The 'Rigour' Of Simple Simon

If you ask the public what they understand by the title of "academic", they might imagine an austere and profoundly thoughtful sciencey type who will dot every i and cross every t before issuing their opinion.

But tobacco control 'academics' are far from that stereotype. Take Simple Simon Chapman, for example.

Erm Simon, the vape industry doesn't assure us it is "safe", but they do tend to refer to current evidence which suggests e-cigs are safer than smoking, and there has been no credible evidence so far that vaping results in any harm.  "Looks dodgy" really doesn't cut it as rigorous academic opinion from the decrepit Aussie vandal-cum-pub singer, now does it? In fact, it looks more like behaviour people like Chappers used to condemn from the tobacco industry when accusing them of being "Merchants of Doubt". Tweeting that vaping "looks dodgy" and hinting that industry would say that, wouldn't they, is quite obviously designed to create doubt without any evidence to support it.

Hardly the rigorous academic, eh?

As mentioned the other day, he is also a bit woolly and confused when researching where quotes he remembers seeing have been published.

However, his lack of rigour is probably most acute when assessing conflicts of interest. You see, when struggling against the weight of evidence proving his daft assertions wrong he will routinely play the "you're paid" or "conflict of interest" ad hom card which, in my humble opinion, means he immediately loses said debate.

But he's not so concerned about his own conflicts when promoting self-congratulatory, narcissistic books about ... Simon Chapman. In an article in The Conversation last week, Simple Simon basically argued that science wasn't about rigorous objective analysis, oh no, it was about producing headlines.

Except that the piece was clearly promotion for his new book.

It is blatant commercialism, and with no declared conflicts of interest.  Both he and the University of Sydney stand to benefit from this promotion, but this isn't declared. The University of Sydney is both a partner/funder of The Conversation and also publisher of the book by ... Simon Chapman.

So many blurred lines and lack of transparency mean that Chappers, the University and The Conversation are conflicted. Worth remembering next time the crusty clown accuses others of that kind of thing - as he very often does - isn't it? 

The Big Scream

A blinkered vaper-hating tobacco controller, pictured Thursday

"In tobacco control we call these reactions ‘the scream test’ of policy potency. We’re amused when the industry supports anodyne, useless campaigns like these. And we know we’re on the right track when they behave as they did over plain packaging." - Simon Chapman, 2013

Every right-minded person's favourite Grandad has written today about the hilarious reaction by Irish anti-tobacco extremist James Reilly to Thursday's positive Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Report on e-cigs.

Oh no. The RCP could be wrong. We still don't know if vaping could be harmful in 50 years time. And there are a lot of people in America and elsewhere who have raised doubts [no matter how ludicrous].

Responding, the Irish cancer charity said that while it recognised e-cigarettes were safer than tobacco, it could not recommend them for use as a smoking cessation device until further research was carried out.

Minister for Children Dr James Reilly said he was “very concerned” about e-cigarettes.

“We didn’t have sufficient information and I didn’t want the ‘perfect’ to get in the way of the ‘good’ in relation to including that in the legislation,” Dr Reilly said.

“But the evidence is starting to pile up now that this is a serious problem.”

Actually the evidence is now saying it isn't a problem, but never mind.

Oh joy. It seems that Reilly - a doctor himself, apparently - has been stung badly by a report written by the UK's leading representative body for those in his own profession. Instead of admitting that he may be wrong on this subject, he obviously knows better so will ignore it (if he even read it at all) and just scream the same old shit he has done before.

Curious crusty Simon Chapman - who is a sociologist, not a doctor - is of the same mind. After FOIs revealed he had been corruptly attempting to undermine August's PHE report, he now appears to be sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to listen to the RCP's conclusions too.

The link refers to the rapid responses at the BMJ where every absurd butthurt anti-nicotine fruitcake has been lining up to pass their ignorant and often laughable opinions about how the RCP is wrong. From the gynaecologist with a sideline in hypnotherapy who can see his income drying up; through the guy who bizarrely used the recent death of Prince to argue against vaping; to the nutjob whose "laser-like" critique amounted to citing Martin McKee and Simon Crapwell's easily-debunked Lancet article which McKee then lied about in the BMJ.

Then, today, the pièce de résistance. A letter to the editor of The Times which is unintentionally hilarious.

Signed by a diminishing cohort of reality-denying lunatic usual suspects including the aforementioned McKee & Chapman, along with opera-banning liar Mike Daube and German extremist Martina "Mendacious" Pötschke-Langer, the letter is a triumph of deliberately disingenuous brat-like screaming so effortlessly filleted by Clive Bates here, an article which I heartily recommend you read in its entirety.

The worst letter of 2016? It’s definitely an early contender

Three of writers of this letter to The Times (McKee, Chapman and Daube) won my “Worst Letter of 2014” award for a deranged letter they wrote to The Lancet, trying to mock a vaper, Lorien Jollye for having the impertinence to disagree with them based on her actual lived experience (my take on that letter is here - DP). But this is very strong: a real contender for  the 2016 award.

And, of course, no tobacco control industry scream is complete without hysterical comment from Mad Stan the aircraft mechanic, eh?

“These guys, in my view, are going off a cliff,” said Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California who has been outspoken in his criticism of e-cigarettes. “They are taking England into a series of policies that five years from now they all will really regret. They are turning England into this giant experiment on behalf of the tobacco industry.”

Add in random medical morons taking to Twitter and Facebook to exhibit their snobby prejudice and blind ignorance of the huge body of evidence in favour of the benefits of e-cigs, and the dramatic increase of newly chronic asthmatics in comments sections, for whom - shorn by the advent of e-cigs of their recently-endowed permission to sneer at many smokers - apparently now insist that even stepping into a shower could push them into an early death by steam so therefore vaping must be banned despite all evidence to the contrary, and we have one of the world's biggest ever collective screams on our hands.

Who knew that such a benign activity as vaping could flush out so many vile anti-social and intolerant arseholes in one fell swoop, eh? As Simon Chapman has taught us, the scream test has been well and truly failed by these ridiculous flat-earthers so the UK triple-whammy of PHE report, RCP report and NCSCT guidance must surely be on entirely the correct track. Hey, Simple Simon made the rules of this game, who am I to not follow them?

But then, I've always said that e-cigs carried the potential of doing just that. So as well as the first word, I'll leave the last word to Grandad too.

Over the years these lies have become the truth purely by virtue of constant repetition.  How often do we hear of the hundreds of thousands who have "died from second hand smoke" or the thousands of kids who take up smoking because they have seen it in a film?  I am not saying that all anti-smokers know they are lying but those at the top definitely do, unless they are totally deranged. 

Then along comes the e-cigarette. 

They had no answer to this device which threatened not only their livelihood but also the profits of their masters in Big Pharma.  Their only answer was to spin more lies in the hope that the momentum would carry them over the bump.  E-cigarettes are leading kids into smoking real cigarettes.  E-cigarettes are carcinogenic and are more dangerous than real cigarettes.  E-cigarettes reduce smokers' chances of quitting.  E-cigarettes explode without warning.  The list is long and tedious. 

They have been called out on their lies in public.

Maybe now people will see they have been lying through their teeth all along?

Quite. The longer these stubborn, narcissistic and inveterate liars scream, the more the public will hopefully see them as the repellent dishonest moon-howlers they (and their colleagues) have always been.

UPDATE: You'd think this would be a parody tweet, but it really isn't. I think they actually mean it.

The echo chamber seems to be collapsing in on itself in ever-decreasing circles. Long may their absurdity continue.

The BMJ's Integrity Sinks Still Further

I'm beginning to think that the formerly respected BMJ's self-dereliction of their integrity is not just naiveté, but more reminiscent of an organ which is now dancing wholly to the tune of the pharmaceutical industry.

This time last year, they took the decision to refuse any research - however worthy or useful - simply on the basis that it may have received funding by the tobacco industry. It wouldn't matter if it was ground-breaking research revealing the elusive cure for cancer, the BMJ would be stubbornly uninterested.

At the time, many responses - including one from former editor Richard Smith - asked the obvious question as to why pharmaceutical-funded research was not being treated in the same fashion.

I suggest that exactly the same is true of the pharmaceutical industry and that we probably have even more evidence on the misconduct of pharmaceutical companies than of tobacco companies. 

So will the editors stop publishing research funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and if not why not? Knowing the heavy financial dependence of journals on the pharmaceutical industry, I shall be looking for sophistry in the explanations.

After all, one of their darlings - Ben Goldacre - published a tome about "How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients" just a couple of years ago.

Defending the decision, editor in chief Fiona Godlee had this to say.

"[There is a] growing body of evidence that biases and research misconduct are often impossible to detect, and that the source of funding can influence the outcomes of studies in invisible ways."

Indeed it can, as was proven just the other week when a critique of the e-cig summit was published by the BMJ from a "journalist" called Ingrid Torjesen. Entitled "E-cigarette vapour could damage health of non-smokers", it made some bold claims.

Particles in secondhand vapour from e-cigarettes have the potential to damage the health of non-smokers, a study by environmental scientists presented at the e-cigarette summit in London on 13 November has found. 

Researchers presented the first results from chamber experiments that measured the concentration, size, and composition of particles in e-cigarette vapour, and how these parameters changed over time, to determine their potential effects on non-smokers. 

Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health and risk management at the University of Birmingham, and Gordon McFiggans, professor of atmospheric multiphase processes at the University of Manchester, presented the results. 

All well and good ... until the researchers themselves responded by saying that was not what they had said at all!

First, we have made no studies of vapours from e-cigarettes, our study made direct measurements of the particles in the visible "mist" from e-cigarettes with no analysis or quantification of the vapours. 

Second, we made no statement of the effects on health of non-smokers.

Incredibly, Torjesen was undaunted even when told she was wrong by those who presented the evidence that she had incorrectly reported. Instead, she reiterated the accusations and said that she was correct and that they were not.

It was then that another response pointed out that she may have an agenda.

I would like to draw your attention to a matter concerning the counter-response to claims by Professors McFiggans and Harrison that the article, “E-cigarette vapour could damage health of non-smokers,” written by Ingrid Torjesen, in which they assert that the author has seriously misrepresented their research. 

At the end of her counter-response, Ms Torjesen states that she has no competing interests. The fact that Ms Torjesen is the editor of The Advisor magazine which covers smoking cessation and is financed by McNeil Products, makers of Nicorette products, leads me to believe that she should have declared this interest. I feel that this is particularly so because the popularity of e-cigarettes is seriously impacting on the profits of the NRT companies, and her connection to the magazine could lead people to believe that her objectivity might have been somehow compromised. Indeed, in his response to her article, Professor McFiggans states, “However there is evidence that the misrepresentation of our work and misappropriation of evidence is more mischievous than simple misunderstanding.” 

Footnote: The magazine in question claims to be independent. It may well be editorially independent, but it is financed by a company that advertises their products within the magazine and who stand to profit by making the publication available to smoking cessation health workers. Surely where money is involved, it must be impossible to be totally independent - however hard one strives to be so?

Well, fancy that!

Having been busted, Torjesen then belatedly admits her competing interests may be a problem while throwing in the bereavement plea which anti-smokers tend to think should shut down all criticism.

If I have any competing interests in terms of my editorial direction, they are that I am a supporter of all forms of smoking cessation because of the damage smoking does to smokers, their families and other subjected to it through passive routes. I have also been an advocate of banning smoking in all forms since I was a child, being the child of two parents who were addicted to the habit and died prematurely of smoking-related disease.

Hmm. Bereavement coupled with the lure of payment from pharmaceutical interests - I would suggest - could meet Fiona Godlee's definition of "influence" in "invisible ways" quite comprehensively, doncha think?

Yet the BMJ published her article without any scrutiny of the person who was making such transparently outrageous claims.

All this follows on swiftly after the BMJ were slapped down by the EU for publishing execrable nonsense from Jonathan Gornall, and just last week published a load of deliberately misleading cockwaffle about e-cigs in an opinion piece so devoid of fact that it would have failed GCSE level.

So, to recap, the BMJ - which profits from, and prints articles sponsored by, Big Pharma - is quite happy to publish utter garbage from someone else who is dependent on pharmaceutical industry cash.

But it's only tobacco industry research which might be biased? Good grief.

Martin McKee Just Doesn't Get This Liberty Thing

The redhead has posted a fine filleting of Martin "bubblemug" McKee's most recent extremist cockwaffle in the BMJ, I can heartily recommend that you go read it.

However, I think it's useful to add that he also seems to have learning difficulties when it comes to  the concept of freedom of speech on Twitter.

For those who advocate for healthy public policies, social media are both a blessing and a curse. They offer a means of communicating instantly to large audiences. Yet they also offer the opportunity for those seeking to undermine public health to undermine you.

Yes, this is the very essence of freedom of speech Martin. You and your pals have the freedom to pump out your nonsensical garbage and promote it on social media, and those who disagree have the same freedom to object to it via the same medium. It's how freedom of speech works, it's a two way mechanism, d'you see?

If you don't understand that basic tenet of freely accessible social media, perhaps you shouldn't be on there.

Your words are taken out of context and twisted. You are insulted and abused on Twitter.

Completely different to McKee's approach, of course. He'd prefer to twist, insult and abuse in the integrity-free, paywalled, lefty tabloid BMJ.

Some seem to be deeply troubled individuals, who in the past might have spent their days on a soap box in the marketplace, holding forth to anyone who was prepared to listen to them.

Yes, and very useful those individuals in the past were too, I'm surprised committed socialist McKee is so dismissive.

The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for workers' protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men. 

Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers' Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. Its existence is frequently upheld as a demonstration of free speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars. Lord Justice Sedley, in his decision regarding Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999), described Speakers' Corner as demonstrating "the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear." The ruling famously established in English case law that freedom of speech could not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to "the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence", and that the right to free speech accorded by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights also accorded the right to be offensive. Prior to the ruling, prohibited speech at Speakers' Corner included obscenity, blasphemy, insulting the queen, or inciting a breach of the peace.

In the late 19th century, for instance, a combination of park by-laws, use of the Highways Acts and use of venue licensing powers of the London County Council made it one of the few places where socialist speakers could meet and debate.

Once again, we "deeply troubled individuals" find ourselves firmly on the side of the angels - with history in our corner too - while McKee prefers to ally himself (accurately, as it goes) with those in the past who would bully, censor, disenfranchise, abuse human rights and deny political debate.

You can read the rest of his incoherent explanation of how - because a book was published in New Zealand - everyone who disagrees with him in the UK is paid by the tobacco industry here.

Real Science Is Unwelcome

Now you're finally finished playing in the sunshine, I can heartily recommend a rather fine piece at TVFC comparing Victorian Puritans with the modern day religion of 'public health' which you can read here.

One particular observation is very well drawn.

Since our health is placed on the highest pinnacle in this new religion, those charged with care for that health are not to be challenged even when they step beyond their knowledge. Thus, a doctor's opinion on the packaging of cigarettes is granted more value - because he is a 'priest' - than the opinion of those who understand the role of packaging or have studied its actual effect. 

Those who contest these ideas, who challenge the New Puritians are condemned as the followers of Satan - in thrall to Big Tobacco, The Drinks Industry or Big Sugar.

Indeed they are, as has been illustrated in another article I read this week.

You see, back in August 2012, a real scientist - as opposed to the tobacco control pretend ones - wrote about a study he had conducted into how people view health messages on various tobacco packets. As Snowdon reported at the time, his conclusions were somewhat different to those of faux expert Linda Bauld.

For the record, Dr Tim Holmes, of Royal Holloway (University of London) happens to be an expert in eye-tracking experiments and has no ties to either the tobacco industry or the anti-tobacco industry. When he conducted a similar experiment, his research found...

...the non-smokers looked at the warning messages much less than the other participants, and there was no difference between plain and branded package designs in the amount of time spent looking at the warning message. 

Now, it’s great that the right people are looking more at the warning message, but if this doesn’t result in an increased risk perception then surely the messages aren’t doing their job! Moreover, if removing the brand identity doesn’t change the way people look at the packets then maybe plain packaging, which will be costly to implement, isn’t the best of ideas.

As far as I know, Dr Holmes has yet to publish his research and one can hardly blame him from wanting to avoid the smears and slurs that will inevitably come his way if he does.

Snowdon's suspicions were proven correct, as Dr Holmes has written again about that experiment, along with his future research plans in this area.

When I posted that first blog piece about the student project I’d supervised, I was immediately contacted, and even harassed, for being a scientist and daring to question the efficacy of plain packaging in the war on cigarette consumption.

Sigh, it's so predictable, isn't it?

Anyone who cared to read the blog with an open mind would have seen that my stance was that of a vision scientist who can see that simply removing the branding from a tobacco package will not automatically result in increased attention to the health warnings

Quite. But the tobacco control industry never reads anything with an open mind because if they did they'd have to accept evidence which disagrees with their policy-based orthodoxy, and that just won't do. Hence why they usually get their own non-experts to do the research lest a real scientist comes up with something which might be off-message.

Dr Holmes goes on to explain that he is looking deeper into the subject and has - shock, horror! - accepted funding from Philip Morris to do so.

Now, if you’re a proponent of plain packaging, you have probably already decided what the outcome of that study was, and you have probably dismissed my scientific credibility for even talking to Big Tobacco. If so, Big Tobacco was right, because they warned me that would happen if I decided to accept their offer.  But I wanted to understand the genuine effects of plain packaging on visual attention and as a scientist I do not believe that there has to be a necessary correlation between funding source and research outcome.

Well, there shouldn't be, no. But, of course, when even the BMJ has abandoned its integrity in favour of anti-scientific censorship and an admittance that the peer review process is broken, it's a depressingly common method of avoiding debate.

Dr Holmes finishes with a statement which shouldn't need to be made.

I am not a policy maker, I am a scientist!

Sadly, this is why he will be demonised, smeared and ignored if his research comes up with the 'wrong' results. Real science is unwelcome in the message-correct echo chamber of tobacco control and must be avoided at all costs, it's just too uncontrollable and inconvenient.

You can read Dr Holmes' article in full here.

Sauce For The Gander

In support of plain packaging, the tobacco control cartel submitted a systematic review of their 'evidence' to government back in May 2012. This is the basis of every claim by supportive MPs that there is overwhelming 'proof' in favour of banning colours on packs of fags.

However, as I said at the time ...

The review states that they filtered the studies from a starting list of 4,518 citations. How bad the others must have been to leave just 37 which were predominantly authored by the same people conducting the review can only be guessed at. Scribblings on the back of a fag packet, presumably. Is tobacco control really that bad, or are these people just advancing their one-sided agenda under a cloak of impartiality?

Well, scroll on to the present day and a new systematic review of evidence relating to e-cigs has been produced by Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos of the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens-Greece. It is fully described at this site (recommended read), and finds there is nothing to worry about when it comes to vaping.

I contacted Dr F with a pertinent question about his evidence base. Namely:

The 97 studies I read as being covered by your review, are they EVERY study done on e-cigs or have you excluded any as being unreliable/irrelevant/unhelpful etc?

And his reply?

The 97 studies additionally include studies not specifically performed on e-cigarettes but evaluating e-cigarettes components such as PG, VG and nicotine toxicity.  Concerning e-cigarette studies, NO, we did not exclude anything.

Now, if we are supposed to believe that a selective systematic review of plain packaging citations is the gold standard and should be accepted as fact, which tobacco controllers insist. Then, by the same token, the non-selective systematic review of every piece of e-cig evidence ever produced - plus a few extras for the lolz - should be treated in the same manner. Yes?

It's a simple enough concept, and one of the core principles employed by Wikipedia to ensure consistency.

So, if tobacco control continues to insist on maintaining that their cockeyed systematic review is proof positive of the benefit of plain packaging, they can never again claim that "we don't know anything about e-cigs". Now can they?

QED.

But then, there is nothing consistent, fair, or principled about tobacco control, so I expect they'll just carry on spouting their garbage regardless.

Why E-Cigs Are Included In The 'Tobacco Products' Directive?

You may have seen this advert for Niquitin Oral Strips on the box recently.

From the blurb in voce macho:

"New Niquitin Oral Strips are the first and only stop smoking aid in a strip. They dissolve fast, release nicotine fast, they start to relieve your urge to smoke. Fast."

It's true that they are the first type of product in this country, but not the first worldwide. You see, dissolvable tobacco strips do exactly the same thing and are available in the the USA.

Up there, second right

So, vapers, a pop quiz. Where have you heard these arguments before?

A Food and Drug Administration scientific advisory panel says dissolvable tobacco products could reduce health risks compared with smoking cigarettes. But the agency also warned the products have the potential to increase the overall number of tobacco users. 

According to the report, exclusive use of dissolvable tobacco products by an individual would "greatly reduce risk" compared with regular use of cigarettes. It also could reduce population-level disease burden caused by tobacco use if the products decrease the number of people who smoke or don't start smoking. 

"Based on understanding of the delivery of toxins to cigarette smokers, exclusive use of (dissolvable tobacco products) should be less hazardous than regular smoking of cigarettes now marketed in the United States," the report said. 

The committee, however, concluded that the availability of dissolvable tobacco products might make people think tobacco in general is safer. Beyond anecdotal evidence, the committee said it found no information on whether dissolvable tobacco products would make cigarette smokers more likely to quit. 

Most public health experts say there is no safe way to use tobacco and push for people to quit above all else. Others embrace the idea that lower-risk alternatives can improve public health, if they mean fewer people smoke.

There is, of course, no evidence that they are remotely dangerous but they are required to carry the same warnings as chewing tobacco across the Atlantic.

It's still better than the situation in the UK, where they fall within the scope of the EU wide ban on oral tobacco - the same one banning snus anywhere except Sweden - which conveniently leaves the market wide open for Niquitin's medical version of the same nicotine delivery device.

Convenient, huh?

Now, just imagine for a second that there are nasty bastards within the EU who are so anti-tobacco that they believe - or have been lobbied to believe - anything nicotine-related should only be sold by Big Pharma. How do you think they would go about such a task?

Perhaps by classifying a clear and present danger to pharmaceutical profits (e-cigs) as a tobacco product - even though it clearly contains no tobacco - and therefore including it in the TPD and bringing down the mighty Goliath of the tax-funded tobacco control industry on it's ass?

Just saying.

UPDATE: Looks like my presumptions were pretty accurate:

Leak: global death cult @WHO plans to class #ecigs as tobacco, exclude industry, treat vapour as smoke, ban ads #FCTC pic.twitter.com/tyNFLWylYg

— Clive Bates (@Clive_Bates) February 4, 2014

Worms Run Amok At The BMJ

As noted here in the autumn, the BMJ has decided to ban publication of "any study that is partly or wholly funded by the tobacco industry", a move described by BAT's Chief Scientific Officer as "anti-science".

No matter their motives, this justifiably led to many responses under the original announcement logically calling for the same treatment - in the name of consistency - to be meted out to pharma-funded research as well.

It seems that - in their myopic zeal to appease the tobacco control industry - the BMJ has popped open a can of particularly damaging worms which are currently wriggling all over the journal's credibility. As Former BMJ Editor Richard Smith illustrated on Friday in a piece entitled "Should journals stop publishing research funded by the drug industry?" (emphases mine).

The BMJ and its sibling journals have stopped publishing research funded by the tobacco industry for two main reasons: the research is corrupted and the companies publish their research to advance their commercial aims, oblivious of the harm they do. But these arguments apply even more strongly to research funded by the drug industry, and we suggest there is a better way to communicate the results of trials that would be safer for patients. 

Prescribed drugs are the third leading cause of death, partly because of flaws in the evidence published in journals. 

[...] 

In contrast to tobacco funded research, which is comparatively rare, two thirds of the clinical trials published in major journals such as the Lancet or New England Journal of Medicine are funded by the drug industry. In addition, companies use ghost writers to promote misleading trials in scores of secondary publications and reviews in major journals. These, just like the original research, often carry the names of opinion leaders, which seems to give the articles credibility. This common practice is scientific fraud.

Smith, and co-petitioner Peter C Gøtzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, highlight many egregious abuses by pharmaceutical companies, including these.

Merck scientists knew already in 1996 that rofecoxib (Vioxx) might cause thrombosis, but the company published numerous misleading studies in prominent journals to promote its licensed use and other uses, sometimes omitting cases of myocardial infarction in patients taking the drug. More generally, the dishonesty in the research literature on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is legion and has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of patients, many of whom didn’t even need the drug. 

Another dire example is antipsychotics. Many recent drug industry crimes are related to off-label promotion of antipsychotics, and in the United States they were the most sold drugs in 2009. However, they are so dangerous that just one of them, olanzapine (Zyprexa), has probably caused 200 000 deaths.

By way of rebuttal, current BMJ Head of Research Trish Groves doesn't make much of an attempt at defending pharma-funded studies, in fact she agrees they are often deeply flawed. Instead, her argument appears to boil down to - in short - their liking pharma companies a bit more than tobacco ones.

And, of course, that the BMJ's reluctance to be even-handed is certainly not "because our journals receive advertising, reprint, and some sponsorship income from the drug industry". Oh no, absolutely not. Couldn't be further from the truth.

Understandably, Trish takes a bit of a kicking in the rapid responses section (comments, to you and me), and a poll running on their home page currently shows a majority of around 55% in favour of a ban on pharma research too.

It's tobacco control in a nutshell, isn't it? Full of pointless ideas, and with no foresight as to the unintended consequences.

You gotta laugh.

The Political Enemy

Via an excellent rant at Longrider's place (do go read), this is hardly surprising, is it?

Nearly half of Britons say they are angry with politics and politicians, according to a Guardian/ICM poll analysing the disconnect between British people and their democracy. 

The research, which explores the reasons behind the precipitous drop in voter turnout – particularly among under-30s – finds that it is anger with the political class and broken promises made by high-profile figures that most rile voters, rather than boredom with Westminster. 

Asked for the single word best describing "how or what you instinctively feel" about politics and politicians in general, 47% of respondents answered "angry", against 25% who said they were chiefly "bored". 

Rage is the dominant sentiment across just about every sub-stratum of the electorate

And, do you know what? I don't think it will change any time soon while politicians are still engaged in a war on their employers (you know, us poor saps, the public) as highlighted by the IEA's Mark Littlewood back in September.

In order to give you a sense of the tide of possible regulation we face – not just from Brussels but homegrown –  let me just give you a heavily abridged list of policies that are currently on the agenda of the public health lobby. 

A minimum pricing for alcohol, plain packaging for tobacco, a twenty per cent tax on fizzy drinks, a fax tax, a sugar tax, a fine for not being a member of a gym, graphic warnings on bottles of alcohol, banning parents from taking their kids to school by car, a ban on gambling machines in betting shops, a ban on smoking in cars, a ban on anyone born after the year 2000 ever buying tobacco, a ban on the sale of hot food to children before 5pm, a ban on multi-bag packs of crisps, a complete ban on alcohol advertising, a ban on electronic cigarettes, a ban on menthol cigarettes, a ban on large servings of fizzy drinks and a complete ban on advertising any product at all to children. 

And these are just the policies proposed in the last few months.

All this on top of (also abridged) a ban on what publicans can allow on their property despite a government promise to the contrary; an internet filter because they personally don't like what you view online; arrests for joking on Twitter; banning supermarkets from placing sweets near a cashier; a refusal to allow a referendum on the EU - again, despite numerous promises; and even the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition competing to be the most eager to stop you eating a chocolate fucking orange.

If I knocked on my neighbours' doors on a daily basis telling them all that I demand them not to do, while simultaneously hacking their bank accounts and stealing their cash to pay for the time I spent doing so, I don't think I'd be very popular along the street, either.

So, finally, the public seem to be waking up and realising that these people are not there to serve our interests anymore; that it really is a war between MPs and everyday people; and that politicians are an enemy. A political enemy with its campaign HQs in Westminster and Brussels, working long and hard to shaft each and every one of us on a daily basis. About time, too.

Perhaps - and this might come as a massive surprise to most elected politicians who don't seem to realise that freedom is popular - a good way of reversing public opinion which places MPs alongside burglars, granny-muggers and vandals in popularity, would be for them to sit on their hands for a bit and stop passing law after ridiculous law specifically designed to ruin the way we freely choose to live our own lives.

If only they could then imagine committing to a New Year resolution to not be such utter bastards, eh? What a marvellous 2014 we could be in for then. I won't hold my breath though.

The BMJ Is "Anti-Science"

In October I reported on how the BMJ had discarded its integrity by refusing studies funded by the tobacco industry. I made a couple of observations.

[...] we've always been told how brilliant this peer review thing is, haven't we? Now, though, it is apparently shite - glad you cleared that up for us, BMJ. 

But their assertion that "the source of funding can influence the outcomes of studies in invisible ways" is funnier than any comic could ever be seeing as they thought it perfectly acceptable to publish, in July, a study celebrating the astounding success of pharmaceutical products ... written by a panel with pharmaceutical funding interests as long as Peter Crouch's arms.

Interesting, then. that BAT's Chief Scientific Officer has seen fit to comment.

The BMJ’s new policy of banning consideration of scientific studies based on their source of funding is particularly disappointing in the light of the BMJ’s historical policy of encouraging robust scientific discourse independent of ideology. Ten years ago the BMJ was “passionately anti-tobacco” but also “passionately pro-debate and pro-science” and further commented that the type of ban recently instituted “would be anti-science”. Allegations of misconduct by the tobacco industry were cited at that time in support of a proposed ban that the BMJ rightly rejected. 

It is ironic that the BMJ has now revised its prior view.

Isn't it just?

It has been argued that tobacco harm reduction is potentially the world’s greatest public health opportunity today. To have this kind of impact, those with an interest must find pragmatic ways to work together to find solutions based on sound science. For this research to be disseminated widely, it will be important for the science publishing industry to retain an independent, critical, yet open approach.

Harm reduction, of course, includes e-cigs. One of the chief detractors of e-cigs is Mad Stanton Glantz, who was referenced in the BMJ's original statement of their intention to ignore everyone who offers an opinion differing with that of the public health Mafia.

How convenient, then, that this ban should take effect at a time when a global debate is raging about - you guessed it - harm reduction and, in particular, e-cigs. There has never been a time when it is more important to listen to all sides ... unless you're a publication wholly owned by the e-cig hating BMA, of course.

We have also noted statements you have made in relation to the peer-review process currently followed at the BMJ. It appears that the BMJ Editors are concerned with the effectiveness of their peer-review system. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Studies approved through peer review have long been the currency of scientific credibility. The reputation of the BMJ is clearly dependent on this capability functioning properly. Applying selective censorship does not aid in addressing fundamental problem, and separates the BMJ from journals of unassailable scientific integrity and relegates it to the class of journals that politicise science. 

We respectfully invite you to revisit your decision not to consider for publication any scientific studies funded by the tobacco industry on the basis that such a policy is, in the BMJ’s own words, “anti-science”. 

In other words, as I suggested, the BMJ has discarded its integrity and is nothing more now than a partial, rickety rag hopelessly compromised by its acceptance of pharma funded studies without question - while blackballing those funded by others - yet attempting to pretend it still possesses some semblance of calm, unbiased authority.

Such a shame.

You can read the response in full here.

An Object Lesson In The Art Of Ignoring The Public

The New York Times has provided us with an object lesson in how the tobacco control industry - and, by extension, the entire public health nanny state who hang on their coat-tails - contrives to ignore you.

Again, it is those mischievous e-cigs doing the exposing.

BRUSSELS — Facing a decision on whether to impose tight restrictions on a booming market for electronic cigarettes, members of the European Parliament received a pleading letter in September that was signed by thousands of former smokers worried that “the positive story of e-cigarettes may be about to come to an abrupt halt.” 

The signatures had been collected via a website, saveecigs.com, which proclaimed itself the voice of the “forgotten millions in this debate” — people who had taken up e-cigarettes to stop smoking, and their grateful families. 

The website, however, was not quite the grass-roots effort it claimed to be. The text of the letter it asked people to sign was drafted by a London lobbyist hired by Totally Wicked, an e-cigarette company. The website had been set up by a British woman living in Iceland who had previously worked for the owners of Totally Wicked.

That is enough. It's all that is needed to jerk the knee of glorious democratic thinkers of our age such as Martin McKee.

So the "army of vapers" not #astroturf then? NY Times looks under the turf #ecigs http://t.co/PGrLHMQvP8
— Martin McKee (@martinmckee) November 10, 2013

You see, a grass roots effort involving millions of consumers is only worth listening to if it is organised by ordinary Joes and Janes themselves.

They are supposed to come together organically; find huge funds to set up web sites and petitions; after - of course - keeping their eyes continually on the impenetrable machinations of EU regulatory bodies buried amongst thousands of EU web pages; and all without any company pointing potentially troublesome proposed legislation out to them.

No enjoying a life for you plebs, oh no. You must be as dedicated to trawling through acres of regulations on every subject you remotely care about as Martin McKee and the public health community - who are paid a hefty salary to do precisely that all day - or you are to be considered an industry stooge, just like half a million public consultation responses on plain packaging can be air-brushed out of political discourse as if they didn't happen..

But, unlike you, the other side are exempt from accusations of astroturfing. Despite, err ...

Among the companies arrayed against the e-cigarette industry were GlaxoSmithKline, the London-based pharmaceutical company, which sells Nicorette nicotine chewing gum in the United States, and Johnson & Johnson, the American consumer products company, which owns the manufacturer of Nicorette gum, patches and inhalers.

Now is not the time to draw attention to the billions in fines pharma companies have been served with for fraud and malfeasance, it's irrelevant because they have never lobbied McKee or anyone else in the tobacco control industry. Not. Ever.

Sponsored, yes, but that's OK, because professional tax-sponger McKee and his ilk quite like them, they fit their anti-vape and smoke agenda perfectly.

“Are these people all in the pay of e-cig companies?” said Linda McAvan, an influential member of Parliament’s environment and public health committee. “No. But they have been told by these companies that Brussels wants to take away their product. They are genuinely angry. But their anger has been fed.”

What? Consumers are angry about something they were told would prevent them from consuming a product they enjoy? How fucking outrageous! But it's OK, they've been alerted by an e-cig company, so we can just ignore them as astroturf groups.

Their complaints should dribble in weakly, haphazardly, and ignorantly so highly-paid McAvan and her chums can continue making hay with their personal preferences while the spotlight is anywhere but on their dubious and borderline criminal cockroachery. The public actually knowing what is going on is so very inconvenient, isn't it?

This is cognitive dissonance at its most stark. Thousands of vapers have engaged in the democratic process by writing to MPs and MEPs, while state-funded, pharma-sponsored public health pros desperately invent ways to ignore anything someone outside of their influence says.

And they call others sock puppets? Go figure.

Savage Public Sector Cuts Spotted In The South West

Those cuts to public services must be having a massive debilitating effect! This was spotted by an observant fellow jewel robber at the Avon Gorge Hotel on Tuesday.

So strapped for cash are NHS South West that they are relegated to having to suffer midweek dinners in the squalid surroundings of a £120 a night hotel; forced to eat such horrific dishes as 'pan-fried sea bream'; with only a slim chance of escape.

For those that want a little more space, The Clifton Room can open out onto the private terrace area of the hotel.

Just imagine 50 of the poor sods crammed into that hellish outdoor area in this bright summer sunshine, eh? No free Prosecco Drinks Reception (when you book in July or August) can possibly compensate for that!

See, this is what happens when public employees are restricted to a Tuesday dinner budget of around £1,250 plus sumptuous drinks. That there austerity is brutal, isn't it?

(Almost as inhumane, in fact, as the alcohol-hating BMA being strong-armed into week-long whisky tasting tours.)

Ignore The Public, Listen To MacAvan And Her Pharma Friends

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) - a group in Brussels opposed to corporate lobbying - today published a mess of a report on the Tobacco Products Directive.

The United Nation's World Health Organisation (WHO)'s 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is premised on the basic fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between the interests of the tobacco industry (producing and selling as much of a substance as possible, in order to maximise profit) and that of public health regulators (reducing the consumption of that same substance as much as possible, in order to minimise cancers and other negative health impacts). This piece of international law (to which the EU, and all member states, is a signatory) not only requires transparency around all contacts between public health policy-makers and the tobacco industry but requires that they are avoided and limited only to contacts that are strictly necessary to regulate the industry.  

This report documents the experiences of some MEPs, their assistants, and political advisers, who have testified that the tobacco and electronic cigarette lobby are becoming more aggressive as the voting approaches.

Erm, electronic cigarettes are not included in the FCTC for two rather obvious reasons. One, they are not tobacco products because they don't contain tobacco and, two, I'd be surprised if the WHO had even heard of e-cigs in 2005 as they were only invented in China a few months before.

The authors of the report are more than happy to conflate apples and oranges though, with the help of Irish Socialist MEP Paul Murphy.

Paul Murphy MEP explained that in the Parliament, MEPs “are subjected to a lot of astroturf campaigning in the sense that it is manufactured. We get emails from so-called ordinary constituents about electronic cigarettes. But they are really detailed about the Directive.”

That's right, you don't actually exist.

If a constituent engages in democracy and has read up on the subject they are writing to an MEP about, they must surely be in the pay of some evil corporate body and will therefore be ignored.

‘Astroturf’ is the name given to seemingly grass roots campaigns, that have actually been established, encouraged and sometimes funded by companies and corporate lobby groups interested in their success. One MEP assistant told CEO: “They have organised online, created electronic cigarette forums. They’re quite an aggressive lobby”. 

They have 'organised' have they? Created their own forums and shared information? How very inconvenient for MEPs who just want to make up regulations without a clue as to how crashingly stupid they are, eh?

Best just dismiss all constituents who write in as corporate shills and carry on with the stupidity regardless.

Another said: “We get a lot of abuse on Twitter about calling for more legislation on electronic cigarettes.”

The abuse is fully deserved if MEPs - such as Murphy and, presumably, the other lefty MEPs contacted for this report - are copping a deaf 'un to the views of ordinary people they were elected to listen to.

Totally Wicked, another UK electronic cigarette firm, sent every MEP an e-cigarette. One MEP commented incredulously that “They are sending addictive drugs to MEPs. It is quite incredible”. Jutta Haug MEP from the S&D said she had been “strongly lobbied by electronic cigarette users”. The rapporteur on the Tobacco Products Directive, Linda McAvan MEP, has also said that “There is a very aggressive attitude.”

They have been strongly lobbied by users because when the TPD was first proposed, it illustrated how breathtakingly clueless MEPs were about e-cigs. That's the whole point of interaction between ivory tower politicians and the people they serve ... as a check on incredibly daft legislation being passed for the eventual benefit of no-one.

And to express faux outrage at e-cigs being sent to MEPs is laughable. It's a valid method of education considering only a tiny minority of MEPs had any idea they even existed until the letters began to flood in, so why not show them what they are and what they do?

The authors of this silly statist report declare on their website that they:

[Work] in close alliance with public interest groups and social movements in and outside Europe to develop alternatives to the dominance of corporate power.

Which is very odd, because they don't seem remotely interested in other lobbying or 'corporate power', as discovered by Lithuanian journal Respublika and - surprise, surprise - involving rapporteur for the TPD (and most dangerous European alive today), the aforementioned Linda MacAvan MEP (Google translate tidied up).

Seeking for the adoption of necessary legal acts as soon as possible, pharmacists found influential politician in Europe and socialist David Harley who worked in the institutions of the European Parliament for more than 30 years and therefore is able to talk to and to discuss with almost all politicians of Brussels and high rank officers. 

Harley became a public relations specialist after finishing his career as a eurobureaucrat and started working in the public relations agency “Burson-Marsteller”, Brussels branch, as a senior assistant. 

In 2011, “Burson-Marsteller” declared that it received 8,755,000 Euros (30.2 billion Litas) from its clients for lobbying in Brussels. Some of the largest worldwide pharmacy companies, such as “Johnson&Johnson”, “Pfizer”, etc., supplying nicotine replacement products to the market, were among the most generous clients which allocated their funds to lobbying. In 2011, when discussions on the Tobacco Products Directive just started these two companies spent almost 2 million Euros (7 million Litas) for the lobbying in Brussels. 

Not so long ago, Linda McAvan and Harley were two of the main political figures in the group of socialists of the European Parliament: one served as a vice-president and the other served as a secretary-general. They spent long hours together in meetings, discussions and travels for 12 years since 1998 after McAvan was elected to the European Parliament and to 2010 when D. Harley left politics and started working as a lobbyist. 

Is it just a coincidence that today McAvan is active advocate of the interests of the main former colleague’s clients? She not only speaks against tobacco industry but also signed a letter hustling the European Commission to start activities beneficial for pharmacy companies and her signature can be found near the signatures of “Johnson&Johnson”, “Pfizer” and other large manufacturers of nicotine replacement products such as “GlaxoSmithKline”.

Oh really?

Now, which lobbyists do you reckon would have more influence over the TPD? A few e-cig users writing to MEPs who are being routinely ignored by socialists? Or vast pharma companies paying a former socialist bureaucrat who is great friends with Linda MacAvan, the MEP charged with ushering the TPD through the EU ... complete with its restrictions on competitors to pharmaceutical harm reduction/cessation products? 

Yet those right-on progressives at CEO, who are earnestly opposed to "corporate power", don't seem to be bothered about pharma lobbying at all. 

Doesn't it explain a lot, though? The ridiculous continuation of the ban on wildly successful snus; the ignoring of responses to the public consultation; the desperate measures designed to destroy e-cigs; MacAvan's careful selection of evidence gatherer; and the appalling junk science presented to the ENVI committee kangaroo court.

I'd say there are many questions of MacAvan which require answering. Wouldn't you? 

H/T Gawain