Secondhand smoke and cancer: Where's the proof?
CMAJ 1998;159:442
In response to: D. Ahmad, W.K. Morgan
I quite agree with the concern that any report of a scientific study should stick as close to the given facts as possible. However, in this instance I was reporting not on the WHO study itself, which had not yet completed the peer-review process, but on the way the popular press had already handled it. My reference to "egregious mistakes" was therefore referring to the Daily Telegraph reporter's interpretation of the WHO study. I was particularly concerned that the Daily Telegraph story did not contain either any comments from an objective scientific source or any reactions from antismoking advocates. Why was that? Nor did any of the subsequent reports in Canadian newspapers include such comments, although in both Ottawa and Vancouver, experts were consulted. These are the points I made in the article. They are also the points that have been made in separate complaints to the press councils of both Ontario and BC. There was indeed hyperbole surrounding this story, but it was found in the pages of the Daily Telegraph and its Canadian cousins, not in CMAJ.
Charlotte Gray
Ottawa, Ont.
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