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Think about cancer before drinking – Davies
England’s chief medical officer has urged women to “do as I do” and think about cancer before having a glass of wine.
Speaking to a Common’s select committee on Tuesday, Dame Sally Davies (pictured) said she weighs up the risk of breast cancer before each glass of wine and added that she doesn’t know many men who drink more than half a glass of wine a day.
She told MPs: “Do as I do when I reach for my glass of wine – think ‘Do I want the glass of wine or do I want to raise my own risk of breast cancer?’ I take a decision each time I have a glass.”
Davies’ comments come soon after the release of her revised ‘alcohol guidelines’ which saw the recommended weekly allowance for both men and women reduced to 14 units a week.
The new recommendations have drawn strong criticism, scorn and mockery from various quarters and accusations that they represent “nanny state” attitudes to alcohol consumption and wilfully ignore many other papers that show various health benefits of moderate drinking.
Addressing the House of Commons science and technology committee on Monday this week, she insisted the advice was sensible, claiming: “I don’t know many men who drink half a glass of wine every day.”
She also added that claims red wine in particular could protect the heart were not as strong as previously thought, saying the NHS had “done so much with statins” and other treatments for heart disease that the case for drinking wine was weak.
She reiterated that the guidance was “advice not instruction” and concluded: “I would be done if I didn’t tell people the science. I have to tell the truth and make sure that it’s out there and it should be 14 units [per week] spread over a few days for both men and women.”
You have to wonder about this kind of statement. Do I think about my cancer risk every time I eat charcuterie? Or drink milk? Or my safety when I go skiing? Or any of the other things that are supposed to shorten our life? It’s a crazy thing to say.
She is anirresponsible Chief medical officer. More or Less the BBC show specializing in statistical gobbley gook, took her claims to task and showed the lack of scientific rigor of her arguments. She has put back safe moderate consumption back decades by making false and misjudged claims, that are not supported. I can no longer recommend the guidelines to my clients, without a big caveat that says they fly in the face of all research and I ignore them personally. She is a liability to the medical profession and a disgrace to science.
So according to this, not drinking raises her risk of breast cancer right?
This dame knows exactly what she´s talking about? So many reasearches have been done about the red wine, all of them agreed that´s good for the health!
Of course, we are not talking about huge quantities. Then, why this Dame is coming up with such notice? What kind of smoke she´s throwing to the readers?
All of the studies about the health in the wine have been supported by statements, declarations and documentation about the results of them.
This Dame is only talking or she has some documents support about?
Unless she´s on service of a third party.
“I would be done if I didn’t tell people the science.” – well she should be done, then, because the science she is telling people is flawed. Now excuse me while I increase my risk of death as I climb into my car after having eaten a chocolate bar and walked down some stairs.
If the science Dame Silly refers to is the same science she used to underpin her new guidelines than it is bad science to debunk years of solid research with a 4-week study (check it out). In 2002, the British Journal of Cancer published a study demonstrating that a woman’s risk of contracting breast cancer increases by 6 per cent if she consumes just one drink per day, and this rises to 32 per cent if she has three or four drinks per day. This was the best-researched worst news (for the industry as well as women) we published in six annual editions of Wine Report in which Beverley Blanning MW was specifically tasked to bring to everyone’s attention the bad news as well as the good, and that report, which still stands today, involved a collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 58 515 women with breast cancer and 95 067 women without the disease, compared to Dame Silly’s four week wonder. The report concluded that 4 per cent of all breast cancers are attributable to alcohol. There are, however, swings and roundabouts. In a summary of this report, Dr Isabel dos Santos Silva of the International Agency for Research on Cancer wrote “Alcohol intake… is likely to account, at present, for a small proportion of breast cancer cases in developed countries, but for women who drink moderately, its lifetime cardioprotective effects probably outweigh its health hazards.”
Any death is a terrible thing, so I do not wish to belittle the dangers of breast cancer, but everything is relative and when Dame Silly reaches for her next glass of wine, she should think “In 2012 there were 1.68 million people suffering from breast cancer, more than 99% of whom were women, with 11,643 deaths amongst those women and, of these, statistics tell us that alcohol was probably responsible for 466. If I have one glass of wine a day I increase my risk of breast cancer by 6%, but cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the biggest cause of death for women in the UK, with 3.5 million diagnosed in 2012 (7 million in total) and 155,000 deaths (both male and female). The biggest CVD killer is coronary heart disease (CHD), accounting for just over a third of all female CVD deaths. CHD alone kills twice as many women as breast cancer and large studies have shown that 5-7 alcoholic drinks per week offer significant protection against all forms of CVD, particularly CHD and Strokes. So my choice really is between a small increase of risk of breast cancer and a significant protection against CVD, which is a much bigger killer.”
I do not have the precise figures to hand as I respond to this story about Dame Silly or any definition of ‘significant’ and it is a much too serious topic to make guestimates, but the amount of research is massive and most of it can be studied online. There are other studies that show that men who have had one heart attack and drinks two glasses of wine per day reduces his chance of a second attack by 59% compared to non-drinkers. Tons of work done showing increased protection from dementia and greater longevity. All serious stuff, not whacky 4-week studies!