Another day, another scare based upon logical fallacy posing as research.
Just one alcoholic drink a day may increase the risk of cancer, according to a new study, which estimates that light drinking is responsible for 34,000 deaths a year worldwide.
I’ve come to the conclusion that living causes cancer, so best to stop doing it…
“Alcohol increases the risk of cancer even at low doses,” say the researchers. “Given the high proportion of light drinkers in the population, and the high prevalence of these tumours, especially of breast cancer, even small increases in cancer risk are of great public health relevance.”
A classic case of presuming that correlation is the same as causation. Another one to ignore.
The reason why more people are dying of cancer is because we are not dying of all the things we used to do.If people are not dying from all the nasty diseases that killed off our grandparents, then cancers get a chance to develop. Simples.
In very general terms, it is reasonable to state that dying causes cancer. Cancer is a disease of old age (my doctor told me many years ago). What do we understand by that? As I see it, it means that, in old age, cells of the body deteriorate and fail to function. Repair mechanisms fail. Clearly, not all parts of the body will fail at the same time. For some, it will be lung problems, for others, heart problems, etc. For some unfortunate individuals, critical organs of the body may well fail (become prematurely aged) in middle age or even earlier. Thus we occasionally hear of a baby with a cancer.
What this suggests is that FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS alcohol, tobacco smoke, diet, environmental substances, etc could be factors for them personally.
Perhaps the key to ‘cancer control’ (I do not think that ‘cure’ is the correct word) lies in discovering the propensities of individuals, if that were possible.
“even small increases in cancer risk are of great public health relevance.”
How about personal relevance? Funny how they seem to miss that one every time.
Radioactivity, ever present and increasing since the 1940s.
GAinNY
Not any more.
Background radiation is now slowly dropping back towrds pre-1945 levels, as it has been doing since bomb-testing stopped, though it will never quite get there, for obvious reasons …..
@JohnD2008 – “The reason why more people are dying of cancer is because we are not dying of all the things we used to do.”
“On the Gate- a tale of ’16” (Rudyard Kipling, Debits and Credits ~1920) – on the “Civil Service” attitude – regarding administrative problems of the afterlife.
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The world’s steadily falling death-rate, the rising proportion of scientifically prolonged fatal illnesses, which allowed months of warning to all concerned, had weakened initiative throughout the Necrological Departments. When the War came, these were as unprepared as civilised mankind; and, like mankind, they improvised and recriminated in the face of Heaven
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http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/debits/chapter29.html
Is that it? A weak correlation between cancer death rates and light drinking? So ironic given the totemic status of ‘Science’ these days.
Here are a couple of other correlations which may be causes of cancer:
Average height has increased as cancer rates increase.
The salaries of professional footballers has increased massively in the same period as ‘an alarming increase in cancer rates”