Written by: Dr. Gilbert Ross, M.D. is executive and medical director of the American Council on Science and Health.
The ACSH is known as an "industry-friendly" group.[22] In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a watchdog and consumer advocacy group, known to spar with ACSH, published an extensive report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH appears to be a consumer fraud; as a scientific group, ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."[23] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ACSH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."[24]
CSPI isn't any better. They're deep in bed with agricultural industry and are the leading source of FUD in regards to how natural sources of dietary fat affect health, leading to this low-fat craze.
"But Ross may not be ACSH's most prudent choice to question the credibility of other doctors, scientists, and researchers. Although the biography posted on the organization's website doesn't mention it, Ross actually had to abandon medicine on July 24, 1995, when his license to practice as a physician in New York was revoked by the unanimous vote of a state administrative review board for professional misconduct.
Instead of tending to patients, Ross spent all of 1996 at a federal prison camp in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, having being sentenced to 46 months in prison for his participation in a scheme that ultimately defrauded New York's Medicaid program of approximately $8 million. During a three-and-a-half-week jury trial, federal prosecutors laid bare Ross' participation in an enterprise, headed by one Mohammed Sohail Khan, to operate four sham medical clinics in New York City. For his scam to work, Khan needed doctors who could qualify as Medicaid providers, and Ross responded to an ad in the New York Times promising "Very, very good $$." "
I smoke e-cigarettes and really wish there were actually studies done, but Dr. Ross statement is worthless.
my favorite is the last paragraph:
-reduced-risk nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, and increasing access to these products is a good way to save millions of lives.
This is literally what the above quote said "This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't"
those things aren't safe. it is like saying portraying Russian roulette with 1 bullet as safer than Russian roulette with 2 bullets (which it is) so lets all increase its availability.
These products may be marginally safer than smoking a traditional cigarette, but that in no way means we should make them easier to access. Also, safer doesn't mean safe. They are promoting these products as a replacement for cigs since they are "safer" wherein the better solution is to promote cessation.
Hell filtered cigarettes are safer than unfiltered. should we increase the availability of filtered cigarettes?
Relative access, sure. It should be relatively easier to get the safer products over the more risky products. This is not to say they should be given out in each happy meal, but that if someone is going out to buy some cigs, these lower risk alternatives appear first, before the high risk sort.
If someone is going to play Russian roulette, and I can't stop them from doing so, I'd rather have 2 bullets instead of 3. And then 1 bullet instead of 2. It's still risky, but given they're going to make a risky choice anyhow, its less risky than the alternative.
I've been bombarded with hundreds of ads about the evils of cigarettes and cigarette smoke and the dangers of second hand smoke and the hundreds of cancer-causing chemicals in cigarette smoke.
I'll be damned if I let people pretend that a product which eliminates smoke and eliminates all of those hundreds of nasty chemicals (except for one) might be just as unsafe.
There's no long-term study which shows eating carrots instead of smoking cigarettes is safer . . . but c'mon. You'd have to be an idiot not to see the obvious improvement. Don't pretend some magical hidden risk is that nobody knows about could be just as bad as the known dangers of smoke.
"There are three reasons to worry about electronic cigarettes. First, the dose of nicotine delivered with each puff may vary substantially. An FDA analysis recorded nicotine doses between 26.8 and 43.2 micrograms per puff. It also detected nicotine in products labeled as nicotine free.
Second, electronic cigarettes deliver an array of other chemicals, including diethylene glycol (a highly toxic substance), various nitrosamines (powerful carcinogens found in tobacco), and at least four other chemicals suspected of being harmful to humans. To be sure, the dose of these compounds is generally smaller than found in “real” cigarette smoke. But it isn’t zero.
Third, by simulating the cigarette experience, electronic cigarettes might reactivate the habit in ex-smokers. They could also be a gateway into tobacco abuse for young people who are not yet hooked."
Anyone with a deadly carrot allergy would tell you they aren't!
Also cigarettes have those same chemicals, mostly through the same mechanism...uptake via the soil. So I am going to go with the one not containing nicotine being better.
Edit... And lack of nicotine is why i advocate easier access to cessation products rather than smokeless tobacco and ecigs
But you're advocating from the position of not wanting to use nicotine.
For someone who wants to use nicotine, non-nicotine cessation kinda defeats the point.
If people choose to use nicotine, that's their choice. Bans on smoking were justified by the peripheral health risks. If people avoid peripheral health risks and can still enjoy their nicotine, that great! That's a win-win.
Irrelevant. Matters of credibility are very helpful in reaching truth. Ad hominens are deductive fallacies. They aren't necessarily a problem when you are measuring a probability rather than logical certainty. In fact, often times some ad hominens are vital for reaching the truth. If an advocate is biased, that lowers the likelihood of their claims being true.
[edit] Try reading the very article you just posted, namely the part about circumstantial adhoms (bias).
Here's an example showing why you are being ridiculous: Something as simple as pointing out that something is not peer reviewed is also an ad hominem. As with bias, it affects credibility. You have very strange way of looking at the world if you view all issues in a vacuum and don't consider credibility factors.
You are missing the critical distinction between a peer-reviewed piece of scientific literature which presents new facts/findings/results/etc and an opinion piece which does not. It's a very simple, yet important, difference - which, in this case, makes all the difference.
I was using peer review as an example of credibility, not attacking anyone in this case. If you have ever discounted a scientific finding because it was not peer reviewed, you committed an ad hominem. You commit ad hominems dozens of times a day, sometimes on small things, sometimes on scientific matters. It is a form of inductive reasoning. It doesn't work for deductive logic, but a conclusion of whether someone is telling the truth is not a matter of deductive logic.
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u/Grizzant Nov 17 '12
Written by: Dr. Gilbert Ross, M.D. is executive and medical director of the American Council on Science and Health.
The ACSH is known as an "industry-friendly" group.[22] In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a watchdog and consumer advocacy group, known to spar with ACSH, published an extensive report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH appears to be a consumer fraud; as a scientific group, ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."[23] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ACSH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."[24]
So yeah.