The Daily Mail’s List of Things That Give You Cancer: From a to Z

https://www.anorak.co.uk/288298/tabloids/the-daily-mails-list-of-things-that-give-you-cancer-from-a-to-z.html

by mr_toad • 7 years ago

39 28 7 years ago

anorak.co.uk

treebornfrog• 7 years ago

There should be more sites like this that index the nonsense these mainstream publications report.

tptacek• 7 years ago

Did you just refer to The Daily Mail as a "mainstream publication"?

big_chungus• 7 years ago

Mainstream does not imply respectable. Many "tabloid-esque" publications (e.g. buzz feed) are not reputable and publish low-quality, poorly-sourced, salacious stories. Sometimes, they publish something good; it's the broken clock being right.

liability• 7 years ago

Mainstream and disreputable.

eloff• 7 years ago

To be fair many, maybe even most of these have a thread of truth. The sad reality is living elevates your risk of cancer. The food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, and the earth and structures you live on/in.

And some things may simultaneously increase and decrease your risk of cancer at the same time. Coffee and sunlight probably fall into that category.

That said, it's all about quantifying the change in risk and deciding if that's worth it or not. (Easier said than done.)

bdz• 7 years ago

The EU has a dedicated site for "euromyths" reported by the UK media

https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/

ars2• 7 years ago

Reminds me of reading two articles: one claimed global warming caused drought and the other that it caused rain in the exact same spot, in the exact same time period.

I've also seen predictions that global warming would cause both more, and fewer, hurricanes.

We need one of those sites for global warming, because people blame absolutely everything on global warming (with zero scientific study). It's always "here's something that is different, yup, must be global warming".

(This isn't a dig on science, actual scientists would never do that - they are far more careful on blaming specific things.)

qrbLPHiKpiux• 7 years ago

On a long enough timeline the survival for everyone drops to zero.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 7 years ago

Is this longer or shorter than the California Prop 65 list?

haser_au• 7 years ago

Shorter.

California Prop 65 List [1]: 614 (excludes delisted entries, 'type of toxicity' contains "cancer")

Daily Mail: 169

[1] September 2019 version. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list

snthd2• 7 years ago

https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com

bonoboTP• 7 years ago

A kind of random thought: why could that be that most things that prevent disease are of the sort that requires discipline and effort (exercise, bland-tasting food), while things that we naturally like (lots of fat, sugar, salt, alcohol, cigarettes and sitting on the couch) cause health problems? I mean, I'm not interested in some deep metaphysical moral lesson of how one must work for things that are desirable. I mean how does such a situation come about evolutionarily? It seems like we're attracted to things that harm us and that needs serious explanation.

One answer could be that we're just far removed from the environment that our desires were calbirated for, but it seems strange that it's just so consistent.

I don't remember reading about anything preventing cancer that people just naturally like to do/eat. Maybe it's also publication bias in the news and the "postman biting the dog" being more newsworthy than the "dog biting the postman" (Hungarian saying, not sure if it exists in English).

CDSlice• 7 years ago

We have a similar saying but we shorten it to "man bites dog".

nothrabannosir• 7 years ago

Yes! Man bites dog. :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog_(journalism)

schwartzworld• 7 years ago

Too much of anything is unhealthy. Too much exercise can hurt or kill you, but most people don't exercise that much because it stops feeling good.

It's not that healthy behaviors can't be pleasurable, but they are rarely pleasurable in the way that kills you.

diego• 7 years ago

Cancer doesn't play a significant role in evolution because most people get cancer long after reproducing. In a way, cancer means that you succeeded at living long enough.

snthd2• 7 years ago

Maybe evolution's doing just fine and we're just overestimating it's speed relative to the speed of environmental change.

Also evolution can make some very crude selections - https://www.quora.com/Why-do-women-have-periods-What-is-the-...

ars2• 7 years ago

That's just because all things we like that are also good for us, we already do them.

And the things we don't like and are also bad, no one does them.

So neither category gets any notice. It's only in the other situations that you need to take extra notice.

magerleagues• 7 years ago

There is an unclosed </a> tag that breaks all the links past NUTELLA. Also... broccoli??

gerdesj• 7 years ago

Web pages can catch cancer and you've just found a sufferer. It may be coincidence that "obesity" is the first broken entry. I clicked on the obesity entry and ... "Nutella gives you cancer. ..." Yes - you are right it is broken, technically as well as contentwise.

The Roast potatoes link (you say tommmmmmmmmatoe, I say potarrrrto or something) works and so do some of the others.

Broccoli can be pretty dangerous if not handled correctly.

flavor8• 7 years ago

Yeah, broccoli is actually a cancer preventive, according to the How Not to Die doctor.

https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/broccoli/

azinman2• 7 years ago

I don’t understand what their point is. The list is quite disingenuous and intellectually lazy. For example, “Dildos give you cancer” according to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2611376/These-toys...

But actually it’s not dildos, it’s HPV, and it can be transmitted by sharing dildos. But it can also be transmitted with sexual intercourse, so they should list it under sex. And while we’re continuing to go further away from the actual cause, we might as well say human interaction or just plain being a human.

This kind of work makes people say “everything gives you cancer, so therefore I won’t care about any one thing,” which ignores the fact that you can absolutely dramatically change your risk profile one way or another based upon your actions... as well as what’s legal to be sold. We shouldn’t look at this as an excuse for asbestos to be legal again, for example.

hombre_fatal• 7 years ago

Yeah, I stopped at the first example: Afternoons.

It's just saying that the sun is brighter in the afternoon than in the morning, so sun-bathing in the afternoon increases skin cancer risk more than in the morning.

Then I closed the tab.

undecisive2• 7 years ago

Not sure whether you're talking about the Daily Mail or the Anorak website? Certainly everything you say is absolutely true about the Daily Mail, the sensationalist misattribution appeals to their fanbase.

Havoc• 7 years ago

At least some of those seem credible to me?

Alcohol and sausages (processed red meat) for example are on the WHO list if memory serves

yarrel• 7 years ago

The ingtersection of this and their list of things that cure it is not the empty set.

undecisive2• 7 years ago

For those unfamiliar, the Daily Mail (as a brit) is notorious for being sensationalist and playing on the most base fears of the intellectually ungifted.

You know what? I'll say it plainly: It's an idiot's paper. It's clickbait in physical form. It is not on a critical thinker's go-to list of newspapers.

It is written by probably intelligent (albeit morally compromised) people to appeal to the racists and the reactionaries. It has an unashamedly strong conservative bias. One week it will tell people that red wine causes cancer, and the next week it will tell people that red wine cures cancer. It will tell you that Conservatives are being compassionate in slashing funds for the disabled, while Labour is communist for wanting to raise even a penny in taxes.

It's because of its readership that we should all be wary of the damage that the Daily Mail can do. The only time you'll see language that might challenge a 5-year-old is on one of these cancer scares, mostly so that "the man down the pub" will switch off and avoid further research.

The Daily Mail’s List of Things That Give You Cancer: From a to Z

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