The Nation's Pulse / Zealots Against Science
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
THE NATION'S PULSE ZEALOTS AGAINST SCIENCE T have just read a very illuminating I manuscript that you, dear reader, may never be able to read. It deals coolly, analytically, and at times quite...
...When will a free debate that tobacco advertising encourages hysteria and distorting the national not hurting the rest of us...
...Others have pursued repellent causes such as nativism and prohibition...
...It has also spread ri inally the anti-tobacco movement is more serious problem than the "depen- ing the hysterias of such other zealots enormous amounts of misinforma- r but one of a dozen movements rais- dence' caused by smoking...
...Yet today it is curiously threatened by the fanatics...
...The author worked for the American Lung Association for nine years but quit after seeing it metamorphose from a responsible public health organization whose atmosphere was somewhat like that of a traditional university into an activists' movement that put him in mind of a "TV ministry," replete with phony claims, exaggerated points of view, bizarre priorities...
...The list is long...
...Drug addiction remains a far when will other intelligent books refutand scientists...
...Another example of the flawed reasoning resorted to by the anti-tobacco crowd is the claim that nonsmokers sustain the burden of billions of dollars in health costs brought down on society by smokers...
...There are studies that show it is dangerous and studies that show it is not...
...If ETS is a problem, which it points and more are lucidly made in the torch to the Bill of Rights...
...In reading this manuscript I was surprised not only by how far the anti-tobacco zealots have gotten with faulty arguments, but by the range of issues the author felt he had to address in exposing the anti-tobacco fanatics...
...Tobacco is not illegal...
...Owing to the lower life expectancy of smokers, they take out less from the Social Security system and from their pension plans...
...Much more importantly, the personal liberties of Americans have been imperiled and at times restricted...
...All are usually unpleasant individuals with a sleepless bug in the bonnet and very little solicitude for the rights of others...
...Sen...
...Most have been a threat to freedom, and right now I believe there are more such authoritarians R. Emmett Tyrrea Jr is editor-in-chief of The American Spectator...
...But eighteen of the studies that the EPA claims to have reviewed found no health risk for ETS and three found ETS to be beneficial...
...The consequences have rarely been an improvement in American life, though companies have been bankrupted and workers have lost their jobs...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990 33...
...For years the anti-tobacco zealots F have argued that tobacco is highly addictive, thus a grave menace to innocent Americans...
...on the loose than at any time since the 1920s, the glory days of both the Ku Klux Klan and the Prohibitionists...
...Another of the specious claims being made by anti-tobacco fanatics is that by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...All of these begin on the fanaticisms putting the young people to smoke despite all agenda...
...Though by the world's standards America has always been a free society, it has been preyed upon by zealots from its incunabular days...
...probably is not, it is a much less serious manuscript I have just read...
...Using methodologically flawed "relapse" studies they claim that tobacco is more addictive than heroin...
...Instead they settle into an area relatively remote from the citizenry's daily concern, for instance the area of laboratory animal rights activists, opponents of Western curricula in universities, and food crusaders...
...It deals coolly, analytically, and at times quite brilliantly with one of the growing number of groups achieving veto power over those aspects of our lives where they consider themselves experts...
...With increasing frequency science has been politicized, and scientists have been diverted from the unfettered pursuit of truth by boycotting zealots, government agencies enthralled to special interests, grant programs with an agenda shaped by the half-baked zealots of the moment rather than the curiosity or informed speculations of scientists...
...The claims are hair-raising...
...The manuscript that I have just read makes it clear that the cost of smoking to American society is a clear wash...
...And they come down relentlessly on particular substances in the environment about which Americans care very little, for instance, asbestos, alar, styrofoam, tobacco...
...Edward Kennedy, for instance, has a bill before Congress to create a federal institute aimed solely at eliminating tobacco smoking which would cost the taxpayer over $100 million...
...environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) emanating from a nearby smoker is dangerous to non-smoking healthy adults...
...A recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is notably misleading...
...But today's Bill of Rights-burners rarely stake out an issue broadly affecting the citizenry in the way Prohibition broadly affected the citizenry...
...Moreover, the movement has distorted national health priorities by directing funds away from more pressing health hazards, for instance AIDS research...
...It claims to have reviewed twenty-four ETS studies and concludes that 3,000 or more lung-cancer deaths result from ETS annually...
...New precedents in intolerance have been set...
...He argues that the movement threatens free speech and privacy...
...Some of our fanatics have pursued worthy causes such as abolition...
...Of course the ex-smoker is more likely to relapse than the ex-heroin user...
...The heroin user can be locked up and there can be other immediate costs, for instance an overdose...
...The costs of going back to using heroin are much graver than going back to tobacco...
...He argues convincingly that the movement embraces fanatics willing to follow the same road 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990 to violence as certain animal rights ac- the zealots' claims to the contrary...
...But I read of them in the New York Times, so say no more...
...Free scientific inquiry has been one of the Republic's most valuable assets...
...My questivists have followed...
...Smokers as those in the animal rights movement ion: for instance, there is no evidence ing a fairly trivial issue to the level of may be hurting themselves, but they are be published...
...The movement indoor air pollution problem than many tion is when will it be published, and has intimidated government agencies others...
...In fact there is no consensus among members of the scientific community as to the deleteriousness of ETS...
...Some claim that it is more dangerous to non-smokers than smoke inhaled directly from a cigarette...
...It has allowed advances in vast areas of life...
...The manuscript that I have just read may never be published by a major publishing house because it takes issue with a very influential group of zealots, those of the anti-tobacco movement, specifically the American Lung Association...
...If they did it would be much easier to muster a majority against them...
...I know, I know, those last three surprised me too...
...Yet here, my author makes clear, the comparison is faulty...
Vol. 23 • July 1990 • No. 7
