From The Metro:
Twenty-four-hour boozing and heavily discounted alcohol (1) have led to an ‘appalling’ rise in cancer cases, warn experts. The latest figures, obtained from parliamentary questions by the Liberal Democrats, show a 53 per cent rise in oral cancers since 1997 in the UK, up from 3,225 cases to 5,000. (2)
1) Why does it make a difference what time of day you drink or how much you paid for it?
2) How many people drink alcohol in the UK? Twenty million maybe? So, even assuming these statistics to be correct, your chance of contracting mouth cancer in any particular year is, er, 0.025%, or one-fortieth of a per cent.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Health scare story du jour:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
1) Most oral cancer is caused by smoking according to Wikipedia (something like 75%). So, cases should have gone down.
2) It can also be caused by the frequent use of alcohol-based mouthwash and unprotected oral sex. So it could just be that there's been a lot more blowjobs.
3) According to Cancer Research, there were 5,325 cases of oral cancer in 2006, so actually, numbers have gone down since then. Are the lib dems cherry-picking their years like they did with the Thames Barrier stats?
4) Less than 3% of mouth cancers diagnosed in 2006 were of people going out 24 hour drinking (people under 40).
5) Pakistan has a much higher rate than the UK despite alcohol being illegal.
6) Scotland is much higher than England because of higher smoking and drinking rates. But the rate is also higher amongst ethnic populations who chew betel and areca. Of course, I doubt you'll hear the lib dems wishing to equate it with a rise in immigration.
Beware of pharmaceutical studies blaming anything and everything for an increase in oral cancers which interestingly begin happening at the same time pharmaceuticals introduce oral based nicotine products such as gums and lozenges which are known to contain nitrosamines, the same as in tobacco. Someone could well be fooling with the data to throw all blame from where it might squarely lie.
As the baby boomers age, the females go through the Change of Life. Lots of problems correlate with that - it's the old "globalwarming caused by hot flushes" trick.
Oooooo, nearly 6 o'clock. Time for a sherry or five.
I think we really ought to keep the oral cancer/oral sex link quiet people. I'm going to have to start buying flowers if this gets out..
0.025%? That's a massive risk. That's it, I'm packing it in right now! ;-)
Wasn't it to do with mouthwash the other day? And as the cynic says above, they always say it's smoking that causes it too.
Embellishing for further government money? I think so.
Yep, it seemed a bit strange to me too.
Optimistic Cynic
"5) Pakistan has a much higher rate than the UK despite alcohol being illegal."
Must be the man-on-man oral sex then ? Oh no, that's illegal too.
Post a Comment