Scribblings IV: On real ale, obesity, long life and settled science plus Notting Hill and French welders.

First a call to arms from Old Mudgie - or at least a reminder what the Campaign for Real Ale was set up to do:

CAMRA is not, and never has been, a generalised campaign for All Good Beer. If some of its members have at times given that impression, they have been wrong. It is a campaign to preserve and champion a unique British brewing and cultural institution. The clue is in the name, and it does what it says on the tin. There are plenty of great non-“real” beers out there, and CAMRA members should feel no shame in enjoying and celebrating them. But they don’t need campaigning for. Real ale does.

And he's right - real ale is the uniquely British product, something that Asterix can take the piss out of, that is central to our pub culture, and is at its best one of the world's greatest drinking experiences.

According to Grandad we have to ban obesity - 'tis the only way to solve the problem (given that studies have shown it's nothing to do with calories or exercise):

And because there is now a cure, they can start pushing for obesity to be made illegal. It will start with public transport and move on to pubs and offices but it's all for our own good. Soon fatties won't be able to even visit public open spaces because as we all know, blubber is now denormalised and we have to protect the cheeeldren from even the sight of a pot belly or a huge arse.

So it goes with science, hardly a day passes without what we thought was true not quite really being true at all. Unless it's climate science of course - as James reports:

Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.

I gather the students weren't even allowed to share sceptical thoughts in an online forum - any questioning of that 'settled science' and bang - off the course.

Meanwhile Julia exposes the inconsistency of cops and councils by spoofing that they're banning the Notting Hill Carnival:

The Metropolitan police had asked the council to shut down the famous August Bank Holiday festival after the huge crime rate and the stabbings.

Of course, the closure isn't the carnival (454 arrests, five stabbings, 100 assaults on police officers) but the Fabric nightclub (no arrests, no stabbings, two drug deaths).

On a broader note, Bill Stickers talks about his family and, in doing so comes up with this telling paragraph:

As well as all the “But you can’t say that!” voices crying out that we should not talk about certain issues, or even allude to said facts existence, there’s a ‘health’ lobby out there determined that we will all end our days restricted to ‘care’ homes, dribbling out our dotage, and subject to naught but pity as the Alzheimers inexorably robs us of our marbles, bowel and bladder control.

Living well is more important than living long, which isn't an argument for dissoluteness but rather an encouragement to enjoy the time we've got - we only get one go at it after all!

So driving round France in a camper van makes sense even when trying to get a petrol tank welded means meeting the health and safety rules:

We learn that welding metal petrol tanks is a slow undertaking: at least in France, you have to have a special approval as a welder, and rules require that the tank be washed thoroughly before any work can start, a process that takes a fortnight. And today we are told that no welder here or in the surrounding towns is prepared to take on the job.

I get the cleaning bit (welding and petrol don't mix well) but no-one?

Finally James shares why we die and want medical research we fund. There's a bit of a mismatch with about half the research we fund through donations going on breast cancer.

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Ban Bad Luck Now!

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Cancers are one of the biggest causes of death and, leaving aside occasional sociopathic nonsense, we see the mission of finding effective treatment for the disease as a great campaign worth waging. And in recent times we've been told - repeatedly - that it's our fault we get cancer. If we'd only had a different diet, exercised more, drank a little less then we'd have been fine. The old joke that the Daily Mail is seeking to divide everything between stuff that cures cancer and stuff that causes cancer is funny because it's more-or-less true.

Now it seems this public health assault on lifestyle is a little misplaced - the main cause of cancer is bad luck. It's the curse of normal distribution.

Overall, they attributed 65% of tumours to random mutations in genes that can spur cancer growth.

"When someone gets cancer, immediately people want to know why," said oncologist Dr Bert Vogelstein, who conducted the study with Johns Hopkins biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti.

"They like to believe there's a reason. And the real reason in many cases is not because you didn't behave well or were exposed to some bad environmental influence, it's just because that person was unlucky. It's losing the lottery."

In one respect this a pretty depressing. I can hear the fatalist in all of us kicking in as we ponder the fact that getting cancer is a function of probability not lifestyle. With each cell division there's a chance - a minuscule chance - of the mutation that will give you cancer. And the more cell divisions, the more the chance. As D&D players know, one day you're going to roll a one.

There will be a scuttling sound as public health finds a new argument (after all their existence rather depends on being able to prove positive health outcomes from their fussbucketry). But those of us who question the value of modern public health have a little more ammunition now!

Perhaps public health folk could just ban bad luck?

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Friday Fungus: more on mushrooms and cancer...

At risk of sounding like the Daily Mail here but there's some further evidence that mushrooms (to be exact, shitake mushrooms) might help prevent cervical cancer;

An extract from a Japanese mushroom kills the sexually transmitted virus HPV that can cause cervical cancer. Human papilloma virus (HPV) is a common, and highly contagious, infection that affects skin and the moist membrane linings of the body, for example, in the cervix, mouth and throat.

Pretty good news for mushroom lovers!

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More misrepresentation of science in the cause of so-called "public health"

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One of the New Puritans' favourite approaches to the presentation of science is to take an extreme example - high doses of the chosen "evil substances" - and use this to run a scary story about consumption at more normal levels.

Here's an example from the Daily Mail:

Soft drinks laden with sugar could raise a woman’s risk of developing womb cancer, claim researchers.

Pretty straightforward and further evidence of how those "sugar-laden fizzy drinks" are so evil.

But hang on a minute, let's take a closer look:

Researchers discovered that postmenopausal women who reported the greatest consumption of sugary drinks had a 78 percent increased risk for estrogen-dependent type I endometrial cancer.

And that greatest consumption of fizzy drinks? It's consuming 60 plus 'units' (essentially, one can), which is about 20 litres a week. That's an awful lot of coke!

If you're drinking that much sugary drink, you've a problem. And:

The University of Minnesota researchers said that they couldn’t rule out that women who had lots of sugar-laden drinks had lots of unhealthy habits.

Looks to me like we're extrapolating from extreme levels of consumption here by women who are very likely to be seriously obese - this doesn't mean that your mum having a glass of coke while sitting in the garden is going to give her cancer of the womb.

It's just a scare story. And just to give you a little hope and cheer - if you're under 70 then, in the unlikely event that your can of 7Up gives you uterine cancer, you've a 90% chance of surviving.

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Eating stuff doesn't cause cancer....

Pie. A very good pie. From Ellisons in Cullingworth

Over recent years assorted nannying fussbuckets and attention seeking "researchers" have bombarded us with tales that warn how those wonderful foods we love are giving us cancer. Not that I was taking any notice but it does seem that it was - to be polite - a little exaggerated. At least according to some American academics:

...US scientists have warned that many reports connecting familiar ingredients with increased cancer risk have little statistical significance and should be treated with caution.

"When we examined the reports, we found many had borderline or no statistical significance," said Dr Jonathan Schoenfeld of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

In a paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Schoenfeld and his co-author, John Ioannidis of Stanford University, say trials have repeatedly failed to find effects for observational studies which had initially linked various foods to cancer.

These foods included:

...flour, coffee, butter, olives, sugar, bread and salt, as well as peas, duck, tomatoes, lemon, onion, celery, carrot, parsley and lamb, together with more unusual ingredients, including lobster, tripe, veal, mace, cinnamon and mustard.

Plus, of course, as the Daily Mirror puts it - the "British breakfast":

A health warning on the British ­breakfast was lifted yesterday after scientists ruled that bacon, tea and burnt toast may not cause cancer after all.

After months of stories linking the ­nation’s favourite foods with the disease, US scientists now say there is in fact NO evidence that they are harmful.

What on earth will the Daily Mail publish now?

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The lunacy that is Australia...

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It's a joke surely? A silly joke...

The state government is preparing to ban solariums and the private sale of sunbeds.

Government and opposition MPs supported a motion in Parliament for the bans, introduced by Greens MP Colleen Hartland in the upper house on Wednesday night.

This is Australia right? Where it's sunny all the time? So first, why are Aussies using sunbeds? And second isn't the burning hot sun more of a problem for the skin cancer?

You see those 447 sunbeds in the State of Victoria were wandering the land shooting people with their skin cancer rays.

People know the risks - they're on the label so to speak. Yet they still prefer to be brown. Their choice.

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Oddly enough this is good news...

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...although I'm sure some won't portray it that way:

If the cancer-specific and sex-specific trends estimated in this study continue, we predict an increase in the incidence of all-cancer cases from 12·7 million new cases in 2008 to 22·2 million by 2030.

It may seem odd to portray the near doubling of new cancer cases as good news but, as the authors point out:

Our findings suggest that rapid societal and economic transition in many countries means that any reductions in infection-related cancers are offset by an increasing number of new cases that are more associated with reproductive, dietary, and hormonal factors

Rather than dying from infection and communicable disease, people will be dying from conditions - and cancers are primarily one of these - that are associated with longer lives. This makes cancer more of a problem and puts some imperative on development in treatment but it is a clear indication that trends show that people in developing countries will be living longer, healthier and happier lives. Mostly because of economic growth.

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Drinking Causes Cancer - the New Puritans play their Ace...

"Two glasses of wine a night triples risk of mouth cancer, government warns"

So screams the Telegraph today as it reports on the Church of Public Health's latest advertising campaign:

Television adverts which start running on Sunday evening will say that drinking "just a little bit more" than recommended daily limits for alcohol increases the risk of serious health problems. 

Apparently - although neither the article not the government cite the evidence for this or tell us about the actual risks - we are three-times "more likely" to get mouth cancer if we exceed daily recommended limits. And (what a surprise) the article features prohibitionists arguing for a minimum price for alcohol.

Drinking causes cancer! The biggest card in the New Puritan deck...

Over the past forty years alcohol consumption has risen considerably (up to 2002/3) and then fallen sharply. If there was a link between alcohol and mouth cancer you would expect the incidence of this condition to reflect that rise and fall. Here is a chart from Cancer Research UK showing mortality from mouth cancer from 1971 in the UK:




The incidence of this disease hasn't shifted at all over that time. I'm not saying alcohol isn't a risk factor but it doesn't seem to be a big one!

Perhaps they should ask why mouth cancer is the single most common cancer in Pakistani men?

In high-risk countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, oral cancer is the most common cancer in men and may account for up to 30% of all new cases of cancer compared to 3% in the UK and 6% in France.

Food for thought...

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Even Cancer Research UK admit alcohol consumption is falling?

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Among all the media excitement about how fags, booze and burgers are giving us cancer it appears that the rather nuanced nature (other than on smoking - actually smoking not passive smoking) of the Cancer Research UK work is somewhat overlooked. However, I was struck by this bit (see I've read it - rather than just the CRUK press release):

In fact, data from the national General Lifestyle Survey (Robinson and Bugler, 2010) show that the average number of units of alcohol consumed in a week rose in the 1990s to a peak in the period 2000–2002 of around 17 units for men, and 7.5 units for women, but has fallen since that time in both sexes. The proportion of men and women drinking more than the recommended maximum (21 units a week in men and 14 units in women) has also been falling. The fall in consumption occurred among men and women in all age groups, but was most evident among those aged 16–24. It is quite possible, therefore, that the burden of alcohol-related cancers is around its maximum at present, and will fall in future.

Got that folks.

And get this - two-thirds of cancers are NOT the result of smoking, drinking or bad diet. That's a thought, eh?

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Cancer: how the two-week target is a nonsense

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Various folk have reported – with differing degrees of indignation – on Labour’s targeting of cancer sufferers. And I’m sure others will ask the questions about data protection and the misuse of personal data (bearing in mind that you cannot use geodemographics to identify breast cancer sufferers*).

However, nobody questions the essential deception in labour’s “appointment within two weeks” offer.To explain this I’m going to give you a personal story.

At the end of last summer I went to the GP as I had a lump in my throat that wasn’t going away. The GP referred me for an ultrasound scan to establish more information (I joked at the time about her thinking my throat was pregnant). This was duly done and I visited the GP again who referred me to a specialist. All this took around six weeks – a long way outside the target of two weeks.

Except that I wasn’t referred to a “cancer specialist” but (quite rightly) to a thyroid specialist. Who referred me for more tests, two further ultrasound scans and some further tests. In the end, I had my throat cut in January and the (thankfully benign) lump removed. All this on the good old NHS – great doctoring, truly awful bureaucracy and appalling front-of-house service. Took about six moths beginning to end.

I’m not complaining about this process. It seemed entirely reasonable and sensible. I don’t feel hard done by at all. So why have a wholly arbitrary and unreferenced requirement of two weeks? Especially when the doctors can get round it by not describing something as “cancer”!

*Seems to me (as an expert on geodemographics) that Labour are lying on this one