Sunday 2 August 2015

Blatant Mistruths and Spin

This guy
 (487 twitter followers) is one of the worst examples of a supposed educated man with a constant gripe against e-cigs . I have read his posts previously, ultimately deciding to unfollow him as he simply puts out propaganda on an epic scale, and as is usual, refuses to engage.

Two recent posts were highlighted by others and curiosity got the better of me

If the 2 links are not clear for you I will highlight what they lead to here http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.201505-0898ED?journalCode=ajrccm#.Vb1P2W5Vikp

and http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.201505-0915ED?journalCode=ajrccm#.Vb1QCG5Vikp

Both of these 'extracts' demonstrate what is  produced  ad nauseum from supposedly learned but misguided people. Just a cursory glance very quickly confirms that these are not in any way balanced, scientific pieces of work rather a hysterical,scaremongering piece of  opinionated garbage, more akin to the gutter press. Scepticism is acceptable but blatant agenda driven drivel is certainly not,I wonder how many of the commentators are expert in the field of smoking cessation? Or indeed any field that could add anything much of use to the ongoing 'debate', that every man and his dog has decided to pass an opinion on, usually with negligible knowledge.

An excellent article by Lindsay Fox summarises ''How to Write a Bullshit Anti-Vaping Article'' http://ecigarettereviewed.com/how-to-write-a-bullshit-anti-vaping-article this undoubtedly could be extended to include the blatantly biased studies and attendant hyped up press releases that are unquestioningly published around the World by the syndicated press.

Stanbrook has the gall to say ''Don't be fooled by #ecigarette 'proponents' spin ''   Hah!

How can this guy just blatantly ignore independent surveys conducted Worldwide that UNIVERSALLY state that the number of non-smoking teens regularly using e-cigs is of the order of <2% and substantially less in many .

 Professor Linda Bauld confirms here http://vaping.com/ecigsummit2014/linda-bauld

 ASH UK statistics http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_891.pdf

Cancer Research UK http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/press-release/2015-06-12-research-shows-most-children-do-not-regularly-use-e-cigarettes

ONS (Office for National Statistics) http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/nov/25/e-cigarettes-not-gateway-traditional-smoking-great-britain?CMP=share_btn_tw

Many similar links could be provided for the individual States in the US demonstrating negligible numbers of non-smoking youth taking up e-cigarettes on a regular basis.

This article from Brad Rodu highlights part of the deception that seems rife when discussing numbers http://rodutobaccotruth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/nejm-fails-to-correct-data-on-childrens.html

The other article Stanbrook highlighted was calling for for more data - I'm surprised he didn't call for clinical trials! Oh wait .......US seems to put impossible hurdles there!! see esp P2 http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallysatel/2015/07/30/double-standard-for-e-cigarettes-v-medical-marijuana/

Once again an outbreak of hysteria, there is more than enough existing data for any reasonable person or medic to conclude that some unknowns still exist, but that e-cigarettes are undoubtedly a  substantially safer option than the alternative. For a good list of current studies see http://blog.rursus.de/studienliste/

For further confirmation of how pragmatic Health Professionals feel, I encourage the reader to examine M.O.V.E. http://moveorganization.org/move/ and try to encourage further involvement with their own acquaintances or indeed anyone else to extend into more countries and numbers

Finally I will leave the last words to Kevin ......... Who has tirelessly worked to produce both a Consumers Survey https://vapinglinks.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/the-vaping-truth-survey-is-now-live/   and a Health Pro Survey here https://vapinglinks.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/health-care-professionals-and-e-cigarettes-survey/

Read this excellent blog from him describing the early results of the Health Pro Survey https://vapinglinks.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/medical-professionals-say-what-about-e-cigarettes/

To conclude, thankfully there are many in the medical profession who are far more open minded than the likes of Stanbrook who appears to have set himself on a mission to become a wannabe 'Stan'(from UCLA)

****** Updated following horrific propaganda and spin at #ATS2016 Wednesday 18th May

this poster was the prelude to a series of manic tweets that featured a co-author of Stanbrook in his latest so called research with an  abstract of the ATS presentation here  
 


I suggest a look through Sean Spence (co-author) tweets on this date are called for look here  Again the point I made above are these the acts of dispassionate rational scientists/medics? I really doubt it!

The agenda is perfectly clear to my mind