"Trials can be rigged .... it happens all the time" (Angell, 2004, 95).

[kai kane]

from HuffPo:

"Marcia Angell, MD, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and author of the powerful book The Truth about Drug Companies, said it plainly and directly: "Trials can be rigged in a dozen ways, and it happens all the time" (Angell, 2004, 95).

She further expresses real concern about research reliability:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. As reprehensible as many industry practices are, I believe the behavior of much of the medical profession is even more culpable.

Angell gives many examples of why reading research studies is not reliable:

A review of 74 clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that 37 of 38 positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome (Turner, 2008).

Conventional drugs used today are so new that there is very little long-term research on them. There are good reasons why a vast majority of modern drugs used just a couple of decades ago are no longer prescribed: they don't work as well as previously assumed, and/or they cause more harm than good."

There is a common presumption that nicotine is 'evil', but evidence abounds that 'smoking addicts' are not satisfied by NRT's. And the plain physiological impact of nicotine in small doses is not that bad, in fact, small doses are shown to help MS and Alzheimer patients. If nicotine were so evil - we should ban all tomatoes, eggplant, etc...and the FORK, since it 'delivers' the nicotine! It's the SMOKE, your honor, not the nic!

Think of all the many drugs 'approved' by BigPharma/FDA that have caused suicides, heart attacks and the like - now no longer sold ... and the suppression or non-admittance of positive studies the ecig are contributing to the FDA's position. Why isn't more attention being brought to the obvious "rigging" of the FDA's test conclusions? And the FDA's motivation that can be directly traced to Banzoff's threats. I feel this and the smoke/vapor arguments are the 'white elephants' in the room...

I've read that there are NO reports of negative health impact of proper ecig use, despite millions of users worldwide over many more years than any clinical trial would produce.

 

[River]

Don't forget about Parkinson's disease.


"Most of the research on tobacco has focused on its detrimental health effects. Studies conducted over the last 40 years show that the incidence of Parkinson's disease is about 50 percent less in smokers than in the general population. Recent studies in experimental models suggest that the nicotine in smoke may be responsible for this neuroprotective effect."

Parkinson's Disease: Nicotine Reduces Levodopa-induced Dyskinesias