Hookah (Hubbly-Bubbly) Apartheid in South Africa and Pr Yussuf Saloojee’ Striking Bias (Videos)

This is a comment on a South African Story by Kate Barry (producer) & Devi Sankaree Govender (presenter) titled Hubbly Bubbly, recently broadcasted by the “Carte Blanche Medical Show (South Africa Channel), dated Apri l 4, 2010:

 Featuring are two great antismoking scholars: Pr Angela Mathee (Medical Research Council, South Africa) and Pr Yussuf Saloojee (National Council Against Smoking, South Africa) and a member of the world antismoking Globalink Secret Society.

If you click on the small photograph of Pr Yussuf Saloojee there (not on the big one which is based on an interview with Pr Angela Mathee), you will be able to watch and hear terrific things in an interview with him.

Interestingly, one comment there reveals that Pr Yussuf Saloojee wrote in Tobacco Control (the world main propagandistic antismoking journal with which he is affiliated as Region Editor for Africa):

"It is only after the advent of cigarettes that the epidemic of tobacco-related diseases took off. Previously, people had used snuff, cigars and pipes for 500 years with comparative safety (Res Adv Alcohol Drug Problems. 1976;3:1–47)"(source)

QUESTION: So what, Pr Saloojee, the five centuries old “hubbly bubbly” would not be a "pipe" like other pipes. We have never seen likes of Pr Saloojee or his colleague Pr Angela Mathee comparing pipes or cigars with 100 cigarettes. Why is this ? Would pipes or cigars be acceptable because they are viewed as “European” while the “Middle Eastern” hookah would be seen as alien to South Africa ?

A strange reaction indeed which is very reminiscent of recent smoking related xenophobic interventions elsewhere, and of a similar interview by ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) aiming to justify the UK Ban on smoking. The invited antismoking ““waterpipe””™ experts were, by that time, Wasim Maziak and Alan Shihadeh, Globalink Secret Society s'c olleagues of Pr Saloojee.

We won't comment this time on all the pseudo-scientific hackneyed parotting stuff (about nicotine, tar, etc.) there. For future accountability (hopefully soon in an international court), don’t miss however the following delicious quotations:

The "Horiba" trademark stands for "horrible results"...
”We then asked a young hubbly smoker to do the same thing. A bagful of hubbly smoke was attached to the machine and the results were dramatic. The digits continued climbing until the CO levels were out of range - over the limit of 500 - and the Sulphur Dioxide level was 10 parts per million."


Prof Angela Mathee (Medical Research Council): “The youngest child we saw was two years of age, smoking a hookah pipe with his mother”

Prof Mathee: “And so the volume of carbon monoxide that you take in is huge. And of course carbon monoxide is the same thing you use when you want to commit suicide. You attach a hosepipe to your car's exhaust system and you sit in the car and it is the carbon monoxide that kills you.”

Pr Yussuf Saloojee (Executive Director: National Council Against Smoking): “It's got nicotine in it. It has got carbon monoxide, which is a poison [and] which comes out of motor car exhausts. It has got things like arsenic, which is used as a rat poison. It has got lead. It has got chromium. So it has got most of the dangerous chemicals in tobacco smoke and, as a result, people who use hookahs can get almost all the same diseases that you get from smoking cigarettes.”

Pr Saloojee: “A person who uses hookah is at increased risk of getting lung cancer, increased risk of getting bladder cancer and mouth cancers [check out the too big lie there] . The same cancers are also caused by cigarette smoking. You are more likely to get heart disease. We know that even after one single session of using a hookah, if you measure people's heart rate you'll see the heart rate has gone up. That's because the nicotine makes the heart work harder [please don't burst out laughing !]"

Sally Thorp, Head of Life Talk: "It's becoming a bigger issue as well because younger siblings... we have seen a photograph of a three-year-old smoking hubbly! And then teens... we got an email from a teen saying it is so funny, because she blows instead of sucks.” RELEVANT SOURCES

Hookah, Pseudo-Science and Xenophobia 

The Middle East Peace Pipe (Scientific & Ethical Issues)

REMINDER

We have provided the public with the full names of the individuals involved in the criticized material. The reason is that these individuals have made either oral public declarations or published (that is: made public) written articles. Since the criticized materials are part of permanent attack on sound science and the credibility of public health intervention, these people must therefore be accountable for what they say (in public). See our policy of scientific criticism.


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