High Blood Pressure and Other Scary Things
Oct. 31st, 2007 by adminACSH
Corrie Driebusch
October 31, 2007
This morning at 7am, ACSH staffers learned that trick or treating isn’t just for little kids. Even when we’re grown up, sometimes “tricks” are attempted. Today the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) issued a report concluding that consumption of red meat is causally linked with both breast and colon cancer, recommending we eat fewer burgers, chops, and steaks.
Well, ACSH’s Dr. Kava explains, there is a line in the report that acknowledges that they’re unsure whether the link between red meat consumption and cancer is caused by the red meat or something else red meat eaters are not consuming. We couldn’t agree more. There were other conclusions drawn in the report we can’t argue with — for instance, the link between obesity and cancer is one that all here at ACSH believe to be true. But the problem is that these true statements, the ones that aren’t hyperbole, did not get into all the news stories this morning — the news networks presented the report as black and white: Red meat causes colon and rectal cancer.
The Today show this morning was particularly problematic. The message it promoted: Don’t eat meat, vegetarianism is better, and every alcoholic drink is a potential poison. We can only imagine a mother waking up and hearing this message at 7:30 in the morning, thinking how this advice is contrary to her lifestyle and how the food she’s planning for her family for lunch and dinner is now being called the “root” of cancer. And the comments about alcohol (a “link” we’ve been hearing about all month), ACSH staffers couldn’t help but think of the many couples who go out to dinner every night and share a bottle of wine — resulting in two and a half glasses per person. If we are telling people you are going to die if you go out to dinner and split a bottle of wine, the President should hold a press conference. That is just not true.
Also, ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan pointed out, Dr. Snyderman on the Today show repeated a line in the report that said cancer is a “mostly preventable disease.” What a way to blame the victim. While there are some risk factors we can control (such as smoking — the commonest cause of preventable disease and death — and weight gain to the point of obesity), most are outside of our control (such as age and genetics). Statements like this only serve to make people feel guilty when diagnosed with cancer, as though they “brought this upon themselves.”
All in all, ACSH’s Dr. Gil Ross said, the report just seems to use some fuzzy math. If you have something that’s statistically significant, that still doesn’t mean that it’s significant for an individual, he explained. If the numbers don’t even rise to the level of confirming there’s a real association, then the whole study is really junk.
Speaking of junk (not junk food), this “study” on dioxin made us wonder if we got the holiday wrong and it’s April Fool’s Day. The study found that the pollutant dioxin causes an increase in female births and decrease in male births. A side note: eradication of boys from the population? Is this really a negative consequence? (I kid, I kid.) This so-called study is replete with scientific errors of the most basic type and should be discarded.
Last night — Mischief Night — a major news network played a little trick on ACSH’s Jeff Stier. The network mistakenly thought that scaremonger Dr. Samuel Epstein is a “client” of ours. Jeff explained that we do not have clients, and if we did, Epstein would never be one of them. An MSNBC producer had seen Jeff’s New York Post op-ed that was critical of Dr. Epstein and made the wrong association. Then, after realizing that Jeff, and ACSH, will take an opposing position to Dr. Epstein on cancer scares, the network booker quickly got off the phone, even after Jeff offered to go on and offer a contrasting point of view. If you happen to be watching MSNBC this afternoon and see the segment on cancer, watch carefully whether it’s balanced or not (based upon Jeff’s conversation, we guess it will not be).
Finally, ACSH staffers found one piece of news to be our “treat” for the day — that more young people are taking cholesterol-lowering medicine and medicine for high blood pressure. There are about 50 million people in this country with high blood pressure, Dr. Ross explained, and only about a quarter have been diagnosed and have it under control. Since high blood pressure is the greatest cause of cardiac disease in the country, it is essential to pay more attention. Dr. Ross (and the rest of ACSH) thinks it’s good news that there’s a bigger movement to get younger people to get their lipid levels under control. The NIH has noted that cholesterol-lowering drugs are vastly under-utilized, and increasing treatment of lipid abnormalities would further reduce the already-declining rate of heart disease.
