Let your figures do the talking
Modern life is killing our children: Cancer rate in young people is up 40pc.
Talk about a dramatic headline!
They manage to throw scare, cheeeldren and cancer together, so any tabloid would just have to print it! They even throw in an "our" to make us all feel guilty even if we don't have kids. Clever!
Now being an avid researcher of "research" and studier of "studies" I just had to read on to see what they are on about. It must be pretty scary stuff, with cheeeldren dropping like flies?
First of all, I looked to see what period the 40% refers to. Is it an increase in the last century or maybe over the last year? This is pretty important stuff. It transpires that it's over 16 years which is quite a long time. At least it isn't a 40% increase over one year which would indeed hint that something was a little amiss? There again they could have avoided the tabloid panic if they stated that the rise was 2.5% per annum, but it just doesn't look as good.
So what kind of numbers are we actually looking at?
Funnily enough they give the answer to that near the top [big mistake – someone might spot it there – should be in the small print as an oblique referral]. 10 cases in 100,000 sixteen years ago has risen to a dramatic "nearly" 16 cases now. Just as an aside – what the fuck is a "nearly"?
Anyhows, let's look at these numbers from a slightly different perspective. 16 years ago, 0.0001% of cases were cheeeldren but that has risen to 0.00016% now. Wow! Though I'm surprised they didn't round the figure a bit [who gives a fuck about five decimal places?] and make that 0,0002% which would be a doubling of the number! They missed a trick there.
I see they have to mention smoking as one of the causes, despite smoking figures falling and cancer cases [nearly?] rising.
Maybe they should read the studies that show passive smoking in cheeeldren decreases the risks of lung cancer?
Why can't these fuckers just concentrate on finding cures, instead of pumping out these useless lists of "causes"?
What the fuck do they expect us to do? Avoid the list of "causes" and you're dead from suffocation!
They are just a waste of space.
Wankers!
touché
It’s odd, isn’t it, that all these “experts” don’t seem to mention, whenever there’s a rise in cancer cases, of whatever scale, that these rises have happened at precisely the same time as the number of people smoking, and thus also the amount of environmental tobacco smoke, has been experiencing its greatest decline? Ditto the “obesity crisis.” No-one – not a single, solitary “expert” – ever even hints at the fact that obesity rates have increased in almost direct correlation with the lower number of people smoking, despite the fact that we are virtually all now surrounded by people we personally know who have grown to twice their original size since quitting.
I guess, it’s just too embarrassing to admit that there’s a “downside” to their anti-smoking Holy Cow, isn’t it? Far better to spout glaringly obvious rubbish than to make any uncomfortable, if self-evident, connections. And then they wonder why no-one listens to them any more …
They can never ever admit that their actions have unintended consequences. They wiffle on about 3,726 bar staff being "saved" from second hand smoke [it's always 3,726 for some strange reason, no matter what year] without a whisper about the publicans who lost their businesses, the bar staff who were put out of work or the old folk who were driven into isolation and in some cases, suicide. They are so blinkered that they just cannot see anything outside their narrow little view of the world.
Excellent observation,. They blindly accept their dogma and reject all else. They are convinced smoking is evil and rational analysis eludes them.