Titled "Lies, Damned Lies & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths," the article focused on the 1993 report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimated that 419,000 Americans died of diseases attributed to smoking in 1990. The authors maintain that the CDC used statistical trickery to grossly exaggerate the dangers of smoking. The alleged death toll included diseases for which the relative risk to smokers is statistically insignificant. So insignificant that groups such as the National Cancer Institute refuse to recognize such levels of risk.
Also the CDC failed to correct for variables, a mortal sin in statistics.
Jacoby recommends the Regulation article as a corrective to the hysteria of the anti-tobacco crusade.
Another such corrective charges that the Environmental Protection Agency deliberately used false and misleading information in claiming second-hand smoke causes cancer.
A new book released by the Fraser Institute of Canada expands on the July 17, 1998, decision by Judge William Osteen of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Osteen nullified the EPA's 1992 assessment that there is sufficient evidence to designate second-hand smoke as a human carcinogen.
The decision said that the EPA's epidemiological studies did not qualify as true science because measurements had little credibility and studies include assumptions that are grossly unrealistic while excluding publications that arrived at contrary conclusions. EPA findings did not account for bias and contained conjectures devoid of scientific content and justification, the court said. In other words, the EPA used junk science to back its own preconceived claim.
Judge Osteen determined that the agency had knowingly, willfully and aggressively disseminated false information with far-reaching regulatory implications.
Yes, Osteen presides in tobacco country, but suggestions of bias on his part won't wash. He is the same judge who found that nicotine is a drug and gave the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco.
Yes, the Fraser Institute is a business oriented organization. But the main thrust of the book, as with Osteen's decision, is truth. The bottom line is that government shouldn't lie, even in the name of public health.
Smoking is an unwholesome habit. Government has a right to warn against the potential harm involved but it has no right to do so by corrupting science.
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