Health Alert

[Rev2010]

Dude, that is because 82.8% die from heart disease before they can get lung cancer.

^^^ He's right here. My stepfather smoked non-filtered Lucky Strikes for 41 years (since he was 12) and eventually needed a quintuple bypass. The surgery went fine but he died almost two weeks later from a blood clot that moved to his lungs and suffocated him - was in the hospital too at the time cause just prior he was coughing up fluid so they readmitted him.

Before the heart surgery they told him his lungs were like swiss cheese and he would need them operated on as well but the heart issue was critical so it would come first.


Rev.

 

[izatt82]

Until they prove the correlation I am not going to worry about it and even then I have a lot better chance of dieing of something other than drinking beer.

 

[tchuklobrau]

Read #1 and skipped here so sry. Getting a visectamy(? spelling) increses your chance of prostate cancer by 75% but men have that surgery done every day with no cancer. So i personally will not worry about this newest "risk of cancer" IT ALL CAUSES CANCER.

 

[EPS]

This is BS they come up with new bad stuff that can kill you every week. One time i was watching the news and they said eating to many eggs could increase your risk of some crazy disease. Don't remember witch disease cause didn't really care and its BS. My dad and grandpa drink 4-6 beers every night sometimes more and there healthy as a horse. My grandpa has been drinking beer since i can remember and he dosen't take any blood pressure pills or no medication and hes 75 years old. Beer will increase the chance that you go home with an ugly woman or guy (for the ladys) but cancer sorry don't beleave it for a min.

 

[spagyric]

Dude, that is because 82.8% die from heart disease before they can get lung cancer.

Um, all I'm saying is that 3/4 is a huge percentage compared to the less than 1/5 of smokers who get lung cancer (particularly given the direct, well established, causal link between smoking and lung cancer). Since the article is about cancer prevalence I was commenting on cancer prevalence.

It's true that more smokers die of heart disease than lung cancer (and that smoking is a huge risk factor for heart disease), and it follows that the lung cancer rate of smokers would be higher if heart disease wasn't a factor. But since the average onset of lung cancer is about sixty, and the vast majority (78 percent in 2006) of heart disease deaths occur after the age of seventy-five, your statement that 82.8 percent of smokers die from heart disease before they can get lung cancer is an oversimplification. Especially since there is a high prevalence of heart disease in general including among beer drinkers.

Obviously there are a lot of risk factors (involving an extremely complex set of variables) for both heart disease and cancer. That's beyond the scope of my original post.

 

[Kokopuff829]

My grandfather was a heavy alcoholic drinking more than 1 beer per night and during the Vietnam War drank a lot and even drank for a while after the war. Drawing this to a conclusion he is still alive and has not had gastric cancer or any liver problems that I know of. This is just BS probably trying to scare kids not to drink which drinking isn't bad unless you drink a lot! Stupid news.

 

[Bumbler]

Can't drink - Can't drive - Death is everywhere.

"Polluted Freeway Air Causes Brain Damage in Mice"

http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/freeway-air-damages-mice-brains-1356/

 

[Xaphoeous]

Think of the number of people you have heard of having stomach cancer. Now compare that to the number of people you have heard of drinking beer on a regular basis.

Yeah. I'm off to grab a beer...

 

[Xaphoeous]

I thought 100% was a guarantee that something is going to happen, so does 700% mean it WILL happen 7 times? How can you have more than a 100% chance of something anyway?

hahaha, that would suck! But alas, that 700% means you're 8 times more likely to be affected. If the normal likelihood is 1 in 100, and the new rate is 700% higher, that means 8 in 100. I know it sounds weird that 700 equates to 8 times, but "100% more likely" means "twice as likely", so 100% = twice as likely. 200% = thrice as likely. Etc.

 

[malkore]

Correlation masquerading as causation.

jebus...I read that as 'castration'...

 

[FifteenTen]

miller lite is bad for you or none of the above. I won't stop brewing and drinking it.

Your brewing and drinking miller lite?

 

[Patstarr777]

Your brewing and drinking miller lite?

Ha ha. Uh, no.

 

[biestie]

I already gave up cigarettes & hookers, I ain't giving up beer.

I gave up cigarettes too... as for.... err nevermind

 

[JohnTheBrewist]

Considering that beer is the national drink in Germany, where beer is cheaper than a glass of water, coffee or soda, you'd think Germans would be dying off from gastric cancer right and left.

I do know one German who did, though. She was my wife's aunt. She was a health nut and never drank any alcohol (but did drink her own piss) (yes, really). Died at 68 from gastric cancer.

 

[Kokopuff829]

Considering that beer is the national drink in Germany, where beer is cheaper than a glass of water, coffee or soda, you'd think Germans would be dying off from gastric cancer right and left.

I do know one German who did, though. She was my wife's aunt. She was a health nut and never drank any alcohol (but did drink her own piss) (yes, really). Died at 68 from gastric cancer.

Well piss is the liquid your body doesn't want so drinking it doesn't seem like the best thing to do.

 

[JohnTheBrewist]

Well piss is the liquid your body doesn't want so drinking it doesn't seem like the best thing to do.

Yah, some stupid study told her it was healthy...

 

[Legin]

Considering beer reduces the likelihood of most psychological diseases, heart diseases, most cancers, the developing of kidney stones, bacteria infections in the stomach--the fact that consuming large amounts of alcohol, within one sitting, increasing the risk of one particular cancer hardly seems like it needs to be considered at all.

BTW: This information on the increased risk of this type of cancer has been known for years now.

 

[DregAddict]

Just to clear something up, a 75% increased risk doesn't mean that 75% of the drinkers will get gastic cancer. It means that if there risk was say 1% that it increases by 75% up to a whopping 1.75%. And I'm sure the latent risk of gastric cancer is less than 1% anyways, I was just using it as an easy statistic to increase by 75%.

 

[beninan]

hahaha, that would suck! But alas, that 700% means you're 8 times more likely to be affected. If the normal likelihood is 1 in 100, and the new rate is 700% higher, that means 8 in 100. I know it sounds weird that 700 equates to 8 times, but "100% more likely" means "twice as likely", so 100% = twice as likely. 200% = thrice as likely. Etc.

so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer, making the chances 700%. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.

 

[sudsmcgee]

so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.

Welcome to learning to lie with statistics! It's called relative vs. absolute risk increases.

 

[rambler]

At least I'm enjoyimg the ride...

 

[DregAddict]

so you are saying it's a percentage based off a percentage? So for example purposes (please excuse if some numbers are off, I'm just trying to understand this whole statistics thing), let's say that 100% of something is 1 in 100 billion. so magically, if 2 in 100 billion occur, it's now 200%? If 1000 in 100 billion occur, does that now make it 1000%?

It seems like an awful way to easily mislead people into thinking that the chances of "said thing" happening is greatly increased, because before only one person in 100 billion developed the cancer, but in the second test 7 people in 100 billion developed the cancer, making the chances 700%. Seems like a very slight flaw in testing can cause HUGE differences in results.

It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.

 

[sudsmcgee]

It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.

True, but no can deny that study authors commonly switch between relative and absolute risk reporting depending upon their bias.

 

[beninan]

It doesn't make the chances 700%, it increases the chance by 700%. It's not a misleading statistic, it's math. For a 700% increase you could easily say that it is an 8 times increase in risk. The reason why they state it in a percentage increase is for numbers that don't work out as simply. To use their study as an example, a 75% increased risk would be 1.75 or 1 3/4 times more likely than normal. If they would use a decimal or fraction then the same people who don't understand the percentage increase would likely still be confused.

I understand what you are saying, but it still very misleading because you don't know what the numbers were for the testing. By saying your chances of winning the lottery are increased 100%, most people would think that they WOULD be winning the lottery. But the secret number that's never told, is only 1 in 1 trillion people will win the lottery, but now it's increased to 2 in 1 trillion people, so your actual odds are only 1 in 500 billion....i think... if my math is correct...

 

[DregAddict]

I understand what you are saying, but it still very misleading because you don't know what the numbers were for the testing. By saying your chances of winning the lottery are increased 100%, most people would think that they WOULD be winning the lottery. But the secret number that's never told, is only 1 in 1 trillion people will win the lottery, but now it's increased to 2 in 1 trillion people, so your actual odds are only 1 in 500 billion....i think... if my math is correct...

You numbers are right. The problem is that researchers don't really have a better way of stating their findings. Maybe it's the articles authors that needed to take more time explaining what those #s mean.

 

[HSB]

Studies like this are almost always reported as the percent increase of occurrence. It's the bigger number, so it makes for a more exciting story.

Writing that heavy beer drinkers increase their risk of some disease from .005% to .00875% would be boring. (just an example, I have no idea what the control percent chance of this specific disease is)

 

[Wingy]

True, but no can deny that study authors commonly switch between relative and absolute risk reporting depending upon their bias.

Meh, I'm not sure it's bias so much as the authors ran a logistic regression model and reporting as "% increase" is fairly standard in that case, esp in cancer research. A OR of around 6 that was significant will definitely get published...

Great point about H. pylori MI longhorn, did you find the presentation? I would be very curious to see if they controlled for this factor in the model and it should absolutely be sent back for further review if they did not.

Redcoat or rebel, please quit being ridiculous. Antiquity was not some magical disease-free era. People got cancer and died from it, even back then (carcinoma is a Greek word meaning crab-like, was coined by Romanized Greek physicians back in the day). A notable Persian queen (Atossa) most likely died of breast cancer, and breast cancer was common enough in Ancient Egypt to merit mention by Imhotep in the 17th Century BCE. (I even haz sources! Mukherjee S, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner, New York, 2010. pp. 40-42). Prevalence of H. pylori has also dropped precipitously in the US over the past 80 years so "everyone" does not have it (more like 26-44%, depending on age and race) (Source!) Sorry to go on a rant I'm just doing my part against pseudoscience .

Generally I think that the study is interesting, but would need to be confirmed in at least one other population independently. Without information on extraneous risk factors and confounders (which MSNBC conveniently failed to provide...) it's fairly impossible to evaluate the information. I'll keep on drinking beer/homebrew

 

[jeffjm]

As George Carlin pointed out, saliva, too, causes cancer, but only when swallowed in small quantities over a long period of time.

 

[cklages]

Correlation masquerading as causation.

Quoted for truth.

How is it that we ended up with 'science' that no longer follows the same scientific method people are taught in grade school (or at least used to be).

Now we get Al Gore prancing around in front of some correlating charts, telling us he knows all of the answers. We get observations, and are told that we should just connect the dots, after all who would be so stupid as to need an actual experiment to demonstrate what 'everyone' should be smart enough to see.

Science has become the religion of the 21st century, and our preachers demand their alms. So let us build them a Large Hadron Collider, so that they may bestow their Ipods and Priuses (or is it Priui) upon us.

Once they make their new observations, they can interpret our new reality, as surely as light is waves through the ether.

Sorry, its been a long day....

 

[spagyric]

Just to clear something up, a 75% increased risk doesn't mean that 75% of the drinkers will get gastic cancer. It means that if there risk was say 1% that it increases by 75% up to a whopping 1.75%. And I'm sure the latent risk of gastric cancer is less than 1% anyways, I was just using it as an easy statistic to increase by 75%.

I totally misread the article before I posted on this thread. D'oh!