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Chapter 1: What new study links vaping to cancer?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman. This is Science Versus. The show that pits facts against fumes. Groundbreaking new research has confirmed a deadly link between e-cigarettes and cancer.
Vaping is likely to cause lung and oral cancer.
Headlines have been screaming about a new paper that's rocking the vaping world, claiming that vaping is more dangerous than we thought. We're hearing that not only is it likely to cause cancer, but also that something that scientists have been telling us for years is wrong.
So is it safer to vape than smoke? Well, now the science is in. New research has found vapes are no safer than conventional cigarettes.
The conclusion is unavoidable. We can hardly say that e-cigarettes are somehow safer than conventional cigarettes.
vaping is as bad as cigarette smoking? Now, if this is true, it is a huge switcheroo for science. And also for science versus.
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Chapter 2: Why do some scientists believe vaping causes cancer?
For literally a decade, we've been telling you that vaping is a safer and better alternative to smoking. In a past episode, we even played you a song written by a bunch of researchers about it.
So did we lie to you?
Through song? Will we fall on our own batard? I mean, will we be hoisted on our own... batard? Well, the thing is, while some nerds have been supportive of this new paper that's sparking all these headlines... Others are not.
And in fact, right after the paper was published, a bunch of scientists wrote angry responses, calling the paper misleading, problematic, and saying it has little credibility. So what's going on here? And getting this right is a big deal. Millions of folks, including kids, have picked up vaping around the world. So today on the show, we are asking, one, does vaping cause cancer?
Two, is vaping as bad as smoking now? And three, could picking up a vape ever be good for your health?
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Chapter 3: What criticisms exist against vaping-cancer claims?
When it comes to vaping, there's a lot of... No, no more songs until we work out what the devil's going on here. And it's all coming up just after the break. Hi, Wendy here. Today we are finding out, is vaping more dangerous than we thought? And with me to sort all of this out is senior producer Rose Rimler. Hi, Wendy. Hello, Rose.
I don't think I've ever heard that song before in my life. Do we play that?
We played it. So memorable, seemingly. I've had it in my head all week. In the middle of the night, this acoustic guitar will just start ringing.
All right, let's jump into this new study that's setting the vaping world alight, igniting all these news reports.
Chapter 4: Is vaping as dangerous as smoking?
It is quite interesting, and the implications are super, super important. So... I want to work out what's going on. What's this science fight all about? Yeah. So to get to the bottom of this, Rose, you and I, we read this paper. And then I called up one of the lead authors, Professor Bernard Stewart. He's at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Good morning.
Morning. Now, Bernard told me that basically his entire career has been using research to figure out whether various things in our environment cause cancer. So a decade ago, he was part of this big international team that looked at the characteristics that a substance has to have for it to be considered carcinogenic. He's looked at PFAS, you know, forever chemicals.
Microplastics, pesticides in soil.
But when he was watching the data coming out on vapes or e-cigarettes, he told me... This, to me, was a far greater worry.
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Chapter 5: Do vapes effectively help people quit smoking?
Out of curiosity, did he ever find evidence that something didn't cause cancer?
Yes. Yes, he did. And he actually specifically told me, you know, we have this idea that everything causes cancer. But he said that's not true. Okay, that's good. And in that context, he was worried about vaping causing cancer.
So he and his colleagues pulled together studies published from 2017 to the middle of last year that were looking for a link between vaping and cancer, and they wrote it up in a review paper. Mm-hmm. And so now I kind of want to go through the case that Bernard is making that vaping causes cancer.
Mm-hmm.
So we know that some of the chemicals found in vape aerosols, I'm thinking acrylamide, benzene and various metals, they can cause cancer in humans. But there was this question of when you use a vape and inhale that stuff, do you just breathe it out again or does it go into your system where it can then cause damage?
And so scientists have tested the blood and urine of vapours for these kinds of chemicals and here's what they've found.
Those chemicals are detectable.
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Chapter 6: How is Big Tobacco involved in vaping research?
In other words, they have been absorbed into the body and not just to exhale. So strike one.
There are also studies in cells where scientists expose them to vape liquid and then they can see that these cells pick up DNA damage and oxidative stress, which we know can lead to cancer. Yeah. On top of that, scientists have exposed rats and mice to the vapour from e-cigarettes and they can see markers of inflammation in their lungs.
And this is worrying to Bernard because we know that inflammation, when it's chronic, in other circumstances, can lead to cancer. One study in particular exposed mice to vape fumes for almost a year, which is a long time in the life of a mouse, and a bunch of them developed lung cancer.
Mm-hmm.
So then finally, Bernard's team point to a few case reports. So here he is on that.
Individual dentists say, I saw a patient with oral cancer and this patient never smoked, which is the well-known cause of oral cancer, but he or she did vape and I suspect the vaping was connected with the cancer.
Now... It's messy because in the four case reports that Bernard cites, two of those people did have a history of smoking as well.
Like, smoking cigarettes. Yes, I noticed that.
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Chapter 7: What are the health risks associated with vaping?
Yes. Still, but when Bernard looks at the totality of the evidence, here's what he thinks.
So all of that data, the laboratory data, the biomarker data, the animal data, the case reports, all of that taken together lead us inexorably to the conclusion that vaping is likely to cause oral and lung cancer.
So that's, you know, in the case of vaping versus cancer, that is the case that Bernard is making. But Rose, you were going to play defense on this, right?
Yes. So there were a lot of scientists who were pissed off by this paper. Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to find out why. And so we called up one of them, Professor Leon Schaub. He is a vaping expert at University College London. And Leon didn't think the review was put together in a systematic way. He didn't like that. Yeah. But he said that's not the only reason that he's skeptical.
Chapter 8: What conclusions can we draw about vaping and smoking?
The concern is further deepened by the fact that this review includes several papers that claim evidence that e-cigarettes cause cancer, but that have themselves been heavily criticized. Tell me more.
Well, so you mentioned the rodent studies, like the one where some of the mice that got exposed to vape aerosol got lung cancer. In that study, the mice were living in a chamber that got filled up with the vape fumes. Basically, they were being hotboxed with vape. That's how they do these, right? And they got hotboxed for four hours a day, five days a week.
They were basically enveloped in a cloud of vapor. It doesn't seem like a realistic use condition for a human.
Isn't it? I mean, obviously, you're not living in a cloud if you vape, but you are breathing it in directly from the vape, right?
Sure, but you're not sitting in a chamber of vape clouds for hours and hours. Unless you truly are a vape lord. I mean, most people I know don't do that. And I've never seen vapers lick the vape off their body, which is what mice might be doing because, you know, rodents groom themselves. Oh, right. So they'd be licking their fur that then has the vape. Crap on there.
Which would have gotten some extra exposure, different route of exposure. That's just a criticism you can make about these studies. You know, I emailed the author of the paper, that paper about the mice, some questions. Yeah. And yeah, he said, like, we tried carefully to create conditions that are as natural as possible to what... vapors might get exposed to.
But even he was like, yeah, ultimately, it's a study in mice. He said, this is a quote, the major purpose of exposing mice in an inhalation chamber is to determine the effect of e-cigarette aerosols in mice. So like, of course, we can't say the same is going to be true for humans. Of course.
It's step one. It's step one.
Yeah. So the other point that Leon made, and this has to do with, I think the first thing you mentioned, Wendy, about how like, oh, it turns out the toxic chemicals, the carcinogens, they like actually get in the bodies of the vapors. You can find them in their pee. And that is certainly not a good thing. Leon and other experts who commented on this paper, they pointed out that like, well, these
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