Forces International stuurde het nieuwsstation de volgende boodschap:
It’s incredible that you keep spreading these old lies!
The EPA report that you mention was sentenced in a verdict by Judge Osteen in 1998. According to the judge, the EPA ‘cherry picked’ their initial data and didn’t commit to their own scientific rules (see: http://wp.forces-nl.org/analyses/osteen.pdf).
The WHO report mentioned didn’t proove that SHS causes lung cancer. In contrary, part of the study even shows that SHS exposure during childhood can be benificial (see:
http://wp.forces-nl.org/analyses/who_eng.html).
From the report:
“No increase in risk was detected in subjects whose exposure to spousal or workplace ETS ended more than 15 years earlier. Ever exposure to ETS from other
sources was not associated with lung cancer risk. Risks from combined exposure to spousal and workplace ETS were higher for squamous cell carcinoma and small-cell carcinoma than for adenocarcinoma, but the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a dose–response relationship between risk of lung cancer and
exposure to spousal and workplace ETS. There was no detectable risk after cessation of exposure. “
Figures that define less than a 100% increase (RR<2) are considered as flawed and statistically insignificant by the National Cancer Institute and
other organizations:
NCI:
“Relative risks of less than two are considered small. . . . Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or effects of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident.”
Sir Richard Doll:
” … when the relative risk lies between 1 and 2 … problems of interpretation may become cute, and it may be extremely difficult to disentangle the various contributions of biased information, confounding of two or more factors, and cause and effect.”
WHO/IARC:
Relative risks of less than 2.0 may readily reflect some unperceived bias or confounding factor, those over 5.0 are unlikely to do so. – Breslow and Day, 1980, Statistical methods in cancer research, Vol. 1, The analysis of case
control studies. Published by the World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Sci. Pub. No. 32, Lyon, p. 36 FDA: Relative risks
of 2 have a history of unreliability – Robert Temple, M.D. Food and Drug Administration Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Letters, September 8, 1999
And the Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence confirms that the threshold test for legal significance is a relative risk of two or higher. At
any ratio below two, the results are insufficiently reliable to conclude that a particular agent (e.g., tobacco) caused a particular disease.
So these figures of +30% (RR=1.30) are worthless.
