Harvard medical school adviser lies about health risks/benefits of e-cigarettes

[Bill Godshall]

Harvard medical school adviser lies about health risks/benefits of e-cigarettes
Harvard medical school adviser: Are electronic cigarettes safe? - Canton, OH - CantonRep.com

I sent the following e-mail to harvard_adviser@hms.harvard.edu
From: Bill Godshall
To: Harvard Advisor
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 1:27 PM
Subject: Your lies about electronic cigarettes


Your responses (below in red) to the question "Are (e-cigarettes) a safer alternative to cigarettes?" at
Harvard medical school adviser: Are electronic cigarettes safe? - Canton, OH - CantonRep.com
are dishonest, decietful and immoral. If you are actually affiliated with Harvard Medical School, you have an ethical and professional duty to issue a correction and an apology to every news outlet that published your outrageously false propaganda (especially since e-cigarettes have saved the lives of millions of smokers during the past several years).

For facts about e-cigarettes, I suggest you read John Tierney's article in yesterday's Science section of the NY Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/s...e-some-unlikely-critics.html?_r=1&ref=science

Based upon your massive amount of misinformation about e-cigarettes, it appears that you have zero interest in scientific or empirical evidence or for telling the truth. But if you desire additional evidence about e-cigarettes, please contact me.

William T. Godshall, MPH
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
1926 Monongahela Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15218
412-351-5880
smokefree@compuserve.com



Now back to your question. Are electronic cigarettes a safe alternative to regular cigarettes? The short answer is that nobody knows if electronic cigarettes, also marketed as e-cigarettes, are safe. That’s because e-cigarette makers have not submitted their products for FDA approval, which would require proof of safety and efficacy. Still, preliminary studies from New Zealand, Greece and the FDA itself raise concerns.

There are three reasons to worry about e-cigarettes. First, the dose of nicotine delivered with each puff may vary substantially. An FDA analysis recorded nicotine doses between 26.8 and 43.2 micrograms per puff. It also detected nicotine in all the products labeled as nicotine-free.

Second, the e-cigarettes all deliver an array of other chemicals, including diethylene glycol (a highly toxic substance), various nitrosamines (powerful carcinogens found in tobacco), and at least four other chemicals suspected of being harmful to humans.

Third, by simulating the cigarette experience, e-cigarettes might reactivate the habit in ex-smokers. They could also be a gateway into tobacco abuse for young people who are not yet hooked.

We need scientific studies of e-cigarettes. Until then, it’s caveat emptor: Buyer beware!

And for an ex-smoker on the brink of relapse, it’s also important to remember that there are a variety of well-studied, FDA-approved nicotine replacement products. Each is vastly preferable to smoking -- and to electronic cigarettes.

 

[cigarbabe]

It is unbelievable that a doctor {Anthony Komaroff }who thinks so highly of himself could be so ridiculously uninformed and would deliberately lie to a person who may have been seeking information about whether they should try this product instead of staying on the endless carousel that is NRT products which are "FDA approved".
Truly shameful.
C.B.

 

[hairball]

The doctor stands behind the FDA so what do you expect? It's sad that as knowledgeable a person as he, he would have done his own homework. Too many doctors still stand behind the FDA and will not do some research. He's a prime example.

 

[cigarbabe]

The doctor stands behind the FDA so what do you expect? It's sad that as knowledgeable a person as he, he would have done his own homework. Too many doctors still stand behind the FDA and will not do some research. He's a prime example.

Exactly right!
C.B.

 

[AttyPops]

"They all have DE?" lol. What a bunch of uninformed hooey... and that's just part of it. Someone ought to explain harm reduction to this guy. If NRT's work for you fine... most of us have been down that road and know where it leads (or dead-ends).

Maybe Yale has better educated physicians....

 

[Nicko]

The doctor deserves to experience a smoking-related disease for at least a month, (the horror of lung cancer?) Then he would know what he is inflicting on his readers and patients.

Or maybe he would prefer a month of emphysema. That's not very nice either. He deserves to know what his words and actions are causing. I don't mean to sound horrible, but I often think these people deserve to experience the pain and suffering that they are inflicting on others. Because they surely know that MANY people actually believe what they say!

It is criminally insane and must be stopped.

 

[lawnman3]

very well said my friend very well said...

 

[Antoly]

Go to the link in the original post. Right below the article there is another link with e-cig thumbnail titled "Do not buy until you read this...". The article completely contradict the "advisor". Have you read this?

 

[windwalker]

@Bill -

Something smells fishy here, and it ain't the Salmon e-liquid...

This article is old. Like really old, the original was published in Detroit Free Press over 20 months ago... And is no longer even archived because they (Detroit Free Press) removed it...

As it sits, I found 45 occurrences of the article dating as far back as January 2010...

To confirm this, take any snippet from the article, enclose it in quotes, and google search on it... Google will find anything that matches verbatim and give you the results. For example, I used "The short answer is that nobody knows if electronic cigarettes, also marketed as e-cigarettes, are safe." for my anchor phrase search and found 45 verbatim matches... Many of which are very recent spins and syndications of the CantonRep article. But many others, are old versions of the original still floating around for the last 20+ months...

So this leads to some interesting questions: Why is CantonRep syndicating a 20month old article? Why is there no Author listed? Where is the verifiable link to Harvard Medical School?

"Harvard Medical School Adviser" is not an acceptable byline for any real media source. I imagine there is no link to HMS, and a little work could cause some headache for Canton Rep.

Also, at the time of publishing, 20 months ago, the info was in keeping with the best fear mongering available at the time, so going after the source (if you are able to track it down) will reveal: "We wrote that almost two years ago, before all the new info and research came out."

Now, those insights in tow - another interesting thing presents itself - the article itself is one click away from and Ignite E-Cigs Affiliate page. It is not normal practice for any reputable journal or news source to link out to undisclosed affiliate pages... They can host advertising, but undisclosed affiliate pages are actually FTC violations carrying some pretty steep fines... No credible media source will host them or link to them intentionally.

So if Canton Rep has a journalist working there, I'm sure they are the path to pursue... Most journalists deplore these sorts of bad practices. They will surely print an updated article that you give them (you are an extremely credible source)... and then that article will hit the syndication wire...

On the other hand, if they are merely a couched 'feed search and republisher' pretending to be a news source, they might also be eager to host an article written by you (free content is the lifeblood of fake newsources)... Once again, this gives you the chance to update the syndication feed with good solid verifiable and credible info...

Either way - I bet you can get a fresh article into their syndication downline...
Thanks for all your hard work and diligence!

 

[windwalker]

After a little more digging - it seems that the Canton Rep article is a syndication feed, the article appears 12 hours earlier at GoErie.com: Dr. K: Not a whole lot is known about e-cigarettes | GoErie.com/Erie Times-News

Now, what makes this even odder, is that article appears in several places attributed to Dr. K Anthony Komaroff's - and his wesbite Ask Doctor K attributing him as "Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Editor in Chief of Harvard Health Publications." - So what? Big deal right?

Well, first: the article does not appear on the Ask Dr. K website. Second, versions of the article predate Dr. K Anthony Komaroff's taking over the control of the website and column from Dr. Gott on September 26th, 2011.

So what is going on here? Where is the root of this syndication (first source)? Who actually wrote this article? When was it actually written? Why is it circulating the wire now? Does Dr. K Anthony Komaroff know he's being given the byline on this? Why is the byline so inconsistent across media sources?

I also notice that the article has been spun and respun several times - leading me to think there is a degree of article curation happening here, and somebody feed the wire a curated and spun piece of garbage that has just bounced around playing the telephone game (every version adds and edits it to make the content appear unique) hoping to make a few cents from adserving...

It will be fun to see if you can trump the wire!

 

[DC2]

@windwalker

I don't know what you were talking about in the last two posts.


But I know you are a potentially strong asset to our community.
Perhaps someday you might join CASAA?

 

[windwalker]

@DC2 - Of course my friend! I'm all about supporting CASAA in everyway I can... PM and we'll talk more...

Now, to explain my last two posts:

It's like this, "Diligence" - before contacting someone, we want to be as well armed for the confrontation as possible, right?

The quickest, easiest thing in this scenario to do is simple, grab a full and unique looking sentence from the article, enclose it in quotes, and then google search it. This will pull up any pages that have an identical match, this way we can see where else the article is showing up... IE: Articles enter a syndication feed, and get feed to dozens of websites, who in turn feed other sites...

What we want to find is: Where is the first original occurrence of the article? (the rawest complete source of the feed) (imagine how easy it would be if we suppose Dr. K is an ethical, solid guy already on our side, and help him out by discovering that people are falsely attributing works to him!)

Now Curation: Is the practice of small websites grabbing the feed, and spinning (adding content or changing core content to make the article appear unique) and then republishing the article hoping to make a few cents off of advertisements. But many of these curated sites will then - 'Re-syndicate' their version of an original article, which in turn, may inadvertently get picked back up and republished by the original source!

So an article can vanish, and reappear as some mutated form of itself months, even years later...

From what I can tell - this article was written by a guy named Dr. Gott (a possibility which I can't confirm), back in January 2010 and first appeared in the Detroit Free Press around that time. Dr. Gott at that time was "The Harvard Medical Adviser" and someone last week picked up the article as "Harvard Medical Adviser" and then added "Dr. K" to it, because he is the current "Harvard Medical Adviser" even the the article was written almost 18 months before he got the job!

This curation / republishing / syndication process is fairly common, and most likely Erie and Canton both got duped by a bad wire ('wire' refers to a syndication feed which is open for republishing) - most likely, it's a great opportunity for both of these news sources to pick up a good story, correction, retraction, and Nice Fluffy Pro-Ecig article from CASAA or Bill...

When I said: "Trump the Wire" what I was referring to is an article that enters the syndication feed and gets picked up by more sources than the original. Meaning: "The Dr. K e-cig" article got 45 republishings - we want the retraction, correction, and pro-piece to replace it, and exceed 45 republishings - "Trump the Wire"

What we've got here, is a not an enemy, shill, or pawn in Dr. K - instead we've got is a great opportunity to get a pro-piece written, with 'Harvard Medical Adviser Stands Corrected on E-cigs' as the title out on the wire to tons of media sources... Plus, because Erie and Canton have a journalistic obligation to refeed the correction to the wire, we add their credibility to the pile...