Does Homebrewing lead to cancer?

[cyanmonkey]

With the way scientific research is conducted these days regarding grants and funding, research teams are tasked with finding positive results in their research or risk losing grants.

Until this has been up against peer review and studied further, I'm skeptical.

 

[drksky]

The following is purely my opinion and not a claim of fact.........
Ok, having said that it is my belief that any such correlation would come more from the glyphosate that is used on the fields where they are growing the grains that we use in brewing. It stays in the soil, is retained in the crops that it is used on, and is present in everyone that doesn't eat an exclusive organic diet. We have Monsanto to thank for making our beer, and so much more in this world, poisonous......

That's a bunch of hippy happy horse****.

 

[heLLbent]

This is not a study. This is an article written based on "referenced" studies that as of yet, has zero citations from medical professionals. It appears the guy read studies of his own choosing and drew his own conclusions!
The article is new, so may be deleted or may be cited when it is reviewed.

They use the word "plausible" and I agree it is plausible that drunks have a higher risk of cancer from, passing out in the sun, using tobacco products, eating greasy food at the bar...

With the amount of tax revenues on alcohol I doubt we will ever know for sure how harmful alcohol is. Hangovers are a good clue that drinking to much is not a good thing.
I think for me the benefits outweigh the cancer risk. I will stick with my Pint a day average, sometimes banking them for the weekend,lol.

 

[55x11]

Lots of junk science out there. It makes better headlines. However, it is true that if you drink a beer everyday the rest of your life you will die.

much of this IS junk science - for example, it is possible to come to exactly opposite conclusion using the same sets of data!

The research paper being discussed here focuses on increased dangers from cancer yet claims any positive effect on cardiovascular system from drinking alcohol (in moderation) must not be there because..., well, just because.

It is clear that many "scientists" in this area are trying to pull some numbers to make arguments that suit their preconceived notions.

In my limited experience looking through the literature, it does seem there are (small) cancer risks associated with alcohol consumption - but the increases are tiny or non-existent for common types of cancers and only significant for cancers that are relatively rare.

For example, you may double your chances of developing larynx cancer if you consume 50g of ethanol daily. But the current rate is 3 cases per 100,000 people, and I would suspect that majority of those people may have been predisposed to these types of cancers for other reasons (genetics, smoking etc.) - and survival rate is >70%.

Meanwhile, there are 1.5 Million heart attacks/strokes in US alone, and 800,000 people die from cardiovascular deceases every year in US. (1 in 3 deaths). So decreasing your chances of developing cardiovascular decease, even by a relatively small margin, say by 5-10%, reduces your chances of dying a lot more than doubling of rate of say 10 relatively rare cancers (such as larynx, pharynx, stomach etc.).

Regardless of all these statistically "massaged" studies, the one thing that appears over and over again is that moderate drinking substantially reduces mortality rate over non-drinking/abstaining population. Even after correcting for various factors (such as abstainers being recovering alcoholics/not healthy to begin with, social factors associated with drinking, social status etc.). The mortality rate decrease benefits max out at about 2 beers a day, every day, but there are still benefits even at 5-6 beers a day (over abstainers group), the so-called J-curve. Drinking daily, low-ABV drinks, instead of binging, drinking slowly and with food, increases benefits. Drinking irregularly (for example abstaining during work days and then doing a lot of shots on Saturday night) is bad for you.