In my previous post I discussed the incredibly effective doubt-generating campaign of the tobacco industry at a time when their corporate profits were jeopardized by the discovery that use of tobacco could cause cancer. The bottom line is that they denied and they lied, and people died and are still dying to this day.
The tobacco companies are experts at generating doubt in the mind of the public in spite of the fact that their own scientists confirm the results of scientific studies performed by others. They are also intelligent enough to realize that when a doubt-generating campaign fools the public into purchasing their deadly products, repeating the campaign in the face of new discoveries makes financial sense. They spend millions on their campaigns to add millions to their bottom line.
The Battle Over Second-Hand Smoke
In a 1986 report, the Surgeon General of the United States concluded that second-hand smoke could cause cancer in healthy non-smokers. I lived in a home where both parents smoked and my father died in 1989 of lung cancer at the age of 59. I remember finding out about the Surgeon Generals’ Report and remember thinking that even though I don’t smoke, I could get cancer because I was exposed to second hand smoke for 20 years. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that “there is no risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke even in small amounts.”
How would you characterize an industry that had knowledge that a new-found danger for years and never let the public know? Would you call that reckless? Would it be characterized as “evil?” Is it nothing more than a solid business practice? It has now been proven that tobacco industry scientists knew that second-hand smoke contained more toxic chemicals than mainstream smoke, and they knew this in the 1970’s. Evil indeed.
In 1980, before the Surgeon Generals’ Report was published, the New England Journal Of Medicine published a research paper showing that nonsmokers working in smoky offices had decreased lung function, as much as if they had been light smokers. The report chronicled the effects of a smoky workplace on twenty-one hundred subjects. Another study from Japan looked at 540 women whose husbands smoked. This study showed that the more the husbands smoked, the more the wives died of lung cancer. This was a 14 year study.
At this point the tobacco industry started fighting back. Soon a new study was out that claimed that the Japanese study was full of statistical errors. (Later proven to be a false claim) The Tobacco Institute convinced media outlets to present both “sides” of the story. The media, as is their habit, fell into the trap of believing that both sides deserved equal coverage in spite of the fact that they did not deserve equal weight. The new study was of course funded by the tobacco industry. Do you see a pattern here? The media, in its haste to appear “neutral”, gave both studies equal weight in their stories in spite of the fact that one study was a significant piece of scientific research and the other was an attack on the previous study and was funded by the very organizations that stood to lose the most. To this day, the media provides coverage for studies that carry very little scientific weight and validity. Welcome to “Doubt-Generation 101” a course in fooling the public and maintaining profit, brought to you by corporations who feed you addictive and deadly products.
At this point, the tobacco industry began to fight proposed actions to protect nonsmokers from ETS (environmental tobacco smoke). Today, just as in the realization that smoking causes cancer, the public has been convinced that second hand smoke can, and does do, the same thing. However, not all believe.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a smoker complain that they are not allowed to smoke in certain places they were used to smoking in. You have heard them. You might even be one that does the complaining. The complaint usually sounds like this: “No one is going to tell me that I can’t smoke where I want to! It is my body and I can chose to do as I please. If you don’t like my smoke, go ahead and leave.” Then there is also this one: “The government has no right to tell me what I can or can’t do. If I want to smoke it is none of their business!” I guess individual “liberty” trumps the well-being of the public. Pathetic.
Those words are spoken by those who are probably addicted to two things. One, they are addicted to cigarettes. Two they are addicted to fighting the cause of personal freedom at the expense of the health of others. Not a pretty picture is it? When you hear words such as these spoken, you can thank the tobacco industry for their doubt-generating campaign.
No one wants to believe that their child’s asthma is in any way related to the fact their child is being brought up in smoke-filled rooms. However, parents all over the world are doing just that. No man wants to believe that his wife died of lung cancer even though he was the one who smoked. No one wants to believe that among women who smoke, their lung cancer rate is higher if their husbands also smoked. No one wants to believe. Yet, the evidence is there and has been for years. It is not about belief, it is about evidence.
The methods used by the tobacco industry to fight second hand smoke legislation are the same as the ones used to fight their previous campaign against the science and scientists that definitively proved the deadly nature of their product. In fact, the individuals involved were basically the same. The same group of corporate CEO’s and corporate scientists (hired guns) were involved in both fights. They were effective campaigns, they denied the science, they lied and covered up their own science, they attacked legitimate science and scientists, and people died. Welcome to the world of corporate doubt-generation.
In my next post, I will discuss how the generation of doubt spread to other “scientific controversy”.
For a detailed study of the effectiveness of doubt-generating funds I would suggest that you pick up and read a copy of “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway. A great deal of the information presented in this post comes from this terrific work.
Notes From The Greenhouse 
I worked for over two decades in a coal-fired generation station. Back in the late seventies, I asked the chief engineer there how long we could get away with dumping all the oxides of carbon into the atmosphere, before the bill came due. “It’s a big atmosphere,” he assured me.
But viewed from space, it is a very thin envelope around the planet. We are releasing into this atmosphere carbon that has been sequestered for millions of years in the space of a few centuries. Somehow, people manage to persuade themselves that this won’t make a difference, and the various industries profiting from it cheer them on.
I wonder how much longer that will last.
Thank you for visiting my blog and commenting on the topic. With regard to people persuading themselves that it won’t make a difference, I will be presenting a lot of information on the blog that the reason people are persuaded is due to huge efforts on behalf of industry to protect their profit. When you get a chance, visit the blog again and sign up to “follow” the blog. Followers receive immediate notice of new posts. I will always welcome your opinion.