Hello Marshal,

Here is the original draft of the message that I sent out to several local newspapers. The part about asking them if they had the guts to print it was actually a note to "The Editor" which I had tacked on (as I am doing here). They just decided to print that as well, I guess.

Following the piece that I wrote, is the study done by Rosalind B. Marimont, and following that, is a little piece explaining her credentials.

Lyle Empson

510 Garden Street

Gananoque, Ont.

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The Hysteria Over Smoking.

Let me start by saying that I am a 75 year old man that has nothing to gain by trying to promote smoking. I am neither anti smoking or pro smoking. I am a moderate smoker however (1 pack or less per day), and since I started smoking around the age of 10, I have calculated, that I have smoked in excess of 700,000 cigarettes since I first started. I have none of the problems generally associated with smoking and I am not on medication of any kind.

It has been my own experience that has prompted me to keep an open mind, and think back, to try to correlate these horror stories about smoking, with the many people that I have known in the past. Even though most of my acquaintances were smokers, I was not able to relate one single incident to any of them, since they all died in their 80's. To further confuse the issue, the non smokers I knew, died at a relatively early age of heart related diseases. I never knew anyone that died of lung cancer. Those that I know, born in the mid 1920's, and are still alive, are smokers.

This strengthened my belief, that the anti smoking groups were piling it on a little thick when it came to all these deaths and sicknesses caused by smoking. So I decided to use the computer and the internet to do a little research on studies that the anti smoking groups point to for supporting their arguments. What I was able to find out was astonishing and supports what I have suspected all along.

It seems the whole population, US and Canada has been brain washed to the point that they are incapable of taking an unbiased look at these bogus claims by the anti smokers.

Our governments too seem to have seized on the populations anti smoking frenzy, to bring in millions of extra tax dollars by tacking outrageous taxes on those of us who enjoy a smoke, on the grounds that they want to protect our kids. What a sweetheart deal for them.

Beginning in the early 1950's, the American Cancer Society started to wage war against smoking. Later, the government took up the cudgel and, today, there is a US government agency, the Office of Smoking and Health dedicated to stamping out smoking. Unfortunately the government propaganda is often predicated upon assertions which are simply untrue.

In many instances, these are examples of the "LaLonde effect". Marc LaLonde was formerly the Canadian Minister of National Health and Welfare. He argued that health messages should be "loud, clear and unequivocal" even if unsupported by scientific evidence.

Hal Roach, the producer of the "Little Rascals" movies, was a heavy, 3or 4 pack-per-day cigarette smoker for his entire life, but died recently, at the age of 101, apparently from simple old age. A former governor of Virginia died recently of lung cancer; he was in his 50's and had never smoked. Not too long ago, CNN showed a picture of a Lebanese gentleman, who claims to be 134 years old. He was vigorously puffing on a cigarette. The world's oldest woman, a 125 year old resident of France, smoked until she was 123.

When we examine the program of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us...I will offer here a sound maxim...that we can't reach old age by another man's road...

Before leaving this subject, however, not too long ago, (04/19/95) a letter to the editor of the San Jose, Ca., Mercury News sheds some light on the methods used by the anti-smoking lobby to generate false reports of "smoking related" deaths. The author of the letter, Mary Ellen Haley, reported that a loved one died of adenocarcinoma. The letter writer was provided with the information for the death certificate, which she took to the attending physician for completion.

On the death certificate there was a line for the doctor to insert the immediate cause of death, and then three lines for "due to". The doctor inserted "cigarette smoking" under "due to". The letter writer questioned the doctor. Was he sure the tumor was caused by cigarette smoking? The doctor said he wasn't sure about that, but there were guidelines issued by the American Cancer Society that when a person dies of certain conditions and has smoked, the doctor is instructed to list the "due to" as "smoking".

The usual willingness of the medical profession to blindly observe "guidelines" issued by the Cancer Society, which generates a continuous stream of death certificates, validating the official line that cigarette smoking causes everything from heart disease to uterine cancer' yet there is no shred of scientific evidence to validate any of the certificates; they are based on nothing more than official instructions to put down smoking as the cause of death.

When I began researching the subject however, I found that, like the myth about smoker's lungs turning brown from cigarette tars, the "thousands and thousands of studies done to show that smoking was bad, was also a myth.

There were thousands of animal studies (if you consider each animal studied to be a "study"), in which researchers tried to induce lung cancer and other diseases in rats, rabbits, mice, monkeys, dogs, etc., by forcing the animals to smoke. But these studies all failed; no diseases were ever induced. The general populations belief is however, that they did succeed, and this is what the anti smokers want them to believe.

In the late 1950's, the lung cancer societies in England and the U.S. conducted seven epidemiological studies, which purported to establish a statistical correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. (there are reports pointing out the discrepancies in this study as well) Strangely, however, the same studies showed no such correlation between cigar/pipe smoking and either lung cancer or morbidity. In fact, the studies actually showed that pipe smokers live longer than people who don't smoke at all.

Correlation, of course, does not prove causation. My point here, however, is simply that virtually everything written about the dangers of smoking is predicated on these seven ancient studies. There have been a few new studies, e.g., Wynder's study of smoking in the U.S. and Japan, and they prove my point, i.e., that Japanese smoke more than Americans but live longer and have far less lung cancer!

It's not just in Japan that smoking rates are high, yet life expectancies are long and lung cancer rates are much lower than ours! The same is true of Israel, Greece, Spain, South Korea and even China as well as many other countries. But don't expect the anti smokers to tell you about this.

I think that one can say with a good amount of certainty that lung cancer in Japan is not caused by smoking because the percentage of smokers in Japan is almost double that of the US while their incidence of lung cancer is about one third that of the US. It couldn't possibly be that low if smoking was the cause.

I challenge anyone out there who may read this (and are in their seventies) to put their prejudices aside and think back to the time when it was not unusual to have three or more men smoking in any one household (especially in the winter time) where you could cut the smoke with a knife, yet the women and kids (who usually didn't smoke) as well as the smokers themselves, went on to live long and productive lives.

I am not suggesting that we should return to those kind of conditions, but the people who lived through them, went on to live to a ripe old age. The very fact that they did, rules out any problems from smoking or second hand smoke.

Some of what I have included here is from the research done by Lauren A. Colby. He is a US trial lawyer, and a pipe smoker.

If space allowed, I could point out so much more that shows the ridiculousness of the anti smoking arguments.

Finally, I have found that just about everything put forth by the anti smokers is riddled with inaccuracies but I realize that it's highly unlikely that this or any other scrutiny of the fallacious studies they rely on will ever persuade them to take a closer look. Like members of a religious cult who's own parents can not convince them that what they are doing is wrong. They will brush aside anything that doesn't support what they have been brain washed to believe.

Consider the following:

* America has the highest infant mortality rate in the industrialized world

* American Children have as many as 5 heart-disease risk factors by the time they reach kindergarten

* Heart Disease used to be the #1 cause of death in America but according to recent reports it has been replaced by "DOCTOR RELATED DEATHS: Wrong prescription; Wrong diagnosis; Wrong treatment; Wrong surgery, Post-surgery complications, etc.).

Lets get back to the real world. You have a better chance of being killed by your Doctor than from smoking or second hand smoke.

Lyle Empsom

Gananoque, Ont.

Bulletin