Slashdot Mirror
E-Cigarettes Are Effective At Helping Smokers Quit, a Study Says (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that e-cigarettes were nearly twice as effective as conventional nicotine replacement products, like patches and gum, for quitting smoking. The success rate was still low -- 18 percent among the e-cigarette group, compared to 9.9 percent among those using traditional nicotine replacement therapy -- but many researchers who study tobacco and nicotine said it gave them the clear evidence they had been looking for. The study was conducted in Britain and funded by the National Institute for Health Research and Cancer Research UK. For a year, it followed 886 smokers assigned randomly to use either e-cigarettes or traditional nicotine replacement therapies. Both groups also participated in at least four weekly counseling sessions, an element regarded as critical for success. The findings could give some new legitimacy to e-cigarette companies like Juul, which have been under fire from the government and the public for contributing to what the Food and Drug Administration has called an epidemic of vaping among teenagers. But they could also exacerbate the difficulty of keeping the devices away from young people who have never smoked while making them available for clinical use.
I can understand the sentiment, but that's not how science works. Many of the smokers and former smokers with COPD and lung cancer that I helped treat in hospitals and nursing homes thought the same as you. There are few situations more depressing than being reliant on supplemental oxygen to be able to breathe at rest and still not being able to get enough air to walk 10 feet to the bathroom without being terrified of passing out. The sound of people desperately struggling to get air really stuck with me...
:(
But I sincerely wish you the best with avoiding issues like that in the future. They're life-changing
Hopefully genetic testing will help give people more accurate personal risk assessments in the next few decades.