The following is a letter received in January, 2005 in response to our newsletter on second hand smoke and heart disease. 

Link to our original article: Secondhand Smoke

Link to British Medical Journal study article "Commentary: How acute and reversible are the cardiovascular risks of secondhand smoke?

Link to my response

Here is the letter I received:

Dear DNC folks,

You write the below on your web page titled "secondhand smoke."

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The number of heart attacks fell by 40% in Helena , Montana in the six months that an indoor smoking ban was in effect. Once the city repealed the ban, heart attack rates jumped back to prior levels....   Tobacco company websites  under the guise of promoting patriotic freedoms are already astir trying to discredit this study.
Read the full text of the study published in the British Medical Journal:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7446/980 "

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The fact that you reference the journal article online would indicate that you had ready access to and knowledge of the Rapid Responses.

In those Rapid Responses it was quite clearly pointed out that the study did NOT actually examine the effects of secondhand smoke as was also clearly stated by the authors within the study itself.  Yet you put this on your web page under that heading.  May I ask why? 

It was also pointed out that the data charts of the study used in its initial presentations showed that the real decline in heart attacks only occurred during the first THREE months of the ban... not throughout the entire six month period... and that they pretty much bounced back up to the normal range DURING those last three months of the ban, not after as stated in your piece.

Why, when you have clearly had access to the proper data are you misleading people about the content of the study?  Or, if you feel you are not, could you please explain how you feel you are not.

Many thanks,

Michael J. McFadden...

Who is quite disturbed that you classify my website, TheTruthIsALie.com and   http://cantiloper.tripod.com/index.html  (which contains "The Great Helena Heart Fraud") as "Tobacco Company websites."   I consider that a clear case of libel and am considering taking proper legal action unless a proper public apology is noted in your pages and the slur corrected.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" http://www.Antibrains.com http://cantiloper.tripod.com/index.html

Competing Interests: I have absolutely NO financial connections with Big Tobacco, Big Hospitality, Big Pharma, or any other player in this arena other than as a customer and as the author of a book titled "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains."