A Few Things Ill Considered

Whores to Industry

Posted by coby on October 28, 2008
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Over at DesmogBlog, I saw an interesting video that covers some of the history of climate change denialism, starting with its roots in tobacco-lung cancer denialism.

Interesting how some of the names are so familiar, such as Steve Milloy and Myron Ebel.

Is “sociopathic whore to industry” too strong a term for those characters? Real people die as a direct result of their actions, and it is next to impossible to believe that they don’t know full well of exactly that consequence.

A name missing from that list with Milloy and Ebel is Fred Singer, also very active in the tobacco propoganda wars. Something tells me he is just a senile crackpot though, but personal motives are very hard to divine without personal aquaintance.

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Comments

  1. #1 timwells
    October 28, 2008

    Careful Coby,your ideology is showing.
    “Real people die as a direct result of their actions”
    This is a rediculous statement if I have ever heard one.No one force-feeds cigarettes to anyone,and the evidence that smoking cause fatal disease has not deterred hundreds of millions of westerners from lighting up.

  2. #2 coby
    October 29, 2008

    I am not an advocate of removing personal responsibility for one’s own actions at all, however when you have been lied to about the dangers, and in a calculating manner, then there is room to blame others as well.

    The fact is that smoking related deaths have gone down dramatically in countries where controls are in place and people like Steve Milloy accept money to lie in a direct effort to prevent controls and information from reaching the public. The better they do their job, the more people die. I don’t think there is any way around that set of facts.

  3. #3 Kiwiiano
    October 29, 2008

    < "Real people die as a direct result of their actions"
    This is a rediculous statement if I have ever heard one.No one force-feeds cigarettes to anyone....>
    They don’t have to, the just had to carefully adjust the nicotine content to get the smokers hooked on the fiercely addictive drug. It’s more addictive that heroine, in fact medical researchers observed from changes in their brains that young teenagers are trapped with as few as 2-3 cigarettes. Ask anyone who’s tried to give up smoking, it’s agony and the Baccy Barons damn well knew it.

  4. #4 Sven T�rpe
    November 3, 2008

    Kiwiiano, you got the wording wrong. You have to call it “manipulation” as demonstrated here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2008-releases/cigarette-menthol-manipulated-to-recruit-youths.html. Adjustments is what Apple does to the iPod to lure young people into lifelong addiction. If evil tobacco does it, however, it is manipulation.

    Frankly, after reading that strange press release I am no longer sure who it is that learned his propaganda lessons.

    Oh and by the way, do not believe the Allen Carr nonsense on smoking. It has been carefully designed to addict people to his books. Nicotine, as a drug, is pretty harmless, and it is not that hard to get off of it. Smoking is really more of a habit, or a set of habits. People can change them, but as with any habit, it isn’t easy but possible. It’s usually a matter of motivation, which is where Carr attacks.

  5. #5 Vo Reason
    November 8, 2008

    Regarding your advice on how to to rebut AGW deniers, why is it necessary to assume that they all are fools? I won’t wait around for your answer because no doubt it will be an insult. FYI, historically less people die during periods of global warming. Pick your poison, starvation or Malaria.

  6. #6 spammer
    March 30, 2011

    [spam]

  7. #7 Wow
    March 30, 2011

    This spamlink has been appearing on deltoid too.

    God knows what they’re expecting to get from it because there’s nobody dumb enough to click on this obvious piece of spamlink.

    PS on
    “why is it necessary to assume that they all are fools?”

    a) for the same reason you should assume a spider has 8 legs?

    b) note they’re still not dumb enough to click on the spamlink