Penn State Live - Video: Electronic cigarettes may offer an alternative for smokers
Penn State health researcher Jonathan Foulds has a new video out on YouTube reporting on his e-cigarette research. Foulds is regarded in general as a progressive tobacco Control 'front runner' who is sympathetic to new ideas, although many of his colleagues no doubt regard him as a dangerous revolutionary.
In this video he describes their e-cig survey and some figures it produced: 78% of long-term e-cig users have ceased cigarettes, only 8% use a 1st-generation e-cig, and so on.
There are two important issues revealed by this film:
1. It appears that researchers do not actually read the literature, they repeat press releases and 'commonly-known facts' that aren't true:
a. Foulds repeats (and presumably his staff approved) the often-heard '4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke' figure, but research has been available for some time, and is certainly available in the literature, that 5,300 ingredients of tobacco smoke have been identified. This is only pointed out as it reveals either lack of knowledge or a sloppy attitude to facts.
b. Also of course the old chestnut that NRTs are 'safe and effective'; but there are none at all that can be defined as both, and all that have been subject to independent research have been clearly shown as either absolutely ineffective or dangerous.
c. Plus, the usual 'we don't know much about them'. If only we didn't have those 50 or more research papers, clinical trials, in-depth reports by assorted professors, detailed chemical analyses, 70 years of data on the inhalation of the ingredients, and other assorted position papers by public health experts on e-cigarettes - then this might be true. But as it stands, a statement by a medical professional with a declared interest in the field that 'we don't know what's in them' or 'we don't know much about them' can only qualify as the most outrageous lie or extreme ignorance of the literature.
2. Medical personnel still feel the need to promote the use of treatments that don't work or are dangerous - and lie about the consequences (or are ignorant of them).
The average success rate of NRTs is about 5% (a failure rate of 95%), so describing them, on average, as 'effective' is clearly the most blatant lie. Of course, it is always possible that some medical researchers don't know this. Some NRTs have a proven failure rate of 98%. The one that works best, Chantix, with an estimated success rate of about 8% at 20 months (although this figure has never been published), is recognised as being not just dangerous, but possibly the best candidate for withdrawal from the market of any current prescription drug. There is a long list of doctors and experts who have called for its withdrawal due to the hundreds of deaths and the tens of thousands of lives it has ruined.
Just in 2010, and just in the USA, it is believed to have caused 62,500 heart attacks, several suicides, and dozens of psychotic events (e.g. violent attacks or attempted suicides). It causes a 'cardiac event' - a heart attack - for 1 in 30 patients (and one survey says a higher rate than this).
Promoting the use of Chantix, as Foulds does in the video (there are background shots of information about Chantix) is not the action of a responsible doctor - it is irresponsible, disingenuous, and absolutely breaks the primary requirement of the Hippocratic oath whatever form that may take. There is no possible way to describe this drug as safe and effective - it is clearly dangerous and all but useless compared to other options. An 8% success rate as is probably achievable by Chantix does not compare to the 78% success rate for e-cigs that Foulds himself reports. Not to mention the fact that Chantix is obviously thousands of times more dangerous, since in exactly the same timescale that e-cigs have been available in, Chantix has killed hundreds and ruined tens of thousands of lives, whereas e-cigs have killed precisely zero and there are no substantiated reports of harm.
How any doctor can stand up and say Chantix is a viable option compared to e-cigarettes is beyond comprehension. It's the same as offering someone a game of Russian Roulette with one loaded round in a magazine of 25 plus a ticket back to Calcutta, or a ticket to Hawaii with a residence permit. Not sure about you but I know which option I'd take.
So on balance this is a promising video from a TC industry* insider because it acknowledges the existence of electronic cigarettes, it correctly reports they work, and it correctly reports that people move on to 2nd- and 3rd-generation equipment. But it repeats the fallacies that we don't know much about them, and that NRTs are safe and effective. A strange mix, in the end, and something we are increasingly seeing as standard for the progressive end of the TC industry. There are very few medical personnel who have sufficient courage to just stand up and tell the truth:
e-cigarettes work and they are going to be our #1 weapon against smoking deaths
Normally, millions and millions of people using something and more joining every year, a $200m-plus global market, and already about 4% of smokers converted, would tend to point out that it works. Only medics, who think in terms of what worked 20 years ago, could deny that rather obvious conclusion.
* I describe tobacco Control as an industry because it is. It has its own agenda and saving life is not the core value. There is any amount of evidence for this.
Penn State health researcher Jonathan Foulds has a new video out on YouTube reporting on his e-cigarette research. Foulds is regarded in general as a progressive tobacco Control 'front runner' who is sympathetic to new ideas, although many of his colleagues no doubt regard him as a dangerous revolutionary.
In this video he describes their e-cig survey and some figures it produced: 78% of long-term e-cig users have ceased cigarettes, only 8% use a 1st-generation e-cig, and so on.
There are two important issues revealed by this film:
1. It appears that researchers do not actually read the literature, they repeat press releases and 'commonly-known facts' that aren't true:
a. Foulds repeats (and presumably his staff approved) the often-heard '4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke' figure, but research has been available for some time, and is certainly available in the literature, that 5,300 ingredients of tobacco smoke have been identified. This is only pointed out as it reveals either lack of knowledge or a sloppy attitude to facts.
b. Also of course the old chestnut that NRTs are 'safe and effective'; but there are none at all that can be defined as both, and all that have been subject to independent research have been clearly shown as either absolutely ineffective or dangerous.
c. Plus, the usual 'we don't know much about them'. If only we didn't have those 50 or more research papers, clinical trials, in-depth reports by assorted professors, detailed chemical analyses, 70 years of data on the inhalation of the ingredients, and other assorted position papers by public health experts on e-cigarettes - then this might be true. But as it stands, a statement by a medical professional with a declared interest in the field that 'we don't know what's in them' or 'we don't know much about them' can only qualify as the most outrageous lie or extreme ignorance of the literature.
2. Medical personnel still feel the need to promote the use of treatments that don't work or are dangerous - and lie about the consequences (or are ignorant of them).
The average success rate of NRTs is about 5% (a failure rate of 95%), so describing them, on average, as 'effective' is clearly the most blatant lie. Of course, it is always possible that some medical researchers don't know this. Some NRTs have a proven failure rate of 98%. The one that works best, Chantix, with an estimated success rate of about 8% at 20 months (although this figure has never been published), is recognised as being not just dangerous, but possibly the best candidate for withdrawal from the market of any current prescription drug. There is a long list of doctors and experts who have called for its withdrawal due to the hundreds of deaths and the tens of thousands of lives it has ruined.
Just in 2010, and just in the USA, it is believed to have caused 62,500 heart attacks, several suicides, and dozens of psychotic events (e.g. violent attacks or attempted suicides). It causes a 'cardiac event' - a heart attack - for 1 in 30 patients (and one survey says a higher rate than this).
Promoting the use of Chantix, as Foulds does in the video (there are background shots of information about Chantix) is not the action of a responsible doctor - it is irresponsible, disingenuous, and absolutely breaks the primary requirement of the Hippocratic oath whatever form that may take. There is no possible way to describe this drug as safe and effective - it is clearly dangerous and all but useless compared to other options. An 8% success rate as is probably achievable by Chantix does not compare to the 78% success rate for e-cigs that Foulds himself reports. Not to mention the fact that Chantix is obviously thousands of times more dangerous, since in exactly the same timescale that e-cigs have been available in, Chantix has killed hundreds and ruined tens of thousands of lives, whereas e-cigs have killed precisely zero and there are no substantiated reports of harm.
How any doctor can stand up and say Chantix is a viable option compared to e-cigarettes is beyond comprehension. It's the same as offering someone a game of Russian Roulette with one loaded round in a magazine of 25 plus a ticket back to Calcutta, or a ticket to Hawaii with a residence permit. Not sure about you but I know which option I'd take.
So on balance this is a promising video from a TC industry* insider because it acknowledges the existence of electronic cigarettes, it correctly reports they work, and it correctly reports that people move on to 2nd- and 3rd-generation equipment. But it repeats the fallacies that we don't know much about them, and that NRTs are safe and effective. A strange mix, in the end, and something we are increasingly seeing as standard for the progressive end of the TC industry. There are very few medical personnel who have sufficient courage to just stand up and tell the truth:
e-cigarettes work and they are going to be our #1 weapon against smoking deaths
Normally, millions and millions of people using something and more joining every year, a $200m-plus global market, and already about 4% of smokers converted, would tend to point out that it works. Only medics, who think in terms of what worked 20 years ago, could deny that rather obvious conclusion.
* I describe tobacco Control as an industry because it is. It has its own agenda and saving life is not the core value. There is any amount of evidence for this.
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