In the ebb and flow of news surrounding the ongoing debate over secondhand smoke in Helena, last week was particularly busy. Helena doctors Richard Sargent and Robert Shepard made national news with their finding that heart attacks here dropped last summer while the city's ordinance was being enforced. Meanwhile, over at the Capitol, the House approved a bill to exempt casinos from any local smoking regulations.

In a display of the power of the (Associated) Press, news of the heart attack study made its way across the country and even across the oceans. The AP's national science editor filed a story Tuesday from Chicago, where Sargent presented his findings to the American College of Cardiologists.

Large news organizations like CNN and MSNBC picked up the story on their Web sites, as did newspapers big and small, from the Chicago Sun Times and Washington Times to the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald, the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph and the Roanoke (Va.) Times.

The story didn't stop at the border. Helena's heart attack data also received play from the CBC and Globe & Mail in Canada, the British Broadcasting Corp. and India's Hindustan Times.

Most news outlets were content to run the wire story, but a few authored their own take on the news.

The Wall Street Journal wrote its own story about the heart attack findings. The Journal noted that a larger study is needed but quoted a University of North Carolina cardiologist as saying "this is a strong piece of evidence of the need to avoid the dangers of secondhand smoke."

The Journal went on to say that "Despite the small numbers, the statistical analysis, done at the University of California at San Francisco, indicate the results meet the high tests of validity."

Others aren't so sure. In an editorial, the Great Falls Tribune said the study was too small.

"It's not that we wouldn't like to believe that a smoking ban in bars and restaurants could cause an instantaneous, communitywide 57 percent decline in heart attacks.

"But those results, reported by some Helena doctors, just don't stand the test of reasonableness.

"We're neither scientists nor mathematicians, but over the years we've seen this phenomenon enough that we've given it a name: the Montana error.

"It's what happens when you apply models that work fine in Illinois or California to sparsely populated Montana. You just don't have enough numbers to draw valid conclusions.

"The adverse health effects of smoking are well known and documented," the Trib said. "But we're not sure the cause is helped by trumpeting data that are so clearly suspect."

Not surprisingly, the news was greeted differently by those on either side of the debate.

"The bottom line is simple. Secondhand smoke kills," said Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights at that group's Web site (www.no-smoke.org). "This study validates that there are important and immediate health benefits to smokefree workplace policies. All nonsmokers deserve to breath smokefree air in enclosed workplaces and public places."

M. Cass Wheeler, CEO of the American Heart Association, agreed:

"This new evidence adds to the already substantial body of evidence showing that secondhand

smoke is dangerous. Communities that want to see an immediate drop in heart disease can start by banning smoking in public places."

Meanwhile, Forces International (forces.org), a smokers' rights outfit that provides "support and guidance for the pro-choice consumer," offered its opinion of the doctors' work in no uncertain terms:

"Needless to say this study is prime junk, about as meaningful as a rain dance. That didn't deter the medical editor at the Associated Press from writing a story that is as full as gobbledygook as extreme gullibility. The mainstream press, ever devoid of true scientific knowledge, has also picked up this pile of junk ... Two Helena Doctors are on the verge of discovering just how profitable kitchen table research can be."

John Harrington is the IR's business editor. As Others See Us is an occasional column that looks at the national media's reaction to news here.