331–340 of 385 posts
> Alcohol ... has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco. But as I understand it we do have a notion of "safe" dosages of radiation. Isn't this statement then like saying "no level of exposure to radiation is safe for our health?" Maybe I'm wrong but I would think that…
It is need vs want debate.
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Smoking is the intake of carcinogens, a direct health risk. Jumping off a building is the result of unhealthy depression, i.e. a symptomatic behavior. A vehicular accident as a driver is not a direct cause of driving any more than a pedestrian accident by a vehicle is the direct cause of walking.
You seem confident that you can categorize any activity. what about: strolling along a pathway, hiking in the footlhills, scrambling a mountain, ice climbing, base jumping? At what level the rock climbing rating system do we inflect from indirect to direct risk?
I object to the conflation of quantitative risk of experiencing an incidental event with the qualitative risk posed by a voluntary event.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist)
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/even-smal...
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Why is alcohol only dangerous in alcoholic beverages? Fruit juice (they real stuff) also contains small amounts of alcohol, for example.
That is an excellent question, perhaps the benefits of those fruit juices outweigh the small amounts of harm a small amount of alcohol may create. If was to get my random opinion without expertise, I would guess that sugar is the dominating factor as to whether fruit juice is healthy combined with your typical non-juice sugar consumption or not; given you are not deficient in some key nutrient. But to clarify, I was…
We've been drinking fermented drinks for millenia and yet here we are: 8 billion strong. Shut up WHO ;)
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What if you drive a Tesla?
Teslas still have a crash risk, emit noise and dust locally and emissions remotely.
The thinking is backwards on this. They state there is no scientific safe drinking level. They even compare it to radiation. The goal is to establish an unsafe level. it's like saying there is no safe speed to drive a car - sure that's technically true, but worthless to say.
They don't give a safe number of cigarettes, do they? There probably is a number that's minimally harmful, that lowers with age. Alcohol has numerically similar numbers of cancer cases, and cancer is just one aspect. Now it is less, and we can argue about how widespread the use is ect. However, it cases 1/3 of the cases, heart disease, mental health problems. Are you a drinker? Especially since quitting, I've noticed…
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Maybe read the well documented history of self-righteous teetotalers? It's not too hard to understand what the goal of this type of rhetoric is.
I'm genuinely curious - do you have some good references of this history I could read?
> Alcohol ... has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco. But as I understand it we do have a notion of "safe" dosages of radiation. Isn't this statement then like saying "no level of exposure to radiation is safe for our health?" Maybe I'm wrong but I would think that…
The linear no threshold model of harm for radiation is debated but is the foundation of all nuclear protection policies. To policy, zero radiation is considered best and all increments above that, regardless of size or relative comparison to natural background radiation are bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model It's extremely hard to scientifically back this or challenge it due to the noise. So…
David Spiegelhalter of BUGS fame: "So a total of 50,000 bottles of gin among these 1,600 people is associated with one extra health problem. Which still indicates a very low level of harm in drinkers drinking just more than the UK guidelines." https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2... The WHO is fear mongering. Maybe it is good health politics, people are scared of alcohol and people will have a…
For example, if a change in diet increases the chances of getting a specific cancer from 1 in 1000 to 1.5 in 1000, that very well may be statistically significant. But, your odds of not getting that cancer go from 99.9% to 99.85%, which most people would not consider to be a meaningful difference.