Re: those statistics purporting to show that the smoking ban has led to a ten per cent fall in heart attacks, which I dismissed as dubious earlier today, Michael Siegel (who knows far more about all this than most people) went hunting for the underlying research and found that there is absolutely nothing to back up the headlines, nothing whatsoever.
Stormlight
1 hour ago
7 comments:
There never is. Anti-tobacco is a proof-free zone. Always has been, always will be.
It's how they fooled a lame-brained public into believing smoke is more dangerous than diesel fumes on the high street.
Should the story be that there is an increase in deaths by heart attacks, because of a fall in health-care funding due to reduction of Tax Revenue from tobacco sales?
Surely the first relevant question is to what extent, if any, has smoking decreased?
If it has decreased the next questions is what part of that decrease was caused by the ban?
Once those two essential pieces of groundwork are in place we can turn to the causal connection, if any, between recent reductions in smoking and reductions in heart attacks.
The simple fact, for it is a fact, is that no one can tell from the loose correlations produced by research in this area whether there is a causative effect between recent cessation of smoking and heart attacks.
What about the other scary factors such as salt intake, fatty food, lack of exercise and boozing? How have these changed and what effect have they had?
The answer - the undeniable and patently obvious answer - is that it is impossible to tell.
Assuming (and it is a massive assumption) smoking, boozing, food and exercise are the four major causative factors in a myocardial infarction, one would have to measure them all and see how they have each altered in order to be able to draw any conclusion about the effect of any one of them on the rate of heart attacks.
Since it is impossible to measure them to any degree of accuracy, it is impossible to draw any sound conclusion about their effect.
The whole thing is nonsense on stilts.
MW - you might like to peruse this story if you haven't already.
The drive came amid recent figures from health officials which indicated the number of young people smoking in Scotland had returned to a level last seen almost 10 years ago.
Well that worked then. Didn't it?
CFF, I liked the headline but the rest was a damp squib and so I ignored it. The heart attack story was more interesting.
When the BBC say "a level last seen almost ten years ago." they mean it in an ooh-scary kind of way, but we know that it's irrelevant. What does "almost ten" mean? Nine and a half? Nine? We also know that smoking rates haven't declined much in nine or ten years so they can't have increased much either.
Hi Mark,
I've added you to my blog list and have mentioned you in this new update:
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-i-dont-believe-in-miracles.html
Cheers,
Chris
I stand to be corrected but I was under the impression that someone who quits smoking improves their health over the long term but in the short term worsens it. Immediately after quitting the risk of several problems rises before declining again.
If this is true, then we ought to see a decline in smoking accompanied by a short term rise in certain illnesses rather than a fall.
I notice my link (thanks to Mr Wadsworth) mentions heart attacks increasing after cessation.
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