December 14, 2014
Thomas Wills and colleagues just published "Risk factors for exclusive e-cigarette use and dual e-cigarette use and tobacco use in adolescents" in Pediatrics. This large (1941 high school students, mean age 14.6 years, conducted in 2013) found:
December 13, 2014
Check it out here.
One of Stossel's staff had called me a few days before he made the statement and tried to get me to agree with him and say that the CDC conclusions were wrong. I spend about an hour explaining how people get risk estimates and compute attributable risks ... and that the CDC is bases toward underestimating risks.
December 13, 2014
December 12, 2014
I hear a lot of calls for civility in the debate over e-cigarettes. A friend sent this summary of some recent tweets from Clive Bates, in just the past couple of weeks.
Cowardly public health 'boot boys' and their smearing, sneering, jeering letter (Chapman, Glantz, McKee, Daube)
World’s top cigarette salesmen (Chapman, Glantz, McKee, Daube)
Fakery of the public health establishment
Profound insanity of @UCSF is not merely misleading and harming people, but protecting cig sales (Glantz)
Moralising activists and indignant prudes
Tactics …… to misrepresent the science and mislead the public
False evidence
Ignorant tweets (Capewell)
For an academic, you are disturbingly ignorant about the basics of causation and association. Who funds you…..and why? (Capewell)
Self-indulgent critics of e-cigarettes
One of the most primordial bottom-feeders in all social media (McKee)
Scaremongering
The usual junk-peddlers in tobacco control
December 11, 2014
In our paper, "When health policy and empirical evidence collide: the case of cigarette package warning labels and economic consumer surplus," published in American Journal of Public Health in February 2014, we raised a concern that the FDA would expand its practice of discounting health benefits of other public health regulations that would encourage healthy eating.
On December 8, 2014 Reuters reporter Sharon Begley reported that the FDA did just that in their new rule requiring calorie information to be added to many menus in chain restaurants and other food vendors.
The FDA estimated that the cost of the lost pleasure could be as much $5.27 billion, essentially wiping out any economic benefits if the medical savings of reduced diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems is at the lower end of the benefits that the FDA estimated ($5.3 billion to $15.8 billion of 20 years).