Smoke Signals: Selected Writing

Smoke Signals gathers 71 of Professor Simon Chapman’s authoritative, acerbic and often heretical essays from across his 40-year career. They cover major developments and debates in tobacco control, public health ethics, cancer screening, gun control, and panics about low risk agents such as wi-fi, mobile phone towers and wind turbines. This collection is an essential guide to many key debates in contemporary public health. It will be invaluable to public health students and practitioners, and provides compelling, entertaining reading for anyone interested in health policy.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Never say die? 2. The paradox of prevention 3. The commodification of prevention 4. A testing time for prostate 5. Prostate screening not worth it 6. Why do doctors keep silent about their own prostate cancer decisions? 7. How famous faces muddle the message on cancer 8. Patient consent in spectator surgery not the only consideration 9. Does celebrity involvement in public health campaigns deliver long-term benefit? Yes. 10. A nation of flashers should show some modesty 11. A long, winding road to end the carnage 12. Drink and drive? Not the publican’s problem 13. The AIDS myth that will not die 14. A shattering of glass in Tasmania 15. Gun lobby on shaky ground 16. Now, about those guns . . . 17. 150 ways (and counting) that the nanny state is good for us 18. Tardis travelling into David Leyonhjelm’s post-nanny state dystopia 19. Torture by omission 20. It’s the government’s call over phone tower debate 21. No, we’re not all being pickled in deadly radiation from smartphones and wi-fi 22. Wind turbine sickness prevented by the money drug 23. Wind turbine syndrome: a classic “communicated” disease 24. Questions a prominent windfarm critic needs to answer 25. Chilean earthquakes in Australia and other wacky myths from windfarm opponents 26. Let’s appoint a judge to investigate bizarre windfarm health claims 27. Tragedy puts values at threat 28. Charities to be seen but no longer heard? 29. Reflections on a 38-year career in public health advocacy: ten pieces of advice to early-career researchers and advocates 30. Unravelling gossamer with boxing gloves: problems in explaining the decline in smoking 31. The banality of tobacco deaths 32. Smokers spend, then pay with their lives 33. Death of a Fat Lady 34. Stop-smoking clinics: a case for their abandonment 35. The inverse impact law of smoking cessation 36. Quitting unassisted: the 50-year neglect of a major health phenomenon 37. Is it time to stop subsidising nicotine replacement therapies? 38. The ethics of the cash register: taking tobacco industry research dollars 39. Smoke screen 40. It’s smokers, better still those trying to quit, who should benefit 41. Corporate responsibility is fast becoming a smoke-free zone 42. The problem with selling a lethal product: you just can’t get the staff 43. International tobacco control should repudiate Jekyll and Hyde health philanthropy 44. When will the tobacco industry apologise for its galactic harms? 45. Pleased as Punch: interview with the tobacco industry 46. Smoking bastions set to crumble 47. Why even “wowsers” argue about smoke bans 48. How Santa and the Tooth Fairy collaborated to allow smoking at casino 49. Is a smoking ban in UK parks and outdoor spaces a good idea? 50. Are today’s smokers really more “hardened”? 51. Light cigarettes – deadly despite the name 52. Matter of smoke and hire 53. Butt clean-up campaigns: wolves in sheep’s clothing? 54. Silver screen lights up with a deadly hidden message 55. What should be done about smoking in movies? 56. Four arguments against the adult-rating of movies with smoking scenes 57. Factoids and legal bollocks in the war against plain packaging 58. The slow-burn, devastating impact of tobacco plain packaging 59. The case for a smoker’s licence 60. E-cigarettes: the best and the worst case scenarios for public health 61. Spotless leopards? Decoding hype on e-cigarettes 62. Ten myths about smoking that will not die 63. Ten more myths about smoking that will not die 64. Letters to editors 65. Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian: a book that changed me 66. Why do researchers donate their time and money to help private conference organisers make big bucks? 67. Why I block trolls on Twitter 68. Publishing horror stories: time to euthanase paper-based journals? 69. My mother’s death 70. Dying with dignity with dementia 71. Can academics ever retire? Works cited

About the Author :
Simon Chapman AO is professor emeritus of public health at the University of Sydney.

Review :
‘Anyone who has been named by the free-market Institute of Public Affairs as an opponent of freedom is worth reading.’ ‘Chapman is a former academic with the rare ability to turn a phrase until it catches the light and to shape an argument to devastating effect.’