This story was in the papers this week, linking a very commonly used medication with a doubling in stomach cancer risk. A doubling in the risk of anything sounds bad, but what does it mean in reality?
absoulte risk
Hot drinks and cancer
You may have seen a frankly terrifying headline this week:
“Hot drinks probably cause cancer, warns World Health Organisation”
Telegraph, 15th June 2016
Almost every news source carried this story, and the headlines were universally similar to the one above. This story comes from a report by the WHO, which looked at the association between coffee and mate (a South American herbal tea) and various forms of cancer. In short, they found that there was no association between coffee or mate and cancer, but that the temperature of the beverage may be linked to oesophageal cancer. Continue reading
