Slow Burn: The Great American Antismoking Scam (And Why It Will Fail) Review

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(More customer reviews)Though written in a conversational and highly accessible tone, this exhaustively-researched book exposes the wildly misleading conclusions drawn by the anti-tobacco fanatics, based on their junk science "studies" and other misinformation. One of the book's most useful revelations is that the "400,000 deaths from tobacco per year" factoid, which "everybody know is true," did not come from medical records or post-mortem examinations, but is rather a statistical projection that resides in a computer! It is no better and no worse than the assumptions upon which it is based, but any statistician can tell you that mere correlations do not prove causality. (For example, the fact that more people die in hospitals than anywhere else does not "prove" that hospitals are the leading "cause" of death!) I am a lifelong non-smoker, but when I hear the anti-tobacco nuts raving, I don't mind telling you that I feel personally threatened. Whose life is it, anyway? I'd like to tell them to keep their damned hands off MY health! For those who feel as I do, this book is a must.

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"Slow Burn" is a highly personal but thoroughlydocumented journey by the author, Don Oakley, to find out the truthbehind the supposed medical facts undergirding the nation'sthree-decades-long crusade against smoking.He begins with a searching critique of the 1964 surgeon general'sreport, which set the crusade into motion, and details thereservations of the surgeon general's advisory committee regarding theseven weak studies which formed the basis for the famous warning that"Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficent importance in theUnited States to warrant appropriate remedial action."It was that "action"--or, more accurately, actions--flowing from thereport over the past three decades that persuaded the author, aretired newspaper editorial writer, to undertake his book. A smoker ingood health for 53 years, he was appalled at the hysteria infectingAmerica as a result of an endless series of assaults against smokingand those who choose to indulge in it.In the course of his research, Oakley acquired, and in "Slow Burn"gives the reader, a basic knowledge of epidemiology and the uses--andespecially the misuses--of statistics. The book examines the mostimportant studies into smoking since the 1964 report and reveals thatmany if not most of them are fatally flawed by deep antismoking biason the part of researchers who are supported by abundant antismokinggrant money, much of it extorted from smokers themselves. At the sametime he reports on numerous studies exonerating smoking that thepublic has never heard about.The book is also infused with great humor as the author pokes fun atsome of the more ludicrous claims and almost superstitious beliefssurrounding smoking, beliefs that unfortunately are entertained bymany in the medical establishment as well as by the lay public."Slow Burn" is, however, an utterly serious work. Oakley realizes thatany attempt by a nonscientist to challenge "what everybody knows"about smoking will be greeted with widespread disbelief. But as heasks in Chapter 2, even if everything said about smoking is true, iswhat we as a nation are doing on the basis of it wise and necessary?As detailed in subsequent chapters, what we HAVE done has been toostracize and discriminate against a quarter of the population, tovillainize an industry and applaud its plundering by state attorneysgeneral and the plaintiffs' bar and, above all, to countenance thieprostitution of science and the corruption of the nation's legalsystem--all in the politically correct cause of a "smoke-free"society.Because of this, in a daring and provocative conclusion, Oakley statesthat "The 1964 Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon Generalof the U.S. Public Health Service is one of the most insidiouslyharmful documents ever foisted upon a gullible public.""Slow Burn" is not written primarily for smokers (although they havebeen taken in by the Great American antismoking scam along witheveryone else). Nonsmokers who value both truth and fairness will findthe book an eyeopener and an alarm-bell warning about what theexcesses of the antismoking crusade could ultimately cost them interms of diminished personal freedom and responsibility.