Heather Crowe is one of the most famous Canadians of all time. Her well-known
and tragic story has appeared in newspaper reports and television and radio
programs around the world. She has appeared in Health Canada poster ads plastered
on every bus shelter across Canada, as well as heavy-saturation movie preview
and television ads. She has made public appearances and presentations to Provincial
Legislatures in most provinces and the City Councils of many major cities. Everyone
knows the story of the spunky little Ottawa City waitress who is dying from
exposure to second-hand smoke in her workplace.
Unfortunately, there are convincing reasons to believe that many things about the Heather Crowe story are not what they appear to be. Some critical "truths" which most people believe they know about Heather Crowe and her story, are not true at all!
And there's more - if Heather Crowe's story inspired anger against injustice, in you, the never before told "behind-the-scenes" story of her recruitment, manipulation and exploitation by ruthless fanatics ought to inspire genuine rage in you!
[Disclaimer; Despite Heather Crowe's obvious eagerness to be 'used' as an anti-smoking and public smoking ban advocate & spokesperson, I still believe she is sincere. I don't believe her involvement in misleading and manipulating us all, was intentional. I believe she is herself a victim, and even now probably remains unaware of the full extent to which she, herself, has been manipulated and exploited. There are no criticisms of Heather Crowe herself, in this article.]
PART ONE : Myths about Heather Crowe 1) MYTH - Heather Crowe was an average,
typical restaurant worker - so what happened to her could easily happen to anyone
who works around second-hand smoke.
FACT - Heather Crowe was far from an average or typical restaurant worker. In the first place, waitressing full-time for 40 years is very rare. The vast majority of persons who have ever worked as serving staff in the hospitality industry have only worked part-time, or for a few years before moving on to jobs in some unrelated field of work. The average "fast-food" company employee leaves their job within six months, for example.
By her own words, there were years when Heather Crowe worked "three shifts a day, at three different restaurants, from 6am to 2am". Working 20 hour days for years at a time is so far from "average" or "typical" for hospitality workers, that it would be more accurately described as a "one-in-a-million" work routine. The extreme level of exposure to second-hand smoke that Heather Crowe would have experienced throughout her working years, would therefore also be best described as "one-in-a-million".
Heather Crowe was not an average hospitality worker, with an average level of exposure to other people's smoke. The people in the anti-smoking organizations that misled her into believing that she was, or reinforced any such mistaken belief she might have held - betrayed her trust in them, manipulated her for their own purposes, and through her have attempted to manipulate us all.
2) MYTH - When Heather Crowe says; "I want to be the last person to die from second-hand smoke", she is referring to the many other documented cases of people being killed by exposure to second-hand smoke.
FACT - There has never been a case of someone dying from exposure to second-hand smoke, documented by death certificate or autopsy report, in our country. If Heather Crowe does end up dying from her lung cancer, (she is currently in remission, and may not die from her lung cancer at all, despite having allegedly been told that she had no more than a year to live), she will be the first and only person in the history of Canada to "officially" die from second-hand smoke.
Figures used by anti-smoking groups and government health agencies, of some number of persons supposedly "killed by second-hand smoke" every year, are not based on documentation of individual person's cause of death. "These estimates are made by...epidemiological estimating procedures that do not involve direct examination of individual death certificates." - Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada
That is why every health unit across our country seems to be using different numbers for the alleged "killed by second-hand smoke each year", and each of them contradicting the others. It seems very odd that, if you are in Lambton Ontario - 5000 people will die from second-hand smoke this year, but if you hop on a plane and go to Calgary Alberta - suddenly, only 3000 people will die from SHS. If you fly back to Ottawa and hang around the Health Canada buildings, the number of dead will magically drop to 1000/year. We should probably all move to B.C. because, standing on the healing soil of B.C. causes the national "death by SHS" rate to drop down to 500/year. No matter where you are standing in our country, however, not one of these alleged fatal victims of SHS can be found in your local morgue - with an autopsy report certifying that to be their cause of death, attached to them. They exist only on the pages of epidemiological estimating reports.
When Heather Crowe won compensation for allegedly contracting lung cancer through her workplace exposure to SHS, anti-smoking organization spokespeople gleefully predicted that her case would "open the floodgates" - that there would now be dozens or even hundreds of similar successful applications for compensation by similar victims across our country. In the eighteen months since her highly publicized successful claim, however, there has not been even one - not a single other application for compensation by any similar victims. No other "Heather Crowes" have surfaced.
It seems very probable that Heather Crowe and her tragic story are entirely unique in the history of our nation. Certainly, no documentation exists to the contrary. Heather Crowe may have been fated to be the first, last and only 'documented' fatal victim of exposure to SHS in the workplace, even if she had never gone public and campaigned for smoke-free workplaces.
3) MYTH - After working 40 years as a waitress, non-smoker Heather Crowe was diagnosed as having "a smoker's tumor" in her lungs.
FACT - There is no such thing as a "smoker's tumor". The phrase; "smoker's tumor" is not a medical term, and cannot be found in any credible medical dictionary.
Lung cancer can manifest as any one of four different cancerous tumors, all of which have been linked - through statistical analysis - to the smoking habits of the people who developed them. (The four types of lung cancers will be discussed in more detail in Part Two)
Since all four types of tumors have some level of association to tobacco smoke, all of them could be called "smoker's tumors". There is no type of lung cancer tumor that only occurs in smokers, or which is exclusively associated with carcinogens found in tobacco smoke.
The phrase "a smoker's tumor" may have been fed to Heather Crowe so that she would falsely conclude her tumor could only have been caused by inhaling tobacco smoke, just as her constant use of that phrase has falsely led thousands - possibly millions - to believe that she had some type of lung cancer tumor that could only be caused by inhaling tobacco smoke.
The evidence for this possible motivation includes the apparent suckering of Windsor-Essex County Health Unit staff - who really ought to know better - into drawing that exact mistaken conclusion; "Heather Crowe, a lifelong non-smoker, was diagnosed with a lung tumour normally only found in smokers." 1 If county health unit staff were hoodwinked by that phrase into believing that Heather Crowe had a type of lung tumor that is exclusive to smokers, how many ordinary people with no medical background likely came to the same, false, conclusion?
The exact type of tumor found in Heather Crowe's lung has never been made public.
4) MYTH - Heather Crowe's doctors were able to prove, beyond any doubt, that the second-hand smoke she was exposed to in her work was the cause of her lung cancer.
FACT - Because the biological processes involved in triggering cancerous mutation of healthy cells is not fully understood, it is not possible to determine with absolute certainty - even after examining and analyzing a sample of the tumor, as in a biopsy - that any specific substance caused the cells to go cancerous. For this reason, the association of smoking with the development of each kind of lung cancer is only described in medical literature as "strong" (many of the people who developed this type of tumor, were smokers) or "weak" (few of the people who developed this type of tumor, were smokers).
Heather Crowe's doctors could not have submitted, to the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board, irrefutable proof that cells in her lung were made to mutate into a cancerous tumor by inhaling tobacco smoke. No doctor on the planet can demonstrate such a direct causal relationship. Even the presence of carcinogenic substances found in tobacco smoke, in the tissue of her lung, could not prove such a direct causal relationship - because the processes involved in triggering cancerous mutation of healthy cells is not fully understood.
This is why the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board ruling was so "groundbreaking", and why "her lawyer, Phillip Hunt, told her it would be an "uphill battle." 2 Since a direct causal relationship could not possibly be demonstrated, the possibility of winning her compensation claim must have appeared remote to everyone involved. The ruling is, therefore, somewhat suspicious.
There are strong reasons to believe that political pressure was exerted upon members of the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board, quite possibly influencing a favorable ruling despite the lack of proof for a direct causal relationship. (See #5 below and also discussed in Part Two)
The full OWSIB ruling has not been made public.
The names of the doctors who submitted reports supporting Heather Crowe's claim, have not been made public. Their submissions to the OWSIB have not been made public.
For the record, what is publicly known about the submissions made to the OWSIB on Heather Crowe's behalf, is that they consisted primarily of statistical studies alleged to demonstrate an association between exposure to second-hand smoke and increased risk of developing lung cancer. "Mr. Hunt said his submissions to the compensation board relied on information that included studies done on the California food-services industry. The study found that heavily exposed restaurant workers inhaled the equivalent of 1½ to two packs of cigarettes a day." 3
5) MYTH - The fact that the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board ruled in Heather Crowe's favor, proves that second-hand smoke causes cancer (and heart disease, stroke, emphysema, asthma, and every other respiratory or circulatory ailment) in non-smokers.
FACT - The OWSIB ruling established no new medical or scientific findings. The Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board is only a worker's compensation board, a bureaucratic body. It is not a panel of world experts on cancer, nor is it a gathering of the greatest scientific researchers of our day. The extent to which exposure to second-hand smoke contributes to disease in non-smokers is still being debated and disputed, within the world of medical research. The OWSIB ruling has not changed that fact in any way.
If the OWSIB ruling proved anything at all, perhaps it has proven that having very powerful political friends can result in having compensation board standards of evidence tossed out the window in your case; "Crowe drew up a list of important people she had waited on: Ottawa West MP Marlene Catterall, former Gloucester mayor Claudette Cain, Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli, Nepean-Carleton MPP and Energy Minister John Baird, former regional chair Peter Clark, councillor Alex Munter and former Ottawa mayor Jacquelin Holzman. She met with Dr. Robert Cushman, the city's medical officer of health, and asked him to help her write letters to these people asking for support for her claim." 2
6) MYTH - It was Heather Crowe's tragic story that inspired all the anti-smoking organizations to mount fanatical efforts to secure total public smoking bans in every community across our country. The members of these organizations have no motives for wanting total public smoking bans other than to protect other workers from suffering Heather Crowe's fate.
FACT - Total public smoking bans have been a staple of all anti-smoking organizations since they came into being - in some cases, decades ago. The fanatical drive to achieve the goal of 100% public bans began many years before Heather Crowe was even diagnosed with lung cancer.
There are many provable motivations for anti-smoking organizations wanting total public smoking bans, other than protecting workers like Heather Crowe. (Discussed in more detail in Part 2).
One of the primary motivations for these campaigns, is a motivation that has been downplayed in recent years and which often lies hidden beneath more obvious motivations. Many members of anti-smoking organizations subscribe to a delusional yet passionate belief that they are 'heroes' fighting a "David vs. Goliath" war against "evil" multinational tobacco companies. Total public smoking bans would serve this motivation indirectly - by contributing to making ordinary life impossible for many smokers. Anti-smoking advocates assume and hope that being turned into social pariahs, with the civil liberties that other citizens enjoy denied to them, will "motivate" large numbers of smokers to quit -
"Under Section 115 of the Municipal Act 2001, municipalities are permitted to pass bylaws regulating when and where a person can smoke in the community. This is part of the Ontario Tobacco Strategy aimed at reducing the use of tobacco in the province, and in the longer term reducing the health related costs that come from tobacco use." 1
which would in turn deal the tobacco companies a serious blow through the loss of customer dollars this would represent.
The myopic fanaticism underlying this convoluted method of striking at the tobacco companies is plainly shown by the fact that such a plan would necessarily inflict misery and suffering, in the lives of the very people that anti-smoking organizations have always claimed to be dedicated to protecting from misery and suffering (the misery and suffering of contracting and dying from lung cancer, for example) - people who smoke.
Before Heather Crowe, anti-smoking organizations rarely emphasized the idea of protecting workers from SHS health dangers, in their literature and public statements calling for 100% public bans. After Heather Crowe "fell in their laps", the idea of protecting worker's health suddenly became the central focus of all such group's campaigns for public smoking bans. Heather Crowe and her tragic life circumstance have been, ironically and ghoulishly, the best thing that ever happened to anti-smoking groups and campaigners around the globe.
In fact, if Heather Crowe did not exist, it would be necessary for these organizations to "invent" her. Can you be absolutely certain, that they didn't? (Discussed in Part Two)
PART TWO : Too good to be true - Heather Crowe as "the perfect victim"
Introduction -
In this section, the publicly known details of the Heather Crowe story will be dissected in detail. There remain a number of critically important details of her story that have never been made public. I will present arguments as to why these details must become public knowledge, and the sooner the better. My respect for Heather Crowe would grow even deeper than it already is, if she were to voluntarily make the details she has knowledge about, public, on her own. On the other hand, it would probably be preferable if some of these details became public through the course of a public inquiry into the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board's favorable ruling in her case. Heather Crowe herself may have no motivation for intentionally deceiving people, but there are some important questions that could only be answered by other people - people who might very well stand to suffer loss of professional and community respect and esteem, or their jobs and careers, or simply intense personal embarrassment and guilt over having manipulated someone who was so vulnerable and placed so much trust in them - if they were to be completely truthful in their answers. Any such persons could be very highly motivated to lie through their teeth, without the counter-motivation of being compelled to answer honestly at a public inquiry.
There will be some who will insist on seeing me as a callous bastard, demanding personal information from a dying woman. The truth is - the majority of the text on this article was written in the spring of 2003. I refrained from putting this article online, at that time, out of consideration for the fact that Heather Crowe was believed to have very little time left to live. If she had passed away within a year of her diagnosis of lung cancer, as she was alleged to have been told she would by her doctors, this article would have ended up in my computer's recycle bin and never seen the light of day at all.
To my great joy, however, Heather Crowe is still with us and in fact she is "in remission" at this time, which the Cancer Research UK website informs me means; "there is no sign of the cancer" - although there remains a possibility that it may recur. At this point in time, however, Heather Crowe is not dying - of lung cancer or anything else - and has become not only a very public figure (by her own choice) but also a political activist. People who are public figures and political activists cannot reasonably expect that details of their life history, which are of relevance to their political activity, will remain private matters forever.
Political activity, in various parts of our country at this time, is what makes a public inquiry into the OWSIB ruling in Heather Crowe's compensation claim case, and the public disclosure of answers to all questions about that case, an immediate necessity. Heather Crowe's story and her political activism has been credited with directly inspiring some very important legislation that will directly affect the lives of millions of people, particularly in the two provinces currently drafting province-wide public smoking bans. Many city smoking ban bylaws across the country, as well as new workplace safety legislation and even the fight over Medical Officer of Health Peter Sarsfield's unilateral workplace smoking ban, all have been directly influenced by Heather Crowe's story and her activism.
If anyone doubts the direct impact of Heather Crowe and her activism, here are a few media quotes on this subject; "In Saskatchewan, Crowe told her story and the labour minister cried. She was supposed to meet with the mayor of Winnipeg for 30 minutes, but he kept her in his office for two hours. Afterward, he said he wanted to protect his city's restaurant and bar workers from second-hand smoke, even though it wasn't a priority for the province of Manitoba. That same week, she spoke to Cornwall's city council, which was going to weaken the town's ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. Crowe helped change their minds." "In November, Crowe sent a letter to all 14 federal, provincial and territorial labour ministers, responsible for workplace health and safety, asking them to ban smoking in all workplaces, with no exceptions. She also asked to meet with them." "Last month, Crowe met with labour ministers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, who both committed to at least considering a ban. Manitoba will begin hearings next fall." "Then Perley introduced Crowe. "We're going to hear from someone who single-handedly has made second-hand smoke as important an issue to public safety as Walkerton was to water safety," he said" 2 "In a landmark ruling, a former Ontario waitress suffering from lung cancer has been awarded worker's compensation. The award could be the key to compelling the Ontario government to make all bars and restaurants across the province smoke-free." 3
Before any more Heather Crowe story inspired legislation is passed anywhere
in our country, there needs to be a full public inquiry into the OWSIB ruling
in her case and the events which led up to and contributed to that ruling -
because if there has been subterfuge, conspiracy, deception or manipulation
by any of the principle "behind-the-scenes" players in the Heather
Crowe story, that fact must be made public and given as much government-sponsored
publicity as Heather Crowe herself has received, in the interest of one of the
most basic and important principles of any democracy - free and informed decision
making by the electorate and their chosen representatives.
Right now, there are critically important pieces of information about Heather Crowe's story that have never been made public. Someone close to Heather Crowe may be keeping a tight rein on what is, and what is not, disclosed about her case - perhaps through the advice they may be providing her. Exactly what remains to be disclosed, and why this information may be of crucial importance, is the focus of the next section.
The Questions -
1) What is the name of Heather Crowe's diagnosing doctor, and why did that person use the phrase; "a smoker's tumour" to describe to her the "large cancerous mass" on her left lung?
It is essential that the name of Heather Crowe's diagnosing doctor, as well as any other doctors who made submissions to the Workplace Safety Board on her behalf, be made public. The primary reason for this, is for the sake of assessing what kind of association he/they may have had - if any - with the Non-smoker's Rights Association of Canada, Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada, the Ontario Committee for Action on Tobacco, the Ontario Tobacco Strategy Steering Committee, the Canadian Coalition for Action on Tobacco, the Ontario Tobacco-free Network, the Canadian Lung Association, the Canadian Cancer Society , any other anti-smoking, tobacco control or tobacco reduction organizations - as well as any of these persons; Dr. Robert Cushman, Michael Perley, Dann Michols, Murray Kaiserman, Cynthia Callard or other members of the office of the Chief Medical Officer of the City of Ottawa, or Health Canada's Tobacco Control department. The possible importance of any associations Heather Crowe's doctors might have had with any of these people will become clear as we proceed, but first we need to look at the other part of this question.
Why did Heather Crowe's diagnosing doctor use the phrase; "a smoker's tumour" to describe to her the "large cancerous mass" on her left lung? As previously noted in Part One, there is no such thing as "a smoker's tumour" and that phrase is not a medical term at all.
Please don't take my word on that. Try plugging "smoker's tumour" or "smoker's tumor" into the search function of Medline or other medical data bases. No results will be returned. Try looking up "smoker's tumor" in any medical dictionary - you won't find it therein. Even more general search engines such as Google and Yahoo, return only websites on which Heather Crowe is herself quoted as using that term or other people use it when referring to her story. It would appear that, not only is Heather Crowe unique in being the only 'documented' case of a hospitality worker contracting lung cancer from SHS in the workplace, in the history of our nation, but she is also unique in being the only person ever to be diagnosed as having "a smoker's tumor" in her lung. Something is very wrong, here.
There are two major groups of lung cancers; small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and nonsmall cell lung cancer(NSCLC). Squamous cell, adenocarcinoma and large cell carcinoma are generally grouped together as "nonsmall cell lung cancer" (NSCLC). Squamous cell carcinoma and small cell carcinoma are the most common types found in smokers, but adenocarcinoma and large cell carcinoma also are related to smoking.
From the little information made public about the characteristics of Heather Crowe's cancer, it seems likely that she had a "Limited Stage Disease" small cell carcinoma - this is the type of cancer must likely to be found also in the lymph nodes at time of diagnoses, that also has a reasonable probability of 16-24 month survival and the possibility of remission if treatment is started early enough. This type of lung cancer has a strong association with smoking, but accounts for only 20% of all lung cancer cases. It is not exclusive to smokers, however, and to describe this type of lung cancer as "a smoker's tumor" would imply that 80% of lung cancer tumors are somehow not "smoker's tumors" - which contradicts everything that the lung associations, cancer societies, medical associations and government health agencies are constantly telling us - that smoking is alleged to be responsible for the vast majority of lung cancers.
Why would Heather Crowe's diagnosing doctor use the phrase "a smoker's tumor", when that term is not only not valid medical terminology but also describes a thing that doesn't exist? There must be a reason, a motivation, for feeding this term to her. But what could it be? What purpose could doing this possibly serve? It seems clear, from the very nature of the phrase, that at least part of the purpose must have been to convince Heather Crowe herself that her cancerous tumor could not have been caused by anything other than tobacco smoke. But, why do that? There is no obvious medical motivation to convincing her of this.
If, however, you were a doctor who was engaged in "trolling" for candidates to be the face & voice of workers suffering irreparable harm from SHS exposure in their workplace, you might be motivated to provide a diagnosis to likely looking prospects which would ensure that they themselves have no doubt whatsoever about SHS being the only possible, sole cause of their affliction.
If that was the motivation for using the phrase "a smoker's tumor", it couldn't have been more successful. Heather Crowe became so certain of the exact cause of her lung cancer, long before the results of her biopsy were known, that she would not only invest in a lawyer and initiate a claim for worker's compensation on the basis of permanent disability resulting from her work, but agree to appear in an ad that would appear before the biopsy results were in, in which she would publicly claim to have contracted cancer from SHS in her workplace.
2) What were the circumstances under which Heather Crowe and Dr. Robert Cushman - Chief Medical Officer for the City of Ottawa - became acquainted, and what was the full extent of Dr. Cushman's involvement with Heather Crowe's doctors, with submissions made to the WSIB by the City of Ottawa Public Health Department on her behalf, and with the recruitment of prominent political figures and members of the medical community in a campaign to pressure the WSIB into making a favorable ruling on her compensation claim?
Dr. Robert Cushman is the Medical Officer of Health/ Chief Medical Officer for the City of Ottawa. He also happens to be one of the most prominent, influential and fanatical anti-smoking advocates in Canada. He is President of the Canadian Council for Tobacco Control - a non-profit anti-smoking organization that had it's federal funding from Health Canada cut in half after auditors could verify expenditures for only a tiny amount of the $647,243 in public money provided to it in 2000-2001. He led the City of Ottawa Health Department's campaign for total public smoking bans in that city, during the course of which he diverted $800,000 in "surplus" funds from that department to finance the smoking ban campaign. 4 So fanatical was his devotion to this campaign that there were times when "I was reminded by friends and foes to take it in stride, that I had “no real power to decide,” that “I was not the mayor.” 4
We know, from the article "Good till the last breath", that Heather Crowe and Dr. Cushman became acquainted at some point before her biopsy was performed - long before the results of which were known - and that he helped her write letters to former customers of hers, who happened to be prominent political figures, asking them to "support" her compensation claim. "She met with Dr. Robert Cushman, the city's medical officer of health, and asked him to help her write letters to these people asking for support for her claim." 2
There is at this point, no public record of how they became acquainted. Did she just decide to drop by his office one day and introduce herself? Were they introduced to each other through her diagnosing doctor - the one who taught her that she had "a smoker's tumour" ? Were they introduced through the efforts of some other, unnamed, party or parties - and if so, who was it?
3) To what extent was the Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board's handling of Heather Crowe's compensation claim, and the favorable ruling they gave her, influenced by pressures placed upon the OWSIB and it's board of directors by prominent politicians and members of the anti-smoking activist and medical communities?
We have already seen that Dr. Robert Cushman assisted Heather Crowe in writing to prominent and influential people and asking them to "support" her claim; "Crowe drew up a list of important people she had waited on: Ottawa West MP Marlene Catterall, former Gloucester mayor Claudette Cain, Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli, Nepean-Carleton MPP and Energy Minister John Baird, former regional chair Peter Clark, councillor Alex Munter and former Ottawa mayor Jacquelin Holzman. She met with Dr. Robert Cushman, the city's medical officer of health, and asked him to help her write letters to these people asking for support for her claim." 2
There is evidence that her compensation claim was "fast-tracked", expedited - but for what reason and by whose orders? According to her lawyer, Phil Hunt; "Mr. Hunt submitted a claim last July, and it was approved this week. He said the board acted with unusual speed. Its decisions are often painfully slow, he said." 3
There is evidence that the OWSIB's ruling in favor of her claim was anything but routine;
"In a landmark decision, the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has agreed to pay workers compensation benefits to a former waitress who developed terminal lung cancer after working in smoke-filled restaurants for 40 years." "The Board’s decision to recognize second-hand smoke as a legitimate workplace hazard breaks with past practice..."
"I believe it is the first award of its kind for employees in the services industry, particularly bar and restaurant businesses," said Crowe’s lawyer, Phil Hunt. "To our research, it’s completely unprecedented in Ontario or Canada." 3
"Cynthia Callard, a spokeswoman for Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said the award is the first of which she has heard in 17 years of working in the field." 3
The most important of all unanswered questions about the Heather Crowe story is this; was this "landmark decision" by the OWSIB, that "broke with past practice" and was "completely unprecedented" - a result of some startling new revelation about the relationship between SHS and fatal illness in non-smokers (a revelation that was apparently not made public), or was it a result of truly unprecedented pressure placed upon Ontario Workplace Safety & Insurance Board members by influential persons whose demands for a ruling in favor of Heather Crowe could not possibly have been refused?
The Quest For The Perfect Victim -
I have suggested that - if you were a doctor who was engaged in "trolling" for candidates to be the face & voice of workers suffering irreparable harm from SHS exposure in their workplace, you might be motivated to provide a diagnosis to likely looking prospects which would ensure that they themselves have no doubt whatsoever about SHS being the only possible, sole cause of their affliction. But - were there really any doctors engaged in a search for just such a "perfect victim", at that time and in that place? Yes, there were...
"One Sunday night in July, while she awaited the results of her lung and lymph node biopsies, Crowe watched the news on television. She saw an item about a benefit to support restaurants and bars that opposed the smoking ban. Cynthia Callard, a woman who backed the ban, was interviewed. She was from an organization called Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada. Crowe grabbed her phonebook and was soon talking to Callard, executive director of the organization, who just happened to be in the office that night, emptying the garbage. Callard recalls that first conversation. "She said her name was Heather and that she had just been diagnosed with lung cancer from working as a waitress. She was wondering if we could help her with some research for a worker's compensation case." Callard immediately realized that Crowe might be the "face" that the anti-second-hand smoke forces were searching for, in the same way a flight attendant in the mid-'80s had been instrumental in getting smoking banned from aircraft in Canada. Carmen Paquin flew the Toronto-Ottawa route for Air Canada and frequently met politicians. She'd tell them how important it was for her and her co-workers to have a smoke-free work environment." 2
"...the "face" that the anti-second-hand smoke forces were searching for..." The first thing to note about this, is that it wouldn't be necessary to "search" for an average hospitality worker - such a large portion of the population has worked in that industry at one time or another in their lives that a pebble randomly tossed into any crowd is likely to strike an "average" hospitality worker. But, if you needed to find a hospitality worker so far removed from the average that they could plausibly claim to have contracted a fatal illness through second-hand smoke exposure in their workplace (sound familiar?) - then you would indeed have to search, high and low, to find such a person.
So, "the anti-second-hand smoke" "forces" were indeed actively searching for a "perfect victim", long before Heather Crowe fell in their laps. "Forces" implies a great many more people than just the executive of Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada - we can safely assume that it encompasses a great many organizations and individuals - including all the people running Health Canada's anti-smoking programs and Dr. Robert Cushman, Chief Medical Officer for Ottawa and fanatical anti-smoking activist, himself.
And how were they going about this "searching"? Not through anything as direct and public as advertisements in area newspapers - there's no evidence of that kind of campaign. No, their search must have been carried out much more discreetly - for example, a notification communicated to all front-line medical staff such as General Practitioners, to be on the lookout for any likely looking prospects that should show up in their offices...perhaps sent out through the auspices of Dr. Robert Cushman's Public Health department?
Meanwhile, on July 8-9, 2002, Health Canada is running a conference on "denormalization" of tobacco, smoking and smokers - which is no doubt being attended by many members of "the anti-second-hand smoke forces". "Denormalization" refers to a process of turning previously socially acceptable behavior into socially unacceptable behavior. Among the comments made by the participants, while brainstorming ideas for denormalizing smoking, are these startlingly "coincidental" ones; "We need champions for tobacco industry denormalization." [such as, a Heather Crowe?] "Municipalities and their work re: smoke free public places are essential to social denormalization" [and a "perfect victim" would sure help pressure more municipalities to "get with the program"] "Testimonials and graphic messages work, as noted during the discussions in the morning session" and "There is a need for real, graphic, living-with-the-disease shock value and recognizable to every day people."
A need for "testimonials" that can provide "graphic" "living-with-the-disease shock value"....a need for precisely the kind of victim/spokesperson that Heather Crowe is going to become, for them. Could this "need" of theirs be so pressing that they would be willing to manipulate and exploit the first "likely prospect" to come to their attention?
Could Heather Crowe have been set-up to be the person these "forces" so desperately needed - the face & voice of workers suffering irreparable harm from SHS exposure in their workplace - right from the moment of her initial diagnosis? Could that be the reason her diagnosing doctor fed her the preposterous and medically invalid term; "a smoker's tumor"? To encourage her to believe that only tobacco smoke could have caused her cancer, and then assess her reaction to that? Is it possible that, when she failed to question that "diagnosis" and voiced her outrage at being victimized, instead - Dr. Robert Cushman and possibly others might have been notified that a likely prospect had been identified, after which a number of influential members of "the anti-second-hand forces" would take whatever steps were necessary to ensure that the documentation they would need, including a successful worker's compensation claim, became a reality?
If the scenario I'm suggesting seems implausible to you, consider how implausible
the alternative scenario - the "official" Heather Crowe story that
we are all expected to just accept and never question - really is...
- Heather Crowe's diagnosing doctor "just happens" to describe her cancer to her using a medically invalid term which precludes any possible cause for her cancer other than the one cause that would make her of value to "the anti-second-hand smoke forces".
Then, the following events take place - all of them BEFORE her biopsy results and/or the outcome of her compensation claim are known;
- Heather Crowe, a low-income worker facing financial ruin because she has cancer, nevertheless invests some of her precious financial nest egg into hiring a lawyer to help her with a worker's compensation claim based on exposure to SHS in the workplace and persists with the claim even though her lawyer tells her it will be "an uphill battle".
- She "just happens" to run into Dr. Robert Cushman, one of Canada's foremost anti-smoking advocates and a very probable member of "the anti-second-hand smoke forces" that are searching for a 'perfect victim', and he helps her to recruit influential former customers to support her compensation claim. He does this, even though the results of her biopsy are not known yet.
- The day after her biopsy is performed, still long before the result is known, a regular customer of hers who is an assistant deputy minister for Health Canada, and responsible for the government's anti-smoking programs, including ads running on television and in movie theatres - named Dann Michols - "just happens" to ask her about her health. After she tells him, he immediately recruits her to appear in a series of very expensive commercials - despite the fact that there is no documentation, such as biopsy reports or a successful compensation claim, at that time to support her contention of contracting cancer from SHS in her workplace. An initial ad is even filmed almost immediately.
- Not long after, Heather Crowe "just happens" to call up Cynthia Callard of Physicians for a Smoke-free Canada, who "just happened to be in the office that night, emptying the garbage," 2 ostensibly to ask "if we could help her with some research for a worker's compensation case." 2
"Callard immediately realized that Crowe might be the "face" that the anti-second-hand smoke forces were searching for..."2, and "In a matter of days, Crowe attended an information meeting in Perth about a possible smoking ban." 2
Remember, the results of her biopsy are still not known, yet she has the temerity to publicly identify herself - at that meeting - as someone who is doomed to die from exposure to second-hand smoke; "Barry McKay?, general manager of Pubco, the Pub and Bar Coalition of Ontario, which is fighting the ban across the province, said at this meeting there was no proof second-hand smoke had killed anyone. Crowe stood to speak: "I've been a waitress in smokey restaurants for 40 years. When I die, I will make sure someone delivers a copy of my death certificate to you," she said. Crowe, the activist, had emerged." 2
- Shortly after this, her biopsy results come out and they are alleged to provide evidence that; "She really did have inoperable cancer caused by cigarette smoke." 2 Conveniently, however, she chooses not to ever release the biopsy report publicly, preventing any objective assessment of the validity of this claim.
- Then, in a coincidence more startlingly unlikely than any found outside of religious texts about divine intervention; "The riveting ads [of Heather Crowe] began airing across Canada on Oct. 9. That same day, Crowe received startling news. She had won compensation." 2 If you can believe that Health Canada would approve her ads for airing without knowing in advance that her compensation claim would be approved - then I have some ocean-front property in Saskatchewan you might be interested in purchasing...
- And finally; "...with the worker's compensation victory, which acknowledged she acquired cancer from second-hand smoke, she suddenly had clout behind her message. In November, Crowe sent a letter to all 14 federal, provincial and territorial labour ministers, responsible for workplace health and safety, asking them to ban smoking in all workplaces, with no exceptions." "I am the canary in the coal mine for the hospitality industry," Crowe wrote. "It would be like ignoring the fact that the canary in the restaurant has stopped singing, and sending the workers to certain danger, and perhaps death." 2
Now "the anti-second-hand smoke forces" had their "perfect victim", and a perfect activist on top of that, at just the perfect time! And along the way of her "becoming", every member of these anti-second-hand smoke forces she encounters accepts her story of contracting cancer through SHS exposure in her workplace - without any documentary evidence - and enlists her as a public spokesperson for them, even though they would all end up publicly discredited for all time if either her biopsy or her compensation claim had not turned out the way they needed them to.
No. A far more plausible version of events would have many of "the anti-second-hand
smoke forces" quietly conspiring in the background, to "put the fix
in" for her biopsy results and compensation claim to go exactly as they
wished them to - enabling all the people she encounters to have total confidence
in their eventual outcomes and to act on the basis of that foreknowledge without
any worries of a nasty surprise lying in wait for them.
Only a full public inquiry can set to rest these reasonable doubts and suspicions.
SOURCES: 1 = Windsor-Essex County Health Unit. 3/9/2004 2 = "Good till
the last breath" - CanWest? Media; canada.com 3 = "Ailing ex-waitress
wins second-hand smoke case" - Globe & Mail 4 = Optimum Online - Vol.
31, Issue 3, Mar 2002, Page 15