Sleepless in Midland

A novel approach to the novel coronavirus: Nicotine

Imagination and innovation are often triggered by desperation. This time innovation has brought us the theory that nicotine might actually be useful in the fight against covid-19.

This idea came from the French as described in Was Hockney RIGHT? French researchers to give nicotine patches to coronavirus patients and frontline workers after lower rates of infection were found among smokers:

French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent - or lessen the effects of - the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population. 

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.

They may be onto something. Authors in sciencemag.org explains how the virus tries to wipe us out in How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes. Here's a short excerpt addressing the immune system:

Some clinicians suspect the driving force in many gravely ill patients’ downhill trajectories is a disastrous overreaction of the immune system known as a “cytokine storm,” which other viral infections are known to trigger. Cytokines are chemical signaling molecules that guide a healthy immune response; but in a cytokine storm, levels of certain cytokines soar far beyond what’s needed, and immune cells start to attack healthy tissues. Blood vessels leak, blood pressure drops, clots form, and catastrophic organ failure can ensue.

It's no secret that nicotine acts as a mild depressant of the immune system. There probably aren't any stats on people who actually use nicotine for the sole purpose of alleviating symptoms of those diseases in which their own immune systems attack some organ. But they are out there comfortably appreciating the relief nicotine gives them.

So now we are slowly learning that they also might be helping themselves ward off the most devastating part of the coronavirus.

Doctors have been so indoctrinated against smoking that they are loath to suggest any remedy that uses nicotine. And this is not enough of a reason to start smoking. But there are other ways to get nicotine into the system, and anyone willing to try can come up with a way that doesn't involve lighting up.

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2:25 PM 4/26/2020

Quite a contrast between the way the U.S. and the U.K. regulators view e-cigarettes

Regulators in the U.S. see e-cigarettes as a threat. See FDA Threatens to Pull E-Cigarettes to Fight the Rise of Kids Vaping.

On the other hand, U.K. Gov’t Report Finds E-Cigarettes ‘Substantially Less Harmful,’ Urges Deregulation:

A report released by the Science and Technology Committee in Parliament last month found e-cigarettes "substantially less harmful" than conventional cigarettes. The report recommends relaxing regulation so that approval of e-cigarettes can be "streamlined" and asks policymakers to reconsider allowing their use in public places.

The report also found no evidence that vaping is a gateway to traditional cigarette smoking for teens.

Also note this from parliament.uk/

In 2016, the Royal College of Physicians concluded that:
Large-scale substitution of e-cigarettes, or other non-tobacco nicotine products, for tobacco smoking has the potential to prevent almost all the harm from smoking in society. Promoting e-cigarettes, [Nicotine Replacement Therapy] and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible, as a substitute for smoking, is therefore likely to generate significant health gains in the UK.

U.S. regulators should be paying attention to what's happening in the U.K. in regard to e-cigs.

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1:13 PM 9/20/2018

The FDA should get on board with E-cigarettes instead of opposing them

Smokers in Novato, California, have it tough. They can smoke only in private cars or in single family detached houses if they wish to comply with a new ordinance there.

By all accounts it's hard to quit smoking. E-cigarettes seem like a reasonable way to get nicotine without lighting up the old cancer stick. But the FDA declines to list that as a way to quit.

Of the techniques recommended Watchdog.org says this:

Research varies, but one study found 9.2 percent of people who used the patch were still smoke-free after six months, versus 8.4 percent for Nicotine gum. According to WebMD, quit rates for all five NRTs range from 19 percent to 26 percent, while Chantix and Zyban are 33 percent and 24 percent effective, respectively.

That comes from E-cigarette critics get research dollars from industry competitors which goes on to say:

Researchers have found that e-cigarettes are not only 95 percent less harmful than the cumbustible version, but they have helped 6.1 million people in Europe quit smoking and another nine million have cut back on their habit.

The point of the article is the possibility of bias against E-cigarettes due to the source of funding for some of the research. The fact that E-cigarette competitors help fund the research doesn't mean it's wrong. But one doesn't have to look far to find examples of misleading research results presented as news. After all, the tobacco industry became a pariah because of allegations of fake news. The anti-smoking campaigns may simply be using tactics they learned from big tobacco.

12:15 PM 4/11/2017

news about exploding e-cigs is interesting but not especially helpful

A lot of e-cigarette smokers have decided that the benefits outweigh the risk. But there are also a lot of folks who are opposed to the whole idea of e-cigarettes. Some of those folks are in government and some are affiliated with special interest groups.

The idea of exploding e-cigs is frightening. But there's something missing from the news reports. They need to name names. If it were any other industry, eager reporters would be investigating the hell out of this. And specific companies would be identified and pilloried in the press.

But now all we have are pontificating politicians and lawyers displaying their clients. No one is willing to identify a company or product to help e-cig users avoid them.

The media are willing to blame Russia for tampering with the presidential election without having seen any proof. But they really dropped the ball on the case of the exploding e-cigarettes.

Progressives are driven to regulate -- have sights on e-cigarettes

Progressives generally make no bones about their desire to regulate anything that moves, so they were natural allies with big pharma and big tobacco in the battle to stop e-cigarettes. Some would call this a baptist and bootlegger situation. And while that might be an apt label, it's old fashioned politics with special interests combining forces to get what they want through government and recruiting compliant politicians who will carry their wishes through the sausage factory to get laws passed that will hurt the competition.

Their target is the e-cigarette business -- a relatively new industry that could revolutionize the nicotine delivery system. See Hot Air: Democrats Work With Big Tobacco and Big Pharma to Choke the Vaping Industry. Decide for yourself who are the baptists and who are the bootleggers:

Drug companies favoring the FDA rules—usually big backers of Democrats—have huge sums invested in prescription smoking-cessation drugs, covered in many cases under the Democrat-passed Affordable Care Act, which they helped shape. They now face stiff competition from readily available e-cigarettes. Similarly, tobacco companies, left flat-footed by the growth of the upstart vaping market, also support the FDA rules as they look to shore up market positions in both tobacco and e-cigarettes.

Some use e-cigarettes because they don't produce the carcinogens that tobacco cigarettes do. Some use them as a way to quit nicotine all together. Others use them because of the healing power nicotine has on some diseases, although that's probably a tiny segment.

In any event, the e-cigarette industry should be encouraged not destroyed. Before piling on regulations, the FDA should do some research to try to identify harmful effects of vaping so users can decide for themselves whether e-cigarettes are right for them.

e-cigarette aren't as bad as they told us

Late last year an article titled Cases tied e-cigarettes to lug injuries, pneumonia said that a study found that diacetyl, a chemical that can cause lung damage, was found in e-cigarettes. That news went viral and likely scared the dickens out of many e-cigarette users.

But wait just a minute. Guy Bentley has been all over this with several articles at Dailycaller.com refuting that finding and questioning the motive of those promoting that theory.

See, for example, Media Bias Exposed: ‘Popcorn Lung’ Chemical 750 Times Greater In Tobacco Vs. E-Cigarettes:

But according to Dr. Michael Siegel, a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, the Harvard study has several “glaring omissions,” and the level of diacetyl exposure from vaping compared with smoking differs by “orders of magnitude.”

And this: Scientist Debunks Latest Claim That E-Cigarettes Are As Dangerous As Tobacco:

In a statement sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation, Siegel said, “this study confirms previous findings that e-cigarette vapor can cause damage to epithelial cell lines in culture, and that the damage caused by e-cigarette vapor is much lower than that caused by tobacco smoke. ... In particular, the dose at which e-cigarette vapor was found to have an adverse effect was much higher than the actual dose that a vapor receives. ”

Furthermore, Professor Warns War On E-Cigarettes Protects Big Tobacco And Kills Smokers:

Adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottowa and special lecturer with the division of epidemiology and public health at the University of Nottingham, David Sweanor spent more than 30 years fighting tobacco. ... But now, Sweanor has split from many in the anti-smoking movement because he supports e-cigarettes.

“There’s a very strong abstinence-only part of what’s going on in the anti-smoking movement. I think it’s one of the most counter-productive things that we’ve ever seen,” Sweanor told Regulator Watch Saturday.

“We’ve known for decades people smoke for the nicotine, they die from the tar, they die from the smoke. That the nicotine itself, that the dosage level somebody’s looking for is not particularly hazardous so it can be usefully compared to caffeine.”

So puff away, my vaping friends. And keep thinking critically.

Government goes the wrong way on e-cigarettes

Last week we talked about how the British Royal Society for Public Health is calling for greater use of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation. But the U.S. government seems to be taking a different tact. The goal they seek is to extinguish tobacco use for good. And e-cigarettes do not play a role.

Dailycaller.com calls our attention to the way the U.S. National Institutes of Health uses grants to influence the outcome of the research they fund, and in particular, research into tobacco use. See Government Grant Funding Corrupts Tobacco Research, Holds Back Scientific Inquiry. The point of the article is that the government wants a particular outcome of the research projects it funds, and with so much money at stake, the universities seeking the grants are too willing to comply.

The author, Jesse Hathaway, says this:

Every year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) doles out $623 million to more than 1,000 university researchers interested in advancing its stated goal of “a world free of tobacco use.” In one such solicitation for researchers willing to fit facts to dogma, NIH set aside $10 million for eight to 10 studies, provided those studies proved useful in helping the government “develop effective ways to limit the spread and promote cessation of smokeless tobacco use.”

Studies show smokeless tobacco is much less harmful than smoking, and hence it should be part of any harm-reduction strategy governments would pursue. That is the very opposite of what the NIH is doing.

Emphasis added.

It's a shame that the U.S. government has to be such a corrupting influence on science. The Brits got this one right.

British health service says e-cigarettes are good smoking substitute

Here's another win for e-cigarettes. The Royal Society for Public Health is calling for greater use of e-cigarettes by smoking cessation programs. The study is titled Stopping smoking by using other sources of nicotine. And it says that nicotine by itself isn't that harmful. It's smoking that's so deadly.

Hence, the use of e-cigarettes is a good substitute and can help a smoker kick the smoking habit.

Note: I found this item at Daily Caller in an article titled Big Win For E-Cigarettes: Study Says Nicotine No More Dangerous Than Coffee by Guy Bentley. Is that a misleading headline? The study itself says absolutely nothing about coffee, so you be the judge.

Let's say something good about nicotine

There was a time when it was cool to smoke cigarettes. But even then smokers under a certain age had to hide under the bleachers to get a puff. All grown up, now they huddle outside of buildings, having been banished from the office place and held in slightly higher regard than heroin addicts.

Among the things that nicotine does to the body is impair the immune system. And cigarette smoking requires the user to suck smoke and tar into his/her lungs. Throw those things together, and the high incidence of smoking related cancers shouldn't be that surprising.

However, there are some conditions affecting some of us that are caused by an over active immune system. Something triggers the immune system to go on the war path, and failing to find the offender, it attacks the host. I couldn't name all of those conditions, but people with them know what they are.

Physicians prescribe all sorts of drugs to alleviate the symptoms. And some physicians want to prescribe the powerful drugs that are supposed to prevent transplant recipients' immune systems from destroying their new organs.

A perfectly functioning immune system is in delicate balance. So obviously, it's a tricky thing to fine tune.

Along comes a new delivery system for nicotine: e-cigs. Electronic cigarettes were unheard of by most non-smokers until just recently. Now they're everywhere. What-are-they and how-to videos are all over YouTube. And search engine results are filled with products and reviews.

They're a blessing to smokers. But for non-smokers who suffer from some condition caused by an out-of-balance immune system, they're a miracle drug. If only the FDA doesn't regulate them out of existence.

Related: Nicotine, the Wonder Drug? Subhead: This notorious stimulant may enhance learning and help treat Parkinson's, schizophrenia and other neurological diseases.