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"Slow Burn" is a highly personal but thoroughly documented journey by the author, Don Oakley, to find out the truth behind the supposed medical facts undergirding the nation's three-decades-long crusade against smoking. He begins with a searching critique of the 1964 surgeon general's report, which set the crusade into motion, and details the reservations of the surgeon general's advisory committee regarding the seven weak studies which formed the basis for the famous warning that "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficent importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action." It was that "action"--or, more accurately, actions--flowing from the report over the past three decades that persuaded the author, a retired newspaper editorial writer, to undertake his book. A smoker in good health for 53 years, he was appalled at the hysteria infecting America as a result of an endless series of assaults against smoking and 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--and especially the misuses--of statistics. The book examines the most important studies into smoking since the 1964 report and reveals that many if not most of them are fatally flawed by deep antismoking bias on the part of researchers who are supported by abundant antismoking grant money, much of it extorted from smokers themselves. At the same time he reports on numerous studies exonerating smoking that the public has never heard about. The book is also infused with great humor as the author pokes fun at some of the more ludicrous claims and almost superstitious beliefs surrounding smoking, beliefs that unfortunately are entertained by many in the medical establishment as well as by the lay public. "Slow Burn" is, however, an utterly serious work. Oakley realizes that any attempt by a nonscientist to challenge "what everybody knows" about smoking will be greeted with widespread disbelief. But as he asks in Chapter 2, even if everything said about smoking is true, is what 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 to ostracize and discriminate against a quarter of the population, to villainize an industry and applaud its plundering by state attorneys general and the plaintiffs' bar and, above all, to countenance thie prostitution of science and the corruption of the nation's legal system--all in the politically correct cause of a "smoke-free" society. Because of this, in a daring and provocative conclusion, Oakley states that "The 1964 Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service is one of the most insidiously harmful documents ever foisted upon a gullible public." "Slow Burn" is not written primarily for smokers (although they have been taken in by the Great American antismoking scam along with everyone else). Nonsmokers who value both truth and fairness will find the book an eyeopener and an alarm-bell warning about what the excesses of the antismoking crusade could ultimately cost them in terms of diminished personal freedom and responsibility. |
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