文章基本信息

标题：Mind, language, and rational discourse
本地全文：下载
作者：N. J. Enfield
期刊名称：Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales
印刷版ISSN：0035-9173
出版年度：2018
卷号：151
期号：1
页码：102-105
语种：English
出版社：The Society
摘要：W hen Pope Francis banned the sale of cigarettes in the Vatican in 2017, his announcement stated: “The Holy See cannot be cooperating with a practice that is clearly harming the people.” The World Health Organisation tweeted their support—“WHO welcomes the Vatican’s decision to ban the sale of cigarettes as of next year”—with an infographic summarizing some deadly facts about tobacco, including “12% of deaths of all people aged over 30 are due to tobacco”, “global annual costs from tobacco use are US$1.4 trillion in healthcare expenditure and lost productivity”, and “tobacco kills more than 7 million people every year”. This in turn attracted a response from Nigel Farage, a politician and businessperson with no qualifications in medicine or health sci- ence. To his many thousands of social media followers, he wrote: “The World Health Organisation is just another club of ‘clever people’ who want to bully and tell us what to do. Ignore.” If the scientific findings behind WHO’s infographic are sound, then Farage is potentially endangering the lives of his hundreds and thousands of followers by lit- erally instructing them to disregard WHO’s expert advice. At least Farage practices what he preaches. During the Brexit campaign, journalist Michael Deacon noted that Farage had taken up smoking again, and asked him why. Farage’s response, delivered with ciga- rette in hand, was, “I think the doctors have got it wrong on smoking.”