Marc Beishon, Author at ECigIntelligence

Opinion: ECigIntelligence smells a rat in bad science on e-cigs and COVID-19

Written by Marc Beishon || 9th November 2020 || News analysis |

Marc Beishon, former editor of New Scientist magazine, takes recent examples of bad science to task for misrepresenting the supposed dangers of e-cigarettes, including unfounded links with COVID-19 ...

‘95% safer’ or ‘just as bad’? How does the argument on vaping stand?

Written by Marc Beishon || 4th May 2020 || News analysis |

Widely publicised linkages with the coronavirus are just the latest manifestation of distrust of vaping, in the public-health community as well as the media. So how does that “95% safer than smoking” view hold up? ...

Study finds smokers who switch to vaping ‘avoid cardiovascular risks’

Written by Marc Beishon || 21st November 2019 || News analysis |

Amid all the alarm about vaping, a new study has found that smokers, particularly women, showed significant improvement in vascular health within a month of switching to e-cigarettes ...

Scientists claim to have found new way to study effects of vaping

Written by Marc Beishon || 21st August 2018 || News analysis |

A study into the effects of e-cig vapour on the lungs claims to have developed a new way of replicating vaping to look at how key cells that eliminate airborne irritants and infectious agents react when users inhale...

They do it in the US – but is it right to call e-cigs ‘tobacco products’?

Written by Marc Beishon || 26th June 2018 || News analysis |

Should scientists describe e-cigarettes – which contain no tobacco – as tobacco products? Is ENDS a better term? The answer to both questions is a firm “no”, according to the editor of a leading journal ...

Expert verdict: ‘fewer respiratory harms than tobacco cigarettes’

Written by Marc Beishon || 13th June 2018 || News analysis |

ECigIntelligence health correspondent Marc Beishon assesses some recent papers on the health effects of e-cigarettes and asks when tobacco control regulators will accept the evidence of their harm reduction possibilities ...

Have the metal detectors seriously exaggerated the risk?

Written by Marc Beishon || 1st March 2018 || Marketing & retailing |

A study at a top US university claims to have found “significant amounts of toxic metals, including lead” leaking from some e-cig heating coils and present in the inhaled vapour. But the research may be fatally flawed ...

Of mice and men – and whether e-cig ‘smoke’ may be linked to cancer

Written by Marc Beishon || 6th February 2018 || News analysis |

A widely publicised New York report concludes that e-cig “smoke…may contribute to lung and bladder cancer, as well as heart disease, in humans” – but other scientists question the validity of research carried out on laboratory mice ...

‘Holy grail’ of health studies – daily vapers who have never smoked

Written by Marc Beishon || 11th December 2017 || News analysis |

Researchers in Italy have reported on what is a holy grail in e-cigarette studies – a four-year observation of the health effects on daily vapers who have never smoked ...

Can e-cigs help provide an escape from the health poverty trap?

Written by Marc Beishon || 28th November 2017 || News analysis |

Deep social inequalities among the smoking population have long been recognised; the question now is whether e-cigarettes can help to correct them, or whether they may even widen the health gap ...

Scare stories get more attention than calmly issued research findings

Written by Marc Beishon || 1st November 2017 || Regulatory reports , Topic regulatory reports |

A research paper which led to the headline claim that e-cigs can trigger lung disease “just like cigarettes” was picked up by the media more eagerly than other studies which came to less alarmist conclusions ...

BAT scientists take on the question of risk assessment for new products

Written by Marc Beishon || 4th October 2017 || News analysis |

Scientists working for British American Tobacco have produced a paper taking on the thorny question of how reduced risk should be assessed in new products ...

Gateway or catalyst – does trying e-cigs really lead kids on to smoking?

Written by Marc Beishon || 5th September 2017 || News analysis |

Three new UK studies offer conflicting conclusions on the possible link between young people trying e-cigarettes and those who become smokers – but what does the weight of evidence suggest overall? ...

New studies examine HnB’s nicotine delivery and consumer reactions

Written by Marc Beishon || 21st June 2017 || News analysis |

New research shines a little light on how Japanese consumers are reacting to iQOS, and how HnB products compare with both combustibles and e-cigarettes on the crucial question of nicotine...

PMI rejects researchers’ claim that HnB is ‘smoke by any other name’

Written by Marc Beishon || 6th June 2017 || Regulatory reports , Topic regulatory reports |

PMI has responded forcefully after a Swiss research team claimed its iQOS heat-not-burn system released “the same harmful constituents of conventional cigarette smoke” and said “dancing around the definition of smoke to avoid indoor-smoking bans is...

Vape shops are given a clean bill of health on secondhand vapour

Written by Marc Beishon || 15th May 2017 || News analysis |

In research that could help determine policy on passive vaping, sampling in two U.S. vape shops by public health bodies has found no reason for concern that workers might be exposed to harmful chemicals in their...

Brain scans compare e-cig use with addictive effects of smoking

Written by Marc Beishon || 8th May 2017 || Regulatory reports , Topic regulatory reports |

Do nicotine e-cigarettes have a similar effect on the brain to combustibles? Researchers have been using PET scans to try to find...

Can vaping help in the battle against obesity and hypertension?

Written by Marc Beishon || 22nd November 2016 || News analysis |

Medical research has begun to reveal how e-cigarettes could help to prevent or lessen the potentially dangerous weight gain experienced by many people when they give up...

WHO comes under fire for “naive” report on possible harms

Written by Marc Beishon || 7th November 2016 || News analysis |

A negative report on e-cigarettes presented by the World Health Organization to the seventh session of the tobacco control conference in New Delhi has been scathingly criticised by the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, which accuses...

Study: e-cigs may not encourage quitting, but do help those who try

Written by Marc Beishon || 19th September 2016 || News analysis |

A new study published in The BMJ by researchers at University College London tests the contentious view that e-cigs, far from aiding in smoking cessation, can in fact undermine motivation to...

Latest Cochrane cessation review: we’re still uncertain

Written by Marc Beishon || 14th September 2016 || News analysis |

The Cochrane systematic review of e-cigarettes and smoking cessation has just been updated, but many may wonder why it has been done now, as there is little new to...

E-cigarette science researchers focus on role of nicotine

Written by Marc Beishon || 26th August 2016 || News analysis |

The effects of nicotine remain a major focus for scientific researchers investigating e-cigarettes, as three new studies...

New Netherlands study reviews danger from exhaled vapour

Written by Marc Beishon || 2nd August 2016 || News analysis |

A recent study and review by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands has brought to the fore questions regarding e-cigarette vapour testing methods and the possible health risks of passive vaping. The...

Making a myth: teens, e-cigs, science and the media

Written by Marc Beishon || 25th July 2016 || News analysis |

A new U.S. study claiming to show a link between youth e-cigarette use and tobacco smoking has not only been criticised by many scientists working in the field, but also demonstrates how misconceptions and misinformation on the topic...

Research suggests vaping may affect circulatory system, but caution urged

Written by Marc Beishon || 13th July 2016 || News analysis |

What do you get when you take 20 smokers and 20 non-smokers, give them tobacco cigarettes to puff on, and then ask them to try e-cigs? A study from the Sapienza University of Rome is one of the...

EU study finds “highest rate of smoking cessation ever”

Written by Marc Beishon || 27th June 2016 || News analysis |

However badly Britain’s skeptical Brexiters may feel the European Union has failed them, it appears to have delivered a big new prize to advocates of vaping: new research showing that 6.1m Europeans have given up smoking with the...

Cessation evidence unclear, but second-gen devices may help

Written by Marc Beishon || 24th May 2016 || News analysis |

A new systematic review of e-cigarettes and smoking cessation is claimed to be the most comprehensive so far as it covers not only published, peer-reviewed studies – including observational research as well as RCTs – but also so-called...

E-cig science: do meta-analyses really matter?

Written by Marc Beishon || 5th April 2016 || News analysis |

In the past year or so, scientists have conducted several systematic reviews that aim to analyse research evidence in order to find whether e-cigs help people quit smoking. The issue addressed by studies like these (which can also...

E-cig researchers beset by accusations of conflict

Written by Marc Beishon || 31st March 2016 || News analysis |

Conflicts of interest in research can blow up when the tobacco industry is seen to be involved in any area of research on smoking – or, now,...

The cancer that wasn’t: doctors fooled by inflammation from vaping

Written by Marc Beishon || 17th March 2016 || News analysis |

Never say that medics don’t have a sense of humour, albeit often a black one. A case report by clinicians in Denmark is titled “A cancer that went up in smoke: pulmonary reaction to e-cigarettes imitating metastatic...

Recent quitters are most frequent vapers, U.S. study suggests

Written by Marc Beishon || 7th December 2015 || News analysis |

More evidence from the U.S. backs up the e-cigarette industry’s contention that non-smokers rarely take up vaping, and also suggests that recent quitters are the most frequent...

Dual users experience significantly lower CO levels

Written by Marc Beishon || 29th November 2015 || News analysis |

It sounds like common sense: if people smoke fewer conventional cigarettes because they are using e-cigs as well, you would expect them to be exposed to fewer harmful substances. And that’s what a study has found after examining...

Sex, drugs and dead batteries: why people dual-use

Written by Marc Beishon || 5th October 2015 || News analysis |

A new study carried out in Hawaii is said to be the first “to attempt to elucidate the contexts of e-cigarette and cigarette use among dual users”, examining issues ranging from consumption patterns to...

E-cigs and dental health: a field wide open for study

Written by Marc Beishon || 22nd September 2015 || News analysis |

There has been little study or comment on e-cigs so far from professional bodies in dental health, or from dental researchers. But that may now be changing, with increased interest from some corners of the dental profession in e-cigs’...

Nicotine delivery: how much is too much?

Written by Marc Beishon || 5th August 2015 || News analysis |

Researchers in the U.S. have developed a model for predicting the amount of nicotine emitted by e-cigarettes, which they say could gauge the expected yield of a device before it is even...

Vaping in pregnancy: the developing debate

Written by Marc Beishon || 23rd July 2015 || News analysis |

Among all the groups that could benefit from e-cigarettes for harm reduction, perhaps none is as contentious as pregnant...

In depth: value of e-cigarettes in quitting smoking is unclear

Written by Marc Beishon || 4th June 2015 || Market reports , Topic market reports |

Research on the role of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation remains contradictory and unclear, but there are hints that frequency of vaping and type of product may be...

In depth: more safety worries over e-liquid flavourings

Written by Marc Beishon || 27th April 2015 || Regulatory reports , Topic regulatory reports |

E-cigarette flavours are causing concern again, but this time not over their purported appeal to youth. The latest study to stoke up worries about harmful substances in e-cigs is “Flavour chemicals in electronic cigarette fluids”, another from a...

“Gateway effect” isn’t simple; drink and drugs involved too

Written by Marc Beishon || 23rd March 2015 || News analysis |

Of all the current concerns about the introduction of e-cigarettes, one that looms large is whether they can be a gateway to conventional smoking and to misuse of other substances such as marijuana. New research from the U.S....

Are headline-hungry publicists to blame for e-cig health scares?

Written by Marc Beishon || 17th February 2015 || News analysis |

A flurry of health scares about vaping in the mainstream media has seemed to gather force in recent months. But they do not always accurately represent the...

Cochrane Review: a cautious thumbs-up for e-cigarettes

Written by Marc Beishon || 20th December 2014 || News analysis |

E-cigarettes containing nicotine can help people quit and cut down on smoking: that is the digested version of the Cochrane review on the use of e-cigs for smoking cessation and reduction, but the review itself is considerably more...

Vapers “significantly less dependent” than smokers

Written by Marc Beishon || 17th December 2014 || News analysis |

Relatively little scientific work has been done on comparing dependence on nicotine via tobacco with dependence on the substance via other delivery vehicles. But new U.S. research attempts to answer this question using a new index of dependence...

Media release misrepresented researchers’ cancer findings

Written by Marc Beishon || 29th September 2014 || News analysis |

A science publisher’s own publicity for a research article on e-cigarettes and cancer has been criticised for suggesting conclusions unjustified by the data. For a recent paper in the John Wiley & Sons...

More study needed on complex nicotine-cancer relationship

Written by Marc Beishon || 7th August 2014 || News analysis |

Laypeople reading a new opinion paper in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer may be alarmed, but it is important to note that although nicotine can contribute to cancer, on its own the current evidence does not support a...

E-cigarettes and heart health: questions, but no quick answers

Written by Marc Beishon || 13th July 2014 || News analysis |

Recent research on the possible cardiovascular health effects of nicotine and smokeless tobacco have generated fierce rejoinders from advocates of...

Nicotine “causes mutations similar to lung cancer” – study

Written by Marc Beishon || 23rd June 2014 || News analysis |

Can nicotine cause cancer? It’s a question that has been posed for some time, and answered in the negative, although some studies have found potentially carcinogenic associations. And now new research raises the issue...

FDA scientists say ignorance isn’t bliss, more data needed

Written by Marc Beishon || 13th June 2014 || News analysis |

Does a special supplement on e-cigarettes from one of the world’s best-known medical journals contribute any new knowledge, or is it more about the “known...

E-cigs vs NRT: the real findings behind the media headlines

Written by Marc Beishon || 27th May 2014 || News analysis |

Robust evidence for e-cigarettes’ effectiveness as aids to smoking cessation effectiveness has until now been sparse. But that may have changed, if the conclusions of a large study published in the journal Addiction prove to be correct in...

E-cig vapour may increase risk of infection, scientists suggest

Written by Marc Beishon || 23rd May 2014 || News analysis |

E-cigarette vapour could increase the virulence of MRSA, the potentially deadly infection that most often takes hold in healthcare settings, according to a study presented at the American Thoracic Society’s international...

In depth: medical licensing in Europe: big rewards, but a long road

Written by Marc Beishon || 31st March 2014 || Market reports , Topic market reports |

The vote in the European Parliament that passed the revamped Tobacco Products Directive will have some e-cigarette manufacturers contemplating the costly and often lengthy process of medicines licensing, in order to compete with larger firms able to afford...

LATEST ALERTS