is absorbing all my energy just now.
However I have taken a break over Christmas Day and Boxing Day and thought I would check back in to deliver what I think should be a reassuring message to members. Before I doing so I will mention a couple of things that have happened to me since I last posted:
- My daughter got married. An expensive business! In additional to general financial support I provided the wine for the reception and dinner (5 cases of champagne, 5 cases of white wine and 3 of red). The wedding was held in Edinburgh at the ‘Hub’ – a ‘tron’ (meeting place) which looks like a church but which is not consecrated. It is an ancient building adjacent to the Castle and right next to where the last witch was burnt in Scotland. All went well, although I don’t remember the very end (apparently I am a good dancer!), when my ‘personal’ family physician bundled me into a taxi after I had fallen down the stairs – a loose piece of carpet, I’m sure. The next day a pleasant surprise waited. The wines which had not been consumed arrived at the house – a case of Champagne, 2 cases of white Bordeaux and one of Guigal’s red Cote du Rhone – so we won’t be short of day-to-day drinking wine for a few weeks!
- I have been awarded the senior prize in Life Sciences of the Royal Society (the Sir James Black Gold Medal) for my research on inflammatory disease, molecular imaging and for delivering Scotland’s first major translational medicine research institute (The Queen’s Medical Research Institute). Sadly no cash is involved, but the medal itself is real gold and in extremis could be melted down!
- In the piping line I have discovered some wonderful tobaccos which have required me to adjust my personal ‘order of merit’. Most notable among these are: ‘Gaslight’ which is now in a three-way tie with ‘Revor’ and ‘Warrior’ as my number one plug; MacBaren’s ‘Old Dark Fired’ is now firmly in my top five flakes; and ‘Christmas Cheer’ which is in my top ten tobaccos. As I write, I am smoking 2012 Christmas Cheer in my ‘last pipe’ - a beautiful 1908 Peterson, my Christmas gift from my Other Half which only now have I been allowed to release from its packaging - a heavenly combination.
Anyway, to ‘Tidings of Comfort……’, I received a link from rebornbriar (Alan) to a recent blog, from a journalist who writes for a famous British newspaper (‘The Telegraph’), concerning passive smoking. The link is:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100251229/passive-smoking-another-of-the-nanny-states-big-lies
I make no professional comments because I have not had time to research in detail the whole literature on passive smoking, but it concurs with my personal preconceptions. Until I was seventeen I was passively exposed to large amounts of second-hand smoke; when my father was not smoking the pipe he went through 2 packs of cigarettes a day and my mother smoked a pack. Granddad smoked 3 packs of Wills Woodbines a day. Dad painted the ceilings every year as they had turned a deep amber shade. Okay, this is an anecdotal study (n=1) but so far it has done me no harm; I played top-level rugby till I was thirty, my pulmonary function tests remain supra-normal and I am the reigning world ‘lime-spitting’ champion (more of which if anyone is interested) – testament to my ‘peak expiratory flow rate’!
I hope it is received with interest. In the event of problems with the link I have pasted in the whole article below:
“By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: December 18th, 2013
2423 Comments Comment on this article
Not Polly Toynbee
Passive smoking doesn't give you lung cancer. So says a new report publicised by the American Cancer Institute which will come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone with a shred of integrity who has looked into the origins of the great "environmental tobacco smoke" meme.
It was, after all, a decade ago that the British Medical Journal, published the results of a massive, long-term survey into the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke. Between 1959 and 1989 two American researchers named James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat surveyed no few than 118,094 Californians. Fierce anti-smoking campaigners themselves, they began the research because they wanted to prove once and for all what a pernicious, socially damaging habit smoking was. Their research was initiated by the American Cancer Society and supported by the anti-smoking Tobacco Related Disease Research Program.
At least it was at first. But then something rather embarrassing happened. Much to their surprise, Kabat and Enstrom discovered that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ie passive smoking), no matter how intense or prolonged, creates no significantly increased risk of heart disease or lung cancer.
Similar conclusions were reached by the World Health Organisationwhich concluded in 1998 after a seven-year study that the correlation between "passive smoking" and lung cancer was not "statistically significant." A 2002 report by the Greater London Assembly agreed. So too did an investigation by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.
Yet between 2006 and 2007 smoking was banned in all enclosed public places throughout the United Kingdom largely on the basis of the claim – widely promulgated by bansturbating politicians and kill-joy activists – that it was necessary to protect the health of non-smokers. On the basis, in other words, of a blatant and scientifically demonstrable lie.
It's not just British health Nazis who like to promulgate this myth. Here's what America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has to say on the subject:
Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year.
The actual number, Jacob Sullum argues at Reason, is "probably closer to zero."
So why does the medical establishment pretend otherwise? Sullum quotes a doctor who comments on the latest study's findings. The doctor observes primly:
"The strongest reason to avoid passive cigarette smoke is to change societal behavior: to not live in a society where smoking is a norm."
Aha. Now we're closer to the mark. What the doctor is showing here are the classic symptoms of "freedom of choice is far too dangerous for the little people" syndrome.
[I hope I don't need to draw the parallels here with the similarly scientifically unfounded excuses being advanced to justify all sorts of regulatory and confiscatory activity to do with "climate change"]
Was the smoking ban a good idea? Arguably, in some ways. It means that when you come home from a crowded gig or club, now, your hair and clothes no longer smell of stale smoke; it forces smokers to smoke less than they might otherwise have done because nipping outside for a fag is so inconvenient.
Against that, though, you have to set the enormous damage which has been done to the pub industry – and indeed to the atmosphere within pubs and clubs. More worrying still, though, is the ugly precedent it has set for the arbitrary confiscation by the State of property rights.
It should have been left up to individual institutions – private members clubs especially, but pubs and restaurants too – whether or not they wished to allow smoking on their premises. Punters would then have been free to choose whether or not they wished, on any given evening, to sacrifice their unalienable right not to be exposed to other people's deadly tobacco smoke.
That is how free societies work. Free people make free choices.
In 2006 and 2007 in Britain – and at various other dates in other countries around the world – the forces of authoritarian government took away those rights. On the basis of a massive lie.”
Interesting?????
So, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman [and Ladies], let nothing you dismay……..”
A very ‘Merry Christmas’ to you all, and all yours!!
PS While I am back on Forum over the next couple of days I will open my PMs
As I said in my ‘Last Post’ I am taking a ‘sabbatical’ from PM Forums in order not to be distracted from a major research and writing exercise that is absorbing all my energy just now.
However I have taken a break over Christmas Day and Boxing Day and thought I would check back in to deliver what I think should be a reassuring message to members. Before I doing so I will mention a couple of things that have happened to me since I last posted:
- My daughter got married. An expensive business! In additional to general financial support I provided the wine for the reception and dinner (5 cases of champagne, 5 cases of white wine and 3 of red). The wedding was held in Edinburgh at the ‘Hub’ – a ‘tron’ (meeting place) which looks like a church but which is not consecrated. It is an ancient building adjacent to the Castle and right next to where the last witch was burnt in Scotland. All went well, although I don’t remember the very end (apparently I am a good dancer!), when my ‘personal’ family physician bundled me into a taxi after I had fallen down the stairs – a loose piece of carpet, I’m sure. The next day a pleasant surprise waited. The wines which had not been consumed arrived at the house – a case of Champagne, 2 cases of white Bordeaux and one of Guigal’s red Cote du Rhone – so we won’t be short of day-to-day drinking wine for a few weeks!
- I have been awarded the senior prize in Life Sciences of the Royal Society (the Sir James Black Gold Medal) for my research on inflammatory disease, molecular imaging and for delivering Scotland’s first major translational medicine research institute (The Queen’s Medical Research Institute). Sadly no cash is involved, but the medal itself is real gold and in extremis could be melted down!
- In the piping line I have discovered some wonderful tobaccos which have required me to adjust my personal ‘order of merit’. Most notable among these are: ‘Gaslight’ which is now in a three-way tie with ‘Revor’ and ‘Warrior’ as my number one plug; MacBaren’s ‘Old Dark Fired’ is now firmly in my top five flakes; and ‘Christmas Cheer’ which is in my top ten tobaccos. As I write, I am smoking 2012 Christmas Cheer in my ‘last pipe’ - a beautiful 1908 Peterson, my Christmas gift from my Other Half which only now have I been allowed to release from its packaging - a heavenly combination.
Anyway, to ‘Tidings of Comfort……’, I received a link from rebornbriar (Alan) to a recent blog, from a journalist who writes for a famous British newspaper (‘The Telegraph’), concerning passive smoking. The link is:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100251229/passive-smoking-another-of-the-nanny-states-big-lies
I make no professional comments because I have not had time to research in detail the whole literature on passive smoking, but it concurs with my personal preconceptions. Until I was seventeen I was passively exposed to large amounts of second-hand smoke; when my father was not smoking the pipe he went through 2 packs of cigarettes a day and my mother smoked a pack. Granddad smoked 3 packs of Wills Woodbines a day. Dad painted the ceilings every year as they had turned a deep amber shade. Okay, this is an anecdotal study (n=1) but so far it has done me no harm; I played top-level rugby till I was thirty, my pulmonary function tests remain supra-normal and I am the reigning world ‘lime-spitting’ champion (more of which if anyone is interested) – testament to my ‘peak expiratory flow rate’!
I hope it is received with interest. In the event of problems with the link I have pasted in the whole article below:
“By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: December 18th, 2013
2423 Comments Comment on this article
Not Polly Toynbee
Passive smoking doesn't give you lung cancer. So says a new report publicised by the American Cancer Institute which will come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone with a shred of integrity who has looked into the origins of the great "environmental tobacco smoke" meme.
It was, after all, a decade ago that the British Medical Journal, published the results of a massive, long-term survey into the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke. Between 1959 and 1989 two American researchers named James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat surveyed no few than 118,094 Californians. Fierce anti-smoking campaigners themselves, they began the research because they wanted to prove once and for all what a pernicious, socially damaging habit smoking was. Their research was initiated by the American Cancer Society and supported by the anti-smoking Tobacco Related Disease Research Program.
At least it was at first. But then something rather embarrassing happened. Much to their surprise, Kabat and Enstrom discovered that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ie passive smoking), no matter how intense or prolonged, creates no significantly increased risk of heart disease or lung cancer.
Similar conclusions were reached by the World Health Organisationwhich concluded in 1998 after a seven-year study that the correlation between "passive smoking" and lung cancer was not "statistically significant." A 2002 report by the Greater London Assembly agreed. So too did an investigation by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.
Yet between 2006 and 2007 smoking was banned in all enclosed public places throughout the United Kingdom largely on the basis of the claim – widely promulgated by bansturbating politicians and kill-joy activists – that it was necessary to protect the health of non-smokers. On the basis, in other words, of a blatant and scientifically demonstrable lie.
It's not just British health Nazis who like to promulgate this myth. Here's what America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has to say on the subject:
Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year.
The actual number, Jacob Sullum argues at Reason, is "probably closer to zero."
So why does the medical establishment pretend otherwise? Sullum quotes a doctor who comments on the latest study's findings. The doctor observes primly:
"The strongest reason to avoid passive cigarette smoke is to change societal behavior: to not live in a society where smoking is a norm."
Aha. Now we're closer to the mark. What the doctor is showing here are the classic symptoms of "freedom of choice is far too dangerous for the little people" syndrome.
[I hope I don't need to draw the parallels here with the similarly scientifically unfounded excuses being advanced to justify all sorts of regulatory and confiscatory activity to do with "climate change"]
Was the smoking ban a good idea? Arguably, in some ways. It means that when you come home from a crowded gig or club, now, your hair and clothes no longer smell of stale smoke; it forces smokers to smoke less than they might otherwise have done because nipping outside for a fag is so inconvenient.
Against that, though, you have to set the enormous damage which has been done to the pub industry – and indeed to the atmosphere within pubs and clubs. More worrying still, though, is the ugly precedent it has set for the arbitrary confiscation by the State of property rights.
It should have been left up to individual institutions – private members clubs especially, but pubs and restaurants too – whether or not they wished to allow smoking on their premises. Punters would then have been free to choose whether or not they wished, on any given evening, to sacrifice their unalienable right not to be exposed to other people's deadly tobacco smoke.
That is how free societies work. Free people make free choices.
In 2006 and 2007 in Britain – and at various other dates in other countries around the world – the forces of authoritarian government took away those rights. On the basis of a massive lie.”
Interesting?????
So, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman [and Ladies], let nothing you dismay……..”
A very ‘Merry Christmas’ to you all, and all yours!!
PS While I am back on Forum over the next couple of days I will open my PMs
