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No, moderate drinking won’t give you cancer? (liquor proclamations) - C C - Jan 7, 2025
No, moderate drinking won’t give you cancer
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/no-moderate-drinking-wont-give-you-cancer-surgeon-general-politicization-d0cdcbe6?st=BqXNwN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
INTRO: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has done more to politicize science and erode trust in public-health leaders than anyone other than Anthony Fauci. Dr. Murthy was at it again on Friday with a headline-grabbing report that recommends alcohol be distributed with cancer warnings.
The report warns that, for some cancers, “evidence shows that this risk may start to increase around one or fewer drinks per day.” Note the operative word, may. The link between heavy drinking and throat and mouth cancer is well-established—but not for moderate consumption.
Two weeks earlier the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a congressionally mandated review of the recent evidence on the health effects of moderate drinking, or up to one drink a day for women and two for men. Its more than 200 pages of findings run counter to Dr. Murthy’s 22-page report, though they got scant attention in the press.
The academies found insufficient evidence to support a link between moderate drinking and oral, pharyngeal, esophageal, laryngeal and other cancers. It did find a slightly higher risk of breast cancer with moderate drinking but also a lower risk of death generally and from cardiovascular disease specifically compared with never drinking.
No matter. Dr. Murthy claims that “alcohol use,” not only abuse, is a “leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, contributing to nearly 100,000 cancer cases and about 20,000 cancer deaths each year.” This estimate is based on models of associations from cherry-picked observational studies.
But even the report partially attributes only 17% of these estimated deaths to moderate drinking. Of the 609,820 cancer deaths in 2023, this would mean moderate drinking contributed to 3,400, or about 0.6%. Dr. Murthy’s claims about alcohol’s cancer risks are misleading but typical of his reports, which are intended to drive a political agenda. Let’s review the roll.... (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Most don’t know that alcohol raises cancer risk
RE: No, moderate drinking won’t give you cancer? (liquor proclamations) - C C - Jan 10, 2025
Why we are still arguing about the health effects of moderate drinking?
https://reason.com/2025/01/08/why-we-are-still-arguing-about-the-health-effects-of-moderate-drinking/
EXCERPS: The evidence is vast but open to interpretation because observational studies are inherently ambiguous. [...] Given the inherent limitations of observational studies that rely on self-reports of alcohol consumption and do not account for all the factors that may increase or reduce disease rates, it is not surprising that people continue to argue about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking...