If there was one matter on which you could reasonably describe me as a “fundamentalist” on it is that of free speech.
Apart from incitement to hatred or violence, everything should be unfettered.
While being self-opinionated I do not believe I have the Wisdom of Solomon or exclusively hold the franchise marked “monopoly of virtue and truth”. Unencumbered debate is how we as humans advance.
If we first look at climate change, or “weather” as someone put on this piece of propaganda put out by United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, the same ugly forces bubbling up like molten lava by a volcano.
Paul Thornton, Letters Editor of the Los Angeles Times said on the 8th October that he will not be publishing climate change denier’s letters: “Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”
Never mind that the Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995 (SAR) by the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change crucially altered two key comments.
“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
“No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
Quite remarkably this report has survived on the web from 1996. It’s by the liberal leaning New York Times and confirms the above to be true: “Those responsible for the report acknowledge that changes were made.”
I am sure I do not have to mention the University of East Anglia emails and awkward journalist Phelim McAleer who was banned from the Cancun Summit in Mexico in November 2010 for previously asking all the wrong questions.
Then we have tobacco control.
In October the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) arranged a debate on “How to really stop people smoking” at the Irish Royal College of Physicians.
Chris Snowdon, Jeff Stier, Dr Axel Klein and Professor John Crown a politician-cum-doctor.
Crown rather soiled his bed sheets. Demanding to go first, his speech was a particularly tiresome rehash on the dangers of smoking and how “nasty” tobacco companies are. After curing insomnia, rather than returning to the panellist’s desk he petulantly sat in the front row playing with both an iPhone and iPad, ignoring the other contributions.
At the end of the speeches Kathleen O’Meara, Head of Advocacy and Communication of the Irish Cancer Society turned up, demanded the microphone, and stamped her foot as she blustered her way through on the evils of tobacco and tobacco companies. After finishing she picked up her handbag and the only thing prompt about her, left immediately.
As Snowdon summarised, it is “one of the most infantile displays I have seen since puberty.”
John Mallon of Forest corroborated, and an equally insightful account adds, “Thanks to Senator John Crown I was embarrassed to be an Irish citizen.”
Professor Crown and Kathleen O’Meara’s failure to engage, let alone hear dissenting opinion more than detracts from their judgment.
My own experience of the Tobacco Control Industry is hardly better if not worse still.
I am reminded from two years ago I spoke at the British Medical Journal’s “Is smoking a disease or a habit” debate. Along with other contributors I had dinner with Professor Luke Clancy of Action on Smoking and Health Ireland.
Beforehand we did a run through of our speeches and Clancy kept interrupting me as he wanted to censor what I had written. I was talking about the junk science of second hand smoke (SHS) in passing.
After he was told to be quiet, we then went to dinner. We were having a generally polite conversation, I think he comes from Galway. I made the point that on the science of SHS, many tobacco control activists had not done their research and there are people who have are wilfully and knowingly misleading us.
Clancy exploded. In front of the fellow diners and 100 people in the restaurant he shouted out I was a “liar” and proceeded to make a complete spectacle of himself by publicly insulting me at volume 11. The host had to quieten him down.
Then there was my appearance on CNN with Deborah Arnott. After doing the interview, I was literally taking a first sip from a glass of water after returning to the green room and she launched into a tirade into the fact that I was “not an expert,” spewing vitriol and bile from every orifice.
The producer button holed me and said she was not doing her cause any good. That is the polite analysis of what she said.
I was interviewed on ITV’s Daybreak by Aled Jones, Lorraine Kelly and Dr. Hilary Jones and in the Green Room was Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies. The plumy Dame Sally, surrounded by two very tame taxpayer funded PR people seemed to be caught off guard as I introduced myself.
Having a regional accent and shock-horror possibly working class, her only comfort was that as a smoker I have a one in two chance of dying of smoking. My repost which did not improve her mood was that the last time I looked two in two of non-smokers died too.
The hermetically sealed world of Tobacco Control does not deal with honest debate, free speech and evidenced-based science too well.
Galileo was sentenced to house arrest in 1633 for daring to suggest that the Earth went round the Sun. Florence Nightingale was public berated in the British Medical Journal for wanting clean and hygienic wards. Ignaz Semmelweis, a 19th century Hungarian physician whose work demonstrated that hand-washing could drastically reduce the number of women dying after childbirth was rejected by the medical community. Some “gentlemen” doctors were also offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands.
As they say, if you want to make a conservative/libertarian angry, tell them a lie. If you want to make the left/liberals angry… tell them the truth.
World history has many examples of junk and misleading science, at least I strive to find truth and wisdom, rather than censor, ostracise and refuse to engage. Something at which the left is so adept.
David Atherton is the Chairman of Freedom2Choose, and a freelance writer
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