Farsalinos' view of e-cigarettes

vaping
                                                                                               (Image from net)


According to David Peyton, a professor of chemistry at Portland State University, e-cigarettes produce more carcinogenic formaldehyde than cigarettes.

Three months later, social activist, British anti-tobacco advocate and consultant Clive Bates (Clive Bates), joined a lesser-known Greek cancerologist Constance Tinos Konstantinos Farsalinos issued a 14-page complaint to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, saying the study was “seriously inaccurate and misleading” and demanded that the content be withdrawn. About 40 researchers and e-cigarette supporters signed a joint petition to support the complaint.

Doctor Fasalinos presented the benefits of e-cigarettes to public health at a global science conference tour. He has his own column on the ecigarette-research.org website and is dedicated to avoiding research and media reports that are not good at knocking down e-cigarettes.

In a recent column, Fasalinos said that the US response to the outbreak of lung injury was "emotional, irrational hysteria." In another article, he argued that there was a “political persecution” on e-cigarettes, and a comment on Bloomberg’s report on early indicators of lung damage caused by e-cigarettes, saying that the report was “confusing, irrelevant. ".

In a telephone interview, Fasalinos said: "There is no doubt that the danger of e-cigarettes is far less than smoking." He believes that the waste of e-cigarettes is exaggerated. “For those who quit smoking by other means, e-cigarettes can save lives.” But he also suggests that only those who have tried other methods but still can't quit can use e-cigarettes.

According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control, smoking is still the leading cause of death and disease prevention worldwide. Each year, approximately 480,000 Americans die from the effects of smoking. In Europe, especially in Greece, the proportion of smokers is high, so it is very interesting to find ways to quit smoking.

After investigating people who were smoking and once smoking near Athens, Greece, Fasalinos found that many people gave up ordinary cigarettes and switched to e-cigarettes. “This shows that in a country with the highest smoking prevalence in the EU, e-cigarettes are having a positive public health impact.” Fasarinos and colleagues published the results of this year in the Journal of Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine.

Fasalinos said he did not receive any funding from the e-cigarette company and his salary was paid for by government spending.

In 2011, Fasalinos received a photo of two friends smoking e-cigarettes, when he knew nothing about e-cigarettes. He believes that this is just a waste of time. At the time, he smoked a pack and a half a day and tried various smoking cessation methods, including nicotine gum and prescription drugs, but none of them succeeded.

Out of curiosity, he began researching e-cigarettes at the Onassis Center. In 2012, his team conducted a short-term study comparing smokers of e-cigarettes and ordinary cigarettes. No e-cigarettes were found to impair heart function. He studied at the European Cardiovascular Society meeting in Munich in August 2012.

One of Fasalinos' favorite rhetoric is that scientists who are not familiar with e-cigarettes test these products under conditions that are not in line with the actual situation.

For example, for a study by Portland State University, Fasalinos believes that researchers have overheated e-cigarette equipment and found toxic substances. But in practice, the concentration of these substances will not be so high. He likened this to toast and said that if you do, there will be carcinogens in the bread. But in fact, people who eat bread just eat dry bread. In May 2015, Fasalinos and his colleague published a corresponding study in another journal showing that the level of formaldehyde in e-cigarettes is much lower.

In an assessment in 2018, the British public health department repeatedly cited Fasalinos' research and concluded that there is no possible formaldehyde risk. Other independent studies have also found that the content of formaldehyde in some e-cigarettes is very low.

Andrey Khlystov, co-author of the atmospheric chemist and the Desert Research Institute report, said that Fasalinos' work was "vibrant" with self-contradictions and logically frantic jumps.

However, Fasalinos said that he could not understand why people are so worried about e-cigarettes.

"This is a paradox. The more research we do, the more we believe that the danger of e-cigarettes is less than that of ordinary cigarettes," he said. "And the public's impression of e-cigarettes is worse every year."

Fasalinos said that his views have not changed, and most young people who use e-cigarettes have a history of smoking.



5/11/2019
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