There is much we can do to reduce the 13,500 deaths caused by smoking each year, prevent young people starting, and help smokers to quit.Her figure for smoking related deaths should be noted. I am not clear how these figures are gathered. Another piece of writing from 2004 looks forward to the ban. In it, Dr Mac Armstrong declares that it would save 1,000 lives a year in Glasgow alone. The toll for 'estimated' smoking-related deaths at 13,000, however, is lower than the one supplied by Sheila Duffy, two years before the ban came in.
Both figures have in fact been floating around for the last few years, but there is no sign of 1,000 lives a year being saved. (Whether by coincidence or not, this figure was also given as the toll of passive smokers killed every year by secondary smoke: the ones the legislation was meant to protect.) And let's not forget this story, that heart attack rates went down 17 per cent following the smoking ban: now made nonsense by the fact that the English are claiming only a 2.4 per drop in heart attacks as a result of the smoking ban.
It is not known exactly most people die, and it is impossible to come up with precise numbers for a potential factor in a death, like smoking. What is certain is that the smoking ban hasn't dramatically altered the death rate in any of the ways we were led to believe it would.
12 comments:
More propaganda from ASH Scotland.
They don't even know how many smokers there are in Scotland.
Nice post Belinda. I'm going to pass this around:-)
So Just when is Sheila going to prove her 13,500 deaths statement? She cannot even name one person who has died solely from the effects of smoking tobacco! Why would anyone believe statements that cannot be proven?
The high probability is that the tobacco “death toll” comes from the USA’s Center for Disease Control’s “Smoking Attributable Mortality & Morbidity and Estimated Cost” (SAMMEC – there is now a SAMMEC II) program. The computer program is an exercise in statistical shenanigans, based on relative risks for a variety of diseases and assumed causation. A country can be given its tobacco “death toll” by providing population size and percent smokers thereof. (see the book Rampant Antismoking Signifies Grave Danger www.rampant-antismoking.com ).
The fact of the matter is that the medical establishment is by far, and for far better causal reasons, the leading cause of preventable death and disability (and associated costs).
IATROGENESIS or IATROGENIC EFFECT (any harm produced by medical conduct)
“We estimated that in 1994 overall 2216000 (1721000-2711000) hospitalized patients had serious ADRs [adverse drug reactions] and 106000 (76000-137000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9555760?dopt=Abstract
Including more sources of iatrogenesis:
Doctors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.
Cause 250,000 Deaths Every Year
From Starfield, B. (2000) Is US Health Really The Best In The World? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284 (4), 483-485.
http://www.naturodoc.com/library/public_health/doctors_cause_death.htm
Including even more sources of iatrogenesis:
Null et al. (2003)
DOCTORS ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE USA.
Cause 780,000-1,000,000 Deaths Every Year
http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf
Adding in the destructiveness of the aggressive promotion of eugenic ideology (e.g., antismoking) – promoting irrational belief, fear, and hatred (and all of the psychological, social, moral, economic, political, and physical ramifications thereof) – the contemporary medical establishment is clearly the most organized, mainstream, global, destructive entity in the world at this time. Unfortunately, the good that the medical establishment can do is being far outweighed by the bad and is being used to ransom societies around the world to deranged ideology.
P.S. The annual death toll in the USA is 2,400,000.
The estimated “death toll” from tobacco is 440,000
The iatrogenic death toll in Scotland will be 25,000-30,000 per annum based on Null et al.
Note: The tobacco death toll is erroneously argued from population level to individual level (next to impossible to coherently demonstrate causation). Alternatively, iatrogenesis is causally demonstrable at the individual level. There is then an extrapolation to the population level to estimate prevalence. Of the two – the tobacco death toll or the iatrogenic death toll – it is the latter that should be taken seriously given that causation of the phenomenon is demonstrable at the individual level. Yet the public rarely hears of the iatrogenic toll and hears incessantly of the tobacco “toll”.
Comment from Anon1 that may have been too long: part 1
The high probability is that the tobacco “death toll” comes from the USA’s Center for Disease Control’s “Smoking Attributable Mortality & Morbidity and Estimated Cost” (SAMMEC – there is now a SAMMEC II) program. The computer program is an exercise in statistical shenanigans, based on relative risks for a variety of diseases and assumed causation. A country can be given its tobacco “death toll” by providing population size and percent smokers thereof. (see the book Rampant Antismoking Signifies Grave Danger www.rampant-antismoking.com ).
The fact of the matter is that the medical establishment is by far, and for far better causal reasons, the leading cause of preventable death and disability (and associated costs).
IATROGENESIS or IATROGENIC EFFECT (any harm produced by medical conduct)
“We estimated that in 1994 overall 2216000 (1721000-2711000) hospitalized patients had serious ADRs [adverse drug reactions] and 106000 (76000-137000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9555760?dopt=Abstract
Anon1, part 2
Including more sources of iatrogenesis:
Doctors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.
Cause 250,000 Deaths Every Year
From Starfield, B. (2000) Is US Health Really The Best In The World? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284 (4), 483-485.
http://www.naturodoc.com/library/public_health/doctors_cause_death.htm
Including even more sources of iatrogenesis:
Null et al. (2003)
DOCTORS ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE USA.
Cause 780,000-1,000,000 Deaths Every Year
http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf
Adding in the destructiveness of the aggressive promotion of eugenic ideology (e.g., antismoking) – promoting irrational belief, fear, and hatred (and all of the psychological, social, moral, economic, political, and physical ramifications thereof) – the contemporary medical establishment is clearly the most organized, mainstream, global, destructive entity in the world at this time. Unfortunately, the good that the medical establishment can do is being far outweighed by the bad and is being used to ransom societies around the world to deranged ideology.
P.S. The annual death toll in the USA is 2,400,000.
The estimated “death toll” from tobacco is 440,000
The iatrogenic death toll in Scotland will be 25,000-30,000 per annum based on Null et al.
Note: The tobacco death toll is erroneously argued from population level to individual level (next to impossible to coherently demonstrate causation). Alternatively, iatrogenesis is causally demonstrable at the individual level. There is then an extrapolation to the population level to estimate prevalence. Of the two – the tobacco death toll or the iatrogenic death toll – it is the latter that should be taken seriously given that causation of the phenomenon is demonstrable at the individual level. Yet the public rarely hears of the iatrogenic toll and hears incessantly of the tobacco “toll”.
posted material on the wrong thread by mistake.
Belinda, you summed it up perfectly with "What is certain is that the smoking ban hasn't dramatically altered the death rate in any of the ways we were led to believe it would."
And even if it SEEMED to have lowered the death rate... could we have believed it? You and Anon both talked about how these figures are derived. You've got the SAMMEC type computer programs that simply spit out whatever numbers are the result of the assumptions and formulas and base figures that are entered, and you've got one after another of these abominations posing as scientific studies declaring 10, 15,23, or 60% "instant drops" in heart attack rates after bans that almost *universally* get ripped apart by analysts after their publication in supposedly well-policed peer-reviewed journals.
Even a fairly quick look over Christopher Snowdon's, Mike Siegel's, and some of the other excellent blog analyses that have been done of these "studies" show the true extent and depth of the problem. Antimoking-funded research left the realm of scientific reality to go wandering in Propaganda Fantasy Land years ago... there's simply no way to get accurate figures and analysis from researchers whose mortgages depend upon consistently pleasing funders who have previously staked out strong and clear advocacy positions.
Here in the U.S. for example I analysed a study declaring "Bars AND Restaurants" didn't lose employment after a ban. After a bit of digging I found data that pretty clearly indicated that the authors had not only PROMISED the "right" kind of results in their grant proposal, but that they deliberately combined the bar and restaurant figures in a way that hid the devastation to bar workers. By using the word "AND" to mean only the combined result while most readers would assume it meant "EITHER bar or restaurant workers" the presentation of the study basically promulgated an outright lie.
And just to complete the picture, when the funding organization was confronted by an enterprising reporter who asked if they had EVER funded a study that gave them results contrary to their announced policy wishes the organization spokesperson responded, "I can't think of one off the top of my head."
Finding the truth from the figures we are presented with is like trying to get a true understanding of astronomy from studies funded and carried out by the Catholic Church in pre-Galileo times.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
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