BREAST CANCER: A MOTHER JONES FACEBOOK POST ASKS IF ALCOHOL IS A CAUSE. WHAT ARE OTHER CANCER CAUSES?

 

 

From motherjones.com:

 

Susan Sontag once wrote that telling people about your cancer diagnosis tends to fill them with mortal dread. But when I’ve disclosed my illness to friends and told them that alcohol can cause breast cancer, I’ve never invoked enough mortal dread to deter anyone from ordering a second drink. Most women have no idea drinking causes breast cancer, and they really don’t want to be told that it does.”

 

While I don’t know Susan Sontag, she is absolutely right. But is it dread, or mortal dread? I can say hearing a cancer diagnosis without mortal dread is suspicious from the patient point of view.

 

“This is your doctor and you have cancer,” is all about mortal dread. Hearing that the first time ends the guessing game. Cancer or no cancer was the question and a positive answer comes with an extra scoop of mortal dread.

 

“This is your doctor and you have hpv16 neck cancer,” adds a dash of terror. Mortal dread and terror combine to challenge the new cancer patient. What would Susan Sontag say about that?

 

“David, can you tell me the cause of hpv16 neck cancer?“

“From hard research, it’s not from smoking or drinking, though smoking and drinking do cause some neck cancers,” I’d say.

“I see. Smoking and drinking do not cause hpv16 throat cancer?”

“Actually it’s tongue cancer,” I’d correct.

“And what exactly is the cause of this hpv16 tongue cancer?”

“I haven’t checked every research resource, but apparently it’s an exchange of bodily fluids,” I’d say. “You’d have to check more on your own.”

“Didn’t your doctor explain it to you?”

“They seemed a little too inconclusive for me to pass along their ideas,” I’d say.

“But they did say cancer?”

“The words I heard were Stage 4 neck cancer, words that made my head buzz with mortal f—ing dread right away,” I’d say.

 

Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer continues with a short history of drinking that may have caused breast cancer. It’s a familiar tale with familiar locations:

 

I drank my first beer when I was 13. My dad and I had been out pheasant hunting on a cold day. After we bagged our birds, we got into the Jeep to warm up, and my dad handed me a Mickey’s Big Mouth. It was nasty, but I drank it to prove my worthiness of the adult gesture. When I was done, he said, “You wanna drive?” That was Utah in the ’80s, at least if you weren’t Mormon.

Later, I went to a Catholic high school, where we distinguished ourselves from the future missionaries in the public schools with excessive drinking. Even in Utah, booze was easy to come by. There was Doug at Metro Mart, who sold us beer from the drive-thru window. When he wasn’t around, we stole it from our parents, siphoning off small amounts of bourbon, rum, gin, and vodka and then dumping the whole awful mix into a cola-flavored Slurpee and sucking it down through a straw.

I went off to the University of Oregon, where Animal House had been filmed 10 years earlier. During my time there, the university decided to crack down on underage drinking on campus. Riots broke out, and the local police had to deploy tear gas.

I’ve never drunk as heavily as I did before I could legally buy a drink. My experience isn’t unusual. Ninety percent of alcohol consumption by underage Americans is binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks on one occasion, according to the CDC.

 

If alcohol causes cancer, then the effects of alcohol can lead to other cancer causes? In a story of one thing leading to another, young people meet for drinks. One of the guys and one of gals hit it off.

 

After another round, they hit the dance floor. Toward the end of the night they leave together.

 

The next day they tell each other how embarrassed they are, how something like this never happens to either of them, and they agree it was a mistake, a fun mistake, but not one they’ll make again. They have a good laugh and forget about it as they go on with the rest of their lives.

 

Then the guy get hpv16 tongue cancer forty years later.

 

More from Mother Jones:

 

I’ll never know for certain whether alcohol caused my cancer. There are so many factors: Just in December, a Danish study found that being on birth control raises the risk of breast cancer more than previously thought. What I do know is that cutting back on drinking, particularly when I was young, is virtually the only thing I could have changed about my lifestyle to try to prevent this cancer if I’d been fully informed.

Now I’ve mostly given up alcohol to hedge my bets against a recurrence. I can’t be sure I would have done the same thing if someone had told me when I was 15 or 20 that drinking could give me breast cancer. I’d like to think so—I never smoked—but there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t have been just like the students Weiss talks to.

At least they have a choice—they’ve been told the risk they’re taking. Like most women, I didn’t have that choice, and a powerful industry worked to keep it that way.

 

Choice? We’re talking about choice? Yes we are. Women get to decide, get to choose, get to make their choice. And here comes the hard sell:

 

With choice comes added responsibility. Ms Mencimer sounds like she knows her subject, probably better than she’d like to. On boomerpdx I support individual rights, including the right for women to choose between legal options without having to scale hurdles erected by men.

 

As a woman surviving breast cancer she chooses to avoid behavior detrimental to her positive outcome. The big question asked here is if responsible people know to avoid known carcinogens, is vaccinating a kid against a known cancer the right choice?

 

Leave answers in comments, please.