Worth Reading this Weekend (October 16th)

WHO Director General Margaret Chan 

This week I've spent some time discussing e-cigarette regulation with my friends Sanner and Grimsrud in  the comment section of an article on tidsskriftet.no, which is kind of the official journal for the Norwegian Medical Association. I couldn't really get google to translate the comments in any other way than copying it and paste the whole thing into the text-field on google translate, but if anyone have a better idea please let me know. Anyway, the discussion has been going on for quite a while now, and I've been pointing out errors in their article, their documentation and their ability to draw logical conclusions. The last two answers I've gotten from them has been more or less attacks on my sources (which have basically been the same as theirs) or me personally. They don't even try to go into the topic any more, just blabbering about conflicts of interest, how little I know about toxicology and in their latest post they strongly suggest I'm stupid. I won't sink to their level but they'll get an answer, that's for sure.

Anyway, in this discussion there has been quite a lot of talk about conflict of interest, which leads me to some of the posts and articles I wanted to share with you today:

• James at the Ashtray blog has written an excellent article on who you can trust in the vape debate. A lot of interesting stuff in there, exposing where some of the most famous anti-vaping advocates get their funding from. (Actually the Ashtray blog also had an interesting article this week on E-cigs, Water vapour and The Lungs that's worth reading as well)

• Although Clive Bates don't mention conflicts of interest in his article on WHO’s Director General Margaret Chan’s casual irresponsibility, one can certainly start questioning how the WHO is funded.

• David Sweanor has been speaking on a C3 Breakfast Seminar this week, and Richard Smith writes about it on thebmjblogs. Some really interesting angles here as well, that might come in handy when discussing with the ANTZ.

• Dick Puddlecote writes about Simon Chapman (or Simple Simon if you'd like): Aussie Tobacco Control Worse Than North Korea. Always amusing to read Dick's well targeted posts.

• Finally, I'd like to ask everyone to have a look at this. Apparently, Facebook is censoring Aaron Biebert and his upcoming movie, and Aaron wrote this letter to Mark Zuckerberg & the Facebook team. Please take a moment to help share this info.