It would be Good to also Post the "Letters" to the Jensen et al. 2015 Study. Because they point out some Key Limitations to studies methodology. And subsequence Implied Conclusions that might be considered by a reader.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1413069#t=letters
All very good and valid replies.
The studies author responded to the response and made some points I have have been trying to make as well.
"In response to Sodhi and Khanna: it is true that cigarettes are known to contain many toxicants at relatively higher concentrations than ENDS.
What is unknown are the overall toxicologic effects of ENDS. It will probably take at least a decade for the public health consequences of long-term vaping to be even partially understood; indeed, the full consequences of smoking cigarettes continue to be learned.
5 In the meantime, a reasonable approach is to quantify individual toxicants and the conditions that generate them and to evaluate possible outcomes.
From a public health perspective, we think the questions are, “What is the full toxicologic terrain of the vaping process?” and “
Can ENDS be better designed to be safer?”"
I do not think that science is anywhere close to understanding vaping yet. Lets face it, its a huge challenge. There are so many variables in the gear, juice, and usage patterns, all of which are evolving at a phenomenal pace. (Hopefully this remains the case - damn FDA)
I fully understand why scientists would try to isolate pieces of it in as generic of a model as possible. Testing on actual vape gear doesnt prove anything beyond the parameters exhibited by that
one single piece of gear. It may, but mostly likely will not, correlate to other similar gear. Testing a Juul will only apply to a Juul, testing of a Pico with a Kayfun will only apply to that combination, testing a DNA250 with an Aromamizer - same thing. Now throw in DIY juice, Diy coils, different wicks/wires/gauges/geometries into the mix. There is NOOOO Way that science could do their testing using our gear and come up with any meaningful results. It simply isnt possible.
Science has no choice but to take a different approach, an approach where their results can be interpolated into different usage models. The only realistic way to tackle this is "one bite at a time". To me, the Wang Study was an attempt at this, and may or may not prove relevant as more is learned. Science has to learn what to test, and how to test it, in a way that it can be applied to more than just a single device.
So, in my book, saying its not valid if it wasnt done on actual vape gear lacks understanding of the massive challenge. Certainly, the Testing protocols need to be scrutinized for relevance, but expecting it to be performed on "our" gear is simply unrealistic.
