Another new study suggesting vaping can give you cancer of the lungs and bladder has been slammed by UK medical professionals.
You’ve probably already read the sensationalist headlines across the mainstream media that vaping gives you cancer, however as always the truth is very much different!
OK, scientists, and I use that word loosely, from New York University say they have clearly linked vaping to cancer following a year long study.
The researchers used a total of 85 mice split – they say – into random groups – this is just one of the points the UK experts are raising their eyebrows over.
My eyebrows were raised from the moment I saw the ‘scientists’ using the word ‘smoke’ instead of vapour – I just knew the whole thing was BS from that moment on!
Plus, this particular research team was behind the headlines ‘vaping changes your DNA’ that appeared last year – another so called study shot down by those in the know.
Read my article: No…Vaping Doesn’t Damage Your DNA – for more info on that!
Scientists Kill Mice To Try and Prove a Point
OK, this study is titled: Electronic-cigarette smoke induces lung adenocarcinoma and bladder urothelial hyperplasia in mice. Catchy!
Group A was exposed to e-cig vapour containing nicotine whilst the other was bombarded with zero nicotine vapour and yet another was left in the ‘animal room’ breathing on fresh air.
I used the word ‘bombarded’ literally.
The mice were dumped in a box for 4 hours per day x5 days per week and the vapour was pumped in for the full 54 week trial – obviously exposing not only their bodies but also their lungs and other internal organs to, in the case of the nicotine group, a whopping 36mgs!
Unsurprisingly many of the rodents died, not just from over-exposure of vapour either, with two appearing to die of ‘natural causes’ given no tumours were found, and another had to be killed due to a paralyzed leg. Incidentally all of the mice were killed after the ‘experiments’.
The scientists published their results this week and concluded:
In summary, we showed that ECS exposure of mice induces lung cancer and bladder urothelial hyperplasia.
Our data simply suggest, on the basis of experimental data in model systems, that this issue warrants in-depth study in the future.
In other words – we’ve pumped killer levels of vapour into the lungs of a bunch of mice and some of them got cancer. Now can we have more money please to kill a few more and get yet more exposure in the media…
Probably…
UK Scientists Question the Whole Study
As you might expect the real vaping medical experts are unconvinced and describe the study and findings as both ‘weak and poor’.
The same study also found that breathing fresh air almost caused cancer at almost the same rate as exposing mice to massive doses of vapour and that vaping non nicotine flavoured liquid caused less cancer than fresh air. Hardly groundbreaking
— John Dunne (@Jdunne9407uk) October 9, 2019
They ask:
- Was this a proper blind trial? It is not clear whether the group allocation was kept secret from either the researchers administering the compounds or those assessing the histopathology. This is known to potentially lead to very biased results.
- The statistical evidence of an effect on lung carcinoma is very weak
- The authors perform multiple statistical tests which increases the probability of a chance positive finding
- The choice of the statistical test is not appropriate for this type of data. Generally the stats in this paper are very poor.
- The authors do not provide indicators of uncertainty (such as confidence intervals) for all the comparisons, which makes impossible to assess the precision of the results.
- The study has a small sample size and they have not performed a power analysis
- The authors say animals were randomly allocated to different groups, but the numbers in each group (45, 20, 20) are perfectly rounded, which would be very unlikely to occur by chance without using a more technical method or randomisation. This may suggest the authors have not used a truly random technique for allocation, which is known to introduce a lot of bias. Moreover, mice dying before the end of the study were excluded from the analysis, which may also cause bias.
- A final point is that this study is in mice, not in humans, and mice may respond to nicotine or ecig vapour differently for a number of reasons.
- It is also unclear if the exposure on the mice is typical of exposure in humans.
Professor John Britton, Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies and Consultant in Respiratory Medicine, University of Nottingham, didn’t hold back saying the results were ‘all noise’ bringing nothing to the table!
This study explores the effect of exposure to nicotine ecig vapour on mice. It shows that exposure to ecig vapour with nicotine causes more cancers than fresh air, but no more than you might reasonably expect by chance.
It also shows that e-cig vapour without nicotine causes fewer cancers than fresh air.
The findings are based on very small numbers and need to be interpreted with extreme caution.
The comparison between mice breathing vapour and mice breathing air is not statistically significant. There is no sample size justification and no power calculation. There is no message to the public here – I suspect these results are just noise.
Oooo harsh but nicely put sir!
He was joined by international pro-vaping Professor Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit, Queen Mary University of London, said the study was flawed given the huge amount of exposure the mice had been subjected too:
The study has unclear relevance for human vapers.
Rodents were exposed to what are for them huge concentrations of chemicals that bear no resemblance to human exposure from vaping. Several animals in fact died during these exposures.
The authors assigned the effects they observed to a carcinogen NNK – but NNK has been measured before in human vapers, and it is known that exposure from vaping is either negligible or none.
So there you have it!
Once again anti-vaping ‘studies’ have been shown to be BS by those who really know the effects vaping has on the human body.
So NO – and once again, vaping will NOT give you lung or bladder cancer…but bombarding mice with more vapour than any human could possibly manage will of course have the desired anti-vaping effect.
A case of more research money please?
I suggest we start a new social media campaign: #SaveTheVapingMice 😉
