Rabinoff, Michael

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Rabinoff, Michael

PERSONAL:

Education: New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, D.O.; studied at Harvard Medical School and University of California, Los Angeles; Ph.D.

CAREER:

Psychiatrist; board certified by American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Has practiced privately and through the California Department of Children and Family Services, Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, and Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. Has held academic positions in the Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles. Chief executive officer and president of Biogenesys, Inc. Public speaker.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Physician's Recognition Award, American Medical Association.

WRITINGS:

Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How Big Tobacco Affects Our Health, Pocketbook, and Political Freedom and What We Can Do about It (nonfiction), Elite Books (Santa Rosa, CA), 2006.

Contributor to professional journals, including New England Journal of Medicine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael Rabinoff is a psychiatrist who has worked in private practice, through governmental agencies, and in research and teaching positions. He was inspired to write his book, Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How Big Tobacco Affects Our Health, Pocketbook, and Political Freedom and What We Can Do about It, as a response to the pain, suffering, and death he saw caused by cigarettes throughout his medical and psychiatric experience. He exposes the mindset of tobacco industry executives, who discuss marketing strategies in warlike terms, and he agrees that there is a war being waged—one that causes one in every five Americans to die from smoking-related causes. He discusses the emotional suffering survivors experience when they lose loved ones to smoking, which frequently involves elements of anger or helplessness because the deceased chose to smoke despite the known health risks. With Ending the Tobacco Holocaust, Rabinoff hoped to provide readers with ways to educate others about the fight against tobacco companies, and to resist the marketing ploys used by these companies.

According to a Publishers Weekly writer, Rabinoff ‘goes a long way toward clarifying the questions’ surrounding smoking. He shows how those with a vested interest in tobacco spend billions of dollars on advertising and on developing strategies for getting people hooked and keeping them addicted to cigarettes. He reveals the extent of cooperation between the tobacco companies and pharmaceutical interests; gives the scientific background on the chemical additives found in cigarettes; illuminates the link between smoking and mental illnesses; and notes the tobacco companies' interest in winning over young people, who are likely to be smokers for life, if they do get started at an early age. Kathy Arsenault, a reviewer for Library Journal, noted that the author is ‘passionate’ about his subject and his attempt to dissuade people from smoking, and about his desire to educate people about the bad intentions of the tobacco industry. The Publishers Weekly writer further found Rabinoff's writing at times ‘hyperbolic,’ but added that the author's evidence against smoking and its supporters is ‘overwhelming."

Rabinoff underlines the strong link between mental illness and smoking. On his Ending the Tobacco Holocaust Web site, he noted that 44.3 percent of cigarettes smoked in the United States are consumed by mentally ill people, and commented: ‘This issue truly does come into my office every day. I am often emotionally affected by it, and I do feel for the pain in my patient's lives caused by smoking."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, February 1, 2007, Kathy Arsenault, review of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: How Big Tobacco Affects Our Health, Pocketbook, and Political Freedom and What We Can Do about It, p. 92.

Publishers Weekly, January 1, 2007, review of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust, p. 43.