BAREFACED LIAR ! Wasim Maziak :“No Research into Hookah Use Existed Before 2002” ! (to The Detroit News, Michigan)

(updated Sep 7, 2009 and Sep 9 due to technical problems)

“No research into hookah use existed before 2002”, according to Wasim Maziak, director of the [US funded] Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies in the Middle East. But his center alone has been involved in 50 scientific reports about argileh, the fruity, fragrant tobacco used in hookah pipes”

“studies have shown that hookah smoking increases the risk of lung cancer (…) It also is linked to (…) oral cancer”.

SOURCE: [*] Kim Kozlowski: Michigan health leaders target growing hookah use. The Detroit News, Friday 14 August 2009

THIS IS A BOLDFACED LIE. The evidence can be found in any library or medical database. Shortcut HERE

As in the flawed WHO "expert" report prepared by the same people of the US-Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies (Wasim Maziak, Thomas Eissenberg, Kenneth Ward) and the US-American University of Beirut (Alan Shihadeh), numerous early studies on hookah smoking have simply been DISMISSED. This scientific misconduct is called Publication Bias.

Read also the response to a Saudi newspaper recently asking ““That leads to another point: Why is it left to countries such as the UK and France to undertake research in shisha smoking? Shisha is part of Arab culture, not British or French culture.”

Yes, this is just true (that hookah research started in 2002 with Maziak) as the History of Iraq has begun in 2003… What actually began in 2002 (inception of the US-Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies (Wasim Maziak, Thomas Eissenberg, Kenneth Ward) is an international publishing campaign of pseudo-scientific papers (twisting the facts, denying the existence of a solid scientific INDEPENDENT literature published for decades) aiming at justifying a desired Prohibition. Of course, they failed because the scaring watchful Sacred Narghile has been around.

Before that bleak year (2002), research has been independent (financially and scientifically), carried out by honest scientists (and not post-September-11-US-led-teams), not demonizing and not driven by a Prohibitionist agenda serving the interests of Big Pharma (industry of Chantix, nicotine patches) and, by the same token, Big Tobacco (cigarette industry). These nice guys have been doing research, just research, not geo-politics.

Strikingly, the US-Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies was launched almost simultaneously with the preparation of the US invasion of Iraq. The latter was justified by scientific reports from “experts” (Richard Butler among others) that weapons of mass destruction threatening the human civilization could be found there. A certain Ahmad Chalabi, an early so-called wealthy “opponent” to the Iraqi legal government of Saddam Hussein, gave tips (which proved to be LIES) to the CIA, urging the USA to launch an invasion. The friends and relatives of the one and half million of dead Iraqis will not forget, Mr Chalabi !

As recalled recently in a recent biomedical publication: “Hookah (narghile, shisha) smoking is an ancient mode of tobacco use which has not posed any particular public health problem over the past centuries”.So, it began to pose a problem in 2002, when the US-SCTS was launched. Logical, no ? Money, honey, moassel…

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As for the “50 “scientific reports””, they have brought virtually nothing new to the issue (millions of dollars for NOTHING) as revealed in a peer-reviewed journal :

“Finally, did we need 8 years of international research and a half hundred of ”waterpipe” studies to establish that “the waterpipe is mainly an intermittent tobacco use method”[[1]], or was this fact already established by four centuries of literature, including early scientific studies, and not to mention common sense ? What are scientific reviews made for ?”[2]

[1] Maziak W, Are premature public health statements warranted? Aust N Z J Public Health. 2008; 2008;32(5):490.

In his paper, Dictator Wasim Maziak (*) was admonishing independent researchers who found that hookah users in Australia were not switching from hookah to cigarettes (very incongruous and off-putting...): Carroll T, Poder N, Perusco A. Is concern about waterpipe smoking warranted? Aust N Z J Public Health. 2008;32(2):181-2. .

[2] Kamal: To whom does ‘public health’ belong when it comes to ‘Waterpipe’ Smoking ? Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2008; 32 (6): 583

(*) Dictator Wasim Maziak laments in his papers on Health in the Middle East (last one here) the problem posed by “authoritarian regimes” [Dictators, no ? why not call a spade a spade ?] in the Middle East. By the way, why does not he have the guts to name SYRIA (obviously on his mind in his multiple papers on this issue) ?

Interestingly, one of his contradictors in the same journal, Iman Nuwayhid (by the way, also author of a study on narghile in Lebanon...), is surprised that Maziak "holds the aggressor and victim almost equally accountable" (for a diplomatic purpose, she adds "inadvertently"...) , recalling, for those who forgot, like him, that ""Iraq reported some of the best health indicators in the Arab world under the regime of Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions that followed" and that "in occupied Palestine, children and their families exhibit high resilience" (note: Maziak calls the last massacre in Gaza a mere "offensive"...).

Read Iman Nuwayhid's witty thoughts addressing the gossip of a researcher who has not mentioned Iraq in his lesson-giving papers published in the biomedical papers during all the Bush years. The evidence: What Taboo Research Areas in Middle East Health ? (E-Letter, British Medical Journal, 1 December 2006)

Read also a previous response to one of his previous ramblings : Arabs Neither Need a Scientific Revolution Nor Are They a Cultural Exception (E-Letter, Science, 7 March 2006)

Now, with the new Administration, he is showing off and giving lessons on how to remodel the Middle East health sytems (*) and even invent crisis in epidemiology. Read a response to Maziak addressing one of his recent intellectually and scientifically void paper (titled "The triumph of the null hypothesis") on this issue.

(*) Condoleeza Rice spoke of "remodelling the Middle East" as a whole. Georges Bush' "Great Middle East" vision (from Afghanistan to Mauritania...) will be remembered by all the peoples of the region, particularly Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians...

CONCLUSION

Gazing at their scientific bankruptcy, although accountable for the millions of lives that could have been saved, Big Pharma (Chantix, etc.) supported antismoking researchers now resort to LIES . See most recently:

Shisha Madness: BBC and Department of Health accused of "gross exaggeration" in shisha story (25 August 2009)

Big trouble in ‘Little Cairo’. Spiked online (3 September 2009)

note: they have also resorted to plagiarism elsewhere...

RELEVANT FURTHER READING

$$$$ Don't miss a video from Michigan hardline antiismoking "research centres" (ACCESS Community) in which a hookah expert states: « Hookah tar is Burning » (Video)

$$$$ More on this individual behind the world confusion and whose “50 reports” have discredited the WHO and hampered efficient prevention by the honest staff of some good tobacco prevention associations

““Waterpipe””™: Time for Action on Scientific Integrity and Accountability, Sacking, and Paying Back Funding of Useless Biased ““Waterpipe””™ Research

YOU ARE NOT ON THE HOME PAGE of the OBSERVATORY on HOOKAH OR HEALTH (Narghile, "Waterpipe"™, Health, Risks, Dangers, Diseases, Tar, Nicotine, Cancer). CLICK HERE to go there !