HEALTH
Distressing news: Alcohol causes cancer.
What to do about it?
First the good news. Everything causes cancer. When yours truly got a prostate cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2005, a colleague asked me, straight-faced, “What do you think caused it?”
I’m not easily flummoxed, however this question was RICHARD BERCUSON
a baffler. I could think of nothing but silly wisecracks since, back then, there had not yet been a study linking cancer with alcohol, as we learned last July. So I rattled off a few possi- bilities: excessive cheesecake consumption, too many Oreos as a kid, the strawberries and cream my mother gave us for dessert, chopped liver, a propensity for the Whole Hawg menu choice of ribs at Montreal’s Bar-B-Barn restaurant...I couldn’t know for sure.
My doctor once informed me, moments before doing a
vasectomy, that there was inconclusive evidence linking the procedure to prostate cancer. He didn’t mention a causal link if I consumed a couple of beers during the procedure. It never dawned on me that delicious red wine or im- ported beer could have done it. You see, I once coached pro hockey in Paris and wine was a daily joy. Delicious beer, too, which was plentiful and imported from, well, everywhere. I was never really drunk. I had to put on airs of control for the lads, you know. Let me share that when you have access to cheap, excellent suds, you can get into the habit rather quickly.
It made me recall Frank Sinatra’s statement. “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink,” he said. “They wake up in the morning and that’s the best they are going to feel all day.” The research bombshell arrived in July from the Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA), which one might suppose spends a great deal of time linking addictions with all manner of things. Here, verbatim, is its conclusion:
Oh no! 8 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
Alcohol causes cancer.
“There is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others. Current estimates suggest that alcohol-attributable cancers at these sites make up 5.8% of all cancer deaths world- wide. Confirmation of specific biological mechanisms by which alcohol increases the incidence of each type of cancer is not required to infer that alcohol is a cause.”
The study adds that alcohol causes cancer at probably more than just the seven sites which are: oropharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and female breast. When I read this, I sighed in relief. At last, definitive proof that my own adventure had no link whatsoever to those late alcohol- tinged nights in Paris, nor the bygone procedure.
continued on page 19
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