Et Tu, Brute?

It's bad enough being a tax scrounger who lies for a living, but the latest disgusting state-funded cobblers from Martin Dockrell of ASH must be stunningly poor if an anti-smoker of over 20 years standing decides to fisk it. Mercilessly.

A few joyous extracts ...

"I take it this means that Dockrell is calling me a denialist and comparing me to AIDS dissidents who still deny that HIV causes AIDS. I also take it to mean that Dockrell is accusing me of being in the pocket of the tobacco companies and acting at their beck and call and presumably -their payments."

"This article demonstrates the religious-like and McCarthyist-like nature of the modern-day anti-smoking movement. If you do not subscribe to the accepted dogma of the movement, even when there is legitimate scientific evidence that brings that dogma into question, you are a dissident and a denialist"

"The absurdity of the article is evident in its implication that I - a strong anti-smoking advocate - am a denialist who is being orchestrated by the tobacco companies to disseminate conspiracy theories."

"Action on Smoking and Health (UK) evidently views the anti-smoking movement as a religion. Any challenge to the doctrines of the religion amounts to heresy. Scientific discourse is not allowed. You have to accept everything anti-smoking researchers claim with blind faith."

"The rest of the story is that the anti-smoking movement is quickly losing its science base. It is becoming a religious-like, McCarthyist-like movement which attacks and attempts to blacklist anyone who doesn't accept the doctrines of the movement. Its personal attacks are on character, not on science, and are doled out based not on the quality of science in the opposing arguments, but the position that the dissenter has taken.

The most important implication of today's story is that this shift in the movement is now evident not only in the informal statements of the anti-smoking groups, but in the peer-reviewed, published literature. Tobacco control as a religion, rather than as a science-based field of public health practice, is now becoming formally institutionalized."

Can Martin Dockrell sink any further into his own excrement? Never forget that the Department of Health pay this pharma sphincter-licker's wages.

I think it's time to write to the DoH and demand an explanation as to why public money is being wasted on offensive idiots who can't even convince those with whom they share an ethos. To be continued ...