The International Conference Against Prohibition rides again

The International Conference Against Prohibition (TICAP) will be holding its second annual event in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday 15th March 2010. The line-up is superb and it promises to be a very interesting day and, I dare say, an entertaining evening the night before.

Guest speakers include former 'Winston Man' David Goerlitz, who spoke out against the tobacco control movement last year (listen here) and Brian Monteith, whose book The Bully State I reviewed recently. 

Other speakers include Dr Patrick Basham of the Democracy Institute, whose work was also mentioned on this blog recently, as well as Dr Rein Vos - an expert on the ethics of health - and Dr Michael Marlow, who has recently written an article tilted Do Anti-Smoking Programs Work to Reduce Smoking?

Last but not least, Dr Kamal Chaouachi, the world's leading expert on the chemistry of hookah smoking, will be speaking.

Yours truly will be chairing the discussion and it would great to see some readers of this blog there. Further details are available here.

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Still no heart attack miracle in England

Today, Michael Siegel dissects another junk science study purporting to show that the introduction of a smoking ban led to a drop in heart attacks. And so it goes on in the world of tobacco control. 

Back in the real world, recently published NHS figures have shown us that, just as there was no big drop in heart attack admissions in the first year of England's smoking ban, so there was no drop in the second year of the ban.

This graph shows the number of emergency admissions for acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) in English hospitals from April 1998 to March 2009:

Ho-hum. It's the same old story. The rate was falling gradually before the ban and it has fallen just as gradually since the ban. 

Whenever hospital data is publicly available, there is no sign of a heart miracle. Whenever the raw data is available only to a select group of epidemiologists, there is a 'dramatic' drop in heart attacks. When an epidemiologist announces a drop in heart attacks in a small town or region, it gets global news coverage. When evidence from an entire nation shows that a smoking ban had no effect on heart attacks, the news is confined to a handful of blogs.

The story is always the same, and I apologise for boring readers with one null study after another. But spare a thought for Dr Anna Gilmore, whose job it is to turn this mundane data into a newsworthy study showing that the smoking ban has saved thousands of lives. She may be working on it at this very moment. 

At some point this year, the media will be reporting a heart miracle in England, based on the very evidence I have shown above (or carefully selected parts of it). It sounds incredible, Orwellian even, but it will happen, and when it does none of the real figures will matter. None of the data carefully collected around the country and displayed on the HES England website will matter. The number of people who really got rushed to hospital with a heart attack in those years will be irrelevant.

If you want chapter and verse, I can tell you that the heart attack rate dropped by 3.84% and 3.79% before the ban, and by 3.75% and 2.61% after the ban. These figures are nowhere near big enough to guarantee news coverage. When the study appears it will probably show that heart attacks fell by at least 10%. We know this because that's what was reported before the study even began.

We live in post-evidential times. Whatever he who pays the fiddler wants to believe happened, is what happened. The real events are of no consequence. They are trees falling in an empty forest. 

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Where are ASH's accounts?

Strange goings on at the Charity Commission, who have just published ASH (England)'s financial accounts. Or so it seems at first glance. In fact, they've published ASH Wales' accounts, stamped ASH (England)'s charity number on them and filed them under 'Action on Smoking and Health: Charity number 262667).' 

This looks to be a cock-up by the Commission, rather than funny business on the part of the anti-tobacco industry. More puzzling are the ASH Wales accounts themselves, which are missing pages 9 to 14. As it says on page 8: "The notes on 9 to 14 form an integral part of these financial statements." They certainly do. They show where the money came from. What's happened to them?

Another cock-up, perhaps. I've contacted the Commission about this and should have some news in the near future. In the meantime, how much money ASH and ASH Wales received from the makers of Nicorette and Chantix last year remains a mystery. Our only clue is a 'key achievement' listed in ASH Wales' accounts:

2. Successful funding bid to the Pfizer Foundation for the delivery of youth worker training.

ASH Wales' links with Big Pharma are no secret. They acknowledged the "financial and/or kind support of" Pfizer, Novartis, McNeil and GlaxoSmithKline in their annual report. The question is whether their English big sister is taking the filthy lucre. We should have the answer any day now.

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The battle royale

One of Simon Heffer's predictions for the decade ahead is that, by 2019, "alcohol will have been accorded the pariah status of tobacco". 

A more optimistic outcome is forecast by Patrick Basham who, on the BBC's World Service, predicts a "battle royale over the fate of the bully state" with the neo-prohibitionists coming out second best.

Bully staters don't want us to smoke cigarettes, gamble, drink alcohol or gain weight so they'll ratchet up the campaign to shame and coerce those who rejoice in the individual's right to pursue - dare I say it - pleasure.

Under the bully state, the real bully is nanny the policy nurse who dispenses regulatory cures for all manner of alleged social ills from smoking to simply having fun. 

Thankfully, there will be dramatic growth in people's unwillingness to be bullied out of, and into, certain habits.  This will create an opportunity for the first politician who stands in front of the bully state's regulatory march yelling "stop!"

By the end of the decade, most Americans - and, I strongly suspect, most Britains too - will be actively rebelling against their respective ministry of the domestic bully.

Will a politician spot the gap in the market for less state interference? I'm not sure. Ronald Reagan once said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" It's hard to imagine any of the current crop acknowledging the limitations of government in this way, let alone mocking it. But then Reagan wasn't a career politician. He'd had a life outside politics and could see government from the perspective of an outsider.

One of the problems, I think, with the rise of the career politician is that it has created a distinct political class that is convinced that it is right and the public are wrong. Politicians are often accused of being out of touch. The political class know they are out of touch but carry on regardless because they believe they are inherently wiser than the electorate. They view going against public opinion as courageous - evidence of strong leadership - where once, perhaps, it would have been seen as an affront to democracy. As a consequence, politicians often appear to be at war with their own people. 

This has to be unsustainable. I hope Patrick is right when he predicts that someone will stand up and say "stop!" But that would require a politician prepared to sacrifice power and hand it back to the individual. At the moment, the political class have no doubt that they would use that power more wisely themselves. Until such a politician emerges, I expect to see more votes going to fringe parties.

Listen to all Basham's predictions here. You can read his latest publication, the impeccably argued and eminently rational Are Public Smoking Bans Necessary? here.

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Just stop

Does anyone even take notice of these stories any more?

Mobile phone radiation 'protects' against Alzheimer's

After all the concern over possible damage to health from using mobile phones, scientists have found a potential benefit from radiation.

The researchers, led by Professor Gary Arendash, said that if the phone exposure was started when the Alzheimer's mice were young adults, before signs of memory impairment were apparent, their cognitive ability was protected.

That's from the BBC today, which links to this not unrelated story also from the BBC...

Mobile phones 'may trigger Alzheimer's'

Mobile phones damage key brain cells and could trigger the early onset of Alzheimer's disease, a study suggests.

Researchers in Sweden have found that radiation from mobile phone handsets damages areas of the brain associated with learning, memory and movement.

The study, which was carried out on rats, is the latest twist in the long-running debate over whether mobile phones are a health risk.

As I see it, there are three explanations for this:

1. Mobile phones give rats Alzheimer's, but protect mice from getting it, for reasons that are completely unknown and totally inexplicable.

2. Scientists had their fun trying to scare everybody about mobile phones then they first came out, but now nearly everybody's got one they've decided to make us feel scared if we haven't.

3. Thousands of foolish young people pour out of university every year clutching a degree in epidemiology and are desperate to produce 'findings' that will get them in the news.

The second story is a classic case in point. The study's author, no doubt pleased to be talking to the media, is a mass of contradictions.

Professor Salford said there was good reason to believe that mobile phones could have the same effect on humans.

"A rat's brain is very much the same as a human's. They have the same blood-brain barrier and neurons," he told BBC News Online.

"We have good reason to believe that what happens in rat's brains also happens in humans."

That sounds worrying. Your study has just found that mobile phones cause brain damage in rats.

Professor Salford said that there was also a chance exposure to mobile phone radiation could trigger Alzheimer's disease in some people.

"What we are saying is those neurons that are already prone to Alzheimer's disease may be stimulated earlier in life."

Now I'm really worried. This sounds plausible.

"However, this theory is hypothetical. We do not have evidence yet that the human brain is affected in this way."

That's okay then. What a relief.

Professor Salford said mobile phone users should not be alarmed by the findings.

Thank God for that. I was alarmed for a second.

"This is a negative finding and yes it doesn't seem to be particularly good."

That sounds bad.

"But this is one observation, in one laboratory with a small number of animals. This study will have to be repeated before we get alarmed."

Good. That's set my mind at rest. A bit.

"Nevertheless, it is strong enough to merit more research into this area."

(The scientist's timeless way of asking for another research grant.)

But he added: "Perhaps putting a mobile phone repeatedly to your head is something that might not be good in the long term."

How else are you supposed to use the bloody things? I thought it was only cigarettes that were "hazardous when used as the manufacturer intended."

"Maybe we should think about restricting our use of mobile phones."

Make your mind up. And is that "we" the people, or "we" the government?

That brief interview has everything - extreme caution combined with extreme scare-mongering, followed by a request for more money and a suggestion that we legislate on the back of evidence that even he isn't sure about. Evidence which has now been disproved. Or maybe not. Presumably, another study will come along saying something completely different.

Instead of paying these people to tell us whether such-and-such does/doesn't cause disease, let's just employ one bloke, put him in a room and give him a coin to toss. It would save us a fortune and he'd probably be right more often.

One day, someone will actually make a scientific breakthrough. Will anyone be listening?

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Smoking in New York

Today's issue of The New York Times contains an article about the widespread flouting of Bloomberg's smoking ban. In short, if you you've got the money to go to a half-decent night-club, you're not going to have a problem smoking.

In November, Eater.com called it “the worst kept secret in New York nightlife” that “smoking is now allowed in numerous nightspots, specifically just about any and every lounge and club with a doorman and a rope.”

It's not just New York, of course. I mentioned the growing disobedience of French smokers a few days ago. Until it changed hands recently, my local snooker club routinely turned a blind eye to smoking on the premises. Recently, I stayed in a pub (picked at random) when visiting relatives and found that the curtains closed and the ashtrays came out on the dot of 11pm every night. Similar anecdotal evidence is abundant.

So while it's not just a New York phenomenon, that city has had longer than most to get used to the legislation. The theory is that resistance to smoking bans should fade over time. Seven years after the smoking ban came in, it seems that the opposite is happening. That really should be no surprise - it's what's happened throughout history. 

Smoking bans were popular a century ago but were all repealed by the late 1920s, according to Christopher Snowdon, the author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking. Most bans meet the same fate, Mr. Snowdon said: “They usually end with the same kind of passive resistance you see here.”

“It's just the fact that you have a habit that won’t go away,” he added.

New York has a long and chequered history of anti-smoking measures. Its first smoking ban was back in 1620 when it was still known as New Amsterdam. In the 1900s, it was the home of the Nonsmokers' Protective League. Before the First World War, it banned smoking on public transport and banned women from smoking in public buildings. The 2003 smoking ban was just the latest in a string of failed tobacco control measures. 

Today's New York Times article may lead to a crack-down on these night spots in the short-term. In the long term, history suggests that Bloomberg and his health department enforcers have their work cut out.

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Barbecue winter

October 27, 2009

Mild winter forecast as part of 'El Nino' effect

Preliminary forecasts, which take into account the El Nino effect, predict that Britain will have a mild winter this year, with temperatures above the 38.6F (3.7C) average for December.

January 2, 2010

Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.

They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.

And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.

Well done chaps. Keep up the good work.

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