Cancer rates highest among the wealthiest (fewer of whom smoke)
Wednesday, August 4, 2021 at 9:30 Another day, another anti-smoking headline.
Hot on the heels of the ‘news’ that smoking allegedly costs the UK economy more than £19bn a year, the Guardian yesterday reported that:
Smoking causes almost twice as many cancer cases among the poor than the well-off, according to new findings that underline the close link between cigarettes and deprivation.
According to a study by Cancer Research UK:
More cancer cases occur in the wealthiest 20% – an estimated 63,828. However, far fewer of them – 6,200 – are the result of someone smoking, and they represent a much smaller percentage (10%) of all cases of cancer that occur in that part of the population.
That may be true but did you spot what could have been an alternative headline?
‘Cancer rates highest among the wealthiest’ (fewer of whom smoke).
Did you know that? I didn’t yet all it got was a passing mention.
Where too was the acknowledgement that smoking-related cancers, like smoking-related illnesses generally, can be caused by multiple factors?
Anyway it didn't surprise me that our old friend Linda Bauld – taking a well-earned break from her Covid-related media duties – was invited by the Today programme to discuss the CRUK report.
I missed the interview but I assume she wasn't asked why cancer rates are highest among the wealthiest because she later tweeted:
Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of cancer and smoking-related cancers are highest amongst those on lower incomes. New findings for England @CR_UK Time to look ahead to the next tobacco control plan & what needs to be done for #Smokefree2030
Anyway, thanks to the good people at GB News I had an opportunity to respond briefly to the report and put the libertarian case for choice.
I can’t remember the last time the Today programme invited me to do that.
Update: According to yesterday’s ASH Daily News, Bauld told the Today programme:
“The gap [in smoking rates] between the most and least affluent really has not narrowed and in some communities has widened. These are preventable cases of death, preventable cases of cancer, and as we move out of the Covid crisis the Government needs to be thinking about these other priority areas for public health [my emphasis].
“We know there’s about 27,000 cases of cancer caused by deprivation and one of the reasons is smoking. If you take that out and smoking rates were the same for everyone, around 5,500 of these cases could have been prevented each year.
“There was an All Party Parliamentary Group report which reported recently just setting out a range of measures looking ahead at what we could do and also how we could raise money from the profits made by the tobacco industry to fund really vital services that smokers actually want access to.”
No mention there of the fact that cancer rates are highest among the wealthiest, just blatant lobbying of government in advance of the new tobacco control plan.
As for the “All Party Parliamentary Group report”, the APPG in question is the APPG on Smoking and Health which just happens to be run by ASH.
I bet no-one mentioned that either.
Reader Comments (3)
"Where too was the acknowledgement that smoking-related cancers, like smoking-related illnesses generally, can be caused by multiple factors?"
You don't have to be a smoker either and you haven't needed to be for years, You just need to have a fraction of "smoking attributable disease"
Summary
PHE conducted an online consultation from 23 September 2020 to 2 November 2020 proposing changes to the relative risks used in the calculation of indicators related to smoking attributable disease
Reasons for review
"The current relative risks used for the calculation of smoking attributable fractions are based on data from ‘The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General’ using data tfrom 1982 to 1988 (5).
In our consultation we proposed to update the list of relative risks to a subset of those in the report published by the Royal College of Physicians in 2018 (2) which used more up-to-date research from systematic reviews of the associations between smoking and various diseases along with meta-analyses of effect sizes. See consultation document for
further details."
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/964447/Consultation_response_on_proposed_changes_to_smoking_relative_risks.pdf
The Independent Review Tuesday 16 November 2004
Tim Luckhurst explains
Smoke screen
"Smoking is under attack as never before. Today, the Government is expected to publish a white paper proposing restrictions on smoking in public places in England and Wales. Meanwhile, the Scottish Executive has agreed on a "comprehensive ban" on public smoking.
Promoting the Scottish ban on the Today Programme, the country's deputy health minister, Rhona Brankin, declared "One in four of all deaths in Scotland is directly attributable to smoking." In a separate interview she said "one in four of all deaths (is) attributable to smoking. About 13,000 people die every year as a result of smoking." She was wise to omit the "directly" that sneaked onto Today.
The most recent statistics reveal that 57,382 people died in Scotland in 2001. If one in four of them died for the reasons Rhona Brankin offers that would give a smoking-related death toll of 14,345, not 13,000. So is the minister guilty of modest exaggeration in the service of a noble cause? The one-in-four statistic is more than that; it is an article of faith among anti-smoking campaigners, but it is not as straightforward as it sounds.
These are not just lung-cancer deaths. Brankin's toll includes every Scot who has died of "smoking-related complaints." To get into that category alleged victims of smoking do not need to have smoked. They are counted in on the basis that killers including heart disease, strokes and bronchitis can be caused by smoking.
Nobody checks the lifestyles of the victims to ascertain that they did smoke."
https://www.ipcvision.com/page05/t-luckhurst-01.htm
‘Cancer rates highest among the wealthiest’ (fewer of whom smoke).
I'm sure many of them still drink though, Simon
Updating
England-Specific
Alcohol-Attributable
Fractions
"Overall, considering only the harmful consequences, 21,162 deaths were estimated to be attributable to alcohol consumption based on the new AAFs; these deaths represented 4.6% of all recorded deaths in England in 2010.
Men experienced greater harm from their alcohol consumption than women with this difference most likely arising
because of higher levels of alcohol consumption among men. Younger men were disproportionately affected by their
alcohol use compared to older men. As a proportion of all deaths recorded in England in 2010, alcohol-attributable
deaths were highest among 25-34 year olds men and 35-44 year old women.
By disease areas, the biggest contributors to alcohol-attributable deaths were cancers, digestive diseases and injuries. Potential years of life lost (PYLL) were calculated as an estimate of premature or untimely death attributable to alcohol use.
Considering only deaths attributable to alcohol consumption, 296,421 potential years of life were lost in 2010.
For men and women,respectively, this is equivalent to an average of 15.4 and 11.3 years of life lost per alcohol-related death"
"In summary, based on developing methodologies and a growing evidence base for the association between alcohol
consumption and the development of acute and chronic conditions, we have calculated updated AAFs for England.
There were limitations to the methods used to calculate the updated AAFs; as with calculation of the previous AAFs
it has not been possible to develop methodologies for calculating uncertainty around the AAF estimates. This major limitation aside, we have addressed several shortcomings of the methods used previously to calculate England-specific AAFs.
While the figures presented here provide a more accurate estimate of the harm attributable to alcohol
consumption, they are still likely to be a conservative estimate given the continuing limitations and uncertainties in the current research evidence"
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/~/media/phi-reports/pdf/2014_03_updating_england_specific_alcohol_attributable_fractions.pdf
There is no safe level of alcohol, new study confirms
13-09-2018
WHO
"The international medical journal The Lancet published a study showing that any level of alcohol consumption, regardless of the amount, leads to loss of healthy life.
“The results confirm that alcohol consumption is a major avoidable risk factor for noncommunicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases, as well as injuries resulting from violence and road clashes and collisions,” said Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, Manager of the Alcohol and Illicit Drugs Programme at the WHO European Office for Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases.
“It is also associated with several infectious diseases, as mentioned by WHO in several reports on alcohol consumption,” she explained. “The Lancet study confirms the need for the development, implementation and evaluation of cost-effective interventions recommended by WHO, such as the 3 best-buy policies focusing on reducing alcohol availability and marketing and increasing alcohol prices.”
https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/alcohol-use/news/news/2018/09/there-is-no-safe-level-of-alcohol,-new-study-confirmsno safe level of alcohol
I think most people still think they are dealing with the traditional scientific method, which is why it makes no sense.
Once again the antismoker lobby obscures empirical evidence that interferes with their agenda. the data used to justify smoking bans and attacks on smokers is weaker than presented. The link between cancerr and smoking became an article of faith rather than an established 'fact.' Biases, and censorship of inconvenient results were ignored and suppressed. They still are. A lot of profit and power rides on surpassing data about other--more likely--causes.
The antismoker industry is a profitable and powerful self-licking ice cream cone. The false front entities and inter-locking boards creat the appearance of broad scientific acceptance. The brutal suppression of dissent obscures inconvenient hearts to the grift.