Many of our readers are already familiar with Lauren Colby, now interviewed, for our latest Round Table presentation. Lauren is well known in the anti-prohibition movement for his uncompromising position against the “smoking causes cancer” tenet of antitobacco orthodoxy.
Ridicule of passive smoking scares is universal in the anti-prohibition movement. However, regarding active smoking, many even in this movement do not question the cancer causation tenet. They know it is based essentially on fallacious statistical interpretation, not on any demonstrable scientific basis, nevertheless they “let it go,” accepting its widespread belief amongst the public at large. They may criticize the characterization of causation as overstatement and leave it at that.
Colby keeps reminding us that the criticism of “overstatement” is, indubitably, gross understatement. The causation tenet, in fact and fundamentally, is absolutely wrong. It is not proven that smoking causes cancer. More and more are listening because Colby is absolutely right about this, and the difference between overstatement and fallacious statement, is altogether crucial.
That smoking is a major cause of cancer and the largest single cause of lung cancer is bedrock “scientifically established fact” to the antismoking ideology. Since the capitulation of the US tobacco industry a decade ago, reflected in timidity amongst the worldwide industry at large, these assertions have been virtually unopposed.
It is no coincidence that one of the firmest commandments of the Master Settlement Agreement is that the industry never again oppose the belief and the propaganda that tobacco causes anything that the antitobacco establishment says it causes. Thus the list now grows endless. Smoking causes bad dreams, and saggy breasts, didn’t you know, the studies prove it (via selective rendering of inevitable statistical quirks.)
Of course the fact is that not one single illness or death ever has been scientifically proven to be caused by smoking. There is nothing smokers “get” that non-smokers do not also “get.” Let it be clear: this does not mean that habitual smoking, alike as with innumerable factors, cannot influence potential health consequences. It simply means that there is no scientific proof that smoking alone causes lung cancer, other cancers, bad dreams or saggy breasts. And there is absolutely no guarantee that, would everybody quit smoking, the number of cancers or other diseases would decrease.
The fallacious logic of assigning the concept of “cause” to what may or may not be an influence on various health outcomes leads to a fallacious chain of “reasoning” that ends in frothing madness. Hence the current status of the modern Public Health establishment.
Hence too the idea amongst a credulous public that tobacco smoking is more dangerous than trapeze walking on a greased wire, that tobacco is the Health Satan, to be feared above all evils, and exorcised from the planet.
Rational anti-prohibition arguments, about free choice, property rights, and so on, go unheard amidst the fomented hue and cry to vanquish the greatest fear object of the age. Rational critics must no longer side-step the prominently bulging root of this.
Moderation in all things, particularly in thinking, is vital. Consider. Driving a car has risks. Driving a car does not “cause decapitation.” Neither does driving fast. Crashing carries a serious risk of injury. Drinking does not “cause cirrhosis.” Chronic heavy drinking invites cirrhosis, among other things, but teetotaling is no guarantee against cirrhosis, half the sufferers of which never drank heavily. A rich meal does not “cause heart failure.” Obesity may invite heart problems. So on and on.
Some would ban candy, beer, and put us all back on horses, but calm and balanced perspective keeps rational criticism of such prohibitions within view and plainly audible. Colby would care to reëstablish sanity as a basis of perspective on tobacco. He’s right on that. Folks on our side must understand the issue and follow his lead.
This Round Table interview was sparked by a French television program in the English language [click here for our comments, and here to watch the video]. Given his “heretical” view it’s extraordinary that he was invited to appear on the show. He gets a chance to make basic points, and, note carefully, they are evaded by the World Health Organization’s antitobacco “expert,” who makes no rebuttal whatever, reverting immediately to scary sound bites from prohibitionist scripture.
The host of the program does not intervene, simply allowing the scriptural reading, and does not either give Colby any opportunity to rebut the “expert” sermon. The smokers’ rights advocate who sits with the host does not seize or expand upon Colby’s important points. She is an abysmally ineffectual “advocate,” but on the particular point of failing to appreciate Lauren Colby’s positions, she is typical of spokesmen for our side. That must change.
Gian Turci invited Mister Colby to a FORCES Round Table to allow him a full opportunity to speak. Colby describes extensive research reported in his book In Defense of Smokers, including references to an endless number of animal experiments, regarding both active and passive smoking, which certainly caused no cancer in any of the animals no matter how much they were tortured.
Of course innumerable negative animal study results are ignored by the “experts.” The double-standard is the absolute standard of the ideologues. They point predictably to chosen and typically extreme studies in which animals have been exposed, through injection or ingestion, to single chemical components of smoke in proportionately vast amounts, altogether incomparable to human tobacco smoking.
When such animals (in most cases specifically bred to be cancer-prone) develop tumors these are said to suggest not merely that smokers run the same risk from microscopically smaller and altogether dissimilar exposure from smoking. The experts proclaim that smoking will “cause” the same. This also “proves” that the fallacious statistical interpretation of “causation” from “lifestyle epidemiology” is “fact.” This is the ideology. This is nonsense.
Listen to this Round Table interview at least once. It is high time the Great Fraud gets torn up by the roots. The unique causation of any person’s illness from smoking has never been scientifically demonstrated. The contribution of smoking to any person’s illness has never been scientifically quantified.
The potential risks of smoking are ludicrously exaggerated, and utterly misrepresented, by the most fundamental tenets of the antitobacco religion. Smoking is no more the “cause” of any illness than is eating. Thus smoking does not kill.
Click the link below for this illuminating interview.
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