Tuesday 21 September 2010

'Falls' in the asthma rate kept under spotlight

Local MEP Catherine Stihler has weighed in to the asthma 'debate'. In a letter to The Scotsman she savages a subscription-only article criticising the latest Jill Pell study by Brian Monteith (former MSP) in yesterday's edition.      

Ms Stihler (with whom I corresponded briefly in the past) wants to see smoking bans in workplaces throughout Europe. Her defence of Jill Pell is peculiarly irrelevant to the shortcomings in Pell's study ('40 per cent of children in Scotland live with an adult smoker'). Her website shows a handful of references to smoking, showing that she is a champion of smoking cessation and graphic images. Nothing very remarkable really. The asthma report has gone round the world, and this is the quality of letter writing that supports it.

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