Hikmet Jamil & coll. Wish to Protect US-American “White Youth” from Hookah in Study Published in the Nicotine & Tobacco [Antismoking] Research Journal

Hikmet Jamil, Dalia Elsouhag, Spencer Hiller, Judith E. Arnetz, and Bengt B. Arnetz. Sociodemographic risk indicators of hookah smoking among White Americans: A pilot study. Nicotine Tob Res. 2010; 12:525-529.

Going straight to the point and without listing again the classical series of huge errors, let’s say that apparently in order to justify the smoking ban in Michigan (USA), Hikmet Jamil and his colleagues from the University of Michigan (USA), have published an article in the Nicotine and Tobacco [antismoking] Research journal:

QUOTEWORTHY: "The fact that White youth increasingly appear to adopt hookah smoking is of great public health concern since it might be a new trajectory into cigarette smoking, as well as other gateway drugs (Duan, Chou, Andreeva, & Petnz, 2009 ). The risk of dispersion is especially great since hookah smoking is done in social groups and is cheaper than cigarettes (Roskin & Aveyard, 2009). The American Lung Association (ALA) actually."

Note: the cited reference are just as junk as the Jamil paper ! As for the editorial support, "Nicotine and Tobacco [antismoking] Research" is a Farmingtonian journal ! Farmingtonian, What’s this?

CONCLUSION

Haram-Treif Science Award to this journal and to Hikmet Jamil and his colleagues of the University of Michigan !

“Haram” and “Treif” ? … What’s this ?

Seek [good, sound] science from the cradle to the grave! Not Bad science, pseudo-science, junk science which are an insult to Religion !

RELEVANT READINGS

The “Nicotine and Tobacco Research” Journal Endorses a Scientific Error as Big and Carcinogenic as a Yemeni Narghile Bowl !

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

Video featuring a colleague of Virginia Rice (University of Michigan):

« Hookah tar is Burning », says the US "expert!

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!

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.


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 !

Dr Rima Nakkash, US-AUB Ambassador of Shisha Prohibition in the Arab World

(updated /section "what religion says about tobacco smoking", Jan 16)

Excerpts from things heard and seen (see image) at a conference (title: Risk of Shisha Use Severe) recently held at the United Arab Emirates University (4-8 January 2010)

Dr Rima Nakkash from the US-American University of Beirut: “Research by the World Health Organisation’s study group on tobacco product regulation conducted in 2005 found that one session of smoking a water pipe could be as dangerous as smoking up to 100 cigarettes".

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS CLAPTRAP FUNDED BY PUBLIC TAX MONEY

FIRST, THE WHO REPORT IS NOT A STUDY but a flawed review of carefully selected antismoking papers themselves full of scientific errors.

SECOND, IT IS A HUGE FRAUD. It is full of serious scientific errors. As an example (among many ones) its authors didn’t realize by that time that :

-the chemical composition (tar to start with) of shisha smoke is completely different from that from cigarette smoke

-temperatures are different in both cases by hundreds of degrees

-shisha smoking is not addictive,

-etc., etc.

EVIDENCE: in the OFFICIAL CRITIQUE OF THE WHO FLAWED REPORT

THIRD, 10 or 100 hundred times more smoke DOES NOT mean 10 or 100 times more “toxic” simply because shisha smoke is chemically completely different. Shisha smoke is mainly made up of GLYCEROL (biologically inactive, experts say) and DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE (a highly dangerous chemical as all honest scientists of the world know.

What is DHMO ?

Video 1 on the hazards of DiHydrogen Monoxide (DHMO).

Video 2

Video 3

ROCKET SOCIOLOGY from US-University of Beirut!

Dr Rima Nakkash:

"This finding is disturbing, she said, because shisha is seen as fashionable and more acceptable than cigarettes among women”.

"In her research among smokers in four Middle Eastern countries, Dr Nakkash found a propensity for shisha smoking among women and youths in particular. “Youths start smoking water pipes because it is socially acceptable and much more permissible than cigarettes, and for women, it is a fashionable trend,” she said."

CONCLUSION

Dr Rima Nakkahs takes Arabs who have not studied at the US-American University of Beirut for boobies who cannot distinguish between heated and burnt materials.

More on other aspects of Dr Rima Nakkash' prohibition campaigns :

Narghile, Sex and the US-American Univer-City of Beirut... Tobacco Control, Prostitution and the City of Bombay...

Rocket sociology : Rima Nakkash and Joanna Khalil Went to the USA (November 2009) to reveal to the world why "“waterpipe”™ "" tobacco smoking" is ""so sexy""(sic !)

After being highly carcinogenous, it is now "so sexy". That's interesting...

HALAL (licit) or HARAM (illicit) ?
A CALL TO ALL MUSLIMS OF THE WORLD
Remember our beloved Jesus Christ' words:
"Don't Be Afraid !"

Certainly, tobacco is not HALAL (licit)("kosher" for Jews). However, what is top HARAM (illicit)("Treif" for Jews) in Islam is junk science. This is because the Prophet of Islam said: Seek science from the cradle to the grave.

He didn’t explicitly mention "scientific integrity" although it’s obvious that the science the believer must seek all her(his) life is sound science, what they would call today "evidence-based" science in the field of medicine.

Therefore, true Muslims should reject all the junk science that says, as in the case of Dr Rima Nakkash from the US-American University of Beirut, citing a junk report from the World Health Organization (prepared by her colleagues of the same university… and the US-Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies …)(*), that:

"One shisha session = 10, 20, 100, 500, 900 cigarettes…”. Basta !

True Muslims should also reject cigarette junk science (particularly what you can read here and there about the so-called numerous cancers caused by passive smoking ("environmental tobacco smoke").

(*) Similarly, true Muslims should reject the junk "scientific" recommendations elaborated by the WHO "experts regarding junk vaccination and, particularly, the so-called "Swine Flu" "pandemic"). Not to mention the “Shisha and Swine Flu” scare !

Indeed, God considers junk science as Haram !

Certainly, tobacco is not mentioned in the Holy Quran as Italian experts have recently noted, stressing that “storicamente molti giuristi hanno considerato lecito il fumare” (through history, many jurists have considered that smoking is licit (Halal)). Tobacco smoking would be among “cose che provocano danno” (things that harm)(1-2) and there we stand. L’Italia è bella…

QUESTION: Since most of antismoking organizations' “science” on tobacco smoking is biased, politicised and flawed, in the name of what principle today’s US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand’s secular non-religious prohibitionists would push States (particularly in Muslim countries), to ban cigarette and shisha smoking in cafes and public parks ?

(1) Prevenzione dei danni da fumo di tabacco: un ruolo per l’islam? Tabaccologia 2007;1:20-21
(2) Holy Quran (II, 195; VII, 157).

Note: The US-Syrian anti-““Waterpipe””™ center was awarded a prize of excellent science by one institution in the United Arab Emirates. Is this a mere coincidence ?

And remember one important thing, folks ! If tobacco is neither Halal nor Haram, Honey is highly Halal (licit) !

“And thy Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in (men's) habitations. Then to eat of all the produce (of the Earth), and follow the ways of thy Lord made smooth. There issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colors, wherein is healing for men. Verily in this is a Sign for those who give thought.” (Holy Quran, XVI, 68-69)

If the mixture "TOBACCO (neither Haram nor Halal) + HONEY (Halal)" is Halal or Haram is another moot question…

Image: credit usurpated by Goodhealth

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 !

The Tragic Death of Akmal and His Dream

Watch this video HERE

«Health Debate» Between Maziak and… Maziak ! Renewed Antismoking Media Propaganda by “Journalist” Matt Erickson for The Kansas City Star

Two weeks ago or so, the BBC presented a “debate” over shisha smoking between two antismoking experts: guess whom ? Paul Hooper, regional manager at the Department of Health (UK) vs. Hilary Wareing, director of the Centre for Tobacco Control Research (UK).

BBC NEWS: Shisha 450 Times Worse than Cigarettes, New Research Reveals. Swine Flu Link Now Established

BBC. UK Shisha Experts 450 More Dangerous for Public Health Than Cigarette Experts. BBC Accused of Gross Exaggeration

Very democratic and well-balanced debate, isn’t it ?

Then, we have now Matt Erickson for the Kansas City Star, offering a “Health Debate” between Wasim Maziak and Wasim Maziak himself !

Hookah trend growing among young people

For your information, this expert is one of the main authors of the WHO erroneous and biased report on hookah smoking (read well, particularly the Comments section published almost 2 years later to understand that he had not declared his authorship at the beginning...)

We also had not so recently the case of the antismoking journal Addiction (Editor-in-Chief Robert West) which became famous for a the tribune it offered to Maziak. It had the cheek to label it (don’t laugh) “For Debate” ! A debate between whom and whom ? Between a patented antismoker and another patented antismoker of course !

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

CONCLUSION

Antismoking journals, biomedical (as Addiction in this case) or popular (The Kansas City Star) or even the BBC, lie when using the word “debate”. They can't allow any scientific debate. And keep in mind their permanent rant about violation of "democracy" and "freedom of press" in remote countries. Rubbish !

RELEVANT READINGS

ASH (Action on Smoking and Health). ““ Shisha 200 times worse than a cigarette” say Middle East experts””. 27 March 2007 (prepared by Martin Dockrell)(accessed 13 June, 2008). Interview with Wasim Maziak and Alan Shihadeh:

“Three leading experts from across the Middle East have warned that excluding “shisha bars” when England goes smokefree on July 1 could worsen the grave inequalities in health that already affect ethnic minorities.”

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

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 !

In Defense of Burqa against the Relevant Background of Tobacco Prohibition

Burqa (the woman’s veil in South-East Asia) is an efficient means to circle totalitarian laws prohibiting tobacco use, enacted “in agreement with” the pseudo-scientific Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC).

In an ethnological study, CJ Charpentier (Anthropos, 1974) reports what he has personnally witnessed in Kabul, Afghanistan, by March 1972:

« I once observed in Kabul a veiled lady renting a water-pipe in the street. The boy who owned the pipe lit it for her and she then placed the pipe under her chaderi and sat down smoking a few metres away from the busy street ».

Quoted for the first time in the following reference book (page 223): Le narguilé. Anthropologie d’un mode d’usage de drogues douces [Eng.: An Anthropology of Narghile: its Use and Soft Drugs], Paris, 1997, L'Harmattan, 262 pages.

Image : Courtesy of Ktemoc

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 !

Shoe Throwing Journalist and World Hero Muntazer Al-Zaidi, Harbinger of Coming Hookah Hurlers ?

Muntazer, the Iraqi Living Spirit of French May 68
PROJECT: A letter to French President Nicolas SARKOZY to ask him to award Muntazer Al-Zaidi the Legion of Honor and appoint him Minister of National Identity.

“A journalist hurled two shoes at President George W. Bush on his farewell visit to Iraq on Sunday, highlighting hostility still felt toward the outgoing US leader who acknowledged that the war is still not won.
Muntazer al-Zaidi jumped up as Bush held a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, shouted "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" and threw his footwear”
(Baghdad, AFP Dec 14, 2008).

« While Bush successfully ducked, Muntadar al-Zeidi’s accompanying remarks must be entered in the TV Hall of Fame as well and admired for brevity, although most of the news accounts truncated them, and distorted them. He [Muntazer] said: "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog," Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.

Myers reported that when the man threw the second shoe, he added: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Needless to say outrage over Iraqi victims of this war has been missing in most of the media for most of the war.”

SOURCE: Journalist Confronts Bush In Baghdad With EMMY-Winning Throw (Danny Schechter)

"Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to Hit the US"
> Most famous VIDEO of the world (in any case, for the -always forgotten- rest of the planet)

> Muntazer (“Muntathar”) being beaten (with a broken arm and in hospital ?):

“Muntathar means "awaited" in Arabic [!] referring to Imam AlMahdi and since we are in it, he was kidnapped by AlMahdi army [Note: a Shii militia] at November 2007 and tortured then released after paying the ransom and some say he didn't pay any ransom.”

See The Sacred Shoe (by Last-of-Iraqis, the blog of an Iraqi dentist)

CALL TO NEW US PRESIDENT
Mr Obama, if you were sincere (and we believe you were and still are) and if you don’t want to be the unfortunate target of some angry hookah hurler in the future, you know what all peoples of the world expect from you right now:

Stop civilian bloodshed everywhere by a quick withdraw of all your troops, not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan and other places. Right ? Put also an end to all embargos implemented in the past (that on Iraq itself has caused a death toll of over 1 million civilians). This way, Mr Obama, crowds will be throwing at you roses everywhere you go.

[added Jan 2, 2009] No need to waste more time ! We’ve got the deceiving response now:
Obama's Silence on Gaza is Deafening (Ben Cohen: Dec 29, 2008)
As War Ravages Gaza, Silent Barack Works on Golf Game (Jason Ditz: Dec 30, 2008)

THE SCIENTIFIC MEDICAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTING MR MUNTAZER AL-ZAIDI’ STATEMENT ABOUT IRAQI WIDOWS AND ORPHANS
"This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq !" (Muntazer Al-Zaidi)

A study published in the Lancet in 2004 found that “100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq” [1][that is, up to the date of the study: September 2004]”. The researchers also found that “most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children”[1].

Our consultant for scientific and international affairs had once the opportunity to comment on this study: “However, another important question deals with the parties directly responsible for the gloomy situation in the Middle East. What about the destruction of dozens of thousands of lives in the name of freedom and democracy ? Some researchers, not necessarily native of the region we are talking about, while sitting comfortably in front of our computers, have recently acted with moral gumption to tackle this taboo issue, the third one [1].”[2]

In a second study less than 2 years later, the same medical team found that “as of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 (392 979-942 636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area”[3].

[1] Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. Lancet. 2004 Nov 20-26;364(9448):1857-64.
[2] What Taboo Research Areas in Middle East Health ? E-Letter to the Editor of the British Medical Journal 2006 (1 Dec). A critical analysis of: Maziak W. Health in the Middle East. BMJ 2006;333;815-816.
[3] Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, Roberts L. Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey. Lancet. 2006 Oct 21;368 (9545):1421-8.

The Anthropological Evidence that Asian and African Peoples Love Peace-Minded US-Americans and Vice-Versa
For 10 years now, US Citizens are mad about the Oriental way of smoking, passing time and socialising: hookah smoking.

The Rising Allure—and Danger—of Hookah, by Lindsay Lyon (US News & World Report, Posted January 2, 2008)
What’s smokin’: water pipes, by Janet Cromley for Los Angeles Times (Nov 12, 2007)

So, please ask your President-Elect to go Iran, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Syria, and Venezuela and Cuba also, etc. and establish a definitive sustainable World Peace there by sharing a few hookah puffs with his counterparts. Indeed hookah (narghile, shisha) happened to be more than the Middle East Peace Pipe. Just like Muntazer Al-Zaidi is not a Middle East hero but a world hero, the hookah is the World Peace Pipe. This is an anthropological truth. Read seminal visionary article:
« La nargileo, pac-pipo de la Meza Oriento : Antropologia Interpreto pri gxia Interparolada, Tempa kaj Luda Aspektoj »
[Narghile, Peace Pipe of the Middle East: an Anthropological Interpretation of its Conversational, Temporal and Ludic Aspects]

OTHER RELEVANT RESSOURCES
“I don’t advocate violence, even in response to violence, much less as substitution for words, and yet it seems to me that al-Zeidi has restored the good standing of journalists in the world. He’s punctuated his brief editorial with a statement in the universal language of television. A cream pie would have helped but would probably have tipped off the Secret Service to his plans. With the toss of two shoes, this journalist communicated more honest information to more people than a thousand New York Times exposes on aluminum tubes or expert commentaries on the Pentagon paid for by the Pentagon.”

“… I recall these two actions only because it occurs to me that people often walk by the White House with shoes on their feet that could perhaps be put to better use.”
SOURCE: David Swanson, from Let’s Try Democracy

+++++++++
“The brave Iraqi journalist Montadhar Al-Zaydi has shown to the world the emperor is naked. He’s been now taken hostage in his own country by the sectarian Quisling government of the Green Zone. Not only should he be released immediately; he must be honoured by any decent human being as a hero. Please, sign this petition in his favour now”
SOURCE: Gabriele from The Cat’s Dream

+++++++++
“Muntazer al-Zaidi's was a J'accuse! for the Iraq genocide, a J'accuse! of an entire People against an ongoing genocide and the silence and hypocrisy around it. The entire world could understand those words, those shoes and their meaning; the entire world but Jonathan Steele, who seems to be on the Moon.”
SOURCE: Gabriele Zamparini

+++++++++
Across the US, many people have begun displaying old shoes as a sign of solidarity with al-Zaidi . Shoes are being hung on mailboxes, put out on posts, mounted on pickup trucks, and allegedly also being mailed to the White House"...

+++++++++
Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush hailed as hero - Times Online

Happy New Year 2007 ! Welcome to the Empire of Global Lies, Hatred, Online Horror and on the Air !

100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study (The Lancet)

Just Foreign Policy (Iraqi Death Estimate)

Iraq Body Count

Shoes Remindful of a Narghile near the Syrian Border…

(source AP/Swissinfo.org, 24 May 2004): All these nice people, including the baby, were killed during this wedding ceremony in the village of El-Qaim, near the Syrian border after the invaders shelled this "den of terrorists". The following day, observers could see pieces of a broken lute and fragments of narghiles scattered here and there...

Images (3 former) : Courtesy of Uruknet and The Sacred Shoe

[note: updated Dec 17, 18, 19]

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 !

For a Handful of Dollars… WHO Group Funds Biased and Erroneous Shisha Study in Pakistan

NEW PUBLICATION: by Qudsia ANJUM, Farah AHMED, Tabinda ASHFAQ: Knowledge, attitude and perception of water pipe smoking (Shisha) among adolescents aged 14-19 years. J Pak Med Assoc. 2008 Jun;58(6):312-7.

“This project was funded by the World Health Organization, Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (WHO-EMRO) as part of their special grant for research in priority areas of public health during the year 2006. We are extremely grateful to all the respective authorities of WHO EMRO for their continuous supervision and liaison in relation to completion of this project.”

The official objective (refer to above link) was “to study the impact of educational intervention on knowledge, attitude and practices with regard to water pipe smoking among adolescents (14-19 years old) in Karachi.”

OBSERVATORY says: Like boggery !

Have a look at the stupid questionnaire (of course directly inspired by highly scientifically "validated" ones “designed” by the The ““Waterpipe””™ Specialized US-Syrian Centre staff and now disseminated as a “model” around the world and quickly gulped down by poor fishes in ““developing” countries” who choke on them further to our criticisms.

Example of item in questionnaire:

“Shisha café are playing an important role in promotion of water pipe” YES or NO ?

OBSERVATORY asks: Shouldn’t we rather say ““Waterpipe””™ is playing an important role in promotion of Shisha café” ?

Other items (Laugh ! You aren't in Wonderland !):

“Water pipe smoking makes boys more attractive” YES or NO ?

“Water pipe smoking makes girls more attractive” YES or NO ?

And the conclusion of the scientific analysis of all the collected data is, watch out !, that:

“The knowledge of the students regarding water pipe smoking improved after the health awareness sessions” ! Case Made !

See also that:

“Regarding health perceptions, the opinion of students to whether water pipe smoking is addictive increased after the intervention sessions (54% vs 68%; p<0.001).>Knowledge about water pipe is more addictive than cigarettes increased among students from 11% to 32% (p<0.001)>

Therefore, the objective of this study was chiefly to make students declare that shisha is more addictive than cigarettes ! Remember the world ““waterpipe””™ experts who have been declaring for years (until we put a sock in their mouths) that hookah smoking was MUCH MORE dangerous than cigarettes)!

Who’s standing behind the WHO funding ? Big Pharma ? And they call this Science ! WHO Tobacco Kontrol' “Science for All”, “Educating ignorant researchers in the so-called “developing countries”. Anjum and colleagues cite the WHO calamitous report on ““waterpipe””™ and other not less disastrous documents. Man, this was certainly a condition for the handful of dollars they have received from the WHO section there or whichever go-between…

They have also apparently taken great benefit from The Sacred Narghile and preferred to cite the latter instead of mentioning the hard publications of its consultant for scientific and international affairs. The reason is simple: he is the author of the above critiques ! Full stop beating about the bush Anjum !

In this , the technique is similar to the one adopted in other junk studies, particularly from the College of Nursing at Wayne State University (Detroit, USA): Linda WEGLICKI, Thomas TEMPLIN, Virginia Hill RICE, Hikmet JAMIL and Adnan HAMMAD. Comparison of Cigarette and Water-Pipe Smoking by Arab and Non-Arab-American Youth. Am J Prev Med. 2008 Aug 1

RELEVANT READINGS:

As if US air strikes on Pakistani civilian populations were not enough, the Observatary asks: Do Pakistanis need imported junk science ? Another previous junk study by Ali JAWAID from Pakistan:

The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Publishes a Junk Pakistani ““Waterpipe””™ Study and another one Citing a Junk Reference

Read other Pakistani good stuff from proud Pakistanis who know what a hookah and a shisha are and who are no puppets in the hands of foreign organizations with a dubious agenda for the world in general and their country in particular:

Ziauddin SARDAR's unpolitically correct message in The New Stateman (June 21, 2007): Let my son and me teach you how to smoke

DON'T MISS: Medical journal criticizes WHO for neglecting evidence

'This is a pretty seismic event. It undermines the very purpose of WHO.'—Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton

Read diplomatic exchange of notes between our consultant and David BETTCHER in WHO:

WHO and Peer-Review Standards in Studies on Hookah Smoking


MOTTO
Pakistanis of the World, Free Thinkers and Independent Researchers of Low-Income Countries, Unite ! Resist Pressures ! Decolonize Your Colleagues' Minds ! Save your dignity and reject suspect funding just as others avoid what you call "Haram" ! Those who ask you to do this kind of biased research are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year while some of you are literally starving. Remember Jesus’ words: “Don’t Be Afraid !”

Image: Courtesy of Karachi Metblogs

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 !

The « Anti-Tobacco » Industry Crimes. Owner of Houara Hookah Lounge in Critical State as He Enters 4th Week of Hunger Strike

A martyr of Big Pharma (*) and its stooges in the most influent media whose clear role is to nip in the bud any scientific debate on a huge mystification: Hookah "Passive Smoking". As for cigarette "passive smoking", the huge exaggeration (3000 times) was already smoked out by world prominent experts ( here )

The Invention of Hookah (Shisha, Narghile) «Passive Smoking» through Repeated Scientific Misconduct and Fraud. Lebanon & Syria

Original in French: Les crimes de l’industrie «anti-tabac». Le gérant d’un salon de thé parisien [Abdelkader El-Ahmer], en grève de la faim depuis 4 semaines, se trouve dans un état critique

(*) RELEVANT TO BIG PHARMA DICTATORSHIP: Prostitution of Tobacco Control Science and Policy: World Conference on Tobacco or Health Accepts Big Pharma Sponsorship (Pr Michael Siegel, March 13, 2008)


Not to mention gross exaggeration about hookah smoke while most of the latter is made up of WATER... and GLYCEROL (known to have no biological toxicity and not included [even as a footnote..., for obvious reasons] in the world anti-tobacco industry' calculation of "TAR" [the so-called "nicotine free dry particulate matter"]).

Not sure ? Read THIS

Any fair and independent tobacco scientist knows that what is important in this field is not Quantity but Quality. What kills people in tobacco is NITROSAMINES and RADIOACTIVITY.

> Where are the anti-tobacco industry' studies on these issues ? Its only obsession for almost 10 years now is (for obvious reasons) the "NICOTINE-ADDICTION" FRAUD originating in a US SURGEON GENERAL report (1988).

> The Anti-Tobacco industry is now recruiting social scientists to help "DEGLAMOURIZE" and "DENORMALIZE" hookah smoking :

Check the scientific level, LAUGH OR CRY: "Being male, older, unmarried, and non-Middle Eastern White predicted current cigarette smoking; being Arab or Chaldean and having less formal education predicted current water pipe use."

SOURCE: Jamil H, Templin T, Fakhouri M, Rice VH, Khouri R, Fakhouri H, Al-Omran H, Al-Fauori I, Baker O. Comparison of Personal Characteristics, Tobacco Use, and Health States in Chaldean, Arab American, and non-Middle Eastern White Adults. J Immigr Minor Health. 2008 Mar 3 [Epub ahead of print]

OTHER FUNNY CASE (involving the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation):

Smith-Simone S, Maziak W, Ward KD, Eissenberg T. Waterpipe tobacco smoking: Knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in two U.S. samples. Nicotine Tob Res. 2008 Feb;10(2):393-8.

>> READ More about the methods adopted by the Nicotine and Tobacco Research journal:
The “Nicotine and Tobacco Research” Journal Endorses a Scientific Error as Big and Carcinogenic as a Yemeni Narghile Bowl !

Stephanie SMITH-SIMONE, the main author, states she works for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Do you want to know more about this foundation ? CHECK OUT Pharmaceutical Multinationals: Buying Governments, Selling Antismoking (see also the RWJF Grants 1992-1999)

No use to introduce Dr SMITH-SIMONE's three colleagues of the “Waterpipe”™ group and main investigators a the joint US-Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies …

QUOTEWORTHY (of course, we will not make a review of numerous errors): “The final distinctive feature of waterpipe tobacco smokers from this U.S. sample is related to risk perceptions. Although sizable proportions of all populations studied in the EMR believe waterpipe to be less harmful and addictive than cigarettes (Asfar et al., 2005; Varsano, Ganz, Eldor, & Garenkin, 2003; Ward et al., 2005), U.S. waterpipe tobacco smokers were much more likely to believe that the likelihood of addiction and experiencing deleterious health effects was very low. For example, 49% of waterpipe users among Aleppo University students believed that waterpipe was more harmful than cigarettes (Asfar et al., 2005) compared with only 3% in this study sample.”


The answer to this “enigma” is VERY SIMPLE:

>> In Syria, smokers and students are under the direct influence, in Arabic, of the propaganda elaborated by the joint US-Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies

while,
>> in the US, hookah users and students are under the direct educational influence, in English, of the propaganda elaborated by The SCAred Narghile and the Observatory on Hookah OR Health…

OUR MOTTO: "DEGLAMOURIZE" and "DENORMALIZE" NEO-LISSENKOIST "WATERPIPE"™ PIRE-REVIEWED SCIENCE, FIRST !


[update April 26, 2008: Hookah Bars in Paris Fight Smoking ban. Abdelkader El-Ahmer, Owner of Houara Lounge, Is a World Hero in Tobacco Prohibition Times ]

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

Two Prominent Public Health Scholars Warn on Alcohol & Tobacco Policies: Moral Hygienism, State Puritanism or Industrial Lobbies ?

Two Prominent French Public Health Scholars Warn on Alcohol & Tobacco Policies: Hell is Paved with Good Intentions. Moral Hygienism, State Puritanism or Industrial Lobbies ? A Call for Action (Nov. 19, 2007)

«Alcool, tabac. Gare au pavé de l'ours. Hygiénisme moral, puritanisme d'Etat, ou lobbies industriels ? Un appel à réagir» (Original in French plus comments)


[Added January 29, 2008] READ ALSO: In Rare Historic Video Interview, Prominent Public Health Scholar in France Smokes Out Truth and Nothing But Truth about Tobacco & “Second-hand Smoke"



Image (not part of the call): Marx talking with French workers, 1844. By Hans Mocznay, 1964 (Deutsches Historisches Museum).

Relevant notes:
1) Most of the characters are smoking (cigar, pipe, cigarettes)
2: Marx one day said: “The Capital will never make up for all the cigars I smoked while writing it” (source : Die Neue Zeit, IX Jhrg., 1890-1891, pp. 10-17, 37-42).

Oh la la, la France encore ! Exhale now !

No, in the USA too: Student's Call in British Medical Journal (Nov 22, 2007) for Banning Smoking Bans !

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