IRONY ALERT:
You dismiss
wikkipedia (Wikipedia) then you cite it...make up your tiny little mind...
Let's delve into one of those 'left wing rags for references'
PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker
Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000. On March 9, 2001, he wrote a column for the website headlined “secondhand smokescreen.” The piece attacked a study by researcher Stephen Hecht, who found that women living with smokers had higher levels of chemicals associated with risk of lung cancer. “If spin were science, Hecht would win a Nobel Prize,” Milloy wrote. For good measure, he heaped scorn on a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency report that also linked health risks and secondhand smoke.
Later that spring, he authored another smoking-related piece for FoxNews.com. In that one, he cast aside two decades of research on the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke and concluded, “Secondhand smoke is annoying to many nonsmokers. That is the essence of the controversy and where the debate should lie—the rights of smokers to smoke in public places versus the rights of nonsmokers to be free of tobacco smoke.” You might chalk it up to Milloy’s contrarian nature. Or to his libertarian tendencies.
Except, all the while, he was on the payroll of big tobacco. According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. “In 2000 and 2001, some of the work he did was to monitor studies, and then we would distribute this information within to our different companies,” Gonzalez said. Although she couldn’t comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001. Asked about Milloy’s tobacco ties, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.” Milloy could not be reached for comment.
Yet it’s all in the public record. The University of California at San Francisco maintains a database of seven million tobacco industry documents made public as part of the 1998 settlement between tobacco companies and state attorneys general. According to those documents, Milloy’s relationship to big tobacco goes back at least to March 1997, when he took over as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (tassc), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris and p.r. firm apco Associates “to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states.” (Fumento was on the organization’s advisory board.)
Under Milloy, tassc sought to debunk a range of scientific theories that ran counter to the conservative viewpoint, from the dangers of breast implants to the need for stricter clean air standards. Philip Morris remained heavily invested in these efforts. A 1997 Philip Morris budget report includes a line item granting tassc $200,000. As executive director, Milloy also reached out to other allies within the industry. For instance, in September 1997, he sent a letter to Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation soliciting $50,000: “The grant will be used to further tassc’s efforts to educate the public, media and policymakers on priorities in public health,” he wrote.
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition is now defunct. But one of Milloy’s nonprofits has the same acronym and a remarkably similar name: The Advancement of Sound Science Center. His Free Enterprise Action Institute also has tobacco links, with Thomas Borelli—a longtime Philip Morris executive—serving as its secretary.
It has become increasingly hard to defend tobacco or attack smoking studies, which is probably why Milloy’s more recent targets have included climate scientists like Mann. “Tobacco has lost most of these battles, but there is still opportunity to spread doubt about global warming,” says David Michaels, the chair of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University. Corporations with a stake in the global warming debate have been distributing their funds accordingly: Of the $3,056,783 raised in 2003 by the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (where Milloy is an unpaid adjunct analyst), $465,000 came from ExxonMobil. Milloy and Borelli’s latest enterprise is a mutual fund that seeks to counter pressure from environmental activists promoting corporate social responsibility.
Fox News canÂ’t be expected to dig through the tobacco legacy documents every time one of its columnists writes about smoking issues. But, as far as Milloy, Fox News should be judged the same way tobacco companies were during their trials: What did they know, and when did they know it?
Fox News has certainly known since last spring that money from ExxonMobil was going to MilloyÂ’s home-based charities. Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators.
wikkipedia is as good as the person who wrote that particular page on it. You know this as well as I do. And your link goes to a intenet archive database.. From 2006 matter of fact.
Since you favor wikkipedia lets see what they say about The New Republic site your archived story is from...
The New Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Domestically, the current version of TNR supports a largely neo-liberal stance on fiscal and social issues. Recently departed editor Franklin Foer describes the magazine overall as such, stating that TNR "invented the modern usage of the term liberal, and itÂ’s one of our historical legacies and obligations to be involved in the ongoing debate over what exactly liberalism means and stands for."
WOW, look at that... And just like I said wikkipedia's accuracy depends mostly on who wrote seeing as its community maintained... So do you agree with their take on your stories source or not? I do...
As I said liberal rags.... Now show me where it says in that liberal rag you cited,
"Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death." Those were your words... How about the part where you claimed he denied smokings link to cancer? He disagreed with the studies linking second-hand smoke to an increased cancer rate... Now again lets try a little honesty here ...
"Milloy blames smokers for their illness and death."
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and have less healthy lifestyles overall. (CNS News 8/1)
Steve Milloy denies coal plant pollution kills people
MILLOY: Show us the bodies, EPA
Green agency uses phony death statistics to justify job-killing rules
To paraphrase cinematic sports agent Jerry McGuire, “Show me the bodies.”
While that may sound harsh, given that the EPA is about to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost our crippled economy countless billions of dollars, Republicans must demand some sort of proof that the alleged harms are indeed happening.
The EPA says air pollution kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is on a par with traffic accident fatalities. While we can identify traffic accident victims, air pollution victims are unknown, unidentified and as far as anyone can tell, figments of EPAÂ’s statistical imagination.
May 10, 2011
The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman Emeritus
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Barton:
As doctors and on behalf of the organizations we represent, we write today to provide you with information regarding the wealth of peer-reviewed research that establishes a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.
During the Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on April 15th you expressed pollution, in particular mercury and particulate matter, does not cause health impacts. Further, you stated that that there was no science to back up the health benefits that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects to achieve as air toxics from power plants are reduced and that the impacted by lung, cardiovascular and neurological impairments, we were shocked at such statements.
We are doctors and we see in the patients we treat what that the scientific literature lets us know to expect: that air pollution makes people sick and cuts lives short.
The health impacts of short-term exposure (over hours to days) of particulate matter were found to include: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; increased risk of cardiovascular harm, including acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and congestive heart failure, especially among the elderly and in people with cardiovascular disease; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including strokes; hospitalization for asthma among children; and aggravated asthma attacks in children.
Exposure to year-round particle pollution has also been found to cause premature death and cardiovascular harm, especially greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
Particulate matter is considered likely to increase the risk of hospitalization for asthma attacks in children; stunt lung function growth in children and teenagers; damage the small airways of the lungs; increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes in older women; increased risk of dying from lung cancer; and. Evidence links long-term exposures to adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes such as low birth weight and
infant mortality.
During the hearing, you also stipulated that mercury is a poison and pollutant, a statement with which we concur. Given this, we fail to understand your subsequent statement that mercury does not pose a health threat. Mercury and other air toxics have serious health effects that compel EPA to act. Some toxic air pollutants, such as lead, mercury, and dioxins degrade slowly or not at all. These pollutants bioaccumulate in humans and other animals at the top of the food chain. Children can be exposed to toxic air pollutants through contaminated air, water, soil, and food.
Mercury is one example of a persistent pollutant emitted into ambient air that leads to exposure through another route: organisms metabolized mercury into methylmercury, a developmental neurotoxicant that poses a significant hazard for children. The developing fetus and young children are thought to be disproportionately affected by methylmercury exposure, because many aspects of development, particularly brain maturation, can be disturbed by the presence of methylmercury. Minimizing mercury exposure is, therefore, essential to optimal child health.
Industrial emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants, are the leading source of environmental mercury. Although the levels of ambient mercury may not be hazardous, mercury deposits into soil and surface waters and ultimately accumulates in fish. Because fish may contain large amounts of mercury, children and pregnant women can have significant exposure if they consume excessive amounts of fish.
...
Sincerely,
O. Marion Burton, MD, FAAP
President
American Academy of Pediatrics
Albert A. Rizzo, MD
Chair-elect
American Lung Association
Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP (E)
Executive Director
American Public Health Association
Dean E. Schraufnagel, MD
President
American Thoracic Society
Bill McLin, M Ed.
President and CEO
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America
Peter Wilk, MD
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
. Actually, once up on a time, “cap-and-trade” was…wait for it…a conservative Republican idea! That’s right, let’s head to the “way back machine” and briefly review the Political History of Cap and Trade.
