Academics and public health campaigners have slammed coverage of a recent study linking vaping to DNA damage similar to that which causes cancer in smokers.
Headlines linking vaping to cancer in outlets like Sky News and the Guardian were quickly debunked by Cancer Research UK, who were quick to point out that the study does not show that vaping causes cancer.
“If you used to smoke and are vaping to help you to stay off tobacco, the most important thing is not to go back to smoking,” Cancer Research asserts, “so, if you’re thinking of stopping vaping, make sure you only do so if you think you won’t start smoking again”.
“Because vaping isn’t risk-free, it’s important that children and people who have never smoked don’t start to vape. By contrast, however, decades of research have proven the harmful effects of smoking, which kills one person every five minutes in the UK. Research so far has found that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking and can help people to stop”.
Other cancer experts also weighed in, providing more context to the misleading coverage.
“The journal Cancer Research is a really high-quality journal, but epidemiologically this study does not lead to the conclusions the authors claim, with a substantial weakness for their smoking/vaping analysis,” said Professor Peter Shields, Emeritus Professor of Medical Oncology at the Ohio State University,
“The authors report novel data but there are substantial limitations that are not mentioned in the manuscript”.
“The data are not sufficient to comment on long-term harms associated with e-cigarette use, or any association such changes may have with the risk of developing cancer,” added Dr Mangesh Thorat, Honorary Reader at Queen Mary University of London,
