Articles by Simon Chapman

Two current British government campaigns pull no punches about urging all smokers trying to quit to use drugs. One puts it bluntly: “Don’t go cold turkey.” Another poster on display in the nation’s waiting rooms says: “There are some people who can go cold turkey and stop smoking. But there aren’t many of them.” That […]

So why do public sector experts give up their valuable time to effectively donate their time and expertise to for-profit companies such as IIR?

The various organisations that are at the forefront of wind farm opposition recently published eight papers in a special edition of an allegedly peer-reviewed journal you could be excused from never having heard of.

When it comes to counterfeit or duty not paid packs, how would they actually know?

With the passage of the government’s bill on plain packaging now assured, an ever-desperate tobacco industry is now concentrating on the legal apocalypse that they say will descend on Australia through the courts.

The government’s plain packaging proposal allows brand names: packs won’t all have just “cigarettes” on them.

Old blokes playing covers has led the odd brush with fame.

Just as interviewing lottery winners is not a sensible way of making informed judgements about the odds of winning, so is it unwise to use the “I’m alive” testimony of post-treatment survivors of prostate cancer as a guide to the value of the test.

The next wave of the tobacco industry’s panicked assault on plain packaging of tobacco products is about to start with a DVD, now on British American Tobacco’s website about to be mailed to all MPs.

The push to present very young women being at significant risk for breast cancer may be lining pockets of private radiography providers, but it will be causing an alarming and avoidable incidence of unnecessary investigation.

If tobacco companies are indeed funding the “neither confirm nor deny” IPA, they might reflect on the value of their investment.

Why are public sector experts giving up their valuable time to effectively donate their public salaried time and expertise to IIR conferences that cost thousands of dollars to attend?

The wind turbine industry is not exactly an industry with a reputation for mendacity, but trust is fragile commodity.

Australia’s tobacco industry is having a major attack of the vapours following recommendations made by the government’s Preventive Health Task Force last year.