Aantal ‘(mee)rokengerelateerde doden’ sterk overdreven
Een nuchtere analyse op een Canadese website laat zien dat de cijfers die door anti-rookfanaten in dat land gegeven worden, zwaar opgeblazen zijn.
De Ottawa Policy Alliance of Canada laat op een pagina op haar site onder andere zien dat het aantal van 45.000 met roken in verband gebrachte jaarlijkse doden precies gelijk is aan het percentage rokers in dat land en dus niets bijzonders is. Ook wordt op een simpele weg aangetoond hoe het simulatieprogramma SAMMEC, waarmee die aantallen worden geproduceerd, gemanipuleerd wordt om de cijfers op te blazen. En uiteraard worden ook de beweringen rond de gevaren van meeroken op een eenvoudige wijze om zeep geholpen.
The anti-tobacco lobby has turned smoking into the “leading preventable cause of death.” This is accomplished by estimating mortality from extrapolated data of whole classes of common illness. Where the sum of deceased smokers and former smokers indicate any statistical percentage above calculated averages, that disease or illness is then considered caused by smoking.
No regard is given to other major factors in each death such as obesity, family history, workplace environment, lifestyle and complicating health issues.
This has allowed a dramatic expansion of the familiar list of lung cancer, bronchitis and emphysema to now include the likes of: hypertension, cervix uteri cancer, kidney cancer, pneumonia, influenza, and sudden infant death syndrome. In some reports, even deadly house fires accidentally set by a match or lighter (Smoking Related Materials) are added to the body count of Smoking-Attributable Mortality (SAM).
But even these wide-net statistics fail to produce a smokers death rate higher than 20%-22% when compared to the total mortality data (StatsCan). This despite an active smoking population (one or more cigarettes a day) of about 18%-21% (Health Canada). The average age of smokers who die is 72 years old. The bulk of deaths are above age 65. By any reasonable standard these are natural life spans.
Yet, even today Health Canada warns that more than 45,000 people will die in Canada due to smoking in 2005. Despite that seemingly large number, it still represents only 20% of all deaths — which would be reasonably expected.
All told, about a third of smokers who die each year, succumb to lung cancer — most at well above retirement age. The other two thirds die from causes that only anti-tobacco crusaders could possibly attribute to smoking, through their complex SAMMEC statistical correlations.
Health Canada projects 1,000 non-smoking Canadians will die in 2005 as a result of exposure to second-hand smoke. Of those, 300 will die from lung cancer. But, this represents barely over one tenth of one percent (0.13%) of the mortality rate. By comparison non-smokers with lung cancer, with no correlated exposure to second-hand smoke, comprise 1.3% of deaths. This is a whopping ten times higher than for cases said to be caused by second-hand smoke. By further comparison, heart disease generally represents over 26% of deaths annually and flu mortality is about 3.6%. The total 1,000 second-hand smoke fatalities comprise just under half a percent (0.4%) of all deaths.
Despite all the dire warnings, very few deaths are statistically linked to second-hand smoke even with the use of projections similar to SAMMEC and SAM.
Only a few major long-term studies with any real credibility have been conducted in the world. The results, which showed no correlation existed between health and second-hand smoke, were summarily suppressed.
