Christopher D. Green earlier withdrew the following: > What you have not responded to is my running of the numbers. EVEN IF > this causal link had been established, we are talking about an > increase in risk of about 2 in 10,000. Does that strike you as Big > News? By contrast the increased risk of developing lung cancer from > smoking is about 130 in 1000 -- 1300 in 10,000, to put it on an > equivalent base.* So, there is simply no reasonable comparison between > the two effects: 2 vs. 1300.
I have now found a recent study which reports the annual incidence of lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers. So, we can compare it to the annual incidence rates for the correlation between alcohol and breast cancer reported in the BBC to see if they are comparable with each other. The article was published in /Lancet Oncology/ in 2008. The abstract can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/av4mur It says: "Incidence rates were 20.3 (95% CI 16.3-24.3) per 100 000 person-years in men who had never smoked (99 cancers) and 25.3 (21.3-29.3) in women who had never smoked (152 cancers).... The incidence rate of current smokers who smoked more than two packs per day was 1259.2 (1035.0-1483.3) in men and 1308.9 (924.2-1693.6) in women." So (averaging across the sex difs), we have about 2 in 10,000 for non-smokers, and about 128 in 10,000 for smokers. That is an increased risk of 126 in 10,000. Compared to the alcohol-breast cancer study reported by the BBC, where the increased risk was about 2 in 10,000. (One might quibble that the study used heavy smokers, but even the somewhat reduced lung cancer rates in "moderate" smokers (1 pack a day?) will not get them anywhere near the 2 in 10,000 of non-smokers.) 2 vs. 126. The levels of risk increase are different by a factor of 63. There oughta be a "mercy rule." (Because of my earlier error, this is my third and last TIPS post today. See ya!) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
