8 ms·

Cancer 'Tidal Wave' on Horizon, Warns WHO

59 points by ytNumbers 13y ago

neals 13y ago
I did not know Alcohol was such a cancer-causer. Maybe I should drink a little less? :/
- mberning 13y ago
  Alcohol and sugar share some similarities in how they are metabolized in the body. It's not so surprising that they are both listed as culprits.
  - oafitupa 13y ago
    One is a derivative or subcomponent of the other I think. Someone who still remembers his Chemistry class is welcome to elaborate.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      As a brewer, not a true chemist: alcohol is fermented sugars.
- ryandvm 13y ago
  Just don't cut back too much... http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/09/why-alcohol-is-good-for-you http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/09/why-alcohol-i...
mberning 13y ago
Great video that will give a glimpse into how sugar and dietary carbohydrate contributes to the development of cancer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I watched that video a few days ago - very enlightening.
- agumonkey 13y ago
  Started very slow, but the points made at the end were more technical and indeed very interesting. Watched it sipping sugared tea over a slice of apple pie though.
- charlieflowers 13y ago
  That talk is EXCELLENT. Thank you for posting. I've been frustrated over the lack of accurate, scientifically sound nutritional guidance, and this talk provides a some. It is probably the single best talk I've seen this year.
mbateman 13y ago
Is the slope on those charts really steeper than population growth?
adamwong246 13y ago
Dying of cancer is a good thing- it means you didn't die in childbirth or from malaria or diabetes. Cancer is a really big name for a lot of the tough diseases we don't yet have a cure for. This "tidal wave" is simply mortal humans living long enough that they start breaking on a molecular level. That may someday change but living long enough to die from cancer is, sadly, the grand prize in life. Not much of a prize but still better than the alternative.
- kaybe 13y ago
  Ah, but cancer is always the same thing, body cells going amok. The reasons are manifold and a lot of research is going on there, but the result is, broadly speaking, the same. (Of course you get different kinds of tumors..) It's hard to see how it can ever be eradicated for good since it's kind of part of the system and does not neccessarily have external causes (though in most cases is does). And then there are other diseases we have no cure for yet, which are not cancer, such as Alzheimers and aids. We can eradicate those, I believe.
  - adamwong246 13y ago
    I don't really think it can be fixed either. Trying to cure all cancers is like trying to engineer a car that never, ever breaks for all eternity. Even if you left this hypothetical perfect sports car in the garage, the belts and tires and tubes would start to degrade eventually. Better to try to replace each part as it breaks with an upgrade! That's my immortality plan- when my hearing breaks, get an implant. When the hip goes out, in goes a titanium one. You mind starts slipping? We're going to need some sort of prosthetic neurons, I'm thinking carbon nanotubes you inject into you spinal fluid and which self-assemble inside the brain. Eventually, enough meat has been replaced with tech that my mind can make the complete jump to software and at which point I shed this frail human form and proceed to explore the universe via self-replicating probes... Well, that's the plan anyways. But either way, to beat cancer, you going to need to fundamentally redesign the human form. ps (Elon Musk, if you are reading this, please contact me. I'm really don't want to die and I'm willing to act as a guinea pig towards that end)
clavalle 13y ago
What is this about having fewer kids contributes to cancer?
- oafitupa 13y ago
  I was wondering the same thing.
- trillium 13y ago
  For women, certain cancers are less likely if you have a child for a variety of factors, including different hormonal states.
- araneae 13y ago
  Breast cancer is one of the more common cancers in woman. Having your first pregnancy before 20 versus after 35 lowers your chance of breast cancer by 50%. For each birth, breast cancer risk decreases by 7%. For each year of breast feeding, breast cancer risks decreases by 4% Source: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional#Section_378 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/hea... The mechanism isn't entirely worked out, but the hypothesis is that immature breast cells are more likely to cause cancer, and that pregnancy and breastfeeding cause breast cells to mature into cells that are less likely to become cancerous. This paper explores the mechanism more: http://erc.endocrinology-journals.org/content/14/4/907.full http://erc.endocrinology-journals.org/content/14/4/907.full
  - aestra 13y ago
    Yet hormonal contraceptives decrease your risks of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Wonder if some of the risks can cancel each other out. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contraceptives http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contr...
mjmahone17 13y ago
24m by 2035 doesn't actually sound like that much. And the fact that most of the new cases will be coming from the developed world seems to speak more to the fact that life expectancy and pollution (due to development) in the developed world is increasing, meaning people are living longer, in more hazardous conditions, and are therefore more likely to get cancer. There really doesn't seem to be anything to be alarmed about. There will be about 73million deaths in 2035 (looking at current death rates vs. expected world population). If everyone who gets cancer dies from it in a year, there will be 24m deaths due to it, although http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_survival_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_survival_rates indicates that cancer seems to have a >70% survival rate, in general. In 20 years, it's likely that survival rate will also be reflected in developing countries. So really, only about 7.2m, or about 10%, of our mortality will likely be due to cancer. That's still a lot, and it's worthwhile to try to prevent as many of those deaths as possible. But cancer seems like it's not, statistically, our biggest threat.
tokenadult 13y ago
The numbers mentioned in this article are numbers of cancer CASES, for the most part, not numbers of cancer deaths. The chart lower down in the article, captioned World Cancer Cases 2012, at least shows countries in different shadings based on cancer RATES (standardized to cases per 100,000 population, as is typical for international health statistics), but that mostly shows which countries have higher rates of diagnosis of cancer (or much lower rates of diseases that kill people when they are young) rather than countries where cancer is the main cause of death. Rates matter more than the raw number of cases in a world that still has a growing population. If we look carefully at charts of death rates by all causes for either the United States or the developed world, we see that death rates from cancer and from most causes of death are still steadily falling at all ages. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... Yes, we still need to do more research on cancer prevention and cancer treatment. Yes, the article is correct that smoking, infectious diseases (mostly viral, some of which are already preventable by vaccines), overuse of alcohol, and obesity all increase cancer risk, but you and I can do something about our use of tobacco, alcohol, and fattening food-and-activity lifestyle combinations today--we don't have to wait for more medical research to reduce our risk of cancer. The article kindly submitted here makes clear that making people more aware of what increases their cancer risk is one of the best interventions for reducing cancer rates and cancer mortality. As other comments have already correctly pointed out, a rise in the number of cancer cases worldwide first of all indicates that there are more people in the world than ever, and secondly indicates that fewer people are dying young of diseases linked to stark poverty. That's good news, on the whole.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I find it particularly frustrating that doctors of all people are so bad with statistics. I know people in general are bad with statistics, and when journalists misunderstand them I have some sympathy, because hey they probably got through college without seeing a number, but I expect more from doctors.
WasimBhai 13y ago
Those in Cancer research, how far are we to actually solve the Cancer problem given recent genetics research surge?
- gus_massa 13y ago
  This is the best simple graphic explanation I found yet: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162
  - hershel 13y ago
    Can't you say the same thing about infectious diseases, yet we have found a general tool(vaccine) to fight them off. Isn't it likely that some of the work done will generate a highly generic tool, that with a few changes could fit to new types of cancer ?
    - gus_massa 13y ago
      Essentially yes, but trying to eradicate cancer is like trying to eradicate all the infectious diseases. (I don’t even know which problem is more difficult.) The infectious diseases can be classified by the pathogen: virus and bacteria (and prions?). We have vaccines for a few of them, it’s an important subset because they caused many dead. Vaccines are very specific, each one is against only one illness, or even only against some strains of the pathogens. (It’s possible to combine some of them to reduce the number of independent shots.) We have eradicated smallpox! And I hope we will eradicate polio in my lifetime. There are many generic antibiotics against a lot of bacteria, and recently appeared some antiviral drugs. But the eradication or cure of all the infectious diseases is still a very long term objective. The treatment for cancer has improved a lot. It’s a more difficult statistic that simply counting the number of dead, but it’s a hope. Also the tools for diagnosis have improved a lot, and that reduces the rate of false negatives and false positives, for example MRI. Some cancers are clearly linked to virus. The most well known case is the cervical cancer (and a few similar cancers in other parts of the body). It’s (mostly) caused by the Human papillomavirus. There is a recent vaccine against the HPV, and it’s beginning to be applied massively. So I hope that in 50 years the number of cervical cancers will have lowered an almost disappear, but there will be still cervical cancer dew to radiation, chemical mutations, and other causes. There are other cancers that probably have a viral origin, and perhaps it’s possible to create a vaccine and eradicate them. It’s possible to eliminate or cure some types of cancer, but a complete solution is almost impossible.
cliveowen 13y ago
"Delayed parenthood" Can someone explain this? I'm guessing it's something referring to cervical cancer.
- araneae 13y ago
  It's breast cancer. Those who have a pregnancy before 20 years of age versus those who have a pregnancy after 35 years of age show a 50% reduction in their risk of breast cancer. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional#Section_378 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/hea...
  - coldpie 13y ago
    Worth noting, the link clarifies that it's actually 50% less than women who become pregnant /or never have birth at all/ after age 35.
- VLM 13y ago
  I assume you want more than "let me google that for you" Delayed parenthood: old eggs are around 1% more likely to result in childhood cancers (more or less, at least sometimes, per some swedes). A bit controversial although it seems fairly common sense. Obviously a 45 year old woman's eggs will have been exposed to three times the radiation as a 15 year old girl's eggs, and given that I'm surprised the net childhood cancer risk was so low. From the original paper, which I'm probably misinterpreting, if the kid lives to age 5, there's no further measurable effect, so either the cancer kills them young or it has no effect, and I have no common sense explanation for that... Fewer children: Seems fairly well proven across many papers that time spent pregnant equals lower ovarian cancer risk. This does not appear controversial. Then again time spent pregnant does seem to increase pregnancy related mortality (duh) so not entirely sure its a net positive. No idea at all about the last claim. Probably something lactation hormone related. I don't think mere calcium loss is a legit anti-cancer treatment.
MrZongle2 13y ago
This part struck me as a little ominous: '"The extent to which we modify the availability of alcohol, the labelling of alcohol, the promotion of alcohol and the price of alcohol - those things should be on the agenda." He said there was a similar argument to be had with sugar fuelling obesity, which in turn affected cancer risk.' I'm all for educating the public, but why does it seem that education is never enough for some, and instead the next step needs to be behavior modification through scarcity? Haven't we seen this fail in the U.S. with the ridiculous restrictions on some over-the-counter medications, the War on Drugs, and Prohibition?
- diego_moita 13y ago
  As someone that grew up in Southern Europe I am at times surprised and shocked by the relation Americans and Canadians have with alcohol. In Portugal, Spain and Italy alcohol is food. We drink at home, with the family, a great amount of wine and a little beer. Wine and beer are openly sold in supermarkets, close to other food. However, the biggest alcoholism problem we have are American, British and Australian tourists binge drinking in our beaches. OTOH, in North America it seems there are only 2 extreme ways of handling alcohol: the Russian-like approach and the Muslim-like panic. Teenagers and poor people abuse it and drink heavily, all the others are obsessively scared of it.
  - coldpie 13y ago
    > OTOH, in North America it seems there are only 2 extreme ways of handling alcohol: the Russian-like approach and the Muslim-like panic. Teenagers and poor people abuse it and drink heavily, all the others are obsessively scared of it. This isn't true at all. You're seeing the extreme cases and generalizing it to everybody. We may have a higher incidence of alcoholism and alcohol abuse (I don't know the numbers), but the vast majority of Americans use alcohol occasionally and responsibly.
- rdmcfee 13y ago
  Modification of promotion and pricing seem to make sense to me. Education is important but for many people in the developed world their exposure to liquor ads on TV is a lot more prevalent than their exposure to education. You're fighting a losing battle if you're competing directly with the messages of liquor companies (same thing in tobacco industry). As for pricing, in many countries including the US with their new insurance system the cost of healthcare is being shared across large groups. In Canada we tax liquor at a rate of about 130% and feed much of that revenue directly into our healthcare system. This way the more you drink the more you contribute to your future expense to the healthcare system.
verisimilitude 13y ago
I will never say I've "read a book that changed my life" but this one comes awfully close: "The China Study" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study If you get a chance to read it, you'll find the studies of the effects of some animal proteins, specifically casein, on propensity to develop cancer when organisms are challenged by mutagens and carcinogens to be rigorous science and important for our daily lives. The book encourages eating vegan, which is not hard, just different, and is a diet whose positive health effects are supported by large scale epidemiological studies.

59 points by ytNumbers 13y ago

neals 13y ago

I did not know Alcohol was such a cancer-causer. Maybe I should drink a little less? :/

mberning 13y ago
Alcohol and sugar share some similarities in how they are metabolized in the body. It's not so surprising that they are both listed as culprits.
- oafitupa 13y ago
  One is a derivative or subcomponent of the other I think. Someone who still remembers his Chemistry class is welcome to elaborate.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    As a brewer, not a true chemist: alcohol is fermented sugars.
ryandvm 13y ago
Just don't cut back too much... http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/09/why-alcohol-is-good-for-you http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/09/why-alcohol-i...

mberning 13y ago

Great video that will give a glimpse into how sugar and dietary carbohydrate contributes to the development of cancer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40

k-mcgrady 13y ago
I watched that video a few days ago - very enlightening.
agumonkey 13y ago
Started very slow, but the points made at the end were more technical and indeed very interesting. Watched it sipping sugared tea over a slice of apple pie though.
charlieflowers 13y ago
That talk is EXCELLENT. Thank you for posting. I've been frustrated over the lack of accurate, scientifically sound nutritional guidance, and this talk provides a some. It is probably the single best talk I've seen this year.

mbateman 13y ago

Is the slope on those charts really steeper than population growth?

adamwong246 13y ago

Dying of cancer is a good thing- it means you didn't die in childbirth or from malaria or diabetes. Cancer is a really big name for a lot of the tough diseases we don't yet have a cure for. This "tidal wave" is simply mortal humans living long enough that they start breaking on a molecular level. That may someday change but living long enough to die from cancer is, sadly, the grand prize in life. Not much of a prize but still better than the alternative.

kaybe 13y ago
Ah, but cancer is always the same thing, body cells going amok. The reasons are manifold and a lot of research is going on there, but the result is, broadly speaking, the same. (Of course you get different kinds of tumors..) It's hard to see how it can ever be eradicated for good since it's kind of part of the system and does not neccessarily have external causes (though in most cases is does). And then there are other diseases we have no cure for yet, which are not cancer, such as Alzheimers and aids. We can eradicate those, I believe.
- adamwong246 13y ago
  I don't really think it can be fixed either. Trying to cure all cancers is like trying to engineer a car that never, ever breaks for all eternity. Even if you left this hypothetical perfect sports car in the garage, the belts and tires and tubes would start to degrade eventually. Better to try to replace each part as it breaks with an upgrade! That's my immortality plan- when my hearing breaks, get an implant. When the hip goes out, in goes a titanium one. You mind starts slipping? We're going to need some sort of prosthetic neurons, I'm thinking carbon nanotubes you inject into you spinal fluid and which self-assemble inside the brain. Eventually, enough meat has been replaced with tech that my mind can make the complete jump to software and at which point I shed this frail human form and proceed to explore the universe via self-replicating probes... Well, that's the plan anyways. But either way, to beat cancer, you going to need to fundamentally redesign the human form. ps (Elon Musk, if you are reading this, please contact me. I'm really don't want to die and I'm willing to act as a guinea pig towards that end)

clavalle 13y ago

What is this about having fewer kids contributes to cancer?

oafitupa 13y ago
I was wondering the same thing.
trillium 13y ago
For women, certain cancers are less likely if you have a child for a variety of factors, including different hormonal states.
araneae 13y ago
Breast cancer is one of the more common cancers in woman. Having your first pregnancy before 20 versus after 35 lowers your chance of breast cancer by 50%. For each birth, breast cancer risk decreases by 7%. For each year of breast feeding, breast cancer risks decreases by 4% Source: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional#Section_378 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/hea... The mechanism isn't entirely worked out, but the hypothesis is that immature breast cells are more likely to cause cancer, and that pregnancy and breastfeeding cause breast cells to mature into cells that are less likely to become cancerous. This paper explores the mechanism more: http://erc.endocrinology-journals.org/content/14/4/907.full http://erc.endocrinology-journals.org/content/14/4/907.full
- aestra 13y ago
  Yet hormonal contraceptives decrease your risks of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Wonder if some of the risks can cancel each other out. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contraceptives http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/oral-contr...

mjmahone17 13y ago

24m by 2035 doesn't actually sound like that much. And the fact that most of the new cases will be coming from the developed world seems to speak more to the fact that life expectancy and pollution (due to development) in the developed world is increasing, meaning people are living longer, in more hazardous conditions, and are therefore more likely to get cancer. There really doesn't seem to be anything to be alarmed about. There will be about 73million deaths in 2035 (looking at current death rates vs. expected world population). If everyone who gets cancer dies from it in a year, there will be 24m deaths due to it, although http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_survival_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_survival_rates indicates that cancer seems to have a >70% survival rate, in general. In 20 years, it's likely that survival rate will also be reflected in developing countries. So really, only about 7.2m, or about 10%, of our mortality will likely be due to cancer. That's still a lot, and it's worthwhile to try to prevent as many of those deaths as possible. But cancer seems like it's not, statistically, our biggest threat.

tokenadult 13y ago

The numbers mentioned in this article are numbers of cancer CASES, for the most part, not numbers of cancer deaths. The chart lower down in the article, captioned World Cancer Cases 2012, at least shows countries in different shadings based on cancer RATES (standardized to cases per 100,000 population, as is typical for international health statistics), but that mostly shows which countries have higher rates of diagnosis of cancer (or much lower rates of diseases that kill people when they are young) rather than countries where cancer is the main cause of death. Rates matter more than the raw number of cases in a world that still has a growing population. If we look carefully at charts of death rates by all causes for either the United States or the developed world, we see that death rates from cancer and from most causes of death are still steadily falling at all ages. Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... Yes, we still need to do more research on cancer prevention and cancer treatment. Yes, the article is correct that smoking, infectious diseases (mostly viral, some of which are already preventable by vaccines), overuse of alcohol, and obesity all increase cancer risk, but you and I can do something about our use of tobacco, alcohol, and fattening food-and-activity lifestyle combinations today--we don't have to wait for more medical research to reduce our risk of cancer. The article kindly submitted here makes clear that making people more aware of what increases their cancer risk is one of the best interventions for reducing cancer rates and cancer mortality. As other comments have already correctly pointed out, a rise in the number of cancer cases worldwide first of all indicates that there are more people in the world than ever, and secondly indicates that fewer people are dying young of diseases linked to stark poverty. That's good news, on the whole.

rayiner 13y ago
I find it particularly frustrating that doctors of all people are so bad with statistics. I know people in general are bad with statistics, and when journalists misunderstand them I have some sympathy, because hey they probably got through college without seeing a number, but I expect more from doctors.

WasimBhai 13y ago

Those in Cancer research, how far are we to actually solve the Cancer problem given recent genetics research surge?

gus_massa 13y ago
This is the best simple graphic explanation I found yet: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162
- hershel 13y ago
  Can't you say the same thing about infectious diseases, yet we have found a general tool(vaccine) to fight them off. Isn't it likely that some of the work done will generate a highly generic tool, that with a few changes could fit to new types of cancer ?
  - gus_massa 13y ago
    Essentially yes, but trying to eradicate cancer is like trying to eradicate all the infectious diseases. (I don’t even know which problem is more difficult.) The infectious diseases can be classified by the pathogen: virus and bacteria (and prions?). We have vaccines for a few of them, it’s an important subset because they caused many dead. Vaccines are very specific, each one is against only one illness, or even only against some strains of the pathogens. (It’s possible to combine some of them to reduce the number of independent shots.) We have eradicated smallpox! And I hope we will eradicate polio in my lifetime. There are many generic antibiotics against a lot of bacteria, and recently appeared some antiviral drugs. But the eradication or cure of all the infectious diseases is still a very long term objective. The treatment for cancer has improved a lot. It’s a more difficult statistic that simply counting the number of dead, but it’s a hope. Also the tools for diagnosis have improved a lot, and that reduces the rate of false negatives and false positives, for example MRI. Some cancers are clearly linked to virus. The most well known case is the cervical cancer (and a few similar cancers in other parts of the body). It’s (mostly) caused by the Human papillomavirus. There is a recent vaccine against the HPV, and it’s beginning to be applied massively. So I hope that in 50 years the number of cervical cancers will have lowered an almost disappear, but there will be still cervical cancer dew to radiation, chemical mutations, and other causes. There are other cancers that probably have a viral origin, and perhaps it’s possible to create a vaccine and eradicate them. It’s possible to eliminate or cure some types of cancer, but a complete solution is almost impossible.

cliveowen 13y ago

"Delayed parenthood" Can someone explain this? I'm guessing it's something referring to cervical cancer.

araneae 13y ago
It's breast cancer. Those who have a pregnancy before 20 years of age versus those who have a pregnancy after 35 years of age show a 50% reduction in their risk of breast cancer. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional#Section_378 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/hea...
- coldpie 13y ago
  Worth noting, the link clarifies that it's actually 50% less than women who become pregnant /or never have birth at all/ after age 35.
VLM 13y ago
I assume you want more than "let me google that for you" Delayed parenthood: old eggs are around 1% more likely to result in childhood cancers (more or less, at least sometimes, per some swedes). A bit controversial although it seems fairly common sense. Obviously a 45 year old woman's eggs will have been exposed to three times the radiation as a 15 year old girl's eggs, and given that I'm surprised the net childhood cancer risk was so low. From the original paper, which I'm probably misinterpreting, if the kid lives to age 5, there's no further measurable effect, so either the cancer kills them young or it has no effect, and I have no common sense explanation for that... Fewer children: Seems fairly well proven across many papers that time spent pregnant equals lower ovarian cancer risk. This does not appear controversial. Then again time spent pregnant does seem to increase pregnancy related mortality (duh) so not entirely sure its a net positive. No idea at all about the last claim. Probably something lactation hormone related. I don't think mere calcium loss is a legit anti-cancer treatment.

MrZongle2 13y ago

This part struck me as a little ominous: '"The extent to which we modify the availability of alcohol, the labelling of alcohol, the promotion of alcohol and the price of alcohol - those things should be on the agenda." He said there was a similar argument to be had with sugar fuelling obesity, which in turn affected cancer risk.' I'm all for educating the public, but why does it seem that education is never enough for some, and instead the next step needs to be behavior modification through scarcity? Haven't we seen this fail in the U.S. with the ridiculous restrictions on some over-the-counter medications, the War on Drugs, and Prohibition?

diego_moita 13y ago
As someone that grew up in Southern Europe I am at times surprised and shocked by the relation Americans and Canadians have with alcohol. In Portugal, Spain and Italy alcohol is food. We drink at home, with the family, a great amount of wine and a little beer. Wine and beer are openly sold in supermarkets, close to other food. However, the biggest alcoholism problem we have are American, British and Australian tourists binge drinking in our beaches. OTOH, in North America it seems there are only 2 extreme ways of handling alcohol: the Russian-like approach and the Muslim-like panic. Teenagers and poor people abuse it and drink heavily, all the others are obsessively scared of it.
- coldpie 13y ago
  > OTOH, in North America it seems there are only 2 extreme ways of handling alcohol: the Russian-like approach and the Muslim-like panic. Teenagers and poor people abuse it and drink heavily, all the others are obsessively scared of it. This isn't true at all. You're seeing the extreme cases and generalizing it to everybody. We may have a higher incidence of alcoholism and alcohol abuse (I don't know the numbers), but the vast majority of Americans use alcohol occasionally and responsibly.
rdmcfee 13y ago
Modification of promotion and pricing seem to make sense to me. Education is important but for many people in the developed world their exposure to liquor ads on TV is a lot more prevalent than their exposure to education. You're fighting a losing battle if you're competing directly with the messages of liquor companies (same thing in tobacco industry). As for pricing, in many countries including the US with their new insurance system the cost of healthcare is being shared across large groups. In Canada we tax liquor at a rate of about 130% and feed much of that revenue directly into our healthcare system. This way the more you drink the more you contribute to your future expense to the healthcare system.

verisimilitude 13y ago

I will never say I've "read a book that changed my life" but this one comes awfully close: "The China Study" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study If you get a chance to read it, you'll find the studies of the effects of some animal proteins, specifically casein, on propensity to develop cancer when organisms are challenged by mutagens and carcinogens to be rigorous science and important for our daily lives. The book encourages eating vegan, which is not hard, just different, and is a diet whose positive health effects are supported by large scale epidemiological studies.