Pregnant Mice Putting Offspring at Risk From Vaping Study Finds
If you’re a mouse and pregnant you might want to put that e-cig away and stop eating hens eggs as you run the risk of giving your offspring asthma.
Now that’s the real story but once again the shamestream media has simply glanced at a shock horror piece of vaping ‘research’ and pretty much written it out verbatim – no questions asked nor facts checked.
As I’ve said before I am an old school reporter and not one of these new ‘repeaters‘ who base ‘news’ pieces around a press release then literally ‘sex it up’.
Yet another day and another rebuttal on what quite frankly is a load of old bollo*** but probably putting the fear of God into already vexed out pregnant women.
OK I’m pretty sure you spotted the news stories all over the media yesterday announcing that vaping whilst pregnant will give your newborn baby asthma.
It’s a scary thought and certainly one that we should take very seriously if indeed that is the research findings have been published – peer reviewed and accepted by the scientific community.
Wait what?
Oh didn’t the newspapers tell you this is unpublished research and therefore no other scientist has been able to verify it – as in a full peer review?
Of course not this is a statement made by a scientist at a conference and gleefully picked up by the media and used to scare the living daylights out of pregnant vapers who are already stressed out thanks to hormones jumping everywhere and the dire need for a fag.
What Comes First Vaping or the Egg?
This latest scare story comes from a study carried out at the University of Technology Sydney Australia.
Mice were ‘exposed’ to vaping before getting themselves knocked up then continually exposed to vaping whilst they were pregnant.
The vaping mice were exposed to an allergen made from ovalbumin – protein inside an egg – until they developed asthma – I mean WTF???
OK sorry about the swearing – but I just did a bit of research into exactly what ovalbumin is.
It’s basically the white of the egg and protein within.
Next to milk allergy – hens egg allergy is the next highest in humans with children in particular susceptible to becoming allergic.
So guess how the allergy manifests?
According to the latest facts [something ‘journalists‘ of today should check] from the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health [PMC] the allergic reaction in children from hens eggs and in particular ovalbumin includes asthma.
You can read the full report: Current Understanding of Egg Allergy for yourselves.
Yup – the very stuff they are giving these vaping mice can cause asthma – now I’m no scientist but surely that makes a mockery of this research?
Not so according to head researcher Dr Pawan Sharma who whilst speaking at the recent European Respiratory Society Congress held in Milan said:
These findings highlight that e-cigarette use during pregnancy should not be considered safe.
Our study found that maternal vaping increased the risk and severity of allergic asthma in offspring. We also found that the detrimental effects of vaping were partially mediated through impairment of mitochondrial function, which affects cellular respiration, and were independent of nicotine. This means that vaping, even without nicotine present, has a demonstrated negative impact on cell function.
Talk about a quantum leap!
Vaping Whilst Pregnant the Facts
OK so pushing the hysterical headlines aside – what do we know about vaping whilst pregnant?
Thankfully many of the pregnant vapers out there took the time to read the information given out by the NHS’ Smoking in Pregnancy Challenge Group in which they make it very clear that smoking whilst pregnant is definitely dangerous vaping is much safer.
They don’t condone vaping when pregnant but they do say:
While not completely risk free, existing evidence suggests that using an electronic cigarette while you are pregnant is much safer than smoking.
You can read the detailed article on vaping whilst pregnant I wrote last summer here.
Look I’m definitely not saying vaping whilst pregnant is a good thing and I’m definitely not agreeing with the NHS that nicotine patches and gum work.
What I am agreeing with is that IF an all ready highly stressed pregnant woman is struggling due to giving up cigarettes then turning to vaping – which the NHS agrees is considerably safer – is acceptable.
Experts Question the Research
And I’m not alone with a number of highly respected experts in vaping and smoking issues agreeing and calling the research findings into question.
Dr James Doidge – Senior Research Associate at UCL said:
This unpublished research appears to provide more evidence that e-cigarettes should not be considered ‘safe’ and may even have adverse effects on unborn children.
But are they ‘safer’? If so, by how much?
This study yields no light on these questions because it did not include a tobacco control arm.
Anybody quitting tobacco must weigh the potentially higher risk of relapse when quitting ‘cold turkey’ or with conventional nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) against the harms associated with alternatives such as vaping.
For pregnant women, this balance should be tipped further towards abstinence or conventional NRT because of the apparent harms to their unborn children.
Linda Bauld – Professor of Health Policy at the University of Stirling said:
This study identifies a higher risk of allergic asthma in mice after their pregnant mothers were exposed to e-cigarette vapour.
This has limited, if any, relevance to advice we would give to pregnant women about e-cigarettes. No-one is suggesting that pregnant women who are non-smokers should vape.
Instead, e-cigarettes may have a role to play in helping pregnant women who already smoke.
Smoking in pregnancy can have very serious consequences for a baby before and after birth. All the evidence we have to date suggests that e-cigarettes, while not risk free, are far safer than smoking and therefore pregnant women who find it difficult to quit smoking should not be discouraged from using them.
However it’s Prof John Britton from Nottingham University who gets the last word and I think he had a slight twinkle in his eye when he said:
I think this study shows that mice who are thinking of starting a family, and having done so expose their offspring to ovalbumin, should reflect on a decision to start vaping.
It has no relevance to human health or disease.
Nobody argues that vaping is safe. It is obviously better not to vape than to vape, but definitely better to vape than to smoke.
Haha that has to be in the running for vaping quote of the year.
So any mice out there planning on getting pregnant we think your baby will be OK if you stick to vaping but steer clear of those pesky hens eggs!
