Bacon, sausage (not that kind bbd--relax) and steak cause cancer--don't eat says WHO

[PhDeac]

Good comments. I'm glad someone can finally admit that scientists market themselves via the media in order to gain $$$......and I'll add..notoriety. It's not much of a slide from that to biasing the results to generate those headlines, especially when big data is involved like in these epidemiology studies which are just weak/unprovable correlations.

Townie is on the publishing side, not the scientists side.

 

[TownieDeac]

I work with both daily, lots of staff scientists here, but the point I was making was about publishers sending stories to the media, not scientists. If a university wants to publicize something their faculty published about, that can be a similar problem.

 

[LadyDeac03]

Bacon Causes Cancer? Sort of. Not Really. Ish.

The scientific evidence linking both processed meat and tobacco to certain types of cancer is strong. In that sense, both are carcinogens. But smoking increases your relative risk of lung cancer by 2,500 percent; eating two slices of bacon a day increases your relative risk for colorectal cancer by 18 percent. Given the frequency of colorectal cancer, that means your risk of getting colorectal cancer over your life goes from about 5 percent to 6 percent and, well, YBMMV. (Your bacon mileage may vary.) “If this is the level of risk you’re running your life on, then you don’t really have much to worry about,” says Alfred Neugut, an oncologist and cancer epidemiologist at Columbia.

 

[awaken]

For scientists/statisticians that have seen Forks Over Knives documentary on Netflix, please comment on the studies cited.

Forks Over Knives summary: American diet is too heavy in protein which causes health problems, which sounds pretty much what WHO is saying now. They cite large historical events, not controlled studies per se, where national populations had their protein intake removed or heavily documented, and compared to heart disease and cancer in those areas during that time (they went down). In micro studies, they show modern doctors who include a whole foods, mostly vegetable diet in their treatment of patients. The changes in a few months seem impressive. I'd like a more scientific take on the documentary, though.

 

[tsywake]

 

[HailToTheDeacons]

RIP Hungry Caterpillar

 

[TownieDeac]

Further evidence the media irresponsibly reports science http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/Chemotherapy/54371

In nearly 100 news articles describing 36 cancer drugs, words like "breakthrough" and "miracle" were used, even though 50% of the time those drugs weren't FDA approved, and 14% of the time they hadn't even been tested in humans yet, according to researchers.
The use of these "'inflated descriptors" often reflected the current "hot fields" of cancer research, like immunologic checkpoint inhibitors, which made up only 14% of the unique drugs mentioned but accounted for 38% of superlatives used, reported Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and Matthew V. Abola, a medical student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveand, in a research letter in JAMA Oncology.

 

[DistrictDeacon]

Further evidence the media irresponsibly reports science http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/Chemotherapy/54371

Is FDA approval really the standard we should be using to determine effectiveness?

 

[TownieDeac]

Is FDA approval really the standard we should be using to determine effectiveness?

It's *a* standard, but that's hardly the point.

The study showed that news outlets were using terms like "breakthrough" and "miracle" on drugs in preclinical development or which had only undergone mouse trials. Just super irresponsible.