Institute for Biomedical Ethics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Institute of Global Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Addiction. 2016 Aug;111(8):1328-32. doi: 10.1111/add.13067. Epub 2015 Sep 28.
Electronic cigarettes are currently polarizing professional opinion. Some public health experts regard them as an effective smoking cessation aid and a vital means of reducing active and passive smoking, while others regard them as another attempt by the tobacco industry to create new customers and addicts. These different attitudes unsurprisingly yield different conclusions regarding both the appropriate regulation of e-cigarettes and the ethical status of research funded by, or conducted in, cooperation with the tobacco industry.
This paper examines whether e-cigarette research linked to the tobacco industry should be regarded as an exception to the rule that tobacco industry research is so tainted by conflicts of interest that journals should refuse to publish them, or at the very least treat them as a special case for scrutiny.
Despite the fact that e-cigarettes can be used for smoking cessation, most of the conflicts of interest that apply to other tobacco research also apply to e-cigarette research linked to that industry.
Journals that currently refuse to publish findings from studies linked to tobacco companies have no reason to make an exception in the case of e-cigarettes.
电子烟目前在专业领域引起了两极分化的意见。一些公共卫生专家认为它们是一种有效的戒烟辅助手段，也是减少主动和被动吸烟的重要手段，而另一些专家则认为它们是烟草行业试图创造新客户和瘾君子的又一次尝试。这些不同的态度对电子烟的适当监管以及由烟草业资助或合作进行的研究的伦理地位产生了不同的结论。
本文探讨了与烟草业相关的电子烟研究是否应被视为违反规则的例外情况，即烟草业研究因利益冲突而受到污染，期刊应拒绝发表此类研究，或者至少将其视为需要审查的特殊情况。
尽管电子烟可用于戒烟，但适用于其他烟草研究的大多数利益冲突也适用于与该行业相关的电子烟研究。
目前拒绝发表与烟草公司相关研究结果的期刊没有理由在电子烟的情况下破例。
