In Defense of the Indefensible
David E. Williams of the Health business blog wrote an entry in his blog yesterday titled, “In defense of smoking“, wherein he criticizes Steven A. Schroeder, head of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at UCSF for failing to mention (in a Washington Post article advocating banning smoking from mental health facilities) that “smoking helps [schizophrenics] feel less crazy”. He goes on to say that it’s “probably worth encouraging some mental health patients to quit but it’s not probably not so clear cut.” (I’m not making this up.)
He cites an article by Dr. Henry Nasrullah on healthtalk.com (Smoking and Schizophrenia: Does Nicotine Help Schizophrenia?) in support of his statement that “smoking helps [schizophrenics] feel less crazy” (which is not the sense that I get from Dr. Nasrullah’s article), but then Mr. Williams fails to mention that Dr. Nasrullah goes on to say that, “The newer anti-psychotic medications can help repair the nicotine deficit in the brains of persons with schizophrenia without the need for smoking. Thus, it is not unusual to see some persons with schizophrenia quit smoking after being treated on psychiatric wards, the majority of which are smoke-free.” (emphasis added.)
Could Mr. Williams’s own omissions be due to the fact that his company, MedPharma Partners LLC “provides management consulting and business development services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and technology enabled healthcare service organizations of all sizes”? After all, fewer cancer, heart, and COPD patients would mean less business for “pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and technology enabled healthcare service organizations of all sizes”, and less business for those entities would presumably mean less clients for Mr. Williams’s company, wouldn’t it?
Besides, they’re only “crazy” people anyway…
Right, Mr. Williams?
