WHO report "Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer "

Because the U.K.'s Telegraph recently removed this official report, CTA has retained a copy on our website for your analysis.

Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official

March 31, 2004
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent

THE world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.

The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.

Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.

The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.

Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers.

The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood."

A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of diseases." Roy Castle, the jazz musician and television presenter who died from lung cancer in 1994, claimed that he contracted the disease from years of inhaling smoke while performing in pubs and clubs.

A report published in the British Medical Journal last October was hailed by the anti-tobacco lobby as definitive proof when it claimed that non-smokers living with smokers had a 25 per cent risk of developing lung cancer. But yesterday, Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all. "It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk." The WHO study results come at a time when the British Government has made clear its intention to crack down on smoking in thousands of public places, including bars and restaurants.

The Government's own Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health is also expected to report shortly - possibly in time for this Wednesday's National No Smoking day - on the hazards of passive smoking.

This report is obviously quite damaging to the "secondhand smoke is a deadly hazard" argument proliferated by the pharmaceutical industry (Nicoderm) funded smoking ban activists; which explains the reason, after years of this story being in the public domain, it was suddenly and inexplicably removed.
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Tobacco treaty signers close to adopting measure

By Vinnee Tong
November 21, 2008

NEW YORK—Anti-tobacco activists said Friday that 160 countries that have signed a treaty to curb tobacco use were on the verge of adopting guidelines that say tobacco sellers' interests conflict with public health.

Representatives of the countries met this week in Durban, South Africa, to determine what role, if any, tobacco companies will take in the implementation of a treaty to prevent or slow tobacco consumption around the world. It was the third such meeting on enforcement of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, organized under the World Health Organization.

A Boston-based corporate watchdog group said Friday that the countries had agreed in principle to how the guidelines would be worded and would vote on them Saturday.

Kathy Mulvey, policy director at Corporate Accountability International, said that earlier opposition from China and Japan -- which both have a stake in tobacco companies -- had dissolved. The section of the treaty in question says, in part, that countries should protect their public health policies from "commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry."

"They provide a roadmap for countries to resist interference by Big Tobacco," Mulvey said after the meeting wrapped up on Friday.

Mulvey said the treaty's Article 5.3 establishes that there is "a fundamental conflict of interest between the tobacco industry's interest and public health." Tobacco sellers shouldn't be considered a stakeholder in terms of public health and shouldn't be making legislative proposals on public health, Mulvey said.

"I think the expertise of companies like ours is important, and we should have a role to play in regulatory issues," Philip Morris http://finance.boston.com/boston?Page=QUOTE&Ticker=MO>  International Inc. spokesman Mike Pfeil said. He suggested the industry could be particularly helpful in areas such as stopping illicit trade, on fiscal policy and product regulation.

In the U.S., Congress may consider a bill next year that gives the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the tobacco industry. No other government agency has had such sweeping oversight.
Altria Group Inc., which until March owned Philip Morris International, has been a leading supporter of the FDA bill.

The global tobacco prevention treaty is designed to reduce the harm associated with tobacco use. The Bush administration has signed it but did not sent it to Congress for ratification, which is required for full participation. Corporate Accountability International spokeswoman Sara Joseph said President-elect Barack Obama had urged the Bush administration to send it to the Senate for a vote in 2005.

Activists said tobacco prevention efforts abroad were being stymied by interference from state-owned tobacco companies in Japan and China as well as the major public companies that sell cigarettes around the world. Philip Morris International, the largest non-governmental cigarette maker in the world, has a partnership with the state-owned China National Tobacco Corp.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been a prominent supporter of tobacco prevention. And his efforts got a boost in July, when Bill Gates pledged additional financial support. Together they have given $375 million to a global effort to cut smoking, $250 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and $125 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The money will be used on efforts to raise tobacco taxes, help smokers quit, ban tobacco advertising and protect nonsmokers from exposure to smoke. It will also aid efforts to track tobacco use and better understand tobacco control strategies.

At the time of the announcement, Gates said Africa was an area of particular interest.

"The epidemic in Africa is not well advanced, and that means that we can catch it at an early stage," he said at an event in New York.
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Read More:  WHO FCTC Page 1