Since we can write about anything we want in these blog posts, I am going to write this one about something that has upset me a lot over the past few weeks, learning that bacon allegedly gives you cancer. A few weeks ago the World Health Organization published its findings that eating processed meat, like bacon and hot dogs, leads to an increased risk of colon cancer. At first I was heartbroken; I wondered what good was left in the world if even bacon is harmful. This despair lasted for a full 30 seconds. Then, I realized that, first of all, I was going to ignore the study, regardless of what it said, and eat bacon anyways. I also realized, from what I learned in AP Statistics, that there are a lot of issues with the World Health Organization’s findings.
First of all, the World Health Organization did not, and cannot, conduct a study to see if bacon gives you cancer. Studies that involve causing intentional harm to the subjects are unethical and are not allowed to happen (except for when the US exposed their own soldiers to atomic blasts in the 1950’s). Instead of conducted their own study, the WHO looked at 800 other studies of unknown relevance and quality. I highly doubt that 800 studies have been carried out just to study the link between meat and cancer, and, so, they are likely to have many confounding factors unaccounted for. Even if the study’s findings are true, I still don’t care. I realized that pretty much everything nowadays “increases your risk of cancer.” If we focus on everything that may slightly increase our risk of cancer, we will not be able to enjoy life, so I decided to just not care about the findings and if I am 1% more likely to be at risk of possibly getting cancer at some point, so be it.
If I learned anything from statistics class, its that you need to see the nature of that data before you jump to conclusions. Many surveys are extremely biased, and its easy to make wild claims because of invalid data. Correlation does not always mean causation, so if a set data correlates with something else, it doesn't quite mean that you proved something. In Maine during the years 2000 to 20009, there has been a 99% correlation between per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets. Does this mean that cheese consumption leads to death by bedsheets?
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with enjoying carcinogens. I would not be surprised if processed meats are carcinogenic, but who cares? Millions of people smoke cigarettes, which have a significantly higher risk of cancer. If smoking regularly increases the chance of lung cancer by 25 times and eating 50 grams of processed meat per day increases the chance of colorectal cancer by 18%, then it would take almost 7 kilograms of processed meat per day to have the same risk. The pros seem to outweigh the cons in this situation.
ReplyDeleteI have not read the study in its entirety, so I cannot take an affirmative or negative position on the subject at hand. That being said, there may be faults in the data, and one study cannot really be conclusive on the subject. Besides, this is not new information, it is well known that red meats and processed food is not particularly good for your health, and can cause heart disease, type II diabetes, and other negative health causes. So at the end of the day this isn't very new information.
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