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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 01/15/2009 : 12:07:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
The relationship of Asthma to ETS is pretty interesting. Back when half the population smoked, and smoked everywhere, asthma was fairly rare. The numbers of smokers is now half what it was at its peak, and severe restrictions mean that non-smokers are being exposed to it far, far less than they were in the past. Yet, asthma cases have risen dramatically. The number of asthma cases seems inversely proportionate to the number of smokers and smoking restrictions – in other words, as exposure goes down, asthma incidents increase. If I were as dishonest as the anti-smoker advocates, I'd push this as "proof" that ETS has a protective effect against asthma. |
There have been lots of studies which seem to show that bringing up children in ultra-clean environments leads to them being hypersensitive to allergens. Don't know why smoke (of any type) would be any different. As a public health policy question, though, forcing kids to play outside instead of inside may do just as much to reduce allergen hypersensitivity as exposing them (specifically) to tobacco smoke, without the health risks to the primary smokers and the support of the tobacco industry.| It's nice that you still have bigotries and unfounded beliefs to cushion you from reality. |
It's nice to see that you can simply side-step my points by claiming that I'm a bigot.| It saves you all the trouble of dealing with the points they make. |
Ditto.| You just write them off as political drivel and move on. |
That's what you're doing, so why can't I?
Besides, which scientific journals are publishing peer-reviewed medical studies on SHS funded by the Cato Institute? A quick PubMed search shows seven items attributed to them since 1994. Six of them discuss healthcare reform. The seventh re-analyzes someone else's data on synergistic carcinogenicy. There is no science coming out of the Cato Institute on the subject of SHS. The Cato Institute is to second-hand smoke science as the Discovery Institute is to evolutionary theory, and Steven Milloy (in particular) seems to have been in Phillip Morris' pocket for quite some time.| I think it's hysterical when a person's own evidence largely undermines his own claims. |
" Results.—Fourteen of the 61 studies were unpublished. Median time to publication was 5 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 4-7 years) for statistically nonsignificant studies and 3 years (95% CI, 3-5 years) for statistically significant studies (P=.004). Statistically significant results (P=.004), experimental study design (P=.01), study size less than or equal to 500 (P=.01), and animals as subjects (P=.03) were predictive of time to publication. When the studies with human participants were analyzed separately, only statistically significant data were predictive of publication (P=.007). Multivariate analysis of all studies indicated that statistical significance (P=.001) and study design (P=.01) were the only independent predictors of time to publication, while for the human studies only statistical significance was predictive of publication (P=.007).
Conclusion.—There is a publication delay for passive smoking studies with nonsignificant results compared with those with significant results." |
Yup, and those conclusions are not what you claimed. Only two of the studies were unpublished because of the lack of significant results. The researchers did not (and could not) conclude that lack of significant results was predictive of lack of publication, they concluded it was predictive of delayed publication (over ten years ago).| Is it biologically plausible they'll get heart disease or lung cancer from that amount of exposure? |
Well, good grief! all those people who've gotten lung cancer and heart disease without ever smoking must have been lying about not smoking, because it's not "biologically plausible" for it to happen otherwise. As soon as you can pinpoint the source of a non-smokers' lung cancer, Hittman, as definitively not from second-hand smoke (like nobody else can do right now, even with a positive radon test, for example), then your conclusion will make sense. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 17:50:38 [Permalink]
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Marf, you're absolutely right. Tell a smoker, "you can only smoke over there" and the vast majority will comply without complaint. Tell them "you can't smoke anywhere," which is the goal of the anti-smoking crowd, and there are going to be problems. Nicotine Nannies are now legislatiing against people smoking in their cars (for the chillllllldren, of course) and in one CA county, in their own homes. This third hand smoke nonsense is a volley to continue that fight (against people smoking in their homes), but the sheer stupidity of it may, I hope, backfire.
There are non-smokers and there are anti-smokers. The anti's represent a tiny minority of non-smokers, but they've discovered how to not only shape public opinion, but get legislation passed to force people to comply with their beliefs, and for some of them, earn huge sums of money in the process. They are, in my experience, people who achieve self esteem by looking down on other people. Now that racism and homophobia are unfashionable they rely on hating smokers to get their jollies.
| Is it your view that those who do research and present evidence, and not of the anecdotal variety, that SHS causes harm to passive smokers are members of the dishonest anti-smoker crowd? |
They are funded almost exclusively by the anti-smoker crowd. And while the researchers may think they're doing honest work, (knowing, full well, that if they don't produce the desired results there won't be any more grants), the dishonesty of the anti-smokers is epic. They way they took a phone survey about beliefs and magically turned it into a survey "proving" Third Hand Smoke is just the most recent example. The Helena Fraud, the Scotland Fraud . . . it's just incredible the kind of crap they get away with and how eager the media is to assist them.
| Parenthetically, where is the research that supports homeopathy? I ask because you seem to regard SHS studies and assertions about the efficacy of homeopathy as equal on your fraud scale. |
I haven't researched homeopathy much, so don't have studies handy, but a quick Google found this:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/#a1
If the mass media loved homeopathy as much as they hate smoking, and homeopathy had "charitable" organizations the size of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The American Cancer Society, we'd probably have a plethora of studies that showed homeopathy was effective, and they'd probably have RRs in the same range as SS studies do.
| There have been lots of studies which seem to show that bringing up children in ultra-clean environments leads to them being hypersensitive to allergens. Don't know why smoke (of any type) would be any different. As a public health policy question, though, forcing kids to play outside instead of inside may do just as much to reduce allergen hypersensitivity as exposing them (specifically) to tobacco smoke, without the health risks to the primary smokers and the support of the tobacco industry. |
Hormosis is fascinating, and in its infancy. (It's as old as homeopathy, but was abandoned for a century because of its similarity to it.) I first encountered it while working for GE's R&D center as a computer tech.
Scientists and researchers often check each others work as a courtesy. I was fixing a computer for the site's chief safety officer, who was a doctor of toxicology. An outside researcher was visiting him and asking for help checking his work. He had discovered that people with no radon in their homes had a higher incidence of lung cancer than people with some radon in their homes. His results were an inverse bell curve – although not really a bell curve because once the chart started going up it kept going up - ut as radion exposure increased lung cancer decreased, until it crossed a threshold where it started going back up. He was having trouble believing what he had discovered. The Dr. found someone to check his numbers and sent him on his way.
I asked the doctor about it, and had a fascinating conversation about how low levels of toxins and radiation appear to have a protective effect. Being too clean appears to be just as dangerous as high levels of exposure. I say "appears" becuase there still isn't much research in this area. Nor is there likely to be - there's no profit in it.
I don't know of the researchers study ever got published or not, but if his numbers were accurate, and it were to receive the publicity it deserved, it might help people be less panicky about tiny amounts of toxins and radiation in their environment.
Here's a fascinating article on the subject: http://discovermagazine.com/2002/dec/featradiation
This doesn't mean we should encourage people to smoke around their kids (I never did, for instance) but it would mean we'd have less panic about those who do. Except among the nicotine nannies, who would continue to refer to smokers as a "walking toxic dump." (A direct quote from the doctor on the Today show, who says after someone goes outside to smoke they must immediately throw their clothes in the washer.)
Dave, if the Cato Institute did sponsor a study (which is not what they do) would you believe it, or just denigrate the source?
| Well, good grief! all those people who've gotten lung cancer and heart disease without ever smoking must have been lying about not smoking, because it's not "biologically plausible" for it to happen otherwise. |
You might want to look up biological plausibility before perusing this silly argument. Lung cancer (or any other cancer) can not only be caused by any number of things, it's plausible that it just happens without a specific cause in people who are genetically predisposed to it.
| As soon as you can pinpoint the source of a non-smokers' lung cancer, Hittman, as definitively not from second-hand smoke (like nobody else can do right now, even with a positive radon test, for example), then your conclusion will make sense. |
Cool! You've mastered fundamentalist logic! Since you can't prove a non-smokers lung cancer doesn't come from SHS, it does! Just like, since you can't prove God doesn't exist, that means he does! Brilliant! |
When a vampire Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door, don't invite him in. Blood Witness: http://bloodwitness.com
Get Smartenized® with the Quick Hitts blog: http://www.davehitt.com/blog2/index.phpBlog |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 19:38:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
Dave, if the Cato Institute did sponsor a study (which is not what they do) would you believe it, or just denigrate the source? |
It's not a question of belief. It's a question of reading the study, examining the methods used and conclusions reached, and tentatively accepting or rejecting the results.
Unlike what you did, which was to take a study's plainly-written conclusions and blow them all out of proportion to what the researchers themselves said. The idea that there's all sorts of unpublished data which shows no significant effects of SHS because such studies prejudicially don't get published is destroyed by simply reading the article you linked to, which found a whopping two out of a hundred and change.| You might want to look up biological plausibility before perusing this silly argument. Lung cancer (or any other cancer) can not only be caused by any number of things, it's plausible that it just happens without a specific cause in people who are genetically predisposed to it. |
Duh.| Cool! You've mastered fundamentalist logic! Since you can't prove a non-smokers lung cancer doesn't come from SHS, it does! |
What an insane reading of what I wrote.| Just like, since you can't prove God doesn't exist, that means he does! Brilliant! |
Nope. Because it is biologically plausible that a single atom of Polonium in someone's smoke could, indeed, cause cancer in a non-smoker's lung, it means that your "the dose is the poison" mantra is just plain wrong in the cases under discussion. The smoke does cause problems. We know this. A potentially huge "dose" of smoke over ten years is a red herring if a person's very first cigarette sets off cancer which goes undiagnosed for those same ten years. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 20:51:06 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I found this over at the CDC site a little bit ago:
Reduced Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction After Implementation of a Smoke-Free Ordinance
It's just one report (I don't know if it was funded by anti-smoking zealots or not), but the conclusions are certainly interesting. |
This junk science approach was invented by Dr. Sergeant and Sheppard in their Helena study. That particular study wasn't just problematic – it was fraudulent. (My research on it: http://www.davehitt.com/facts/helena.html).
It's a pretty simple technique. Whenever a ban is put in place, you look for trends in heart attacks (MCIs). Overall, MCIs have been dropping worldwide, but figuring that into your calculations is optional. When the numbers stay the same you remain silent. When they go up, you remain silent. When they go down you proclaim it was due to the smoking ban. Hooray, Proof! |
Except your "research" doesn't address the study I noted at all, and your hand wave with the "pretty simple technique" seems again to be irrelevant to the study I noted.
Long edit added on below:
I should have just waited until this morning to reply, and not shoot off a quick no-reply like I did above while really tired.
So let's look at your objections. First, you suggest that the study I linked to is invalid because "overall, MCIs have been dropping worldwide." You make this statement without offering up much proof, and I'm skeptical of this claim. But perhaps it's true.
Of course, you then turn around and say this: "When the numbers stay the same you remain silent. When they go up, you remain silent."
If rates are going down worldwide, then how is that that they also go up?
This second point is worth exploring more, though. As Kil notes below, your comment suggests something sort of conspiratorial. I mean, is it really the case that there are studies out there where AMI rates (I assume that's what you mean when you say "MCI", right? Though, since AMI is for Acute Myocardial Infarction, then perhaps MCI is just for Myocardial Infarction, and the two are more or less the same?) have gone up noticeably after city-wide smoking bans and scientists have somehow sought to cover up such information? And if so-- if that information really was suppressed-- how do you know about it?!?
And finally, as I said above, none of your objections apply to the study cited. |
| Edited by - Cuneiformist on 01/16/2009 08:16:07 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 23:10:45 [Permalink]
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| Me: Is it your view that those who do research and present evidence, and not of the anecdotal variety, that SHS causes harm to passive smokers are members of the dishonest anti-smoker crowd? |
Hittman:
They are funded almost exclusively by the anti-smoker crowd. And while the researchers may think they're doing honest work, (knowing, full well, that if they don't produce the desired results there won't be any more grants), the dishonesty of the anti-smokers is epic. |
So, the researchers may think they are doing honest work while all the time knowing that they aren't. Interesting. You do know that their reputations, and therefore their livelihoods are on the line if they are caught helping to perpetrate a fraud don't you?
The shear number of studies that link passive smoking to an increased health risk suggests a conspiracy of epic proportion, if we follow your reasoning. Hell, there are so many studies that even Penn had to change his mind, just like Carroll and me and, dare I say it, most of the skeptic community, because we were presented with enough evidence that we couldn't reasonably not change our minds. The only holdouts seem to be libertarians. And only those libertarians who are unwilling to look at the evidence objectively. (Some irony there, don't you think?)
Hittman
They way they took a phone survey about beliefs and magically turned it into a survey "proving" Third Hand Smoke is just the most recent example. The Helena Fraud, the Scotland Fraud . . . it's just incredible the kind of crap they get away with and how eager the media is to assist them. |
Now, there are literally hundreds of studies from many nations that find a significant correlation between passive smoking and higher incidences of illness in passive smokers. Many of those studies are in part or wholly government funded. Why would so many governments, including our own, want to perpetrate a fraud that would cause them a loss in revenue from tobacco product sales, and force them to implement and enforce laws that also costs money, without any gain such as reduced health care costs? That includes those countries that have single payer healthcare systems and aren't nearly as tight assed about smoking as this country seems to be. (You know, like France.) And even here, it would suggest that “the anti-smoker crowd” has more clout than the tobacco industry and all of its lobbying money has, again resulting in lower revenues in general. Could it be that the health insurance industry (an industry that would prefer its costumers remain healthy) and their lobbying money has weighed in?
| Me: Parenthetically, where is the research that supports homeopathy? I ask because you seem to regard SHS studies and assertions about the efficacy of homeopathy as equal on your fraud scale. |
So you only compare SHS studies, and the subsequent conclusions drawn from those studies, and studies that support homeopathy, for hyperbolic effect. But really, you have no idea. It just sounds great to say, especially to a skeptic.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 01/15/2009 : 23:32:01 [Permalink]
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By the way, the idea that only PC research is safe to publish, and that all other research is ignored by the scientific community, coupled with PC media support, is the claim made by every pseudo-scientific crackpot group out there.
Just saying...
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 04:33:09 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
By the way, the idea that only PC research is safe to publish, and that all other research is ignored by the scientific community, coupled with PC media support, is the claim made by every pseudo-scientific crackpot group out there.
Just saying...
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I'll get to Hittman's posts later, but I needed to quote this for truth. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 08:47:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
Originally posted by Hittman
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I found this over at the CDC site a little bit ago:
Reduced Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction After Implementation of a Smoke-Free Ordinance
It's just one report (I don't know if it was funded by anti-smoking zealots or not), but the conclusions are certainly interesting. |
This junk science approach was invented by Dr. Sergeant and Sheppard in their Helena study. That particular study wasn't just problematic – it was fraudulent. (My research on it: http://www.davehitt.com/facts/helena.html).
It's a pretty simple technique. Whenever a ban is put in place, you look for trends in heart attacks (MCIs). Overall, MCIs have been dropping worldwide, but figuring that into your calculations is optional. When the numbers stay the same you remain silent. When they go up, you remain silent. When they go down you proclaim it was due to the smoking ban. Hooray, Proof! |
Except your "research" doesn't address the study I noted at all, and your hand wave with the "pretty simple technique" seems again to be irrelevant to the study I noted.
Long edit added on below:
I should have just waited until this morning to reply, and not shoot off a quick no-reply like I did above while really tired.
So let's look at your objections. First, you suggest that the study I linked to is invalid because "overall, MCIs have been dropping worldwide." You make this statement without offering up much proof, and I'm skeptical of this claim. But perhaps it's true.
Of course, you then turn around and say this: "When the numbers stay the same you remain silent. When they go up, you remain silent."
If rates are going down worldwide, then how is that that they also go up?
This second point is worth exploring more, though. As Kil notes below, your comment suggests something sort of conspiratorial. I mean, is it really the case that there are studies out there where AMI rates (I assume that's what you mean when you say "MCI", right? Though, since AMI is for Acute Myocardial Infarction, then perhaps MCI is just for Myocardial Infarction, and the two are more or less the same?) have gone up noticeably after city-wide smoking bans and scientists have somehow sought to cover up such information? And if so-- if that information really was suppressed-- how do you know about it?!?
And finally, as I said above, none of your objections apply to the study cited.
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Note also that the highest annual drop in coronary events (couldn't find Acute Myocard Infactions (IMA) specifically in a 5-minute search) in the worldwide MONICA study was 6.5 percent. Drop in the US was 4.2%. Drop in the Colorado study was 27%. This is more than 4 times as high as the annual drop in infarctions in the US, or anywhere around the world for that matter. Note also that in two control populations surrounding Colorado where no smoking ban was enacted, there was no significant decrease in IMA during the same period. One population increased a little bit, the other decreased with a few percent. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
| Edited by - tomk80 on 01/16/2009 08:48:35 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 08:53:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by tomk80
Note also that the highest annual drop in coronary events (couldn't find Acute Myocard Infactions (IMA) specifically in a 5-minute search) in the worldwide MONICA study was 6.5 percent. Drop in the US was 4.2%. Drop in the Colorado study was 27%. This is more than 4 times as high as the annual drop in infarctions in the US, or anywhere around the world for that matter. Note also that in two control populations surrounding Colorado where no smoking ban was enacted, there was no significant decrease in IMA during the same period. One population increased a little bit, the other decreased with a few percent. |
Thanks for looking up the numbers re worldwide AMIs. I am surprised that there actually is a worldwide drop. Is this part of a larger trend, or more isolated (with some years seeing upwards trends and others seeing downwards trends)?
And either way, thanks for expressing my point more clearly. The study I cited had two control groups. So not only did the city-wide smoking ban see a significant drop in AMIs (much more than worldwide), but the two neighboring control regions without such bans saw no change at all-- and this was a study over years, and not just a few months.
This doesn't prove anything perse. But it it cannot be dismissed as simply as Hittman tried to do above. |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 09:20:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
Originally posted by tomk80
Note also that the highest annual drop in coronary events (couldn't find Acute Myocard Infactions (IMA) specifically in a 5-minute search) in the worldwide MONICA study was 6.5 percent. Drop in the US was 4.2%. Drop in the Colorado study was 27%. This is more than 4 times as high as the annual drop in infarctions in the US, or anywhere around the world for that matter. Note also that in two control populations surrounding Colorado where no smoking ban was enacted, there was no significant decrease in IMA during the same period. One population increased a little bit, the other decreased with a few percent. |
Thanks for looking up the numbers re worldwide AMIs. I am surprised that there actually is a worldwide drop. Is this part of a larger trend, or more isolated (with some years seeing upwards trends and others seeing downwards trends)?
And either way, thanks for expressing my point more clearly. The study I cited had two control groups. So not only did the city-wide smoking ban see a significant drop in AMIs (much more than worldwide), but the two neighboring control regions without such bans saw no change at all-- and this was a study over years, and not just a few months.
This doesn't prove anything perse. But it it cannot be dismissed as simply as Hittman tried to do above.
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Link for the numbers:
http://www.heartstats.org/temp/Tabsp2.2spweb07.xls
Looking purely at these numbers, there seems to be a decrease in cardiac events. Of course locally there are increases. Note also that the period of measurement in these figures extends to 1995 at the latest. I don't know what current trends are.
As to what causes the downward trend, I don't remember whether there were plausible explanations for it. Part of the explanation might be that there have been better treatements for people who are at risk for cardiac events, for example better treatments against high blood pressure. These people might then have a cardiovascular disease, but the disease would not lead to a cardiac event. A quick glimpse at the table also shows that case fatality rates (people who die from a cardiac event) is dropping slower than the cardiac event rate. This would meaning that the number of cardiac events decreases, but a higher percentage of those events is fatal. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 21:58:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
| But there is a good reason to use female-only studies, namely that men are more likely to smoke than women. |
That wasn't the criteria for the selection. They ranked studies with a complex tier system. Tier one, the highest rating, contained five studies. Tier 2 had 15, tier 3 had 5 and tier 4 had five. Tier four studies were deemed to be unacceptable for the study. (Page 5-61 of the study.) They then selected eight studies, and didn't' really explain why those eight were selected. Then they added three more on the basis that it wouldn't change their numbers!
Page 6-16 contains this paragraph: "This section calculates the EST ETS-attributable US long cancer mortality estimates based on the combined relative risk estimate (RR2 = 1.19) derived in chapter 5 for the 11 US studies. Alternative, the estimate from just the combined tier 1 and tier 2 studies (RR2 = 1.22 from eight of the 11, see Table 5-17) could have been used because these eight studies were assessed on having the grater utility in evaluation the long cancer risks from ETS; however, the results would have been virtually the same because the relative risk estimates are so similar. It was therefore decided to use the data from all the US studies for the purpose of population risk assessment." In other words, first they checked to see if the extra studies would agree with their numbers, and when they didn't, they decided to include them. |
The extra studies did agree with their numbers, that's the point above. If they would have gone for only the highest quality studies,
| BTW, what do you think of them recalculating the studies to a 90% CI, instead of the standard 95%? |
Nothing much. Since the significance level is arbitrary, it doesn't tell you that much. While a 95% confidence interval is generally taken as a standard, reporting results that have a 90% confidence interval happens often enough if the 95% cut-off is not significant. A p-value between 5 - 10% is a kind of statistical "twilight zone" in that respect. If they decided this in advance through a power calculation, that would be best practice.
| First off, inhaling smoke of six to twelve cigarettes per year is not a helpful comparison. From what I have seen of measurements, exposure to SHS in in some pubs in the Netherlands, to take on example, was quite high. You could literally see the smoke hanging like a fog. If this is only "six to twelve cigarettes per year", this tells us more about the extremely high doses you receive from cigarettes than it tells us about the dose you receive from SHS. |
I think a toxicologist would disagree with you. The Dose Is The Poison. The fact that you can see a lot of smoke is immaterial, what matters is how much is inhaled. |
But the point I was making is that "a cigarette" or "six to twelve cigarettes per year" is not the dose. The dose is for example the amount of fine particles you inhale, or the amount of toxic substances. The comparison you make doesn't tell you what the dose is. It could be that clean air vs smoky air vs direct inhalation from cigarettes is low vs low vs high, or that it is low vs high vs insanely high. You pretend that "six to twelve cigarettes per year" tells you something about the dose of the toxins, but it doesn't tell you much more than "room full of smoke". And no, toxicologists would not disagree with me on this, I work with them often enough for exposure assessment.
| Second, given that second hand smoke is a major source of indoor particulate matter, particulate matter is a likely cause of asthma and people are exposed to particulate matter through a number of sources, SHS increases the dose of particulate matter people are exposed too, thereby increasing the chance people have to develop asthma. |
The studies that measured actual exposure to ETS were done by measuring the particulate matter accumulated in the filters of portable air pumps worn by non-smokers in smoky environments. |
And they showed?
| The relationship of Asthma to ETS is pretty interesting. Back when half the population smoked, and smoked everywhere, asthma was fairly rare. The numbers of smokers is now half what it was at its peak, and severe restrictions mean that non-smokers are being exposed to it far, far less than they were in the past. Yet, asthma cases have risen dramatically. The number of asthma cases seems inversely proportionate to the number of smokers and smoking restrictions – in other words, as exposure goes down, asthma incidents increase. |
The problem you have with this is that not only is exposure to cigarette smoke going down, but so are a lot of other exposures over time. So attributing this trend to cigarette smoke is not easy to do. On the other hand, people living now in comparative studies (exposed group, control group) have approximately the same environmental conditions. Therefore you can make such attributions for the current time.
| If I were as dishonest as the anti-smoker advocates, I'd push this as "proof" that ETS has a protective effect against asthma. |
Stop the namecalling, okay. So far you've shown a far too little understanding of the things you are talking about to call anyone dishonest.
| I actually think such an experiment could be performed in a way that would pass ethical committees. If you'd get a positive result (ie, increased Po 210 in children playing with smokers) I'd be happy to write a nice research proposal for an epidemiological study on Third Hand Smoke exposure and their effects on health. I mean, my current project will last for four years, but I'll need work afterwards |
I'd suggest presenting it to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It the likely result is a further tool to demonize smokers they'll write you a nice fat check.
Oh, wait, you're concerned about ethics. You're no doubt concerned about accuracy too. Never mind. You'll have to find someone else to fund it. |
No idea what foundation that is. You will of course be able to substantiate the accusation you are making here?
| I think it's hysterical when a person's own evidence largely undermines his own claims. |
" Results.—Fourteen of the 61 studies were unpublished. Median time to publication was 5 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 4-7 years) for statistically nonsignificant studies and 3 years (95% CI, 3-5 years) for statistically significant studies (P=.004). Statistically significant results (P=.004), experimental study design (P=.01), study size less than or equal to 500 (P=.01), and animals as subjects (P=.03) were predictive of time to publication. When the studies with human participants were analyzed separately, only statistically significant data were predictive of publication (P=.007). Multivariate analysis of all studies indicated that statistical significance (P=.001) and study design (P=.01) were the only independent predictors of time to publication, while for the human studies only statistical significance was predictive of publication (P=.007).
Conclusion.—There is a publication delay for passive smoking studies with nonsignificant results compared with those with significant results." |
Note, again, that the 14 studies included both studies with positive and negative results. As Dave W. already pointed out, of only two of all studies examined nonsignificant results were cited as a reason for failing to publish. The conclusion of the study was that nonsignificant results was associated with a delay of publication, not with a failure to publish.
| <snap because already addressed> |
Marf, I've never said that primary smoking isn't risky. And yes, there are short term health effects as well. But the things being attributed to SHS (and now THS), primary lung cancer and heart disease, usually take a decade or two to manifest themselves in a primary smoker.
Let's go with ten years. In that time a smoker will have smoked 73,000 to 146,000 cigarettes. (The first number is a pack a day, the second is two packs. According to sales numbers from the UN, the average is about 1.2 packs a day.) A non-smoker with constant exposure to a smoky environment will have inhaled the smoke of 60-120 cigarettes over that period of time. Is it biologically plausible they'll get heart disease or lung cancer from that amount of exposure? |
"X cigarettes" is not the exposure. But you show a lack of understanding of risk attribution. Even of a chain smoker with lung cancer, we cannot state that that person got lung cancer due to smoking. Rather, smoking is one of the factors that has increased the risk on lung cancer that he had. This also holds for SHS. You can never attribute the disease to the exposure directly, you can only state that it either increases or decreases the risk of getting that disease.
Again, with cancer and other chronic diseases, if exposure decreases this doesn't mean you cannot get the disease, only that your chances of getting it are less. For these kind of exposures, there often is no known minimal dose.
That is also why in regulations around cancer causing agents (such as cigarette smoke) regulations do not have a dose that is marked "safe". Rather, levels that are allowed are based on chance estimates, for example the level where we expect the chance of cancer to be 1 in 1 million. This also holds for the chronic effects of toxic substances.
| <snipped more unfounded accusations> |
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Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
| Edited by - tomk80 on 01/16/2009 22:35:39 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 22:15:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hittman
| ] Is it your view that those who do research and present evidence, and not of the anecdotal variety, that SHS causes harm to passive smokers are members of the dishonest anti-smoker crowd? |
They are funded almost exclusively by the anti-smoker crowd. And while the researchers may think they're doing honest work, (knowing, full well, that if they don't produce the desired results there won't be any more grants), the dishonesty of the anti-smokers is epic. They way they took a phone survey about beliefs and magically turned it into a survey "proving" Third Hand Smoke is just the most recent example. The Helena Fraud, the Scotland Fraud . . . it's just incredible the kind of crap they get away with and how eager the media is to assist them. |
Are you at some point going to provide evidence of this. I mean, it's not like we haven't asked for this evidence before.
| Parenthetically, where is the research that supports homeopathy? I ask because you seem to regard SHS studies and assertions about the efficacy of homeopathy as equal on your fraud scale. |
I haven't researched homeopathy much, so don't have studies handy, but a quick Google found this:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/#a1
If the mass media loved homeopathy as much as they hate smoking, and homeopathy had "charitable" organizations the size of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The American Cancer Society, we'd probably have a plethora of studies that showed homeopathy was effective, and they'd probably have RRs in the same range as SS studies do. |
Ah, the American Cancer society is now suddenly suspect? On what data do you base your implication that the ACS was only interested in studies showing an increase in cancer risk due to SHS, rather than funding research into possible causes of cancer, one of which could be SHS?
| Dave, if the Cato Institute did sponsor a study (which is not what they do) would you believe it, or just denigrate the source? |
Would depend on the study. If the study was done by a respectable university I'd probably know a few of the names of the people involved. There are a few in that list where I'd double check, because I wasn't impressed by earlier studies from them. If the Cato institute published the study themselves, for example a review, I'd be very apprehensive. I've read one "review" from them about global warming and was less than impressed, the scientific level was very low. And yes, that makes the next article I read from them more suspect.
| <snap, already addressed in previous post> |
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Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2009 : 23:12:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by tomk80
But the point I was making is that "a cigarette" or "six to twelve cigarettes per year" is not the dose. |
Is there even an LD50 (or LCt50 or FDP) equivalent for carcinogens or allergens? I mean, Hittman's refusal to specify "ill effects" was bad enough, but the fact that some of those "ill effects" are carcinogenic and others are allergenic and still others are actually toxic effects means that he's demanding that we compare apples to oranges and kumquats all based on the single number of cigarettes smoked (actual or second-hand), on the premise that we agree with him that 60-120 smokes versus 73K-146K smokes is a meaningful comparison.
In other words, with a regular ol' poison, how much of it one is exposed to is going to suggest the odds that one will die from it. But with something like lung cancer, it's unlikely to even be diagnosed until the tumor(s) reach a certain size, no matter how much a person smokes, or for how long. Can the two even be compared at all? (Is the number of cigarettes smoked predictive of the size or number of lung tumors at time of diagnosis?) Especially considering that (for example) a complete lack of exposure to strychnine make the odds of me dying from strychnine poisoning astronomically low, but for every ten smokers who die of lung cancer, one non-smoker dies from it.
"The dose is the poison" is nothing more than a magical mantra Hittman must repeat to dismiss a much, much more complicated reality. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 01/17/2009 : 14:02:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by tomk80
But the point I was making is that "a cigarette" or "six to twelve cigarettes per year" is not the dose. |
Is there even an LD50 (or LCt50 or FDP) equivalent for carcinogens or allergens? |
Don't know for allergens, but for carcinogens there are equivalents. Basically instead of looking at lethal dose, you expose animals for a certain amount of time, sacrifice them and subsequently determine the number percentage of animals that developed tumors. From this you can derive LOAEL (lowest observed adverse effect level) or NOAEL (no observed adverse effect level), for example.
| I mean, Hittman's refusal to specify "ill effects" was bad enough, but the fact that some of those "ill effects" are carcinogenic and others are allergenic and still others are actually toxic effects means that he's demanding that we compare apples to oranges and kumquats all based on the single number of cigarettes smoked (actual or second-hand), on the premise that we agree with him that 60-120 smokes versus 73K-146K smokes is a meaningful comparison. |
True.
| In other words, with a regular ol' poison, how much of it one is exposed to is going to suggest the odds that one will die from it. But with something like lung cancer, it's unlikely to even be diagnosed until the tumor(s) reach a certain size, no matter how much a person smokes, or for how long. Can the two even be compared at all? (Is the number of cigarettes smoked predictive of the size or number of lung tumors at time of diagnosis?) Especially considering that (for example) a complete lack of exposure to strychnine make the odds of me dying from strychnine poisoning astronomically low, but for every ten smokers who die of lung cancer, one non-smoker dies from it. |
Well, you can often derive dose-effect relationships. While the assumption with carcinogens often is that the only dose at which no effect occurs is a dose of 0, the relationship is stochastic. So what you can do is relate the dose to the chance of developing cancer. This makes sense from a mechanistic point of view. Let's say a low dose of exposure causes a single mutation and a single mutation can cause cancer. Than with increasing doses, the number of mutations will increase and hence the chance that the right (or better wrong) mutation occurs.
"The dose is the poison" is nothing more than a magical mantra Hittman must repeat to dismiss a much, much more complicated reality.
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True. While the mantra is not completely incorrect, the problem is in what the effect is you are looking at and what you mean by dose. To take some examples, in carcinogenic substances the important effect is whether a mutation or chromosome break occurs. Often we do not know the highest dose at which such an effect will not occur, hence the assumption of no threshold. In mutagenic substances, the effect is an interaction with DNA (rather than a direct effect on the DNA). Again, there will no doubt be a dose below which an interaction does not occur, but we often do not know this dose. Many substances have biological effects that do damage but are not directly toxic (as in having a direct visible effect). Biological effects can include inflammation reactions or interactions with homeostatic processes. With dosages, some substances (examples are cadmium and vitamin A) accumulate in the body. So continued exposure can slowly accumulate to toxic doses. The important dose in this case is not the single exposure, but the accumulated dose in bone, blood or fatty tissue.
And that is ignoring important other effects like synergism with other substances, where the combined effect of two exposures is worse than sum of the effect of the two exposures separately. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Third-hand smoke
