Alcohol is a carcinogen?

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I did not know this:

…when it comes to cancer, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

There are other sources that appear to agree with this conclusion.

There have been times in the past when I would have a few ounces of red wine before going to bed on a regular basis. Recently I only occasionally have a sip of wine from the glass of Barb L. Hence my lifetime alcohol consumption is very low and now I can be even more self-righteous about it.

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17 thoughts on “Alcohol is a carcinogen?”

  2. You know, sex with multiple partners increases the risk of certain types of death too, but that doesn’t stop me from having lots of it. (Ask a doctor sometime about unhealthy sexual practices — you might be surprised at what is considered pathological in the medical literature.)

    Since I started sipping whisky a few nights a week, I’ve noticed my blood pressure’s dropped to levels below when I was running 70 miles a week in high school. I figure that’s not a bad tradeoff.

  3. “…when it comes to cancer, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

    That’s a standard form we’ve seen all our lives. The would-be social engineers, the agitators, use these copy and paste forms regularly;

    “When it comes to ______ there is no safe level of ________.”

    Oh my gawd, really? Well hell’s bells, I’d better tune in tomorrow, and every day, to find out what’s killing me then!

    Be afraid of your food, be afraid of your drink, be afraid of the air you breathe, be afraid of the contrails in the sky, be afraid of your neighbors, and most of all be afraid of freedom. We’ll show you how. If next year we dig up a study that says moderate amounts of ________ are actually good for you, well, it’s all part of the process of keeping you off-balance. Stay tuned.

    • Yep, when it comes to health, happiness, safety, and liberty, there is no safe level of government.

  5. The reason regular drinkers have lower rates of heart attack and stroke is because alcohol (consumed in moderation) activates plasminogen, converting it to plasmin.

    Plasmin dissolves blood clots (fibrinolysis) which might block coronary arteries or cause a stroke.

    Your odds of dying of cardiovascular disease is far greater than the risk of cancer. The tiny risk of getting one of these rare cancers associated with alcohol consumption is an entirely acceptable trade-off.

  6. No safe level… for some sufficiently vague or specific definition of safe, if the goal is to write a law regulating it.

  9. I looked at the CBS article, and saw no mention of how they controlled for the obvious confounding factors. I looked at the Wiki page, and saw “Possible mechanisms of alcohol as a carcinogen” — so we can’t even explain how its carcinogenic.
    I’m with Rolf and Lyle — When I see “no safe level of…” my BS detector goes off, and I assume that a linear dose-response model is being used where no-one has ever demonstrated that it applies.
    There are things that might be carcinogenic when we inhale them, but not when we eat them or paint them on our skin, and vice-versa. And as an acquaintance of mine is fond of saying: “There will always be 10 leading causes of death”.

  10. Pingback: SayUncle » Junk Science

      • Sometimes? Its purpose is to create a slow creep toward communism. That’s the meaning of the word. That’s its charter. Speaking of a safe level of Progressivism is much like discussing safe levels of cancer or safe levels of murder. Sure, these things exist and we probably can never get rid of them completely, but they are purely destructive. Deliberately adding lead to your food may be “safe” at small enough levels, and that would be better than some concept of “safe” levels of Progressivism. Lead does not replicate nor does it transform other elements into lead, you see.

        • That progress creep towards communism I’ve seen referred to as Demoscleroisis, laws are enacted and never go away. They just stay in the body politic like cholesterol caked on the sides of the arteries, waiting for a moment to break free and land in a capillary in the heart, or in the lung, or in the brain.

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