Anne Landman's Collection
Elvis Lives.
Abstract
In 1992 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completed its risk assessment, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders." The report said that widespread exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke in the United States presented a serious and substantial public health impact. More specifically, EPA concluded that secondhand smoke (also known as environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS) is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in U.S. nonsmokers.
The U.S. tobacco industry fought the EPA's risk assessment in part by trying to discredit the EPA's report. This document is one of a series of ads proposed by the ad firm Young & Rubicam for the tobacco industry to help stop people from believing EPA's risk assessment.
The ad says the EPA's Risk Assessment on secondhand smoke is as believable as someone saying that Elvis Presely didn't die, but was abducted by space aliens.
The ad was part of a much larger presentation Y & R prepared for the industry in 1993 called "ETS Issue Language Exploratory." (A Doc-Alert posting on Y& R's "ETS Language Exploratory is at http://tobaccodocuments.org/landman/2501342686-2697.html) The purpose of the "ETS Issue Language Exploratory" was to develop terminology that industry supporters could use in public discussions about secondhand smoke that would "Help [the industry] forestall further smoking bans and restrictions in public/work places." Y&R suggested using terms like "indirect smoke" and "incidental smoke" to describe tobacco smoke pollution. Y& R repeatecly uses the term "incidental smoke" is its Elvis ad.
The entire 64-page "ETS Issue Language Exploratory" document can be seen at http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zjc81f00
Fields
- Quotes
You've no doubt heard the rumors or read the reports that, somewhere, Elvis Presley is alive and well.
But, of course, while these reports are good for a chuckle, you're not going to believe them. Unless you see Elvis with your very own eyes. In person. Or, at the very least, on the Eleven O'clock News.
In other words, unless you have information you can rely on.
If you apply the same test to the recent EPA report about incidental tobacco smoke, you have to come away with the same conclusion.
Because, incredible as it may seem, when the EPA declared that incidental smoke is harmful to nonsmokers, they did so based on research so flawed that one scientist calls it "rotten science." Others call it data manipulation.
What they did was gather disparate studies on the subject of incidental smoke. When they found that most of those studies did not support their position, they simply discarded them [Note: this last section was lined out by hand.]
Then they abandoned regular scientific procedures and blew out of proportion the conclusions of the remaining few studies. [Note: the words "remaining few" are lined out by hand.]
And then they said the sky is falling.
Unfortunately, there's nothing funny about this.
Since over one-quarter of us smoke, and many other may occasionally be exposed to incidental smoke, the American people must have a right to demand that the EPA back up their assertions with research that adheres to accepted scientific methods.
In other words, reliable information, not data manipulation.
Until then, you can file the EPA report right next to the one that says, "the King was abducted by space aliens and is now rockin' and shakin' for folks in another galaxy."
- Region
- United States
- Named Organization
- Eleven Oclock News
- *EPA ( use United States Environmental Protection Agency)
- Named Person
- Presley, Elvis
- Litigation
- Stmn/Produced
- Type
- ADCO, ADVERTISING COPY
- PHOT, PHOTOGRAPH
- Subject
- secondhand smoke strategy (Corporate strategy to deal with ETS issue)
- secondhand smoke
Document Images
