World Health Organisation fails at science and fails at propaganda – the sad case of WHO’s anti-vaping Q&A

On 20 January 2020, the World Health Organisation published a question and answer page on “ENDS” (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems) or e-cigarettes and vaping products for nicotine as they are more commonly known: E-cigarettes: how risky are they? (current live version) Update (30 January 2019): almost certainly in response to severe criticisms, WHO has published an update to its Q & A some time on 29 January. The 20 January original version, which WHO heavily publicised and is the subject of this blog, is available via the Wayback Machine internet archive here. WHO has not notified readers of the changes or issued any acknowledgement of error. Update ends. There are nine questions and every single answer provides false, misleading or simplistic information. It is a disgraceful travesty of science communication and policymaking advice and again puts in question the competence of the WHO – if there is still any doubt about this. But is so bad that it even fails as anti-vaping activist propaganda – and that is a low bar. On the one hand, the WHO will suffer a credibility loss as a whole for this (and that is unwelcome). On the other, it is possibly the ‘jump the shark‘ moment at which the facade of credibility and objectivity on tobacco issues crumbles and the organisation goes into a terminal decline. I will briefly set out the nine questions in the original Q&A and the World Health Organisation’s answers in quote boxes, each followed by my assessment of the answer.

The questions

1. Are e-cigarettes and other vaping products dangerous? 2. Do e-cigarettes (ENDS) cause lung injuries? 3. Are e-cigarettes more dangerous than regular cigarettes? 4. Are ENDS addictive? 5. Are secondhand ENDS emissions dangerous? 6. Should ENDS be banned? 7. Should ENDS be regulated? 8. Do ENDS help you quit smoking? 9. What is WHO doing about ENDS? Bonus question: what should WHO do now? Sourced from: www.clivebates.com Link to the full article right here Clive Bates