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1. 

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   • So you are claiming that doctor opinion can also be wrong sometimes? Right?
     That means all of the evidence by the BMJ doctors association that were often referenced by the anti fracking brigades regarding the health risks by fracking could also be wrong.

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     • TW said:

       So you are claiming that doctor opinion can also be wrong sometimes? Right?

       WRONG

       One common technique used by the tobacco industry to reassure a worried public was to incorporate images of physicians in their ads. The none-too-subtle message was that if the doctor, with all of his expertise, chose to smoke a particular brand, then it must be safe. Unlike with celebrity and athlete endorsers, the doctors depicted were never specific individuals, because physicians who engaged in advertising would risk losing their license. (It was contrary to accepted medical ethics at the time for doctors to advertise.) Instead, the images always presented an idealized physician wise, noble, and caring who enthusiastically partook of the smoking habit. All of the doctors in these ads came out of central casting from among actors dressed up to look like doctors. Little protest was heard from the medical community or organized medicine, perhaps because the images showed the profession in a highly favorable light. This genre of ads regularly appeared in medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, an organization which for decades collaborated closely with the industry. The big push to document health hazards also did not arrive until later.

       In an attempt to substantiate the More Doctors claim, R.J. Reynolds paid for surveys to be conducted during medical conventions using two survey methods: Doctors were gifted free packs of Camel cigarettes at tobacco company booths and them upon exiting the exhibit hall, were then immediately asked to indicate their favorite brand or were asked which cigarette they carried in their pocket.
       http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/images.php?token2=fm_st001.php&token1=fm_img0002.php&theme_file=fm_mt001.php&theme_name=Doctors%20Smoking&subtheme_name=More%20Doctors%20Smoke%20Camels

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2. Glad to see you are happy with your “poster boy”, refracktion! I shall watch with interest to see if the Press take a similar view. I think they can do a bit more than cut and paste.

   For someone who has previously been so damning about PR companies, I suppose there is almost a reversed logic about “lets continue to shoot ourselves in both feet and we can claim we are the alternative.” Trouble is, that once you become the comic turn, everything you try to represent becomes a joke, and the British love a good laugh. (Remember BoatyMcBoatFace.)

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3. Refracktion said:

   There is a truly beautiful irony to Martin and TW apparently not being aware of the struggle medical professionals had to prove the damaging effects of smoking over a lengthy period of time, and the fact that a large part of that struggle was due to the tobacco industry using the same PR company to sow doubt in the mind of regulatory authorities as is used by the fracking industry in the States. H&K strategies used to be know as Hill and Knowlton back in the day. Google them.

   The parallels between what happened with tobacco and what is emerging with fracking are rather interesting for those who have enquiring minds.

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