Lamentable Lung Coverage
Media stories are whipping up baseless fear about vaping causing cataclysmic lung injuries again
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by Dave Cross
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“Teenager addicted to vaping on life support ‘toxic’ e-cigarette chemical damages lungs,” lied the Independent. “18-year-old was warned by doctors that vaping again could kill her”.
Julia Roberts (not the world-famous famous actor who played Erin Brockovich) claimed she had been vaping since she was 14 and was so “hooked” she got through a whole disposable electronic cigarette every fortnight.
She managed this through “non-stop vaping”, according to journalists incapable of fact checking. Non-stop vaping a “fake disposable” containing a “toxic chemical” resulting in “pneumonia”.
Then she made “a miraculous recovery”.
Devoid of a single comment from a doctor, The Independent was happy to tell its readers that “damage from the vape” caused pneumonia, on the say-so of a girl with no medical training and a desperate vested interest in finding someone to take to court.
Previously, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos has railed against misleading articles such as this one. In 2018, he took the American Academy of Pediatrics to task for its pseudo-science.
Unsurprisingly, Daniel Ament’s story has been far less covered by mainstream newsrooms.
Ament spent 40 “agonising” days in hospital as doctors at the at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit performed a double lung transplant on him.
It was claimed at the time that he had almost lost his life due to using a “vape pen”. Then came a fever, his temperature spiking, and admission to Accident and Emergency.
He claimed he was a keen runner and was planning on joining the Navy Seals, being “an athlete in terrific shape”.
“Basically, everyone is vaping,” he told journalists. “Like, a lot of people. It’s more rare to find someone who doesn’t. I would say. Like, people doing it in classes and bathrooms, mostly. The first time I thought I had a problem was the day I had the fever. That was the only symptoms I’ve ever had from it. I did not feel like it was doing anything bad until that second day of school when I went to the ER. Then after that I don’t remember anything, then I had to get new lungs.”
Finally, the other week, he confessed that it wasn’t vaping that had caused the issue, he’d been using an illegal black market THC liquid.
Given that experts all accept that EVALI (E-cigarette or Vaping Product Use-Associated Lung Injury) is caused by Vitamin E Acetate in these THC products, they have demanded the name of the condition is changed to ATHCVALI (Adulterated THC Vaping Associated Lung Injury).
Photo Credit:
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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