Not 1 Death or Sickness

elow is English Translation of the Explanation/Statement by Dr. Simoncini, MD, Head of FORCES Italiana To understand it fully, one does not have to be a physician. All the diseases attributed to smoking are also present in non smokers. It means, in other words, that they are multifactorial, that is, the result of the interaction of tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of factors, either known or suspected contributors – of which smoking can be one. Now, follow this: if I have 2 factors, the way they can possibly combine is 22 – 1 = 3; three factors, 23 – 1 = 7; ten factors, 210 – 1 = 1,023. Among the factors are genetic makeup, environment, diet, amount of tobacco in function of the specific health condition of that life period, stress, and so on, and so on. Cardiovascular disease has over 300 known factors interacting; lung cancer over 40. Never mind calculating 2 300 – 1! Now, to sort them out, there is a primitive tool that really works poorly, called multifactorial epidemiology; its job is to try to isolate the cause, which is impossible.

Since the antis are stating with great certainty that primary smoke "causes," or passive smoke "causes"… The question asks, simply, to find one human being where tobacco can be proven to be the sole cause (etios) of his/her disease (pathos; etiopathology = the cause of the disease), that is, to be sure that tobacco did it. Monocausality is the only way to be sure. Since the only possible answer is "no," the question that follows is: "Then, if you cannot even prove your claims for ONE among the millions you claim die (or are sick) from smoking, how can you be sure that tobacco does it?".

The con work of the antismokers is on the ignorance of people. Epidemiology has defeated many diseases: small pox, TB (almost) etc, and it has helped to keep track of stuff like Ebola and AIDS. But those diseases are MONOFACTORIAL: one cause, one effect. People do not know that ALL "tobacco-related diseases" are multifactorial in the extreme, and believe that the same epidemiology that has worked for small pox is at work for smoking. This is not to say that smoking does not cause disease: it probably does; we just cannot say how much. It follows that all the figures we hear are fantasy and wild guess game, right?

True, medicine cannot be an exact science – and no one expects it to be. But, given the size of the claims, one would expect that one case in, say, 10 millions could be certified simply by random chance! But it is not so, and if you really think about the little formula above, you can see why. Imagine a roulette with 300 numbers: what are your chances to hit the zero? (try asthma: thousands of continuously changing co-factors, and they blame passive smoke!) That is why the porno-pictures you see on your packs are real, but the chance that that stroke you see in the picture, for example, is actually caused by smoking are infinitesimal – although, technically, the possibility that it is due to smoking is real.

And this is for DIRECT smoking; in passive smoke, well, the possibility of isolating a monofactorial etipathology is probably one in more than all the stars in the cosmos, which are more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth.

I hope I have been exhaustive enough. If there are further questions, do not hesitate to ask; if I don’t have the answer, I will find it; and if there is no answer, differently than the antismokers, I’ll say that "I don’t know!"