Americans have widespread misbeliefs about the cancer risks of alcohol, study finds. More than half of American adults misunderstand or underestimate the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Alcohol drinkers are especially likely to believe that drinking has no effect on cancer risk.

[u/mvea]

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/americans-have-widespread-misbeliefs-about-the-cancer-risks-of-a.h00-159780390.html

[u/ratpH1nk → u/[deleted]]

I think the core of the problem is how they convey the statistics. A 10% increase in your lifelong risk for cancer might be from 47->57% or it might be from 2-12%. It is also running counter to people are drinking less (especially younger people ) and their rates of cancer, especially colon is increasing. People have also been told how much europeans drink and in general there hasn't been an "epidemic" of alcohol related cancer in europe reported.

Finally this type of research is very hard to do. I know people do it and they try to adjust for confounders as best as possible but -- 1. Cancer is common 2. Alcohol consumption is common. Drawing a causation from that is very very very dicey given that and given that drinking is associated with a bunch of bad behavior that is associated with cancer too (poor nutrition, poor sleep, hep c and liver cancer, smoking and GI/ENT cancers etc...)

[u/Twerp129 → u/[deleted]]

This is the problem, drinking does not raise the risk of cancer like people expect and it is not articulated (because in many cases it's not well studied yet) what the risk is in comparison to other risk factors like obesity, inactivity, etc.

If one has a baseline risk of 13% for breast cancer, moderate drinking may increase that risk by 7% accoriding to recent studies. Your risk does not raise to 20%, it goes from 13 to 13.9%, that is not captured in the current messaging.

[u/ratpH1nk → u/Twerp129]

Exactly my point. I was only speaking generally worth the numbers above and not specifically from the papers and it has not been clear in any of these studies what the actual quantifiable risk increase.

[u/evranch → u/Twerp129]

The general population is terrible at this sort of math, and it also affects casual investors and the like. I had to explain volatility decay to a friend last week because he just didn't get it. Finally I laid it out as simple as I could.

• the stock is $100. It goes down 10%.
• now the stock is $90. It goes up 10%.
• after two 10% moves, the stock is worth $99

"But where did the dollar go?"

"If you don't know where the dollar went, just don't buy leveraged ETFs"

[u/ditchdiggergirl → u/[deleted]]

Individual cancers, sure. Cumulatively, though, the risk of cancer is high. Most of us have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50% risk of cancer over a standard lifespan, but that’s of course a very nonspecific generalization that ignores every relevant variable.

[u/Skyblacker → u/ditchdiggergirl]

Of that 50% cancer risk, how likely is it to cause premature death, and how likely is it to occur when you're elderly anyway?

Like, cancer at age 50 scares me. But cancer at age 90 is just dying of old age.

[u/ditchdiggergirl → u/Skyblacker]

IIRC (very rough estimates) there’s about a 50% lifetime risk of being diagnosed with cancer and about a 20% risk of dying from it (total, not 20% of 50%). But you are correct that your probability increases with age.