Political Correctness and Smoking

Dear Dr Siepmann,

I read your article with great interest [Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer]. I don't know whether your figures are right, but they sound more plausible than the current torrent of propaganda against tobacco. In my personal experience I've only encountered one person with lung cancer, and she was a non-smoker. My father, who smoked 60 cigarettes/day until he was about 60 (when he completely stopped smoking) lived on to die of stroke/bladder cancer at age 79. Of course, that's only my personal experience. Other people may have a quite different experience.

Back in the 1960s, I had the fortune (or misfortune) of encountering a medical doctor who was strongly opposed to smoking, at a time when such views were held by a small minority. He impressed me a great deal. Did he argue quietly and rationally the perils of smoking? Did he cite clinical studies? Nope. He just inveighed against "the filthy habit" like church preacher, his face contorted with loathing. 

I was impressed because his was clearly a moral crusade rather than a medical crusade. Smoking clearly deeply disgusted him. There's a long history of moral condemnation of smoking (and in particular cigarette smoking) which dates back to 1900 or so. There is an even longer history of moral condemnation of alcohol. And a rather shorter one of using drugs like cannabis. It appears to me that the crusade against tobacco (and alcohol and cannabis) is essentially a moral crusade abetted by loaded "clinical studies". After all, it greatly assists a moral crusade if the object of its condemnation can also be shown to not only be morally offensive, but also fatal.

Tobacco has been in use in Western society for some 500 years. If tobacco was so fatal as is now suggested, one would have thought that cause and effect would have noticed several hundred years ago. This alone leads me to suspect that there isn't that much wrong with tobacco (although it were best if one didn't use it, or alcohol, or fast cars).

I'm not sure when lung cancer became a "scourge", and smoking was found to be its principal "cause", but I think it was in the 1960s and 70s. If smoking was not the cause, then what was? The one thing that comes to mind as a candidate is atmospheric nuclear testing. Has anyone attempted to correlate this with lung cancer deaths?

In short, I would suggest that a) the crusade against tobacco was and is primarily a moral crusade, and b) it was politically convenient to blame lung cancer deaths almost wholly on tobacco because this diverted attention away from the true causes, whatever they may have been.

Regards,

Chris Davis  <chris.davis@virgin.net>

Reply from the Editor:

Thank you for your comments. You are right, a lot of the politically correct crusades are not based on good science. Steve Milloy does a good job at trying to expose such unscientific propaganda in his FOX News column at http://www.foxnews.com/science/junkscience/index.sml (inactive/moved 8/2001) as well as his website at http://www.junkscience.com/ . You and other intelligent readers who would rather base their ideas on facts rather than political correctness will probably enjoy these links as well of course as the Journal of Theoretics.

Re: The Credentials and Works of A.E.Akimov and G.I.Shipov 

Hello,

There are papers on "torsion fields" "discovered" by A.E.Akimov and G.I.Shipov in your journal. I would like to inform you that they are frauds and their "torsion theory" is nothing but a pseudoscientific swindle. See the paper on the torsion field fraud: http://professor.narod.ru/tffraud.htm [not a valid link as of Oct. 2001]

Also see Comments by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dr. V.A.Rubakov - On the book "The theory of physical vacuum" by G.I.Shipov:  http://ufn.ioc.ac.ru:8200/ufn2000/ufn00_3/ufn003j.pdf  (link found to be inactive Jan. 2002)

Prof. Alexander Konkretny. professor@narod.ru

[The above email was referred to Hal Fox who was kind enough to reply with the following.]

We, who work on the forefront of any science, biological, chemistry, or physics must be aware of the current models. No model of reality is fully correct. The concept that light travels only at one velocity appears to be challenged by many who are working on the frontiers of science. The work of Akimov and Shipov deserves to be carefully considered by the interested reader. The claims that this extensive work has no merit, has not to my knowledge, been properly nor professional addressed. All of us are prone to protect our learned view of physical reality. Some of us become quite dogmatic, especially where the speed of light is challenged. Professional scientists exchange information, study the literature, examine the experimental data, and, hopefully, improve their models. It is not widely known nor widely taught, but my information is that astronauts and others who calculate orbits for space vehicles MUST use the assumption that the influence of gravity must be considered as having an instantaneous effect. For example, in going to Mars, one has to use the true position of Mars, not where it is visually observed, to get the correct orbital calculations. In other words, the gravity of the celestial object must be considered as traveling much faster than the speed of light. Torsion fields, according to the literature, have three components, gravity, spin, and magnetic. I have been informed that there are U.S. patents pending on torsion-field devices.

There are several references that can be cited as summarized below in the review article by Fox.

Hal Fox, "Gravity Waves and Torsion Fields: Faster than Light?," J. New Energy, vol 3, no 2. Proceedings of the INE Symposium, August 14-15, 1998. See the 13 references included in this paper.

Best personal regards, Hal Fox    halfox@qwest.net

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