Laigle’s Forum

by Don Hank

 No, actually no such study has made headlines lately. But there is a new study on pot that mediocre students will love.

According to UAB News, Associate professor Stefan Kertesz of the University of Alabama has discovered, in a longitudinal study of over 5000 marijuana smokers aged 18-30 years, that “marijuana smoke is not as damaging to lungs as cigarette smoke.” In fact, the research also supposedly showed that occasionally inhaling small amounts of the combustion products of this dried weed can even enhance lung capacity.

That will be good news for our sons and daughters struggling against the ignorance and superstition of our benighted generation in their efforts to supplement their alcohol intake this semester and do so without guilt.

But for me, after reading through the hype and comparing it with the actual abstract of the study, it looks like just another example of research methodology on campus used to achieve a desired result. I am not necessarily impugning the researcher as much as those who seized upon the report with enthusiasm and an uncanny display of uncritical thought. As I have shown here and here, the scientific method (that is, actually looking at data objectively for the sole purpose of finding out the truth, no matter what that may be) has long been out of favor with the media. But as evidenced by the “Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia, it is none too popular even among a surprising percentage of scientists.

With this realization in mind, and also having read, translated and published (here, for example) a report by Portuguese doctors debunking that government’s study fueling a Cato report “demonstrating” that drug decriminalization “works,” and further, having had a pot-smoking friend – who did not use tobacco – die of lung cancer, I immediately smelled a rat.

Now, let me tell you a little about the profession of foreign language translation, which I have plied successfully full-time for over 40 years. In that time, I have translated medical and scientific texts for about 200 clients, including the American Cancer Society (translating reports from various countries in Europe on smoking and its effects in the induction of cancer, emphysema, “smoker’s leg” and other maladies) and a fair number of drug companies (series of reports on assorted drugs). One of my clients was also the NIH (National Institutes of Health). If you guessed that that agency’s assignments were predominantly medical in nature, you are correct. For a few years of my career, reports on medical studies were the main topic. Caution: I cannot operate on your brain or prescribe liver pills for you. But I will tell you with full confidence: I know the methodology of medical studies. And I know when a research report is pulling my leg.

I can tell you with all sincerity that the media reports on Stefan Kertesz’ studies on marijuana are misleading, and that is being overly generous. Sadly, the report on these studies in UAB News, a publication generally touting successes of persons affiliated with the University of Alabama, is also misleading to say the least. (Which is not necessarily to say that the researcher himself is at fault in this regard).

The headline proclaims: “Marijuana Smoke not as Damaging to Lungs as Cigarette Smoke.” Now, did you immediately assume that the study shows equal amounts of marijuana smoke to be less damaging than equal amounts of tobacco smoke?

I did. Well, I didn’t, but I would have if I had trusted such studies on illegal drugs since I read the Cato report and its thorough rebuttal by the Portuguese MDs who have studied the issue hands-on and met the actual patients (drug users). I have yet to see such a pro-drug study that is not a wide-eyed attempt to justify a bad habit generally endorsed by libertarians and political leftists – who righteously declare drug use of any kind to be a human right that is trampled by most governments generally recognized as legitimate (they think banning anything they like to do is unconstitutional).

So I decided to get a scientific report on the study. Not being a member of AMA, I am not privileged to download articles from JAMA.

However, I was able to obtain for free an abstract of the study from their site.

And lo and behold, what did I find that did not surprise me in the least?

It seems the author has come up with a creative new concept for measuring marijuana smoke exposure. He calls it the “joint year,” and he defines a joint year as 365 joints or filled pipe bowls. He calls this a “moderately high use level.”

Now, of course, in the course of his study, Kertesz no doubt encountered a few subjects who smoked more than these 365 joints per year. But you can see from this definition of a “joint year” that the assumption was for many subjects to have smoked about one joint a day, give or take a few.

One media report quoted the Associated Press as saying that the study:

“…has concluded that smoking cannabis once a week or even more does not harm the lungs.”

The term “even more” is not defined and is therefore meaningless, except as propaganda. But aside from that, if only smoking cannabis once a week is to be compared with what smokers ordinarily do, then the conclusion trumpeted in UAB News (“marijuana smoke is not as damaging to lungs as cigarette smoke”) does not fly. (Most cigarette smokers smoke more than one cigarette a day. You probably knew that).

Of course, there is an outside chance that Kertesz actually did compare the results of smoking 1 joint a day for year-long periods with the results of smoking 1 cigarette a day for year-long periods, but I found no evidence of that. And I can’t imagine where he would have gotten those one-a-day smokers as test subjects.

But here is the most serious flaw in the report that cannabis is less harmful than cigarette smoke: What do we fear most about smoking? Why, cancer, right? Now, the most convincing studies done by cancer researchers are longitudinal studies done on people over a period long enough to induce cancer. Most are seniors when they are stricken–not in the range of 18-30 as used in the Alabama study. In the papers I translated from the Cancer Society, the most feared carcinogen (cancer causing agent) in cigarette smoke was always said to be benzo(a)pyrene.  Mice whose shaved backs were painted with the stuff got cancer. So if marijuana smoke contains benzo(a)pyrene, then it is carcinogenic, right? Well, to find out, I did a search. One of the sites I brought up was run by people who liked to experiment with drugs. It showed a study by the Institute of Medicine and Health.

It showed results of a chemical analysis of cigarette and marijuana smokes. You’ll never guess which smoke contained the most benzo(a)pyrene.

No, not cigarette smoke, which prompted the government to sue the cigarette industry for billions. It was the smoke that Bill Clinton said he never inhaled. Here are the results:

benzo(a)pyrene

marijuana: 31 ng

tobacco: 22 ng

Gee, marijuana contains about a third more of the chief carcinogen than cigarettes and our University of Alabama news letter declares marijuana smoke to the “less damaging.”

I predict that sometime in the not-too-distant future, after all this hype about the harmlessness of marijuana has taken its toll, persuading legions of gullible young people to indulge in this “safe” habit, someone in medical science with high powers of observation and the courage to swim upstream will do a study on marijuana smokers and cancer and discover that the older heavier users are getting lung cancer right and left. 

At any rate, I will not be advising either of my kids to smoke a joint a day while in college. However, I may tell them to study as hard as they can in a down economy when an alarmingly high percentage of graduates are failing to find jobs in their professions and are saddled for years with college loan payments.

You’d think some researcher somewhere would find the time to study the correlation between not smoking anything at all and not drinking alcohol on student grade levels and chances of graduating from college, as contrasted with a control group of students who indulge in these practices.

I won’t hold my breath for such a breakthrough study. Nor will I expect much improvement in the academic performance of US students over the next few years. At least not judging by their role models on campus.

You can contact Dr. Stefan Kertesz, the author of the Alabama pot report and encourage him to do a study among elderly persons who have smoked pot most of their lives. Tell him you would expect to see a strong correlation between lung cancer and heavy pot use:

skertesz@uab.edu

And you can contact the writer of the above mentioned article on marijuana at U. of Alabama and let her know your thoughts (or send her a link to this article):

jpark@uab.edu

 

If you like my stuff on here, you may want to be added to my regular list receiving my unpublished commentary and reader responses thereto, which goes out once or several times a day. If so, just email me at: zoilandon@msn.com

 

The commandment is:  “Thou shalt not steal.”

Most people believe that this commandment represents sound morality, even if they are not Christians.  Nonetheless, it seems that this moral precept is forgotten once we start talking politics.  And no wonder:  Americans have been making up ‘right and wrong’ for themselves for quite a while.   Obviously it was only a matter of time before it seeped into our national mindset.

A good example of this in action is the current attempt by the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut, ‘paying for it’ by having the ‘rich’ pay their ‘fair share.’

That we are talking about theft becomes clearer when one considers exactly what the ‘payroll tax’ is.  We are talking about the portion of one’s income that goes directly into Social Security.  Your contributions, in turn, ensure that when you retire, you will be able to draw a steady check.

Now, the liberals tend to target the rich to fund a variety of their favorite programs, and many of those times there ostensibly is some ‘public’ benefit of them.  For example, we might put public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, in this category.  Usually, though, the program favors smaller, special interest, populations.  The appearance of a socialistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor becomes more profound the more targeted the program.

But the funding of the payroll tax cut by the rich really takes the cake.  It is one of those few instances of a government service where the individual directly benefiting from the service is also the one funding it.  Heck, it might be the only example of such a thing.

To have the rich pay for the payroll tax cut is to ask them to directly fund the retirements of the rest of the population, in a direct and transparent manner.  The ‘99%’ are demanding that the ‘1%’ pay for a service that only the ‘99%’ will benefit from, without themselves contributing a dime.  There is no ‘public’ benefit; the ‘special interest’ group just turns out to be exceptionally large.

This is stealing.

Stealing is wrong.

Therefore, this is wrong.

The real kick in the pants here is that while the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’ are getting behind the highway robbery of their ‘richer’ countrymen, they are actually robbing their future selves.  Since the amount of your contribution is correlated with how much you receive in your retirement account, by continuing to not pay the payroll tax, you are decreasing the amount you will ultimately receive. Read the rest of this entry »

[This is adapted from a much longer essay by Laigle's contributor Anthony Horvath, which can be read here. Anthony is a pro-life speaker and the president of Wisconsin Lutherans for Life.]

Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson has set the pro-life blogosphere on fire with her posting of the ‘Jaffe Memo,’ a memorandum written by Frederick S. Jaffe, former vice-president of Planned Parenthood.  Jaffe apparently was in charge of PP’s population control agenda.  The memo was written in 1969.

The memo appears to be legit but I haven’t been able to find its original source.  Read it.

This memo has all sorts of blood chilling suggestions- blood chilling if the culture of death does not run through your veins, that is.  Ideas on controlling world population include:

• Fertility control agents in the water supply
• Encourage women to work
• Require women to work and provide few child care facilities
• Compulsory abortion of out-of-wedlock pregnancies
• Compulsory sterilization of all who have two children- except for a few who would be allowed three
• Discouragement of private home ownership
• Allow certain contraceptives to be distributed non-medically
• Make contraception truly available to all

Some of my more predictable readers will go through that list and their eyes will simply glaze over for most of it.  With their eyes in a fog as they instinctively declare the above as merely an instance of “Godwin’s Law” but their blood started boiling when they saw on the list “Encourage women to work.”

Dear God, who could be against that? And who could be against making contraception available to everyone?  Clearly, this blogger is a bigot.

I included that item in order to make a very important point. Read the rest of this entry »

Western hypocrisy exposed

 

Don Hank

I have been debating with a friend over the issue of why Ghadaffi has been treated worse than other leaders of the same region. After all, what Muslim leader has not shown unusual cruelty in the course of his reign?

One thing that my friend brought up was that Ghadaffi had instituted Sharia law.

The problem is that, while Ghadaffi did in fact make a stab at using Sharia as a reference, or sort of Constitution, he soon found that it didn’t work in the real world, and he very shortly abandoned it (see link below).

On the other hand, Obama bowed obsequiously before King Abdullah during a visit not long ago but yet Saudi Arabia has one of the most inhumane treatments of prisoners of any country in the world – thanks to its reliance on Sharia law. So here you have Ghaddafi, who abolished cruel Sharia, vs. Abdullah, whose regime relies on Sharia, and whom do the Western elites (incl notably, Obama) call cruel?

Why, Ghadaffi, of course. (Not saying he wasn’t, but why single him out if other Middle East regimes are arguably more cruel?).

Then my friend, who avidly reads the MSM, said he had read that Ghadaffi had brought poverty to his nation. So I did some internet searches on Libyan poverty and found that the only articles claiming Libyans were poor had been written during the run-up to the Libyan rebellion, by reporters in countries whose leading politicians supported the ouster of Ghadaffi. Does anyone doubt that much of what the MSM reports, and the way they report it, is largely propaganda supportive of government policy, particularly that of increasingly authoritarian governments in Europe and the US?

On the other hand, I discovered that, in 2009, the year with the most complete reporting for all countries in the region, the average per capita income in Libya was several times that in neighboring countries, namely, $9,957 (up to $13,800 this year).

Here are some reference figures for average incomes in other countries that same year:

Afghanistan: $4,526

Iraq: $2,565

Kosovo: $3,080

Morocco: $2,808

Egypt: $2,699

Tunisia: $4,199

 

Now, you will note that Iraqis, who had been under US control since 2003, or about 5 years at the time of that compilation, had an average annual per capita income of only a third that of Libya, while Afghanis, who have been under Western Coalition control since 2001, or about 7 years at that time, earned less than half the income of Libyans. Kosovo, which was also created by the Western powers through war, had some of the lowest income in all of Europe, about one-third of what Libyans earned.

So it doesn’t look as though poverty is a viable argument against Ghadaffi, even though it was a favorite in the MSM in the run-up to his murder. After all, if impoverishment of one’s people is grounds for murdering a leader, then what should we do with the leaders (notably Western ones) responsible for countries poorer than Libya?

But when I articulated these arguments, my friend then said he thought it was more of an issue of wealth distribution, with Ghadaffi receiving vastly more than his share. However, the UN’s calculation of the Gini index, which is the best indicator of wealth distribution, was not collected for the countries that I wanted to study for my analysis, namely, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

So if there are no official data available, then apparently Western anti-Ghadaffi arguments were based solely on speculation and anecdotal evidence.  Yet, if you want to trade Libya anecdotes for Saudi Arabia anecdotes, for example, on the subject of wealth distribution you can swap stories ‘til you drop. Here’s a tofer for you, evidence of both human rights violations and poverty: A blogger was arrested this year in Saudi Arabia for posting evidence of poverty in that country. Not just a tad bit authoritarian? And not evidence that enough poverty exists that the government is scared word might get out.

You know what all this reminds me of?

A movie I once saw about a corrupt sheriff’s department in the south that stopped a car driven by a black northerner and tried to charge him but couldn’t think of a charge. They couldn’t get him for speeding because he wasn’t speeding. They couldn’t get him for drunk driving either because he was significantly more sober than a judge.

One of the deputies finally found a tail light out and they fined him on that flimsy charge.

That is the story of Libya’s Ghadaffi: a failed tail light and now he’s toast.

So what was the real motive behind the persecution and murder of Libya’s strong man, who had brought prosperity to his country and was apparently well enough liked that many of his countrymen laid down their lives for him?

The hypothesis that holds up best to scrutiny is that the Western power elite despises Western culture, especially the Judeo-Christian aspect, and here was an opportunity to rid the Middle East of another secular leader who tolerated Christians and Jews (he imported blacks from southern Africa as laborers and he cooperated with the West in its policies regarding Israel). After all, why else would the Ruling Class import millions and millions of Muslims to Europe knowing that they would not assimilate, that they would cause trouble, and that they oppose Christianity and its trappings? And why did every conflict with Western involvement – Iran, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Egypt, etc. — ultimately wind up with almost all of the native Christians banished from their homeland of generally about 2000 years?

I have shown copious evidence of this anti-Judeo-Christian motive in numerous articles, and with each move that the West makes in the Middle East I become more and more convinced of it:

http://laiglesforum.com/i-told-you-so-again/2697.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/my-government-is-killing-me/2159.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/spare-me-the-crocodile-tears-when-northern-africa-explodes/2215.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/how-western-powers-abet-christian-persecution/2513.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/us-media-cover-up-ivory-coast-massacre-details/2398.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/why-i-am-not-on-our-side-any-more/2174.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/the-far-left-connection-to-the-near-east-rebellion/2224.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/2286/2286.htm

 

Check out these links showing the West’s extreme hypocrisy in the Ghadaffi saga:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/africa/poverty-persists-in-libya-despite-oil-riches

Libyan average annual gross domestic product per capita has reached US$13,800 (Dh50,868) per year

(written after OBL killed, so very recent).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita

2009, Libya

 

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&idim=country:IRQ&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+per+capita+iraq

Iraq: $2090 in 2009

 

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&idim=country:AFG&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+per+capita+afghanistan

Afghanistan: $468 in 2009

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita

All 2009:

Average annual GDP per capita in Libya: $9,957

Afghanistan: $4,526

Iraq: $2,565

Kosovo: $3,080

Morocco: $2,808

Egypt: $2,699

Tunisia: $4,199

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Wealth distribution:

Gini index: NO DATA for Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/business/worldbusiness/17iht-inflation.1.15359629.html?pagewanted=all

A January wage increase of 5 percent for government employees disappointed those Saudis who earn less than 10,000 riyals, or $2,666, a month, especially after other Gulf countries moved more quickly to raise wages by larger amounts.

 

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/saudi-video-blogger-reportedly-detained-for-showing-poverty-in-riyadh/?scp=2&sq=saudi&st=Search

Saudi Video Blogger Reportedly Detained for Showing Poverty in Riyadh

A popular Saudi video blogger was detained this week, along with his crew, after his report on poverty in the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, human rights activists said.

The blogger, Feras Bugnah, was arrested on Sunday with his colleagues Hosam al-Deraiwish and Khaled al-Rasheed, in connection with the latest episode of their online show, “We Are Being Cheated,” according to the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association.

 

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/more-saudi-women-record-driving-videos/?scp=28&sq=saudi&st=Search

Saudi women may not drive

 

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/saudi-arabia-executes-eight-bangladeshi-nationals-2011-10-07

Beheadings

The beheadings bring the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year to at least 58, more than double than the 2010 figures. Twenty of those executed in 2011 were foreign nationals.

http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF133.htm

2005

And only those with a perverse sense of what constitutes justice would have approved of the news of an Indian man in Saudi Arabia facing the ‘punishment’ of having his eye gouged out.

http://lankapolity.blogspot.com/2011/06/inhuman-treatment-for-sri-lankan.html

6/07/2011

A Sri Lankan who was found guilty for selling liquor in a public place in Taif city Saudi Arabia while being drunk has been subjected to 430 lashes

The following was posted by Laigle’s Staff writer Anthony Horvath at his blog:

I understand that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is just phase one in a more powerful overhaul, but I am leery about any plan that cannot be attained within a single term of the presidency.  Moreover, we cannot count on the legislators to get behind it, or sustain it once it gets going.

So that’s a pickle, right?  There pretty much isn’t a plan out there that can be rolled out within a single term with the assurance that the legislative branch will implement it as proposed (and not load it with 2,000 pages of caveats).

So what to do?

And consider a different plan that actually tackles these issues head on and effectively ensures that the plan comes to fruition.

The plan is simply this:  deny the Federal government the right to collect individual and corporate taxes, period.  Instead, the Federal government would collect funds from the states.  The states in turn would be in charge of collecting the taxes that would then be sent along to the Federal government.  How the states collect that revenue would be entirely up to each individual state.  Each state would be assigned an ‘amount due’ based on some kind of objective and reasonable criteria, like for example, on a per capita basis and a calculation of that state’s particular burden on the Federal budget.

Read the whole proposal