NEWS FROM BRITAIN by LES ARMOUR
the PHONE TAPPING SCANDAL and the Cancer Scare.
THE BRITISH phone tapping scandal must be rather disconcerting for those who make their livings. by pointing out that the world is going to hell at a rapid pace.
Whatever else is or is not involved it is at least significant a nation should be up in arms over the tapping of a telephone belonging to a man who has openly boasted that he is “the king of the underworld.”
It might be thought that, to cheek on the doings of such o man, it is even proper to pry into the telephone conversations he has with his lawyers ‘and, if the Bar Council is concerned about his relations with his lawyers, to release those conversations to the Council, perhaps it is. But what is important is that the public has demanded to be shown that it as, and that M.P.s of both parties
and even the government which authorised the proceedings are concerned about the principle involved.
The underlying problems are many and extremely complicated. They include the deep concern of every Englishman for the preservation of the sanctity of every other Englishman’s home and the long tradition that what a man says to his lawyer is no one’s concern but his own.
The row has brought a great many accusations—including the one that M.P.s have had their telephones tapped — and the evidence, such as it is, suggests that telephone tapping has been much more widespread than anybody has heretofore believed.
Some, perhaps even all, of the accusations may turn out to be wild.
But it does seem certain that the whole matter will be thoroughly investigated and the public will have some opportunity to pass judgment on the principles involved.
All in all it is a very good demonstration that the English man’s concern for justice is very much alive and that the democratic processes are — still working at full tilt.
LUNG CANCER
If SCIENCE docs not kill us with its dastardly inventions it seems reasonably certain that it will, at least, frighten a good many of us to death.
The lung cancer scare scams to have a very considerable number of people quaking in their boots
The evidence, for the moment, seems to consist in just this: People who smoke more than 25 cigarettes a day meet their ends from Lung cancer forty times as often as people who don’t smoke at all.
This could, of course, just be a very odd coincidence, Statistical relationships and causal relationships are not at all the same thing, But the great majority of scientific laws based solely on statistical relationships and indeed, some scientists nowadays doubt there are any “causal relationships” at all.
So we are being urged by the scientists not to feel too comfortable about the fact that it has not been proved that ‘smoking “causes” lung cancer.
Still, many people quite justly expect someone to offer some explanation for the statistical coincidence, it has been shown that there is at least one potential cancer causer in cigarettes smoke.’ But that has failed rather dismally to produce cancer when it has been injected into mice, So we go on doubting.
Another theory which has been around the fringes of scientific discussions, in the last few months is the one that it is not cigarettes which cause cancer but that the same psychological factors which have caused people to smoke more heavily also cause cancer.
It is against this background that the government decided to file the information with local authorities and let them decide what sorts of anti-smoking campaigns they want to launch.
Naturally, the tobacco manufacturers are not happy about this. They have countered that the charge against the cigarette has yet to be proved.
More happily, it seems that the pipe and the cigar are pretty safe.
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