Health "experts" on Harm Reduction
Three supposed public health experts say that arguments to support harm reduction are based on selective evidence.
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by Dave Cross
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In 2015, McKee was inventing evidence to link vaping to cocaine addiction and attacking harm reduction advocates (by calling them online trolls). As the year rolled by, McKee launched a bizarre criticism of the Public Health England report which had declared vaping to be “at least 95% safer than smoking”. He drew almost universal condemnation for his inane actions, but that didn’t prevent him from publishing further nonsense in the British Medical Journal. Last year, he sent a letter based on selective and incorrect attributions to the New England Medical Journal.
McKee likes to frame the debate as one being skewed by tobacco company shills and online trolls, where he is the innocent and misunderstood hero coming to rescue humanity. It’s a theme that continues in Harm reduction and e-cigarettes: Distorting the approach, a paper published in the Journal of Public Health Policy.
It begins by attacking one of three major studies: “Despite a widespread consensus that e-cigarettes are likely to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes,” write the trio, “although not about the highly controversial ‘‘95 % safer’’ figure cited in a report by Public Health England”.
It’s not “highly controversial”, the figure is only questioned by McKee and his close-knit bunch of vape deniers. The paper continues to raise the same objections McKee has been raising for the last few years – all of which have been soundly debunked, but he refuses to acknowledge that or engage in direct debate.
They make a flawed claim that evidence used to support harm reduction arguments has been selectively quoted, by selectively quoting their own evidence: “We argue that this comparison misrepresents those policies that have been used with narcotics, selecting only those elements that favour e-cigarettes, while ignoring others.”
Clive Bates commented: “The idea of reducing the supply and demand of the very low-risk alternative is obviously absurd. The whole point of harm reduction is to expand the supply of and demand for the low-risk harm-reduction alternative at the expense of the high-risk product or behaviour. Are they seriously suggesting that we should take measures to reduce the supply of clean needles or reduce the demand for condoms in high HIV risk settings?”
He continues: “The main problem is that many commentators from this school are thoughtful harm-reductionists when it comes to illicit drugs, sexual behaviours and other risks, but inexplicably become 'abstinence-only' when it comes to the mildly psychoactive drug nicotine. It is a glaring inconsistency that this article helps to illuminate.”
ECITA’s Tom Pruen continues the attack in his marvellous blog post: “Sadly, the main point proven by the article is that the authors have completely failed to understand harm reduction.”
Photo Credit:
Report screenshot - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41271-016-0031-2
Twitter screenshot - @crossbow2112
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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