I came across a clipping from The Times obituary for Sir Richard Doll. It was not this bit that surprised me:
‘When questioned recently on second-hand smoke, he exasperated the anti-smoking lobby by replying: “The effects of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn’t worry me.”
He was also wont to point out that the idea that smokers cost the taxpayer millions in hospital fees is in fact a myth, stating that smoking efficiently killed its adherents before they could retire or become old — and that the habit might actually be of economic benefit to the country.’
but the ending:
“It was, as one journalist pointed out, ‘an argument that only Richard Doll could get away with airing’”.
Trendy media types are more wont to comment on how much more tolerant we are – civil partnership, women working, multicultural …
In truth, at best we are just tolerant of different things while having our very own things that are too dangerous to think or say
And worryingly ever more intolerant, it sometimes seems, of people saying things which do not fit a certain world view
Intolerant of scepticism, however well founded or well informed
Meeting any such comment with vilification, aspersion, outrage, rather than reasoned rebuttal
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