The Tiger That Isn't by Michael Blastland

Author:Michael Blastland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2009-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

It should be easy. And yet …

'For every alcoholic drink a woman consumes, her risk of breast cancer rises by 6 per cent.'

That's pure garbage, by the way, despite its prominence on the BBC's national TV news bulletins on 12 November 2002, and it's soon obvious why: if true, every woman who drank regularly – and plenty who liked an occasional tipple – would be a certainty for breast cancer in time for Christmas. A 6 per cent increase with every glass soon adds up; about seven bottles of wine over a lifetime would make you a sure thing.

Not much in life is this certain and breast cancer certainly isn't. Still, ludicrous implausibility didn't stop the claim making the headlines. With luck, viewers were less easily taken in than the many journalists who would have had a hand in bringing the report to air, since this is a passing piece of innumeracy that should have been easy to spot.

So what was the real meaning of the study so mangled in the news? It was true that research had shown a link between alcohol and breast cancer, but the first thing to do when faced with an increase in risk is to try to quell the fear and concentrate on the numbers. And the first question to ask about this number couldn't be simpler, that old favourite: 'how big is it?'

Cancer Research UK, which publicised the research – a perfectly professional piece of work, led by a team at Oxford University – announced the results as follows:

A woman's risk of breast cancer increases by 6 per cent for every extra alcoholic drink consumed on a daily basis, the world's largest study of women's smoking and drinking behaviour reveals.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.