Does meat cause cancer?

Last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a two-page report entitled “Carcinogenicity of Consumption of Red and Processed Meat,” warning the planet that processed meat definitely causes colorectal cancer in humans, and that red meat “probably” causes colorectal cancer in humans. The report listed a total of 20 scientific references. WHO’s frightening anti-meat proclamation made headlines worldwide and had a major impact on how people think about meat and health. While plenty of pro-meat critiques of the WHO report have been published, the majority of those I read took the WHO’s findings at face value and emphasized that the statistical risk associated with eating processed and red meat is very small.

I strongly disagree. I read the report and all of the experimental studies cited in the report. I found no scientific evidence to support the WHO’s anti-meat cries, and I think it is important to set the record straight.

  • Watermark710@piefed.social
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    4 days ago

    Everything causes cancer. That’s not gonna stop me from living my life. I’m gonna have 3 bacon cheeseburgers for lunch, then chase them with some vodka and a cigarette. I just started my 3rd 12 hour shift of the week, I’m gonna do what makes me happy.

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPM
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      4 days ago

      Everything causes cancer

      https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.112.047142

      How right you are. That’s because the last 40 years of cancer research has been asking the wrong question.

      I’m very moved by the metabolic mitochondrial theory of cancer. Basically don’t eat carbs.

      Enjoy those 3 bacon cheeseburgers! Just skip the buns if you can

      • Watermark710@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        Just skip the buns if you can

        I actually wrap my burgers in iceberg lettuce (inb4 “crunchy water”), because I prefer them that way. Nothing to do with health, I just don’t like bread very much. I’m not a zero carb person, I eat French toast every Monday. But I don’t like bread if it’s not smothered in eggs and milk before I fry it in oil.

    • xepM
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      4 days ago

      Dr Ede is saying that there is no science behind the assertion that red meat causes cancer, though!

      Your life is yours to live, I agree.

      • Watermark710@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        Some folks say it causes cancer, some folks say it doesn’t. My point is that I don’t care either way. I’m not gonna alter my life because of a small risk of developing a certain kind of cancer (true or not). Smoking is gonna kill me, drinking is gonna kill me, so I might as well enjoy some good food along the way.

  • Mugita Sokio@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    That depends on where you get your meat from.

    There are chemicals in American meat that are the passed onto everyone else due to the Jesuit way of life being shoved down our throats.

    That reason is my opinion based upon staunch spiritual research.

      • Mugita Sokio@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        They, using their best witches and warlocks (food scientists, pharma peeps, etc.), found ways to subtly put poisonous chemicals into the food, including but not limited to, meat.

        Revelation 18:23 is proof of that, which I’ll use the YLT for, as follows: and light of a lamp may not shine at all in thee any more; and voice of bridegroom and of bride may not be heard at all in thee any more; because thy merchants were the great ones of the earth, because in thy sorcery were all the nations led astray,

        This foretold the sorcery of the Great Men. It applies to medical technologies as well, but I won’t get into it.

  • Artwork@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I am sorry, but this is all old as mold… It’s the same “science” I heard like 30 years ago…
    Please do consider that fear sometimes is used to generate money and sold “cure” or now special “legal processing” (e.g., certification)…

    E.g., “No. This is illegal now. You must pass form 142E, form 315A, and do not forget the signed form 6EA31! Otherwise, sorry, but we cannot let you drive this car. C’mon! There’s a whole Global Warming out there!”

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPM
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      5 days ago

      No worries, can you define what “science” you find as compelling evidence?

      Dr Ede just wants you to eat whole foods and not listen to the political scare opinions not based in hard reproducible science.

      • Artwork@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Of course, what Dr. Ede wants is totally fine, regarding the observation and self-confidence.
        I was more about the “Who” “sudden” “evidence” dropped whenever more funding is needed to generate out of the thin air by people involved in such, sorry, fraud built on fears of dear people.

        • xepM
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          5 days ago

          I think this is a view commonly held by people in this community also, but I found the way you stated it difficult to understand.

          To clarify, are you saying that there are private interests who use fear-mongering with epidemiology for monetary or political gain?

          • Artwork@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            I am not sure it’s appropriate to share private/government cases, in any public Communities, including Lemmy, since I do believe in government working for people, in the end, but there are open to public cases where schemes got out of control.

            For example, though I do operate/move around Europe and Asia, for the most part, yet if am not mistaken governments and/or third-party testing corporations built a mandatory industry around annual smog checks and vehicle certifications. In the following case, Volkswagen, an investigation revealed that multiple other major global automakers utilized a relatively similar bypassing for testing.

            I mean, these are just revealed cases, but there’s a chance these were revealed strategically, and another funding was organized to generate money. Since isn’t money an energy that passes where it is streamed.

            The Clean Air Act has helped to greatly reduce the hazardous content of automobile pollutants. One of the main methods of enforcing this legislation is through emissions testing. Before cars can be legally sold in the United States and other participating countries, they must pass a series of tests proving that their emissions conform to acceptable levels.

            Most manufacturers comply to avoid fines and maintain good standing in the automobile market. However, some manufacturers developed “defeat devices,” computerized programs implanted in cars that change the emission output. With such a device, a vehicle that is placed in a stand for emissions testing will operate differently - and more cleanly - than a vehicle that is actually being used on the road.

            Source

            -–

            Another public cases I had in bookmarks:

            In a white-collar crime, there is no physical violence, strong financial motivations are present, and individuals who are said to be respectable members of society are often involved. Fraud committed by top level managers, such as CEOs who are likely referred as respectable members of society…

            The “fraud triangle” is a framework which explains why individuals commit fraud. It is composed of three factors which are often associated with individuals who commit fraud…

            On July 28, 2020, the United States Federal Government charged Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud…

            Hundreds of people were harmed because of the massive fraud at Theranos. Lives were put at risk every day that Theranos continued to operate under such a cloud of secrecy. Healthy expectant mothers received false results of miscarriage. Patients received false cancer diagnoses. Chronically ill persons saw hope in a technology that never worked as advertised…

            Source

            -–

            …the paper offers a diagnostic investigation into the market’s demise, which we trace to oversupply, integrity controversies, intermediary opacity, and, crucially, a moral hazard mechanism whereby firms use offsets as a license to delay or dilute genuine decarbonization…

            Source

            -–

            Related:
            - Dissecting AI-related Paper Retraction… (LLMs are being used not just for text generation, but for the automated fabrication of entire research programs… We conclude that the only viable long-term defense is a transition from post-publication detection to prospective provenance verification…)
            - Pseudoaddiction (…the subject of this review, is a clinical concept that has been influential…)

  • jet@hackertalks.comOPM
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    5 days ago

    What I discovered was that THE WHO REPORT IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENT. IT IS A POLITICAL DOCUMENT. Politicians can get away with making sweeping statements to the general public that stand on shaky ground. Scientists are held to a higher standard. They are supposed to show their work, and defend their positions as objectively and honestly as humanly possible. After reading the studies upon which the WHO’s anti-meat proclamations are made, I concluded that there simply is no scientific evidence that meat causes cancer in humans.

    The first experimental study cited in the WHO report began with a description of 12 rodent studies showing either no association between meat and cancer or a protective effect of meat on cancer risk. None of these studies were mentioned in the WHO report. All rodents were either pre-injected with carcinogens or bred to be highly susceptible to cancer.

    This is such a great article! It’s worth while to read the whole thing!

    Over and over again, researchers see that epidemiology suggests a theoretical connection between some food and some health problem, so they conduct experiments to test the theory and find no connection. This is why our nutrition headlines are constantly changing. One day eggs are bad for you, the next day they’re fine. Epidemiologists are forever sending well-intentioned scientists on time-consuming, expensive wild goose chases, trying to prove that meat is dangerous, when all other sources–from anthropology to physiology to biochemistry to common sense—tell us that meat is nutritious and safe.