As dangerous as bacon?
From the Herald (from the Telegraph)
Using e-cigarettes is no safer than smoking tobacco with nicotine, scientists warned after finding the vapour damages DNA and could cause cancer.
Smoking tobacco is right up near the top of cancer risks that are easy to acquire, both in terms of how big the risk is and in terms of how strong the evidence is.
[There was some stuff here that was right as to the story in the Herald but wrong about the actual research paper, so I got rid of it. Some of the tests in the research paper used real cigarette smoke, and it was worse but not dramatically worse than the e-cig smoke]
The press release is a bit more responsibly written than the story. It describes some of the limitations of the lab tests, and makes it clear that the “no safer than smoking” is an opinion, not a finding. It also gets the journal name right (Oral Oncology) and links to the research paper.
It’s worth quoting the conclusion section from the paper. Here the researchers are writing for other people who understand the issues and whose opinion matters. I’ve deleted one sentence that’s technical stuff basically saying “we saw DNA damage and cell death”
In conclusion, our study strongly suggests that electronic cigarettes are not as safe as their marketing makes them appear to the public. [technical stuff]. Further research is needed to definitively determine the long-term effects of e-cig usage, as well as whether the DNA damage shown in our study as a result of e-cig exposure will lead to mutations that ultimately result in cancer.
That’s very different from the story.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Brilliant title :)
8 years ago