UK smoking ban: exactly as we predicted

<p>Last July 4th we made detailed predictions about how the propagandists would trumpet how successful is the British smoking ban, that we reproduce below (or they can be seen in our archives). We recommended that readers &ldquo;Save and print this page and consult it in one month time, perhaps even earlier&rdquo;. Let us compare now, about 50 days later.</p>

Ironic — and so stupid

<p>The stupidity of attaching pseudo-morality to money is well described in this communiqu&eacute; by a group of concerned citizens in Windsor, Ontario, about a tobacco investor getting the Heather Crowe Award.</p>

Bamboozling the judge

<p>The federal government&rsquo;s suit against the to tobacco industry is over.&nbsp; Anti-tobacco says the industry made out like bandits while the industry itself mumbles incoherently about moving ahead and being a good corporate citizen.</p>

Wacky methodology: great when delivering agendas

<p>This &ldquo;health news&rdquo; titbit, in which we&rsquo;re told that a new urine test proves that obese people are not actually reliable reporters about what they eat, deserves comment for a couple of reasons.&nbsp; For starters, it illustrates a major shortcoming of many studies about health and lifestyle (and other matters as well) that rely on people&rsquo;s memories, perceptions, and honesty about what they have done or experienced.</p>

Institutional perversion

<p>This blog posting in Surreality Times describes quite well a feeling that all of us at FORCES often experience. <em>This is so disturbing and depressing that I have put off writing about it (or anything, really) for many weeks.&rsquo;</em></p>

West Virginia: Putnam reverses smoking ban

<p>Finally, some Courage and Sanity.&nbsp; After being told repeatedly that the Board of Health is only responsible to &quot;listen to their peers&quot;, (meaning the &quot;public meetings&quot; are a farce to keep the public from rioting) this board has used their collective brains to determine that their erstwhile peers are the paid promoters of the junk science.</p>

The 30-minutes exposure fixation

<p>Michael Siegel brings us the umpteenth piece of health obsession: eating a meal at McDonalds, even a &quot;healthy&quot; one, results in the same degree of endothelial dysfunction as 30 minutes of exposure to secondhand smoke! Wonderful, that really means, given the realities of epidemiology, that a McDonalds hamburger can&rsquo;t hurt you.</p>