One of the most enigmatic figures (for me at least) in the smoking controversy is the historian Robert N. Proctor, author in 1999 of The Nazi War on Cancer, which became one of my must-buy books when I started to get interested in tobacco and smoking. It was a book that lifted the lid on a forgotten chapter in history – Nazi smoking bans and Nazi antismoking research – about which I’d known nothing at all. I felt that Proctor had performed a valuable service in disinterring this lost history, which never gets mentioned by antismokers.
So it came as a surprise to me, a year later, to discover that Proctor was actually an antismoking zealot who’d written a number of books and articles against tobacco, and even testified against tobacco companies in court. All of which set me wondering: Why should an antismoking zealot want to dredge up this piece of history? Wouldn’t antismokers want to quietly forget about this episode?
The answer, it would seem, was that Proctor was trying to salvage the reputation of Nazi antismoking research. The gist of his argument goes roughly like this: Yes, a lot of Nazi science was hideous and monstrous, but not all of it was, and their antismoking science was one of the examples of good Nazi science, years ahead of its time.
In the book (on page 194 of my copy), he describes the 1939 research of Franz Müller, a doctor and Nazi party member, as “an exquisite piece of scholarship”, and goes on to outline its methodology.
His analysis was what we today would call a survey-based retrospective case-control study, meaning that he compared, through questionnaires and medical histories, the smoking behaviour of lung cancer patients with that of a healthy “control group” of comparable age. The survey was sent out to the relatives of the deceased (lung cancer kills rather quickly) and included the following questions:
1. Was the deceased, Herr _______ a smoker? If so, what was his daily consumption of cigars, cigarettes, or pipe tobacco? (Please be numerically precise in your answer!)
The questionnaire went on to ask whether the deceased had smoked once and then given up or cut down, and whether he had ever been exposed to polluted air (including tobacco smoke).
Now, a few weeks back I was expressing the opinion that survey-based research wasn’t genuine science – because nothing in it was accurately measured. It’s all vague recollections, none of which can be verified. I have no idea how many cigarettes I smoked yesterday, or last week, or last year – because I don’t keep a count of them. Same for the number of beers I drank, books I read, or packets of peanuts I ate. Asking me questions along these sorts of lines isn’t going to produce any sort of accurate figures at all.
And asking anyone else about my habits isn’t going to produce accurate numbers either. If anything, it’s bound to produce even more inaccurate figures. There’s no possibility of anyone being “numerically precise”. So one can almost imagine the scenes at Aunt Hildegarde’s house when the letter from Franz Müller arrived, and she called upstairs to her husband:
“Do you remember Uncle Manfred? Well, I’ve got a letter here asking if he smoked or not. Can you remember whether he did? Because I can’t.”
“Manfred? Which Manfred? The one in Berlin, or the one in Stuttgart?”
“I think it must be the one in Stuttgart. He’s dead, anyway.”
“Oh him. Well, when I saw him in 1937, I don’t remember him smoking. But then, a year or two before that, I seem to vaguely remember him with a cigar. So yes, he did smoke.”
“They want to know how much he smoked. And we have to be ‘numerically precise’!”
“Good grief. How am I supposed to know how much he smoked? I only saw him about three times in ten years!”
“Well, they want to know. And it’s come in an official envelope, so we’d better come up with a good answer.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, put down any number you think of. They’ve got no way of checking. Tell them he smoked seventeen a day.”
“Seventeen what?”
“Cigars. I’m sure he smoked cigars.”
“You said you only saw him about three times in ten years. How can you be sure?”
“I’m not sure, of course! In fact, I have no idea at all! The main thing with official letters like this is to come up with a plausible reply. One that doesn’t arouse suspicion.”
“All right. I’ve written down ’17 cigars a day’. And I’ve added ‘as well as his pipe.’ They also want to know whether he ever gave up or cut down smoking. What shall we put for that? “
“I haven’t a clue! Write down whatever you like.”
“Well, since you said that when you saw him in 1937 he wasn’t smoking, but a few years before he’d been smoking a cigar, then maybe he gave up smoking some time in, say, 1936?”
“Very well, write that down if you like.”
“But when exactly in 1936 did he give up smoking? We’ve got to be ‘numerically precise’, remember.”
“Well just… Just give any date at all. Like… like… the 20th of April.”
“That’s Herr Hitler’s birthday!”
“I know. He obviously gave up smoking that day to emulate the führer. What better day to give up smoking.”
“And they also want to know whether during his life he was ever exposed to smoke, soot, dust, tar, fumes…”
“How on earth am I supposed to know?! It’s not as if I was some sort of beagle following him around sniffing the air wherever he went!”
“Wasn’t Uncle Manfred gassed during the War?”
“No, he wasn’t gassed. He was machine-gunned. He was lucky to survive. A couple of the bullets went through his chest.”
“Should I put that down? ‘Machine-gunned in the War’?”
“No, don’t! They’re not asking whether he was ever machine-gunned, are they? Nor whether he was ever run over by a bus, I hope. So don’t tell them. They’re not asking for his whole life story, are they? His favourite colour, and that sort of thing?”
“I see. So what was his favourite colour?…”
Imagine that happening in a couple of hundred different households all over Germany in 1939, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the likely accuracy of the numbers in Franz Müller’s study. For unless these relatives had been following around the deceased for years, making copious notes about their habits, these “precise numbers” must all be complete fictions. And so also, by extension, must the conclusions drawn from them.
But, undeterred, Proctor goes on to fulsomely compare Franz Müller to Evariste Galois, a French mathematical prodigy. I couldn’t see what the similarities might have been – except that they were both pretty imaginative with numbers.
Proctor then (p. 215) considers the 1944 paper by Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schöniger, which he describes as “remarkable for its subtlety, surpassing even Müller’s study of four years previously.” And indeed it did. The methodology was the same as Müller’s, but this time over 700 families got asked about Uncle Manfred’s smoking habits.
Anyway, the gist of Proctor’s thesis was that Müller, Schöniger, Schairer, and all the rest of the Nazi researchers had produced path-breaking scientific work. Work that rivalled and perhaps even surpassed the post-war studies of Doll and Hill, and Wynder and Graham.
Curiously, while Proctor is at pains to distinguish pioneering Nazi antismoking research from other, rather less salubrious Nazi research, in 2010 he had no hesitation whatsoever in tracing the links between global warming deniers and tobacco industry shills:
Historians a thousand years from now may wonder what went wrong: How, after scholars had so thoroughly nailed down the reality of anthropogenic climate change, did so many Americans get fooled into thinking it was all a left-wing hoax?
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway give us some very good—if disturbing—answers in their fascinating, detailed and artfully written new book, Merchants of Doubt. In it they show how a small band of right-wing scholars steeped in Cold War myopia, with substantial financing from powerful corporate polluters, managed to mislead large sections of the American public into thinking that the evidence for human-caused warming was uncertain, unsound, politically tainted and unfit to serve as the basis for any kind of political action.
Their story begins with what they call the “Tobacco Strategy,” the campaign launched in the mid-1950s by cigarette makers to refute and ridicule the evidence linking smoking to mass suffering and death. One might suppose the strategy is connected to global-warming denial purely by analogy—a case of yet another powerful industry trying to stave off regulation by obfuscating—but Oreskes and Conway show that key climate-change denialists actually became masters at doubt-mongering while working for the tobacco industry.
So if you’re sending out questionnaires to the relatives of dead lung cancer patients from the Wissenschaftliches Institut zur Erforschung der Tabakgefahren* in Jena, you’re engaged in cutting edge science, years ahead of its time, and completely different from other examples of Nazi research. But if, 50 years later, you’re fighting against supposedly scientific claims that originated in this very institute in Nazi Germany, you’re a deceitful and conniving “merchant of doubt”, and probably funded by genocidal Big Tobacco, all of whose research is ineradicably tainted by its association with the “genetic poison” (p. 174) of tobacco.
* Scientific Institute for the Study of Tobacco Hazards
The ‘dialogues’ in Germany about Uncle Manfred are just brilliant Frank!
Coming to the scientific part of those ‘studies’ , it reminded of Hirayama’s study on ETS and how effectively Japanese work!!!
Extract from rampant – antismoking ( http://www.rampant-antismoking.com/ ) :
Hirayama of Japan addressed the topic of smoking and other cancers .* His paper is based upon his large prospective study which included more than 265,000 adults aged 40 years and over. According to Hirayama, the data presented were all gathered between October and December of the same year . A person in the audience asked Hirayama how 265,000 people could be surveyed in a two-month period. His response that THEY ALL WORKED VERY HARD drew embarrassed giggles from the audience. (p.16)
The ‘dialogues’ in Germany about Uncle Manfred are just brilliant Frank!
Yes, absolutely. Excellent! :-)))
I suspect that Mr Proctor would be disappointed to know that all his hard word failed to catch the enthusiastic attention of the anti-smoking lobby. It’s a sign of how utterly convinced some of the most virulent anti-smokers are of the rightness of their cause that even insinuating something like: “The Nazis might have done some bad things, but we should remember they had some good ideas, too!” isn’t recognised as just about the worst publicity any campaign could want, no matter how supportive the writer might be in their direction. I’m sure that there are a lot of members of the anti-smoking movement who harbour secret admiration for some of Herr Hitler’s ideas – because so much of what they do has echoes of the Third Reich’s style of “management” – but most of them are canny enough not to say so, still less to commit it to print!
The gist of his argument goes roughly like this: Yes, a lot of Nazi science was hideous and monstrous, but not all of it was, and their antismoking science was one of the examples of good Nazi science, years ahead of its time.
“Nicht alles war schlecht im Dritten Reich” (“Not all was bad in the Third Reich”) was a frequent saying by “old nazis of the village” in Germany during the 50s and 60s.
And when we were young and long-haired, we still sometimes heared angry whispers like: “Unter Hitler hätte es das nicht gegeben” (“Under Hitler this wouldn’t have happened”).
(Hehe, and lately I heared a joke, some Green of today would say: “Not all was bad under Hitler – he only shouldn’t have built the Autobahn”.)
Frank todays nazis even used the same questionaires that hitlers nazis used to create their junk science.
It has become very apparent,they got their anti-tobacco guidebook from hitlers own folks even for doing junk science!
even used the same questionaires
I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Can you name any studies that did this?
On Hirayama. Tho the US Surgeon General hung his hat on this study in his first major report about secondhand smoke (1986) by the time the EPA got around to the subject (1993) Hirayama’s work had been so roundly discredited on so many grounds by so many people in published letters and articles that it wasn’t even mentioned. Just dealing with Hirayama’s statistical conclusions, Nathan Mantel, who’d invented the statistical formula that Hirayama used, said his numbers were off by a 1000% and Hirayma later admitted to 100% error though I choose to believe Mantel. The study was a joke on about every level but it accomplished what it had to– got everybody huffing about secondhand smoke;
OT. But just imagine what Hitler could have done had he lived in the age of electronics.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/schools_spy_on_fat_kids_HpPAgsKXPYjt1EWFfaNp9K?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=
Walt,have you got any link from US Surgeon General that effectively discredits Hirayama?
I’ve been patiently waiting to make a comment about Robert Proctor.
In The Nazi War on Cancer, he asks how evil Nazis produced “good” (anti tobacco) science. (For tobacco, also read weird ideas about diet, chemicals, the environment, etc., etc.) This is typical of a zealot (Proctor) – by definition, anything that supports his beliefs must be correct.
I submit that Proctor has the “good” science question ass backwards. The real question is, to the extent that contemporary Western government policies on tobacco (etc.) mirror those of Nazi Germany – what the hell is wrong with contemporary Western society?
Starting in the 1950’s, long established democracies (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia) gradually adopted anti democratic health policies that would have been applauded in Nazi Germany. Smoking of course is verboten. Alcohol only a bit less so. Deadly chemicals are everywhere; “known” carcinogens, and toxins, too. Hamburgers are “junk” food but you can’t eat too many fruits and vegetables or do too much exercise. Today public health, MD’s, legislative bodies, and perhaps a majority of the general public accept this nonsense as scientific truth. (And what the hell, toss in global warming even if the idea is now on the wane.)
Contrary to Proctor, I submit that Nazi anti tobacco, etc. “science” was as sick as the rest of their society. To the extent that anti tobacco and related ideas are gospel today, our Western Democracies have a serious problem.
With their superior knowledge and virtues, today’s Mini-Fuhrers (bureaucrats, academics, and health advocates) assume the herculean task of deciding how everyone else in the world should live. (This, of course, is based on Science.) To serve their goals, epidemiology (aka statistical malpractice) creates one health scare after another. Propaganda (a Nazi favorite) is produced in forest clearing reams by government agencies and “charities,” and all is gleefully reported by the “if it bleeds, it leads” media. To me at least, this looks uncomfortably like Nazi Germany, and there’s nothing scientific about it. There’s nothing democratic, either; only scientist’s opinions count.
P.S.: There are honest (competent?) epidemiologists like James Enstrom. (But look where that got him.) There’s real science in the areas of food-related and infectious diseases. Sadly, however, these are exceptions, not the rule.
Contrary to Proctor, I submit that Nazi anti tobacco, etc. “science” was as sick as the rest of their society. To the extent that anti tobacco and related ideas are gospel today, our Western Democracies have a serious problem.
Yes, we have a very serious problem. And one which is becoming more serious by the day.
The problem for proctor is he was requested by stanton glantz to do the nazi study to circumvent the damage of themselves being labelled nazis. It didnt work the nazi stigma is attached and they must live with it. As far as the research anti-tobacco of today is doing,it appears to be modeled almost verbatum from the nazis anti=tobacco playbook of hitlers time.
We must create a harm where none exists……….prehaps this was goebells true intent in the masterplan,make up passive smoking,make up jews are diseases walking among us, make up science that the mentally insane cant be helped and are a burden upon society that killing them is a just end as they cannot even understand what death is. To be worthy is to commit yourself to the fuhrer and country……Any excesses must be removed as a blight upon the health of the reich/anti smoking movement!
To me anti-tobacco in nazi germany was just one of the many agendas of hitlers nazi party. To sell it to the people they had to create propaganda and what could be more exciting than calling it cutting edge science and link everything to the many objectives of hitler. Smokers were but one of his victims and today we have glantz and many others practicing hitlers vile propaganda machine once again…….
Like the Hitler/autobahn joke Reinhold. I agree, Frank, that recall is a big problem in these studies and, in particular, recall bias, where relatives of those who died from lung cancer might over-estimate their exposure to tobacco smoke. However, the effects of active smoking will dwarf these biases and it is only passive smoking studies they invalidate.
recall is a big problem… and, in particular, recall bias
It isn’t just a big problem. Recall is impossible.
Aunt Hildegarde and her husband just don’t know the answers to the questions they’re being asked. So they can only invent numbers.
Forces International’s Complaint to the Office of Research Integrity
Signatory Organizations ||Signatory Individuals || How to become a Signatory || Excerpts from Rules and Regulations
Update October 29, 2008
On October 25, 2007, Forces International sent a letter to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) charging that the 2006 Surgeon General’s Report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General, violated rules of scientific conduct.
The report is not a study but a meta-analysis of other studies on Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS), known prior to the 1993 report from the Environmental Protection Agency as Secondhand Smoke (SHS).
Theintroductory letter prefaced the body of thecomplaint.
The complaint was also sent to theInspector General.The documents wereshipped/mailed on October 25, 2007, via Express Mail.
As seen in the excerpts from the rules and regulations on the left, the ORI investigates research funded by the Public Health Service.From the Surgeon General’s website,
“The Office of the Surgeon General, under the direction of the Surgeon General, oversees the operations of the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service and provides support for the Surgeon General in the accomplishment of his other duties. The Office is part of the Office of Public Health and Science in the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
Therefore, the investigation of scientific misconduct in the 2006 Surgeon General’s Report falls under the funding jurisdiction of the ORI.
Forces International received a reply from the ORI office, dated November 19, 2007.A letter was sent inresponse from ServingFreedom on behalf of Forces International on May 15, 2008, and delivered on May 21.
A follow-up to the ORI May 21 response has been sent on September 9th, 2008. The follow-up is the first of a series of critiques that demonstrate the flawed methodology use to obtain political results out of insignificant and defective studies. Given its qualifications, the office of the SG should have been keenly aware that, under no circumstance, has there been any Scientific Metholology applied to passive smoke in the first place. Furthermore, he should not have made the claim that the “dangers” of ETS are based on “scientific evidence” when addressing the media and the public. Both were lead to believe that the SG’s “opinion on the studies” is “science”, in favour of special interest groups.
Toreadthe ORI response to the above, click here.Our reply can be seenby clicking here.
Further Information on the original Complaint
Appendix A: The model “questionnaire” of the World Health Organization as an example of data gathering for the quantification of vague memories of exposure of decades earlier. This questionnaire has been used to gather data for theMulticenter case-control study of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer in Europe, Boffetta P, Aguado A, Ahrens W, Benhamou E, Benhamou S, Darby SC, et al., J Natl Cancer Inst., 1998;90(19):1440-50. This questionnaire is a model for all studies on passive smoking, regardless of their results. All studies follow the same methodology. This study, that overall shows no risk from passive smoking exposure, is the largest institutional study on passive smoking ever. The measuring of unverifiable memories is not science.
Appendix A says it all!
EXCERPTS FROM RULES AND REGULATIONS
To be found in:
Part III
Department of Health and Human Services
42 CFR Parts 50 and 93
Public Health Service Policies on Research Misconduct; Final Rule
§ 93.103 Research misconduct.
Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.
(a) Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
(b) Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
(c) Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
(d) Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion.
§ 93.104 Requirements for findings of research misconduct.
A finding of research misconduct made under this part requires that
(a) There be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community; and
(b) The misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly;
and
(c) The allegation be proven by a preponderance of the evidence.
§ 93.201 Allegation.
Allegation means a disclosure of possible research misconduct through any means of communication. The disclosure may be by written or oral statement or other communication to an institutional or HHS official.
§ 93.202 Charge letter.Charge letter means the written notice, as well as any amendments to the notice, that are sent to the respondent stating the findings of research misconduct and any HHS administrative actions. If the charge letter includes a debarment or suspension action, it may be issued jointly by the ORI and the debarring official makes an allegation of research misconduct.
§ 93.210 Good faith.
Good faith as applied to a complainant or witness, means having a belief in the truth of one’s allegation ortestimony that a reasonable person in the complainant’s or witness’s position could have based on the informationknown to the complainant or witness at the time. An allegation or cooperation with a research misconduct proceeding is not in good faith if made with knowing or reckless disregard for information that would negate theallegation or testimony. Good faith as applied to a committee member means cooperating with the research misconduct proceeding by carrying out the duties assigned impartially for the purpose of helping an institution meetits responsibilities under this part. A committee member does not act in good faith if his/her acts or omissions on thecommittee are dishonest or influenced by personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest with those involvedin the research misconduct proceeding.
§ 93.402 ORI allegation assessments.
(a) When ORI receives an allegation of research misconduct directly or becomes aware of an allegation or apparent instance of research misconduct, it may conduct an initial assessment or refer the matter to the relevant institution for an assessment, inquiry, or other appropriate actions.
(b) If ORI conducts an assessment, it considers whether the allegation of research misconduct appears to fall within the definition of research misconduct, appears to involve PHS supported biomedical or behavior research, research training or activities related to that research or research training, as provided in § 93.102, and whether it issufficiently specific so that potential evidence may be identified and sufficiently substantive to warrant an inquiry. ORI may review all readily accessible, relevant information related to the allegation.
(c) If ORI decides that an inquiry is warranted, it forwards the matter to the appropriate institution or HHS component.
(d) If ORI decides that an inquiry is not warranted it will close the case and forward the allegation in accordancewith paragraph(e) of this section.
(e) ORI may forward allegations that do not fall within the jurisdiction of this part to the appropriate HHScomponent, Federal or State agency, institution, or other appropriate entity.
§ 93.403 ORI review of research misconduct proceedings.
ORI may conduct reviews of research misconduct proceedings. In conducting its review, ORI may
(a) Determine whether there is HHS jurisdiction under this part;(b) Consider any reports, institutional findings, research records, and evidence;
(c) Determine if the institution conducted the proceedings in a timely and fair manner in accordance with this part with sufficient thoroughness, objectivity, and competence to support the conclusions;
(d) Obtain additional information or materials from the institution, the respondent, complainants, or other persons or sources;
(e) Conduct additional analyses and develop evidence;
(f) Decide whether research misconduct occurred, and if so who committed it;
(g) Make appropriate research misconduct findings and propose HHS administrative actions; and
(h) Take any other actions necessary to complete HHS’ review.
§ 93.404 Findings of research misconduct and proposed administrative actions.
After completing its review, ORI either closes the case without a finding of research misconduct or
(a) Makes findings of research misconduct and proposes and obtains HHS approval of administrative actionsbased on the record of the research misconduct proceedings and any other information obtained by ORI during itsreview; or
(b) Recommends that HHS seek to settle the case.
§ 93.406 Final HHS actions.
Unless the respondent contests the charge letter within the 30-day period prescribed in § 93.501, the ORI finding ofresearch misconduct is the final HHS action on the research misconduct issues and the HHS administrative actions become final and will be implemented, except that the debarring official’s decision is the final HHS action on any debarment or suspension actions.
§ 93.407 HHS administrative actions.
(a) In response to a research misconduct proceeding, HHS may impose HHS administrative actions that include but are not limited to:
Clarification, correction, or retraction of the research record.
Letters of reprimand.
Imposition of special certification or assurance requirements to ensure compliance with applicable regulations or terms of PHS grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements.
Suspension or termination of a PHS grant, contract, or cooperative agreement.
Restriction on specific activities or expenditures under an active PHS grant, contract, or cooperative agreement.
Special review of all requests for PHS funding.
Imposition of supervision requirements on a PHS grant, contract, or cooperative agreement.
Certification of attribution or authenticity in all requests for support and reports to the PHS.
No participation in any advisory capacity to the PHS.
Adverse personnel action if the respondent is a Federal employee, in compliance with relevant Federal personnel policies and laws.
Suspension or debarment under 45 CFR Part 76, 48 CFR Subparts 9.4 and 309.4, or both.
(b) In connection with findings of research misconduct, HHS also may seek to recover PHS funds spent in support of the activities that involved research misconduct.(c) Any authorized HHS component may impose, administer, or enforce HHS administrative actions separately or in coordination with other HHS components, including, but not limited to ORI, the Office of Inspector General, the PHS funding component, and the debarring official.
”Comparing the plight of smokers to the Jews under the Nazis is twisted”
Evidence from Hitler’s anti-smoking campaign
To the Editor,
http://www.smokersclub.com/klass/klass2.htm
How appripo that on the day The Sun reports that the St.Boniface Hospital is going to start throwing bleeding people in wheelchairs,amputees,women who had just given birth and are bleeding out in the freezing cold to have a cigarette(their sister institution the H.S.C.did this at the same time they were systematically butchering babies because of their race.Remember the”Sinclair Inquiry Into The Baby Deaths”?)the Sun considers it”twisted”to compare these antics to Hitler.
There was a lot more to the Nazi agenda than just yellow stars and death-camps.Anti-smoking activism was one such area. Hitler’s goal was a “secure and sanitary utopia”.The anti-smoking campaign was one instance of the Nazi campaign for”racial and bodily purity”.Before modern Canada Hitler embarked on a program of tripling taxes on cigarettes,draconian restrictions on indoor smoking,and a goofy, largely anti-semitic ,propoganda campaign against smoking.The results?Smoking rates actually increased 50% in Germany between 1932-39,while staying stable next door in France during the same period.(Although the prize packages from German academic medicine who testified before a tribunal about how non-Aryan babies were systematically slaughtered because of their race,when they weren’t throwing bleeding people in wheelchairs out in the freezing cold to have a cigarette-Hitler for the most part allowed smoking in restaurants).
For the record Germany passed a law forbidding Jews from smoking in 1938.Jews were denied coupons nessesary to purchase cigarettes.(This was later extended to pregnant women and to all women under 25).Images of second-hand smoke invariably contained images of dollar signs and Stars of David.Nazi anti-smoking posters contained carictatures of Hasidic Jews trying to lure an “Aryan”youth to take up smoking.Smoking was depicted in posters as the vice of”capitalists,Jews,Africans,degenerate intellectuals,and loose women.”Hitler in fact called tobacco”the wrath of Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor.”Smoking was considered”a genetic poison to the Aryan Race.”
I would just like to quote The Sun a brief excerpt from The British Medical Journal(BMJ No 7070 Volume 313)by Penn St.historian Robert N Proctor”The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis:a little known aspect of public health in Germany,1933-45″
“Smoking was banned in many workplaces,government offices,hospitals and rest homes.The NSDAP(National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939,at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty.The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Herman Goering’s decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets,on marches and on brief off-duty periods.Sixty of Germany’s largest cities banned smoking on streetcars in 1941.Smoking was banned in airaid shelters,though some shelters reserved seperate rooms for smokers.During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to all pregnant women(and to all women bellow the age of 25)while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.
From July 1943 it was illegial for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944,the initiative coming from Hitler himself,who worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.Nazi policies were heralded as marking’the beginning of the end of tobacco use in Germany’.”
At the conclusion of this e-mail I will forward a couple of cartoons in seperate e-mails,some anti-smoking cartoons from Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer that I found on a holocaust site on the Internet.Streicher who was hanged at Nuremberg said”Der Sturmer is not a Sunday paper.”
Warren Klass
wklass@saper.net
sorry frank,the damn thing didnt post at first so I broke it down and when I came back a half hour later………it was a wall of text! Wish we had a delete button or edit post.
It had gone into the spam folder, and I retrieved it. I’ll delete it (but not permanently yet).
@Reinhold – in Britain some of the older generation used to say: “He made the trains run on time” (but I think this is also a gesture to Mussolini). Also “He loved animals and children”.
Both these sayings are deeply ironic.
I’m watching Heimat 2 at the moment, so the German dimension is very to the fore in my mind.
Frank, you posted a video of a lecture by Proctor last year:
http://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/the-nazi-antismoking-legacy-1/#comment-20675
At around 9 mins in for 2 mins he talks about the curing process and states:
“If the tobacco industry wanted to end the global lung cancer epidemic all they’d have to do is to stop the flue curing process and go back to a pre-nineteenth century method of curing.”
(presumably he means pre twentieth century method).
I think he’s probably talking nonsense but if he believes this then why hasn’t he campaigned to get the anti-smoking industry on side? A far easier and less damaging project than they currently pursue.
Not sure if he’s an enigma or just an idiot.
He is talking out his ass again. It refers to TSNA in tobacco curing process. Back in the 1990s phillip morris went to electric heated curing process to take the place of fire cured although not all do this.One first has to look at what is the level of nitrosomines as compared to whats in everything else we are exposed to daily:
This study appears to be wall to wall junk science. They seem to be most worried about “carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs..several hundred nanograms per square meter of nitrosamines” (1)
Guess where Nitrosamines are also formed? Cooking fish, where TSNAs are measured in microgrammes, but in the Berkeley paper nanogrammes a factor of a thousand times smaller. (2)
Nitrosamines are also found in ham, milk, children’s balloons and tap water. (3)
Finally the World Health Organization’s cancer mouthpiece the International Agency Research on Cancer says on Nitrosamines: “5.2 Human carcinogenicity data. No data were (sic) available to the Working Group.” (4)
So we have a dose that is so low, cooking a fish produces 1,000 times more “carcinogens” on a chemical which has not been proven to cause cancer in the first place.
Junk science that insults the intelligence.
Here GARY K explains it:plus a bit ive added to it
Just a little bit more about the N’-nitrosonornicotine found in SHS/ETS.
However, the dose makes the poison!!
This stuff is NOT present in quantities known to be hazardous!!!
The concentration of N’-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) ranged from not detected to 23 pg/l, that of N’-nitrosoanata-bine ranged from not detected to 9 pg/l, while 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) was detected in concentrations ranging from 1 to 29 pg/l.
Thus, non-smokers can be exposed to highly carcinogenic TSNA.
NNN = 0 to 23 picograms per liter
NNK = 0 to 29 picograms per liter
1 cubic meter = 1,000 liters
1 nanogram(NG) = 1,000 picograms
Thus, NNN of 0 to 23 picograms per liter is the same as 0 to 23 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter
NNK of 0 to 29 picograms per liter is the same as 0 to 29 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter.
The question is whether or not 0 to 29 nanograms(ng) per cubic meter of a carcinogenic substance is a dangerous level?
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has concluded that inorganic arsenic is known to be a human carcinogen.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cites sufficient evidence of a relationship between exposure to arsenic and human cancer. The IARC classification of arsenic is Group 1.
The EPA has determined that inorganic arsenic is a human carcinogen by the inhalation and oral routes, and has assigned it the cancer classification, Group A.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprof…iles/tp2- c6.pdf
6.4.1 Air
Mean arsenic levels in ambient air in the United States have been reported to range from 20 to 30 ng/m3 in urban areas (Davidson et al. 1985; EPA 1982c; IARC 1980; NAS 1977a).
NOTE: 20 to 30 ng/m3 is NOT stated to be a hazardous level of exposure to this known human carcinogen.
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these nitrosomines and their group are turned into inorganic arsenic in the body………
Levels of arsenic in the air generally range from less than 1 to about 2,000 nanograms (1 nanogram equals a billionth of a gram) of arsenic per cubic meter of air (less than 1–2,000 ng/m3), depending on location, weather conditions, and the level of industrial activity in the area. However, urban areas generally have mean arsenic levels in air ranging from 20 to 30 ng/m3.
Both inorganic and organic forms leave your body in your urine. Most of the inorganic arsenic will be gone within several days, although some will remain in your body for several months or even longer. If you are exposed to organic arsenic, most of it will leave your body within several days.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp2-c1.pdf
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
has set a permissible exposure limit (PEL) of 10 micrograms
of arsenic per cubic meter of workplace air (10 µg/m³) for 8
hour shifts and 40 hour work weeks.
Levels of arsenic in food range from about 20 to 140 ppb. However, levels of inorganic arsenic, the form of most concern, are far lower. Levels of arsenic in the air generally range from less than 1 to about 2,000 nanograms (1 nanogram equals a billionth of a gram) of arsenic per cubic meter of air (less than 1–2,000 ng/m3), depending on location, weather conditions, and the level of industrial activity in the area. However, urban areas generally have mean arsenic levels in air ranging from 20 to 30 ng/m3.
You normally take in small amounts of arsenic in the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat. Of these, food is usually the largest source of arsenic. The predominant dietary source of arsenic is seafood, followed by rice/rice cereal, mushrooms, and poultry. While seafood contains the greatest amounts of arsenic, for fish and shellfish, this is mostly in an organic form of arsenic called arsenobetaine that is much less harmful. Some seaweeds may.
Children are likely to eat small amounts of dust or soil each day, so this is another way they may be exposed to arsenic. The total amount of arsenic you take in from these sources is generally about 50 micrograms (1 microgram equals one-millionth of a gram) each day. The level of inorganic arsenic (the form of most concern) you take in from these sources is generally about 3.5 microgram/day. Children may be exposed to small amounts of arsenic from hand-to-mouth activities from playing on play structures or decks constructed out of CCA-treated wood. The potential exposure that children may receive from playing in play structures constructed from CCA-treated wood is generally smaller than that they would receive from food and water.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp2-c1.pdf
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Their story begins with what they call the “Tobacco Strategy,” the campaign launched in the mid-1950s by cigarette makers to refute and ridicule the evidence linking smoking to mass suffering and death. One might suppose the strategy is connected to global-warming denial purely by analogy—a case of yet another powerful industry trying to stave off regulation by obfuscating—but Oreskes and Conway show that key climate-change denialists actually became masters at doubt-mongering while working for the tobacco industry.
Why would anyone in the 1950′s launch a “Tobacco Strategy” campaign “to refute and ridicule the evidence linking smoking to mass suffering and death”?
It would be interesting to be given numbers (30 001?). I am not aware of any “mass suffering and death” due to tobacco smoke… In any case, aren’t the anti-tobacco zealots always announcing that there is a long delay? What happened between 1930 and 1950?
What has smoking got to do with climate change?
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