Martin McKee – lying troll

In an article published in the Lancet in response to Lorien Jollye’s letter, published last month, McKee attempts to dismiss her comments because, apparently, some e-cigarette advocates attended a seminar at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the subject of the tobacco “endgame” and er…didn’t say anything. Apart from on Twitter of course, where they insulted him, natch. Here is the article written by McKee et al in full:

Link including references here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62366-7/fulltext

As far as I am aware, the only people who could be described as e-cigarette advocates at that seminar were myself, Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowden, mine and Dick’s blogs about the event can be found here and here.

McKee’s assertion that this was an opportunity for us to engage on the subject of e-cigarettes is absurd. The subject of the seminar was “Can the War on Tobacco be Won” and the presentations were almost entirely oriented around the ways in which the tobacco industry can be put out of business. E-cigarettes received no more than passing references, and then only in a derogatory context. The event itself was so utterly one sided and farcical that it was obvious that it was completely pointless to participate. Even in the Q&A session at the end McKee was taking questions from the audience then rewording them as he put them to the speakers as if for some reason the speakers themselves couldn’t hear or understand the originators. Needless to say McKee’s translations of the questions suited his own agenda and barely reflected the original question where that question was a bit too liberal for his liking.

So, to the assertion that we instead insulted the participants on Twitter. I did not tweet at all that evening. Dicks tweets are here:

Chris’s are here:

Whilst Chris’s comments may be harsh they are hardly surprising given that the fool presenting (and it wasn’t McKee or any of his co-authors) had just tried to persuade us that public health troughers such as themselves are motivated by moral reward, and not financial incentives. Oh really? See this excerpt from an email originating from UCSF re tobacco control among veterans and the military:

“Given that I have learned over the years that there are sometimes pots of funds that are pooled to fund additional grants if people think the work is important, this might be very valuable for us.”

So. E-cigarette advocates are only prepared to engage on their own terms apparently. This coming from the person (people) who have blocked every advocate active on Twitter whether or not they’ve ever spoken to or about them. The same person who refused an invitation to the e-cigarette summit, and also a private invitation to simply have an informal chat over coffee at a place of his choosing. Is that how it works Martin, you will only engage on your own ground and when surrounded by your similarly muddle headed minions?

It seems to me that Martin and friends are so incensed at the temerity of Lorien Jollye, mother, waitress and unpaid vaping advocate extraordinaire, in getting her letter published in what they consider to be their territory, that they have lost control of their senses. Where were the “grossly offensive attacks” from the people who attended your little get together? If a picture of a noose was tweeted I certainly didn’t see it, and what does it have to do with me anyway? Or Lorien Jollye for that matter..

I look forward to McKee’s upcoming workshop on the use of social media. No doubt the module on propagating lies to best effect will be enlightening, as will the one on why lots of people who disagree with him must be being orchestrated. Oh look, they took his name off it. I wonder why. Never mind, here’s how it looked earlier. Don’t worry Martin, I won’t be wasting my money anyway.

Read the redhead’s excellent analysis of the Lancet response here.