Thursday 6 February 2014

Audit Trail Of A Public Health Lie

From imagination to finished article, here is a perfect example of a tobacco control industry lie.

Back in 2010, California's Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) - an organisation which despises tobacco, as the name suggests - decided that a new lie was required, so dangled 3.75 million carrots in front of junk scientists everywhere.
TRDRP Call for Applications
Request for Proposals for TRDRP Initiative on Thirdhand Smoke and Cigarette Butts 
The Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) announces a Request for Proposals (RFP) to undertake studies on Thirdhand Smoke and Cigarette Butt Waste, under a new initiative. 
Approximately $3.75 million is expected to be available for this RFP.
Of course, junk scientists will say anything you like for $3.75 million (eh, Anna?), and it was clear what results the TRDRP were looking for, so prospective grantees had to be equally clear about what the TRDRP would get for its money.

One such lucky winner - as I reported at the time - was University of California Riverside.
[Manuela] Martins-Green will study the effects of this kind of smoke exposure on skin biology and wound healing. The two-year $250,000 grant will support one graduate student and one postdoctoral scholar. “I am expecting to find that prolonged exposure to third-hand smoke will affect the ability of the skin to protect us from environmental exposures,” she said. “I also expect that, when injured, the skin will not heal normally and could even result in wounds that become chronic.”
So, Manuela already knew what her report was going to say before she embarked upon it. It's kind of a prerequisite in tobacco control; if your study is impartial it might come up with the wrong results, you see, and would have to be buried. And what a waste of TRDRP's money that would be!

What's more, the TRDRP grant application page shows that Manuela didn't only pre-commit to a result, she also knew exactly what her post-'research' conclusions would be.
These studies will lend themselves to preparation of educational materials that can be provided to adults who smoke to raise their awareness of the impact that their smoking can have on their children and elderly parents. Furthermore, these studies will also help adult smokers understand that their family members are severely affected if they undergo surgery and return to a THS-polluted environment because their healing process will be not only be altered but will also be significantly delayed. Finally, the proposed work will benefit the public by providing a better understanding of the cause of impaired healing among individuals who are constantly exposed to Third Hand Smoke, i.e. smokers themselves, children and elderly parents in households of smokers, waiters and waitresses in bars and housekeepers in hotels or houses of smokers.
Scroll on to the present day and whaddya know!
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, found that thirdhand smoke leads to damage to organs in mice, as well as increased wound healing time.
So there you have it, bought and paid for bullshit. From drawing board to mass reproduction by lazy journalists worldwide, how a tobacco control lie is born and travels the globe before the truth can get its Doc Martens on.

The exact same process has been employed in the past to conjure up the passive smoking myth, and is currently being used to create lies about obesity, alcohol, salt, sugar, e-cigs and any other public health hobby horse. Mostly using your taxes to do so.

Yet it is only tobacco-funded research which is too corrupt to be published? You've got to be kidding!

If this is the trustworthiness of 'peer-reviewed science', I suggest that anything published by academic journals should be treated as if you'd just read it in the Beano.


33 comments:

Jake6731 said...

But what really stinks is when trash science like this results in headlines like "Third-Hand Smoke Exposure As Deadly As Smoking"

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Quite. I sometimes imagine anti-smokers quaffing Hennessy XO and belly-laughing at how incredibly gullible the public are for believing their garbage. It's almost too easy for them.

Hear all,see all. said...

Mention "funded research" involving "experts" my mind is drawn to a picture
of a large freshly dropped turd,still steaming and surrounded by a swarm of
scented bluebottles (big flies).
No use waiting for investigation from Washington or London or Brussels
they have allready got their beaks in the turd before the bugs.
The All Seeing Eye

Michael J. McFadden said...

Yepper! Heehee... It was funny when you reported on it, because at the same time you were writing your blog I was writing the preliminary stuff for this part of TobakkoNacht (p. 250):


===


In this case, in the press release announcing the grants, the professor stated that in cases of regular exposure, she expected to find that “when injured, the skin will not heal normally and could even result in wounds that become chronic.”[i]


Wounds that become chronic? From merely being touched by a smoker or
their clothing? So, not only is the concern focused on simple brain fever or the mere disintegration of the skin of the tender infant in Granddad or Grandmom’s arms, but now also on the threat that if the child has any sort of wound or abrasion on its body, that it might never heal after even a brief, but lethal, embrace! In a very real sense, “The Touch of a Smoker” has now been proposed to rival in the public mind “The Touch of a Leper.”

[i] University of California. “University of California, Riverside Receives Six Grants for
Tobacco-related Research,” Press Release, August 4, 2010.
http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.html?action=page&id=2403



===


It's always kinda spooky when we channel each other!


:>
MJM

trashbunny said...

Actually I think you are doing the Beano a disservice but no matter. I guess the logical extension of this is that having had your car fail the MOT because of finding tobacco smoke residues (see my response to your post on banning smoking in cars) is that: a) you are fined big-time because you didn't display Biohazard (or maybe 'third hand smoke on board' ) stickers in your car and b) because you didn't empty the ashtray (big mistake!), your car is then declared to be a toxic waste dump, ticketed as such, and then towed away to be crushed and then deposited somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Oh and by the way, the garage operative who tested your car is suing you on the grounds that you knowingly exposed him/her to an occupational health hazard. Am waiting now for the first study on 4th hand smoke, which will of course find that even thinking about smoking is a serious hazard to bystanders. I wish I was joking, but I'm not.

DaveAtherton20 said...

Even Simon Chapman cautioned against going overboard on 3rd hand smoke.


"It is important that research documents residuals from tobacco smoke. But it is equally important that consumers and policy makers are not led to believe that the chemical compounds thus located are somehow unique to tobacco smoke. Unless in the extremely unlikely event that residents burn copious quantities of solanaceous vegetables (aubergine, tomato) which contain small amounts of nicotine, tobacco is going to be the only source of nicotine in homes. But it will not by any means be the only source of many of the ingredients of "third hand smoke" that the unwitting or the fumophobic may believe are attributable only to smoking. The omission of this information in such reports risks harming the credibility of tobacco control."

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/1/e1/reply110960

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I think your scenario just made any watching tobacco controllers cum. ;)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

If even Chapman recognises that, how insane does it make the likes of Martins-Green? {Mind boggles}

trashbunny said...

Well hopefully not all at once, certain parts of the UK are evidently having enough trouble with floods as it is!

Bucko TheMoose said...

I was thinking of having a go at securing one of these research grants because I used to think I could bullshit with the best of them.

Until just now.

Tony said...

It reminds me of this shit.

Rursus said...

Chapmans reply (the link) is gone "with the wind" ;)

What the.... said...

Good job, DP. Siegel also devoted a few threads to this matter:
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/california-state-funded-grant-on.html
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/anti-smoking-researchers-claim-that.html

While we’re ridiculing these buffoons – and reasonably so, and while Siegel and Chapman bemoan the conduct as just undermining their
beloved Tobacco Control, it must be noted that they are engaged in deception for gain (e.g., direct payments, research funding, career advancement) masqueraded as “science”. In any other endeavor, people so behaving would find themselves before a court of law for fraud. But not so Public Health which has normalized what is actually criminal activity, and in an organized manner, i.e., running a racket. These people are criminals and their agenda-driven trash over the last few decades has had destructive consequences, psychologically, socially, morally, economically, physically, ideo-politically in many nations. Only more absurd is that these criminals keep posing as “moral superiors”.

dodderer1 said...

It should be independent and unbiased like this

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/science/funding/find-grant/all-funding-schemes/tobacco-advisory-group-project-grants/

What the.... said...

The sheer obscenity of the situation is that it’s California
smokers (tobacco tax) that have been forced to pay for this inflammatory, agenda-driven antismoking blather; they are forced to pay for their own persecution at the hands of fraudster, self-serving nutcases.

History of TRDRP

In 1988, California voters approved Proposition 99, “The Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Act of 1988,” which instituted a 25¢ per pack cigarette surtax.
5¢ of each dollar collected supports critical tobacco-related research.

The TRDRP is solely funded through the tobacco tax and
individual contributions.
http://www.trdrp.org/about/index.php

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I did suspect that's where the funding came from, thanks for confirming.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Yep, it's a global crap-fest.

What the.... said...

And take a look at the study authors. There are quite a number of long-time antismoking maniacs:

Manuela Martins-Green , Neema Adhami, Michael Frankos, Mathew Valdez, Benjamin Goodwin, Julia Lyubovitsky, Sandeep Dhall, Monika Garcia, Ivie Egiebor, Bethanne Martinez, Harry W. Green, Christopher Havel, Lisa Yu, Sandy Liles, Georg Matt, Hugo Destaillats, Mohammed Sleiman, Laura A. Gundel, Neal Benowitz, Peyton Jacob III, Melbourne Hovell, Jonathan P. Winickoff, Margarita Curras-Collazo

Matt, Destaillats, & Winickoff, in particular, have single-handedly taken nothing and manufactured it into “thirdhand smoke danger”, all perpetrated through “appeal to authority”. They typically feed from the FAMRI funding pool intended for antismoking “research”. Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI), part of the plundering (Master Settlement Agreement) of the tobacco industry
that was then passed-on to consumers, started with $300,000,000 (Yep, that’s 300 million dollars). “Its mission is to sponsor scientific and medical research for the early detection, prevention, treatment and cure of diseases and medical conditions caused from exposure to second hand tobacco smoke”.

In other words, here too it’s American smokers that are forced to pay through extortionate taxes for agenda-driven research/drivel that is ultimately used to further “denormalize” smokers.

What the.... said...

And don’t underestimate the influence that this trash research is having. Over the last few years there’s an ever-growing number of websites that now include a section on thirdhand smoke “danger”, depicting it as definitive, factual, and typically citing the “research” of the above fraudsters.

From the current study, this is the antismoker intent:

These results provide a basis for studies on the toxic effects of THS in humans and inform potential regulatory policies to prevent involuntary exposure to THS.

To prevent involuntary exposure to THS!!!!!!

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086391

If these con artists aren't exposed, it’s going to terribly affect accommodation and employment prospects of those who smoke.

Just in the last week a hospital has instituted antismoking policy based on thirdhand smoke “danger”. Do read it. The blathering is extraordinary:
http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/t-j-samson-enforces-thirdhand-smoke-policy/article_6b41c6a1-196f-55f2-a938-6d4fb9bf243d.html?success=1

What the.... said...

There’s more to come from Martins-Green on “thirdhand smoke”:
http://www.trdrp.org/fundedresearch/person_page.php?person_id=1547

In addition to the $250,000 for the last “study”, this new study will claim $434,696 – money extorted from California smokers. That’ll make it $684,696 for baseless, highly inflammatory, agenda-driven trash.

She seems to know again what they’ll find and what should be
done about it:

[Excerpts]

“This proposal addresses a recently-discovered smoking threat called third-hand smoke (THS). THS is derived from the repeated
deposition and aging of tobacco chemicals from Second Hand Smoke on surfaces in homes and cars. THS is a stealth toxin present in households of smokers; it exposes children and the elderly to harmful chemicals without their knowledge. Although we know that many of the chemicals in THS are toxic and have the potential to cause cancer, we know little about the effects of THS on health overall.

The overall goal of this study is to identify how THS exposure affects response to injury and healing, so as to inform policy makers of the dangers of this newly recognized threat. Without the underlying scientific knowledge, it is impossible to develop and enforce effective policies to minimize exposure.

These studies are important because they will determine the
mechanisms by which THS induces abnormal healing, and how it does so. Where possible, we will also suggest appropriate ways to restore the normal healing process. Our results may also point toward prevention and treatments for similar injury of the heart, kidney and lung. And, they will provide regulatory agencies with the experimental evidence to formulate and enforce policies to reduce exposure of infants, children, adults, elderly and workers in indoor environments where smoking occurs.
http://www.trdrp.org/fundedresearch/grant_page.php?grant_id=23500

What the.... said...

Thirdhand smoke “danger” is the final step in the “leperization” of smokers. Smokers are “diseased” due to “addiction”; they contract disease from smoking; they “spread” disease to “innocent nonsmokers” not only from the immediacy of secondhand smoke but now too from the lingering “danger” of thirdhand smoke. From this latest antismoking concoction, smokers leave “dangerous”, lingering contamination behind, and that their very person, too, is a carrier of the “dangerous” contamination. It doesn’t matter if they smoke far from other people; they are walking, talking “contamination”. Smokers have been manufactured into “untouchables”, their only hope being to quit smoking. And in their quit attempt, smokers should constantly be directed to useless Pharma wares. Further, the very [shameful] act of smoking must be hidden (banned) from public view and depictions of smoking in movies must be barred from the impressionable Children™ lest the current “lepers” also seduce, “lead astray”, the impressionable into a life of “leprosy”.

What the.... said...

Here are a few examples of organizations prepared to become part of the propaganda loop peddling thirdhand smoke “danger” (and there are many, many more):
http://cancer.dartmouth.edu/res/children_third_hand_smoke.html
http://www.fortgordonsignal.com/news/2010-11-05/News_Update/Another_reason_to_quit_smoking.html

Talwin said...

'TDRP'; 'RFP'; 'THS'.


WTF!

Radical Rodent said...

Yet another nail to drive into the coffin of the British pub. Now, families will avoid them as they will still be riddled with "third-hand smoke". It doesn't wash out, you know.

What the.... said...

Martins-Green, Chief Wiz in charge of conjuring thirdhand smoke "danger".

What the.... said...

....

Tom said...

Third Hand Smoke. California. New Study To "Prove". Bought And Paid For Using Tax Money Confiscated From Smokers In Large Sums For Conclusions Already Pre-Announced Prior To Performing The "Study".
Contrast that with San Francisco, California, USA, new form required in order to list a private property for sale and a brand new question that got slipped into the form along with dozens of others, mostly involving disclosures on the state of the property and meant to warn prospective buyers or possibly devalue the worth of a property based on certain disclosures becoming new - and that latest question quietly slipped into property for sale listing disclosure forms is:
M. Other
Q2. Any occupant of the Property on or in the Property?
Answer: Yes or No - Not maybe, don't know - Yes or No. Period.
See where this is going to be leading to when this starts becoming as major a disclosure on property transactions as it is with lead paints, formaldehyde, mold, other chemicals and biological elements "known by the state of California" for one such problem or another - and then THS gets lumped in with the rest of them.
Watch properties being stolen for pennies on the dollar from smokers and former smokers and bought up by the anti-smoking industry and its cronies in the redevelopment trade, along with politicians who will profit for their role played in manufacturing this new THS Fraud, which is where the SHS Fraud was eventually going to lead to, left unchecked.
And if it happens in California, now, then once they declare it a "big success", it will probably start showing up in other states and countries shortly there-after.

Tom said...

Corrections:

"based on certain disclosures becoming new"

s/b "based on certain disclosures becoming KNOWN"

and

"Q2. Any occupant of the Property on or in the Property?

s/b "Q2. Any occupant of the Property SMOKING on or in the Property?

woohoo02 said...

I wnt to the CR site and did their survey, this is my comment :)


You seem to promote junk science to de-normalize smoking, there is no scientific evidence to prove SHS nevermind THS against other environmental factors.

In otherwords, just another Sockpuppet charity to grease the wheels of totalitarian government policy!!

Jennifer Doe said...

Now how did I just know you would be plying to something with the name dick in it?

harleyrider1778 said...

Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science
http://www.manhealthissue.com/2007/06/epidemiologists-vote-to-keep-doing-junk-science.html
Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science

Epidemiology Monitor (October 1997)

An estimated 300 attendees a recent meeting of the American College of
Epidemiology voted approximately 2 to 1 to keep doing junk science!

Specifically, the attending epidemiologists voted against a motion
proposed in an Oxford-style debate that “risk factor” epidemiology is
placing the field of epidemiology at risk of losing its credibility.

Risk factor epidemiology focuses on specific cause-and-effect
relationships–like heavy coffee drinking increases heart attack risk. A
different approach to epidemiology might take a broader
perspective–placing heart attack risk in the context of more than just
one risk factor, including social factors.

Risk factor epidemiology is nothing more than a perpetual junk science machine.

But as NIEHS epidemiologist Marilyn Tseng said “It’s hard to be an
epidemiologist and vote that what most of us are doing is actually harmful
to epidemiology.”

But who really cares about what they’re doing to epidemiology. I thought
it was public health that mattered!

we have seen the “SELECTIVE” blindness disease that
Scientist have practiced over the past ten years. Seems the only color they
see is GREEN BACKS, it’s a very infectious disease that has spread through
the Scientific community with the same speed that any infectious disease
would spread. And has affected the T(thinking) Cells as well as sight.

Seems their eyes see only what their paid to see. To be honest, I feel
after the Agent Orange Ranch Hand Study, and the Slutz and Nutz Implant
Study, they have cast a dark shadow over their profession of being anything
other than traveling professional witnesses for corporate hire with a lack
of moral concern to their obligation of science and truth.

The true “Risk Factor” is a question of ; will they ever be able to earn
back the respect of their profession as an Oath to Science, instead of
corporate paid witnesses with selective vision?
Oh, if this seems way harsh, it’s nothing compared to the damage of peoples
lives that selective blindness has caused!

harleyrider1778 said...

The rise of a pseudo-scientific links lobby

Every day there seems to be a new study making a link between food, chemicals or lifestyle and ill-health. None of them has any link with reality.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/13287

harleyrider1778 said...

The nite this trash broke the Daily Mail was the first to print it. If you followed halfway thru the story an ad appears and in the middle of it the famed smokers lung transplant story.........Its just shreds the junk science to no end!