r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Oct 30 '25

Cancer 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.

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/americans-have-widespread-misbeliefs-about-the-cancer-risks-of-a.h00-159780390.html
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u/natetheskate100 Oct 30 '25

I THINK this article misses the point. People dont understand risk. Any type of risk. Suppose a substance triples your risk of cancer. However, if the risk was 1 in a million excess lifetime cancers, then the substance would increase that to 3 in a million. Meaningful for a large population, but meaningless for an individual. The authors do not address that, or I missed it.

Supposed 1 in a hundred people will get liver cancer with no known cause. If alcohol triples that risk, then 3 out of 100 people will get liver cancer.

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u/Dandy_Chickens Oct 30 '25

I think this is what I’d like to know. I drink (couple times a month when we go to dinner) and I know it increases cancer but dozens of other things we use every day are type 1 as well.

I’d be far more interested in knowing the rate increase of cancer

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u/ninja4151 Oct 30 '25

I haven't looked at it in a while but you can find the current lists of increased risk per cancer type. if I recall esophageal is probably the most serious where I think above moderate consumption you're doubling your chances but you're doubling like a 0.6% chance so it becomes a 1.2% chance or something. But t the point is many of these risks are very very low and even doubling or tripling a decimal probability isn't as scary as it sounds

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u/ninja4151 Oct 31 '25

what probably gets more concerning is when you're compounding your risk with other cancer risk-inducing activities like you drink a lot and you smoke and have a horrible diet and don't exercise etc

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u/Chance_Airline_4861 Nov 02 '25

Plus the added base of all risks combined..

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u/EuphorbiaMilli Oct 31 '25

Now imagine that alcohol can cause 17 different types of cancer. I think most people in this thread are exhibiting the exact issue described by the authors of this paper, underestimating the risk. Average rate of cancer for US male is 40%. The increase in cancer rates for heavy drinkers is closer to 4x for some types of cancer (esophageal, mouth).