Their conclusion was that ‘public consensus about the negative effects of passive smoke is so strong that it has become part of a truth regime that cannot be intelligibly questioned’. The result of what Kabat dubs ‘the new McCarthyism in science’ is that epidemiology is reduced to propaganda.
In his fascinating history of anti-smoking,
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, Christopher Snowdon (who was previously interviewed for
the spiked review of books here) provides the wider context for the witch-hunt against Kabat and Enstrom. He shows how the campaign against passive smoking took off in the 1970s, long before the first studies that claimed to show its ill-effects. An early campaigner’s statement that ‘we were just waiting for science to tell us what we already knew’ accurately reveals the subordinate role of science in the anti-tobacco cause. Snowdon also shows that the campaign against passive smoking has grown more strident and more influential in inverse proportion to the scientific evidence. Though large studies in the 1990s had shown all ‘those who had eyes to see that the passive smoking theory had unravelled’, the anti-smoking bandwagon rolled on regardless.
Snowdon provides entertaining examples of the preposterous claims of anti-smoking campaigners – some suggesting that passive smoking causes diseases (such as breast cancer) that have never been linked to active smoking. From Helena, Montana to Glasgow, Scotland, campaigners have claimed dramatic falls in mortality following the introduction of smoking bans – claims that disintegrate under the slightest scrutiny (which they rarely receive from a cravenly ‘on-message’ media). More objective reports suggest increases in levels of smoking, particularly among young people, since the introduction of bans.
Snowdon quotes a recent editorial in the
New Scientist, which suggests that the anti-smoking campaign may have reached some sort of limit. Commenting on the promotion of the concept of ‘third-hand smoke’ – the notion that toxic residues in the form of particulates can be transmitted from a victim of passive smoking to a third party (and hence justifying bans on smoking in the home as well as in the workplace) – campaigners were accused of ‘distorting the facts to make their case’. The editorial concluded that ‘using bad science can never be justified, even in the pursuit of a noble cause’. Yet, as Snowdon observes, the ‘real message’ that emerges from his study is that ‘government health agencies could no longer be trusted to provide accurate medical advice and were now wilfully misleading the public in an effort to manipulate behaviour’. This is the real damage done to public health by its embrace of the cynical moralism of the anti-smoking crusaders.
11-02-2009, 07:50 AM
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