Re: Religious Tolerance

Hi Mike,

A
carcinogen is a carcinogen

Not according to the studies you cite. "The draft guidelines
recommend that for low risk of both immediate and long-term harm from
drinking, men and women should not exceed two standard drinks in any
one day." Also "drinking too much alcohol can cause cancer".

Limited data suggested that alcohol intakes of at least 60 g/d were
not associated with further increased risk.

Why would you ask me to investigate further when it so clearly states
what I have been saying all along:

A single drink occassionally by a non-Baha'i is just fine.

--Kent





Oct 13, 3:54 pm, mikera...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Alcohol has now been
classified as a carcinogen on it's own.
I got that, but what I found said at three or more drinks a day.
Please show me otherwise.

In light of this statement I must assume that you're not getting it. A
carcinogen is a carcinogen, the more the merrier. If you cut back from
4 packs of cigarrettes a day to one pack, yes, you'll decrease you're
risk of lung cancer? but you still risk lung cancer. It's the same
with alcohol.

 The advisement to cut back to less drinking is exactly that.

Here is a citation of relevance.

"Alcohol as a cause of Cancer
May 2008
Authors
Samara Lewis1, Suzanne Campbell2, Emma Proudfoot2, Adèle Weston2,
Trish
Cotter1, James F Bishop1

The risk alcohol poses for cancer is large. Four standard drinks a day
increase the cancer risk by 22%
or with eight standard drinks a day the cancer risk increases by 90%.
For each standard drink per day,the risk of breast cancer specifically
increases by around 10%.

The NSW Cancer Plan 2007–2010, places significant emphasis on
effective cancer prevention with a key
goal to promote behaviour to reduce risks and thus avoid cancer6. This
report suggests that
encouraging a reduction of alcohol consumption should be part of our
strategy for cancer prevention
in NSW. In 2006, 32.8% of NSW adults drank alcohol at levels which
were classified as risky by the
2001 NHMRC guidelines7. Currently, only 41% of NSW adults are aware
that drinking too much
alcohol can cause cancer and 33% reject this notion outright8.
Information about the association
between alcohol and cancer needs to be more widely available so that
the public can make informed
choices about their behaviour. We hope the information in this report
will encourage people to make
positive changes to their lives so as to improve their health and
subsequently reduce their risk of
cancer."

http://www.cancerinstitute.org.au/cancer_inst/publications/pdfs/pm-20...
alcohol-as-a-cause-of-cancer.pdf

I encourage you to read the whole paper.

What I found came from those with head and neck cancer in people >with a
l

ong history of three drinks or more a day who did not >smoke.  But I am
wil
ling to >consider other studies, if there are >any, that say something di
ff
erent.  I like to keep an open mind.

 I don't get that feeling here that you really appreciate the meaning
of a carcinogen. Here's a study on breast cancer:

"Alcohol and Breast Cancer in Women
A Pooled Analysis of Cohort Studies

Stephanie A. Smith-Warner, PhD; Donna Spiegelman, ScD; Shiaw-Shyuan
Yaun, MPH; Piet A. van den Brandt, PhD; Aaron R. Folsom, MD; R.
Alexandra Goldbohm, PhD; Saxon Graham, PhD; Lars Holmberg, MD, PhD;
Geoffrey R. Howe, PhD; James R. Marshall, PhD; Anthony B. Miller, MB,
BCh; John D. Potter, MB, BS, PhD; Frank E. Speizer, MD; Walter C.
Willett, MD; Alicja Wolk, DMSc; David J. Hunter, MB, BS

JAMA. 1998;279:535-540.

Objective.— To assess the risk of invasive breast cancer associated
with total and beverage-specific alcohol consumption and to evaluate
whether dietary and nondietary factors modify the association.

Data Sources.— We included in these analyses 6 prospective studies
that had at least 200 incident breast cancer cases, assessed long-term
intake of food and nutrients, and used a validated diet assessment
instrument. The studies were conducted in Canada, the Netherlands,
Sweden, and the United States. Alcohol intake was estimated by food
frequency questionnaires in each study. The studies included a total
of 322647 women evaluated for up to 11 years, including 4335
participants with a diagnosis of incident invasive breast cancer.

Data Extraction.— Pooled analysis of primary data using analyses
consistent with each study's original design and the random-effects
model for the overall pooled analyses.

Data Synthesis.— For alcohol intakes less than 60 g/d (reported by>99%
of participants), risk increased linearly with increasing intake;

the pooled multivariate relative risk for an increment of 10 g/d of
alcohol (about 0.75-1 drink) was 1.09 (95% confidence interval [CI],
1.04-1.13; P for heterogeneity among studies, .71). The multivariate-
adjusted relative risk for total alcohol intakes of 30 to less than 60
g/d (about 2-5 drinks) vs nondrinkers was 1.41 (95% CI, 1.18-1.69).
Limited data suggested that alcohol intakes of at least 60 g/d were
not associated with further increased risk. The specific type of
alcoholic beverage did not strongly influence risk estimates. The
association between alcohol intake and breast cancer was not modified
by other factors.

Conclusions.— Alcohol consumption is associated with a linear increase
in breast cancer incidence in women over the range of consumption
reported by most women. Among women who consume alcohol regularly,
reducing alcohol consumption is a potential means to reduce breast
cancer risk."

 The key here is to understand what dose dependent and linear means?
In this case, it is analagous to cigarette smoking. Sure you can smoke
less per day and dramatically reduce your risk of lung cancer, but can
you? The problem here is that epidemiology looks at a society as a
whole, and not the individual. You may be blessed with that special
gene that makes you impervious to cancer, or you may have the p53
mutation which means you better watch everything you do or you will
for sure get cancer.

   Shouldn't people be advised if something is a carcinogen? Shouldn'
t
they have the right to know if they have a family history of cancer,
that drinking alcohol could put them over the top and lead to a
miserable death.

 What's wrong with educating people. Kent would have us all believe
that this is some conspiratorial Baha'i propaganda at work. But here
it is the world health organization publishing this information, not
me:

  Since you're into reading the primary literature here is another
question: Why doesn't the american cancer society advocate the people
who don't drink to take up drinking?  After all, it's good for your
heart isn't it? They advise heavy drinkers >2 per day that they risk
cancer but they stop just short of telling moderate drinkers (1-2 per
day) to stop drinking? But they don't advise non-drinkers to start for
the health benefits and advise people to consult with their physician.
Why?

I have little doubt that the cost to our society...
And what little doubt you have, would that be based on other studies? On
es

 that talk about cardio-vascular health in moderate drinkers, say,

no more than five drinks a week?

"Alcohol and Breast Cancer
Review of Epidemiologic and Experimental Evidence and Potential
Mechanisms

Keith W. Singletary, PhD; Susan M. Gapstur, PhD

JAMA. 2001;286:2143-2151.

The association of alcohol consumption with increased risk for breast
cancer has been a consistent finding in a majority of epidemiologic
studies during the past 2 decades. Herein, we summarize information on
this association from human and animal investigations, with particular
reference to epidemiologic data published since 1995. Increased
estrogen and androgen levels in women consuming alcohol appear to be
important mechanisms underlying the association. Other plausible
mechanisms include enhanced mammary gland susceptibility to
carcinogenesis, increased mammary carcinogen DNA damage, and greater
metastatic potential of breast cancer cells, processes for which the
magnitude likely depends on the amount of alcohol consumed.
Susceptibility to the breast cancer–enhancing effect of alcohol may
also be affected by other dietary factors (such as low folate intake),
lifestyle habits (such as use of hormone replacement therapy), or
biological characteristics (such as tumor hormone receptor status).
Additional progress in understanding alcohol's enhancing effect on
breast cancer will depend on a better understanding of the
interactions between alcohol and other risk factors and on additional
insights into the multiple biological mechanisms involved. "

 So is JAMA (that's Journal of American Medical Association for tim) a
Baha'i controlled propaganda factory? Are they lying to us? Gee
willikers, maybe the rise in breast cancer in women could very well
relate to an increased proportion of women drinking in our society.
Notice that for 2 decades you don't hear about alcohol and breast
cancer in the mainstream media. In all of your superior reading and
research you dont mention breast cancer? I wonder why? I guess they're
busy suppressing the Baha'i propaganda.

I don't drink myself, but that doesn't mean I can't be fair to >those wh
o

do.  There is nothing I have seen harmful about a single

But apparently you believe that forewarning people that something is a
carcinogen is somehow propoganda. Provide people with the facts and
let people make their own choice. Here's a question for you: How long
did it take our own american cancer society to demonstrate that
smoking could cause lung cancer?

"The Postwar Era

During the late 1940s, the American Cancer Society began to share,
with other national health organizations in such countries as England
and Sweden, accumulated evidence regarding the relation between
tobacco smoking and cancer. Spurred on by this evidence, the ACS
funded a case-control study of lung-cancer patients and patients
without lung cancer at the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis,
Missouri. The study found that 94 percent of the patients diagnosed
with lung cancer were smokers of cigarettes. Following up on the
conclusions to this study, a more comprehensive investigation was
conducted during the early 1950s involving over 200,000 interviews,
questionnaires, and clinical research. On June 21, 1954, a
representative of the ACS told the American Medical Association
convention in San Francisco that those people who smoked two packs of
cigarettes a day were 25 times more likely to get lung cancer than
nonsmokers and, in addition, that smokers were twice as likely to have
a heart attack as nonsmokers.

<my

read more »...


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