Telling corkers

This mornings screaming headline in the Irish Independent reads, "Two big glasses of wine a day triples cancer risk".

That's right folks, if you are the sort of person who thinks it's bad luck to put the cork back in the bottle, you are going to die in horrible agony, probably tomorrow afternoon.

Of course, as has become the norm, the headline bears little relation to the accompanying article. The article is all about a survey of more than 2,000 drinkers in Britain. Note, a survey of these people, not a clinical examination of them. So, it was a questionnaire not a medical. That is important because the screaming headline is never explained.

Nowhere do we get an explanation as to how two glasses of wine triples your chances of getting cancer. Instead, we learn all the things that these 2,000 people didn't know. I could confidently put out a piece of propaganda like this on smoking. Under a headline, "Smoking found to be essential to healthy living", I could claim that "83% did not realise that smoking boosts your immune system", or "92% did not realise that nicotine reduces the risk of cancer by 99%". The statements themselves are probably totally incorrect, but it is a fact that respondents wouldn't know that if they were presented with it as being the absolute truth.

So, we read instead, "The survey of more than 2,000 drinkers in Britain found that 85% did not realise that drinking more than the recommended limits increased the risk of developing breast cancer" Nowhere is this verified or referenced. It goes on to say, "About 65% were unaware it increased the risk of bowel cancer, 63% did not know about a raised risk of pancreatitis and 59% did not realise excess drinking increased the risk of mouth, throat and neck cancer".

Doubtless this piece of junk science will become part of the bedrock to penalize and de-normalise drinkers very soon and the fatties are waiting in the wings for a good hiding from the healthiest too. Prepare for the so-called 'experts' on radio & TV soon saying that, "Research has shown that a single glass of wine can give you cancer in ten minutes", and it will be an exaggeration of the garbage above.