Cancer Research UK Science Blog

Cancer Research UK (a medical charity) has a good summary of some common food controversies - foods that are claimed to either cause or curtail cancer. The entry on 'super foods' states: > "...the term ‘superfood’ is really just a marketing tool, with little scientific basis. It’s certainly true that a healthy, balanced and varied diet can help to reduce the risk of cancer but it is unlikely that any single food will make a major difference on its own." https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-an… Also worth a read: Bacon, salami and sausages: how does processed meat cause cancer and how much matters? (April 2019) https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2019/04/26/bacon-salami-and-s…

I thought we established they received a non-zero dollar fine. Their annual profit is about $13BN, they were fined $2.8BN which is about 22%. I think that along with imprisoning an exec that was complicit in the lie is a significant and reasonable deterrent/punishment. As for VW significantly increasing the likelihood of any given arbitrary citizen getting cancer I'd love to see the numbers on that. Sounds like hyperbole to me[0] [0] http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fumes-defini…

Cancer Research UK has great articles on taking aspirin both to prevent cancer [1], and to prevent the spread and recurrence of cancer [2] Their tweets [3] today on the topic lay out the current situation pretty clearly Quoting their tweets and blog post: "Aspirin can help protect against bowel cancer, and possibly stomach, oesophageal and other cancer too" "Aspirin also increases the risk of strokes and stomach bleeding" "the benefits start building from age 50, so there’s little to gain from taking it below that age" [1] http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/08/06/aspirin-and-cancer-… [2] http://about-cancer.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancer-in-genera… [3] https://twitter.com/CR_UK/status/925323615360487425

What are you, some sort of beef industry lobbyist? This is a widely accepted fact among the medical community and supported by reams of evidence. Metabolism has almost nothing to do with this. The link between environmental exposure (red meat, smoking, etc.) and cancer has to do with DNA damage and inflammation. https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2021/03/17/bacon-salami-and-s… The rest of your comment is clearly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

The discussion is about testing now, today. It's not about testing in 10 years time. > can only help, never hurt This is simply untrue. Assuming for a moment that people can avoid overreacting you're still ignoring the stress caused by getting a partial dx. And if you're not going to do anything with the information it's pointless doing it: you've exposed people to risk (hospitals are low risk, not no risk, environments) for no purpose. I've linked to doctors and statisticians and healthcare researchers all saying the same thing. Here's a UK Cancer charity which repeats the point: https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2018/03/06/overdiagnosis-when… What you chose to do with your body is, of course, totally up to you. But you should stop spreading the FUD that imaging is harmless or that more information is always better.

It's been debunked. See this post explaining why. https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2017/05/15/sugar-and-cancer-w…

It's strange that this article mentions the increased risk of internal bleeding but doesn't mention the reduced risk of cancer. Here's a study which suggests that if 1,000 people aged 60 took aspirin daily for 10 years then 3 more people would die from strokes, bleeding and ulcers, but 17 fewer people would die from cancer and heart attacks. If that's true, then the benefits of daily aspirin clearly outweighs the costs. https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/08/06/aspirin-and-cancer…

It may be a secondary effect. Most people know the feeling of having a “hot ear” from talking long on a cell phone when it’s against the ear. Frequent heating of cells can be inflammatory which in turn is recognized as a possible cause of cancer - https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/06/09/more-on-inflammati…

This 50% figure is debunked here: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/08/17/we-need-to-be-caref… In the end largely detection in the US is quite a bit better but the actual cancer care is similar.

I do stand corrected on colon cancer. However, I stand by my general stance. Many cancers simply wouldn't show up in a population with a much shorter life expectancy. I'm not about to say it isn't partially environment or lifestyle (other things do cause cancer), just that we notice because of our life span and ability to detect these. I get this from articles like the one listed at the end, which states: The main reason cancer risk overall is rising is because of our increasing lifespan. And the researchers behind these new statistics reckon that about two-thirds of the increase is due to longevity. Colon cancer seems to be an outlier, and there are a couple of these. Cervical cancer is caused by a very common virus and often affects younger women, just to give another example. http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/02/04/why-are-cancer-rate…

Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk There is evidence that Nicotine replacement products do increase the risk of cancer. Every source I've read says that the risk is less than smoking cigarettes, but vaping (for example) is still an increased risk over not using nicotine at all. Current NHS advice puts vaping at 95% less risk than smoking, which is to say an increased risk (5% of the smoking risk), compared to not vaping. - https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes - http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/24/can-nicotine-gum-ca… - http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/04April/Pages/NicotineGumCancer.aspx - http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/prevention-and-healthy-li…

"As a smoker I have special interest. There is no archaeological evidence of cancer among aboriginal nations of Americas which cultures had a lasting tradition of smoking tobacco." Well, as a past smoker I too have special interest. But also, as a logical person, I'd expect all you'd find of cancer in "archaeological evidence" of human remains are those which afflict bones. So you're not really making a case. Also: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2010/10/14/claims-that-cancer-…

The IARC calls _many_ things "probable human carcinogens". I assume you drink alcohol (and if you don't it's likely not because the IARC classifies it as a "probable human carcinogen")? Here's a quote that I think sums it up well: "To take an analogy, think of banana skins. They definitely can cause accidents – but in practice this doesn’t happen very often (unless you work in a banana factory). And the sort of harm you can come to from slipping on a banana skin isn’t generally as severe as, say, being in a car accident. But under a hazard identification system like IARC’s, ‘banana skins’ and ‘cars’ would come under the same category – they both definitely do cause accidents." http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fumes-defini…

Primary source: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/10/01/citizen-scientists-…

There's one small issue with diesel engines. Diesel exhaust fumes cause cancer: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fumes-defini…

The US system is motivated to overdiagnose cancer. ----- "We need to be careful when comparing US and UK cancer care" http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/08/17/we-need-to-be-caref…

I believe some links to research proving homeopathy has no discernible effect on that page would help. As it is, it feels like a knee jerk reaction that wouldn't convince people who are genuinely wondering. http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/17/no-convincing-evide… and the research paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370613 http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy

Plants don't help when we choose to incorporate their radiation into our bodies: Tobacco pulls radioactive polonium-210 from the soil and air[0]. It has been found to accumulate in the lungs and continue to emit alpha-particles. [0] http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/08/29/radioactive-poloniu…

Here's a rather more balanced report on the research and the implications of it - http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/01/07/can-pancreatic-canc…

You forget that life expectancy for native populations aren't due to them to not living long lives, but more due to the fact they have more deaths at childhood (due to stuff like bacteria infections and other diseases we now prevent). So you have a big chunk of population dying young. Also these cultures can be more violent and often have wars killing a big chunk. But past that bump it's not as short as the average (it's far larger). For example the Native Americans if one of them lived to 40, he could expect to live to round 70. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_was_the_av… 70 is easily a cancer age. Going by the current research at https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/02/04/why-are-cancer-rat… one can expect 3/4 people over 60 to have cancer. And it's increasing. So yeah the not living long enough doesn't really hold water. Also juvenile cancers weren't really a thing at all until the modern world (more likely bacterial infections until we discovered penicillin were more likely for juvenile deaths).

> We can't conclude "O is true, therefore H" Definitely, but if O had been false we might have learned something. More interestingly though: > another thing to consider is fallout incorporated into tobacco and then smoked That's an interesting thought, I'd never considered that. My expectation for beta and gamma emitters is that they would be unlikely to cause cancer specifically in the lungs, because lungs aren't very dense and would have a pretty low interaction cross section for such penetrating radiation. For comparison, I-131 -- a beta emitter common in fallout -- is a significant risk for thyroid cancer only because iodine is biologically concentrated in the thyroid. However, if there were significant fallout of alpha emitters, which were deposited in tobacco, this could conceivably deliver a significant localized dose to the lungs. Alpha emitters are more or less only dangerous internally, but smoke particulates that become lodged in the lungs could do the job. There appears to be a fair amount of literature on this -- Naturally occurring Po-210 is apparently still considered a danger today [1], and has been known to the cigarette companies since the 60s [2]. Some apparently comes from decay of natural U (via a few intermediaries) in phosphate fertilizer. A figure in one paper I was able to find [3] suggests up to 100 pCi/kg Pu-239 and Pu-240 (both alpha) in leaves and grass in Finland circa 1963, declining to less than 5 pCi by 1967. The modern Po-210 alpha…

Good chat, despite it's mildly aggressive nature. Here's what: So, an organisation that basically labels everything in the world as either a potential carcinogen or carcinogen [0] when the second lowest score they award still reads as 'potential carcinogen' is more powerful than actual evidence, accrued across enormous longitudinal studies, first from scandinavia [1] but backed significantly by australia [2] and integrated into a plausable mechanism for increases in >70 year olds [3] combined with a finding that would actually revolutionise physics and biology for suggesting a new mechanism for the interaction of electromagnetism and biology? Alarmists are everywhere [4]. But that doesn't mean they are right. It's easy to listen to fear, but just because someone is screaming and crying doesn't make them right. Serious claims deserve to be looked at seriously, and this one has been throughly examined, in research that is continuing. And it continues to be debunked by huge datasets - not just the referenced studies but also the million woman study [5][6] and others. So yes, I repeat, for anyone versed in science, physics and with their head screwed on straight, the science is settled, and I challenge you to demonstrate either a mechanism or a throughly vetted dataset that proves otherwise. And i'll remind you that hitting the first answer on google does not constitute research. [0]…

From a link in the article: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2013/03/01/can-the-power-of-th… > Take these results from a microarray below: the pink horizontal band is, effectively, the length of a chromosome – and any peaks indicate extra copies of that particular region. > There are four regions where you can see the levels change – these show where alterations have occurred in a specific part of the genome. But to be able to home in exactly on which genes are affected, and identify those that may play a key role in cancer, our scientists need to know precisely where this shift begins and ends – and for this we need the accuracy of the human eye. It sounds like this game is built on the idea the human eye is somehow better at detecting peaks in a signal than a computer, which doesn't make any sense to me. Can someone explain what's actually being gained from the human component here besides good PR?