Madam, - Dr Will Fennell, president of the Irish Heart Foundation, writes (December 19th): "Passive smoking is internationally accepted as a class one cancer-causing carcinogen. It also contributes to cardiovascular disease and has serious implications for all our citizens who suffer from respiratory ailments such as asthma".
Obviously Dr Fennell has not read the research report published in the British Medical Journal in May 2003 by Enstrom, J. & Kabat, G. entitled "ETS and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians 1960-1998". (Or if he has, he has chosen to ignore it.)
This project was the largest and most comprehensive ever undertaken into environmental tobacco smoke, spanning almost 40 years and covering 35,561 spouses/partners of smokers. It has unimpeachable academic credentials and was not funded by the tobacco industry. The authors concluded: "The results do not support a causal relation between ETS and tobacco-related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to ETS and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker then generally believed."
Clearly this evidence has been ignored by the health police and their cohorts in the current hysteria about ETS which has been manufactured by our esteemed Minister for Health and his fellow travellers in the health police industry.
Organisations such as the Irish Heart Foundation and the Irish Cancer Society, which have been at the forefront of the current political campaign to ban smoking from workplaces, have clearly stepped outside their brief as charities in becoming involved in politics of this nature. Their status as charitable organisations must now be open to question and a strong case can be made for the Regulator of Charities to investigate their status as charities, given their involvement in a political campaign such as this. - Yours, etc.,
TIM DUNNE, Beechwood Close, Bagenalstown, Co Carlow.