CATCH-3

[frank_davis]

Frank Davis adds his 2 cents to the discussion.

Yesterday Chris Snowdon, writing on his blog about the current discussion here, said:

So untrustworthy have anti-smoking campaigners been in their handling of science in recent years that it is not surprising that some people find it difficult to believe anything they say.
Quite so. Anti-smoking zealots

Comments

Well said and three cheers sir!

[gasdoc]

That is so heart felt and genuine a posting. I congratulate you sir on such fine writing and wholeheartedly endorse your sentiment.

[ext_295311]

frank,damnit man..............your a poet for truth and freedom! Well Done,the finest piece of literary writing I have read......

[anonymous]

Well I certainly can't disagree

[anonymous]

Excellent writing, excellent argument, excellent all ways around.

Someone should link this to other places on the internet to force people to think.

The Debate

[junican]

The Mail On Line has just published an article regarding female lung cancer rates. There are some 50 comments so far. One commenter said that 90% of lung cancers were smokers and thus, in effect, said that "The science is settled". Below is a comment that I have made in response:

""dave, essex 11.04

Your last sentence (90% of lung cancer victims are smokers or recent former smokers) would indeed be damning - if it was true. There is, however, something that you may not be aware of.

When the people who designed the studies decided what would be considered to be 'a smoker', they decided to include anyone who had smoked 100 cigarettes in their lifetime as a smoker. You can see, can you not, that, say, a person in the armed forces would almost certainly have smoked for some time while in that situation. 100 cigarettes in a lifetime is minuscule