I’m not sure I understood that sentence, but I think you’re suggesting the cancer risk from alcohol is irrelevant because cancer is more likely to be caused by controllable factors other than alcohol.
If that’s what you’re saying, I’m not following the logic. If someone is trying to decide whether to ingest alcohol, the relevant factors are the effects of that change in behaviour, such as increased risk of things like cancer, liver damage, kidney damage, brain function, and being a perpetrator or recipient of violence.
As part of the general process of critical self-examination it might also be useful to consider whether you have other behaviours that increase your risk of cancer, but that is part of deciding whether to try to eliminate those other behaviours, not part of the decision of whether to ingest alcohol.
If health authorities are trying to discourage alcohol use, as in Finland, it may be useful to argue that should publicise the kidney failure risk, as alcohol is more likely to kill you via kidney failure that via cancer. I don’t think it’s useful to try to suggest to them that cancer is more likely to be caused by obesity than alcohol.
As an aside, for those concerned with the obesity risk, there is some correlation between alcohol use and obesity. So for obese alcohol users who are trying to reduce their mass, eliminating alcohol from the diet may help. That would be true even if their desire to lose mass was unrelated to the cancer risk of obesity.
The web page you cited includes:
(Note: 5% to 10% of CANCERS. We’re not saying 5% to 10% of the population have a cancer causing mutation.)
If a person is diagnosed with a cancer that has a significant genetic component, it’s worth their while getting tested to ascertain if they have the dangerous allele, and if they do, passing on the bad news to relatives, so those relatives can decide whether they should test if they have also copped the dangerous allele. Those with the allele who don’t yet have the cancer still need some serious genetic counselling surrounding risk factors and the decision of whether to breed.
But again, if someone doesn’t have a family history suggesting the need for genetic testing, I don’t think the fact that some cancers are caused by genes is a factor when deciding whether to use alcohol and thus taking on the additional risk of cancer, liver damage, etc.
And yes - lots of people don’t like thinking about whether they are carrying a cancer causing mutation. Providing they have no intention of passing on their genes, I’d argue that they are within their rights to not think about. Similarly, if people understand the risks, I’d argue they have the right to consume alcohol, provided they don’t do anything that can impact others, like driving a car, operating heavy machinery, being in charge of a minor, or being in the presence of anyone unable to adequately defend themselves against someone who may unpredictably become violent.
In case my original post gave the wrong impression, perhaps I should explicitly state that I’m not suggesting cancer is the most dangerous risk of alcohol consumption. I chose to mention the alcohol risk for 2 reasons.
- Awareness of the cancer risk seems low compared to other risks of alcohol.
- Some risks of alcohol seem to have a threshhold effect, so there can be a safe level of consumption for that risk. Before the cancer risk was recongised, this caused the recommendations to not exceed a particular level of consumption. By contrast, as with many carcinogens, it seems plausible (still not enough data to be sure) that the cancer risk from alcohol is a proportional hazard, which would mean the only safe dose is zero. This has lead health authorities to recommend that people who don’t drink alcohol should not start. But lots of people still exceed the older recommended levels, so at the moment, when people die from alcohol, it’s not usually due to cancer.
