The Helena Study Chart
The Original Chart
This is slide eleven of the PowerPoint presentation Sargent and Shepard
used during their April, 2003 press conference. The black circles
represent the time the ban was in place.
Notice the similar dip in heart attacks in 1998. This was ignored
by the researchers.
Their entire
PowerPoint presentation is available here (pdf).
.
The Obvious Fraud
Here we've removed the lines
for clarity and highlighted the data that represents the ban. The
yellow area is the first three months of the ban. The red area is the
last three months.
Fact: The dip only
occurs during the first three months of the ban, not the length of
the ban, as claimed.
This is their own data, their own chart, and their fraud is obvious.
Many thanks to Michael McFadden who first pointed this out.
Fact: The Health Department did
not enforce the ban for the first
two months. They simply passed out warnings to the venues that were
ignoring it.
Fact: On April 7,
2003, Sargent and Shepard attended a meeting of the Montana Senate
where they heard testimony from business owners that during the first
months of the ban it was being ignored by
many venues, including three out of the towns five casinios. The minutes
from this meeting are available here.
Perhaps only unenforced bans contribute
to reducing heart attacks.
