Thursday 5 February 2015

An uncanny chain of events

World Health Organisation, 1999:*

"Three major pharmaceutical companies have joined this partnership: Glaxo Wellcome, Novartis, and Pharmacia & Upjohn. They all manufacture treatment products against tobacco dependence... And I am happy to welcome other stakeholders - and that includes industry - to join us - because investing in health yields high returns."

Information Daily, 2013:

Despite electronic cigarettes still being in their international infancy, they are now thought to be the UK's most popular smoking cessation aid with 1.3 million users.

According to the latest available figures, over 25 per cent of attempts to stop smoking in the UK are now supported by e-cigarettes, overtaking longstanding cessation aids such as throat sprays, patches and nicotine gum.

BBC, 2014:

The Smoking Toolkit Study, which covers England, has found that electronic cigarettes are overtaking the use of nicotine products such as patches and gum as an aid to quitting smoking.

The Guardian, 2014:

E-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine patches and gum in helping people to quit smoking, according to a study that challenges the negative views of some public health experts.
... Pharmaceutical companies such as GSK and Pfizer, which make smoking cessation drugs, are among the opponents of e-cigarettes. "They are losing sales hand over fist to e-cigarettes and are incentivised to make it appear they are not effective," said West.

BBC, 2014:

The World Health Organization says there should be a ban on the use of e-cigarettes indoors and that sales to children should stop. 

In a report the health body says there must be no more claims that the devices can help smokers quit - until there is firm evidence to support this.

WHO experts warn the products might pose a threat to adolescents and the foetuses of pregnant women.

World Health Organisation, 2014:

The countries agreed on a set of goals in line with the WHO recommendations. These seek to prevent non-smokers and young people ever starting to use ENDS; to protect bystanders from ENDS’ emissions; to minimize the potential health risks posed by ENDS and to challenge unproven health claims used to market these products. To achieve their goals, the countries said that they would deploy any regulatory measures they see fit to limit the use of ENDS or ban their use altogether.

World Health Organisation, 2015:



Job done. I hope Big Pharma has the courtesy to leave a tip.


* Oddly, the WHO have taken this speech off their website, but it can still be viewed here.

4 comments:

Christopher Snowdon said...

They are a powerful pile of nannies

Christopher Snowdon said...

Of course there is their unseen 'partner' too... organised crime, who profit from everything WHO do.

Christopher Snowdon said...

Corruption and collusion are the foundation of tobacco control. False studies bolster by propaganda, censorship and suppressing dissent. Partnerships with Big Pharma and public funding give them the means to maniple opinion. Tammany Hall never had it so good. Essentially tobacco control is organized crime. They are pillaging the public purse, fear mongering, and sowing division in pursuit of power and plunder. It is time to expose these gangsters for what they are!

Christopher Snowdon said...

"I hope Big Pharma has the courtesy to leave a tip."

They have done that for years. The drug industry pays many of the private contributions to WHO, and it is also a well known fact that many individual anti-smoking experts have had close financial ties with Big Pharma.

According to U.S. district court documents the chairman of the working group in WHO's cancer department IARC, Dr. Jonathan Samet - the scientific editor of the 1992 EPA report and the 2006 Surgeon General report on passive smoking - has had financial ties with Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline for decades:

https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/anti-smoking-experts-paid-by-big-pharma/

This is the way Big Pharma makes the experts beholden to the corporations. Because once an expert writes something the corporations don't like his funding is immediately cut. It's as easy as that. It's all about money.