Passive Smoking Kills 600,000 Worldwide – Apparently

Apparently a study has determined that passive smoking is so treacherous, it has killed 600,000 people, one third of whom are children – although why they think that children are different from people is something of a mystery. Still, to come to such a startling conclusion, one suspects that they have some pretty startling evidence.

Well, actually, no…

The study used estimates of the incidence of specific diseases and of the number of people exposed to second-hand smoke in particular areas.

More specifically, from the Lancet:

The burden of disease from second-hand smoke was estimated as deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for children and adult non-smokers. The calculations were based on disease-specific relative risk estimates and area-specific estimates of the proportion of people exposed to second-hand smoke, by comparative risk assessment methods, with data from 192 countries during 2004.

My emphasis

There is an expression for this; non sequitur – translated; it does not follow. They have taken two separate things, one of which is a guess, and tried to presume a causation. As sleights of hand goes, this one is pretty clumsy, and I notice that some of the folks on Have Your Say seem to have cottoned on. All in all, nice try but no cigar. And they have the effrontery to pass this off as scientific. So, actually, when we look at the hard, cold facts, passive smoking hasn’t killed 600,000 people worldwide at all. Or, at least, no one has provided any substantive evidence that this has happened. It’s all a guess, nothing more.

Writing in the Lancet, Dr Heather Wipfli of the University of Southern California and colleagues, said: “There are well acknowledged uncertainties in estimates of disease burden.”

You ain’t kidding.

“However, there can be no question that the 1.2bn smokers in the world are exposing billions of non-smokers to second-hand smoke, a disease-causing indoor air pollutant.” 

If an estimate based on a non sequitur is your evidence, then the only rational response to this assertion is; “poppycock!” Come back when you have done some real research with measurable evidence that directly links passive smoking to a particular illness and I might think about taking you seriously. I’m not about to lose any sleep waiting, mind.

Nice of the Beeb to pass off this massive guessing exercise in its headline as if it was a proven fact, eh?

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One for Dick Puddlecote’s collection.

Yes… I hate it when I’m waiting for the bus and someone decides to arrive and then have a smoke right next to you…. they don’t just kill themselves but everyone around them… they might as well bring a knife a stabe people cos its the same affect!!!!

Priceless – even to the multiple screamers.

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Another gem from HYS:

Second-hand smoking can also make you addicted to tobacco. I had never smoked in my life (and never intended to) until -at age 22- my chain-smoking brother came to live with me as we shared an apartment during college. Within months of breathing his smoke I unwittingly developed a craving for tobacco.

Ye Gods! I live with a smoker. I worked through college in a smoky city pub. I have never felt the desire to smoke. You do read some bollocks on the Internet.

10 Comments

  1. In case you didn’t know, LR – ‘poppycock’ comes from the Dutch word ‘pappekak’, which means ‘soft shit’. Quite appropriate, I would have thought.

  2. “Second-hand smoking can also make you addicted to tobacco. I had never smoked in my life (and never intended to) until -at age 22- my chain-smoking brother came to live with me as we shared an apartment during college. Within months of breathing his smoke I unwittingly developed a craving for tobacco.”

    I thought this might have been a piss take until I followed the link to the original. Rather depressingly it reads as being genuine, in the sense of genuinely attempting to place the blame for taking up smoking on someone else rather than man up and take responsibility for the decision himself. Oh, excuse me one moment. I’m just nipping off to do some heroin, which incidentally I’ve never tried before. Not my fault, you understand. I was given some morphine in hospital once and naturally I’ve been a hopeless addict ever since, though admittedly I only realised it just now.

  3. I thought someone else might have said this before, but I guess it has to be up to me.

    Passive smoking turned me into a newt.

    I got better.

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