Huge multi-national conspiracies work great for action movies and super hero flicks. Through suspension of belief, some good acting and a tight plot we can be convinced that anything is evil, out to get us and might send the world's unwitting citizens to an early grave. Remember in the 1989 Batman movie that the Joker managed to turn innocent combinations of hairspray and cleaning detergent into a poison gas? Or how in the X-Men movie Ian McClellan's Magneto was going to turn fireworks at the Statue of Liberty into a weapon to mutate us all? Or any James Bond movie over the last 40 years where anything from flowers, to water to bowler hats can kill you? Based on their recent report that "Meat Causes Cancer" you'd think that the World Health Organization (WHO) is auditioning to be the next Hollywood supervillain. Instead they've made the biggest mistake that any regulatory agency, parent or mad scientist could ever make - Use a scare tactic that turns out to not be true.
Last week the WHO released a report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) stating that processed meats and some red meats can lead to cancer. Let's be clear, the WHO's annual reports are not some eagerly anticipated event like the Oscar nominations or the NFL schedule. Nevertheless their findings on cancer causing chemicals, foods and substances lead to real policy consequences, particularly for African American communities which suffer disproportionately and have the highest death rates of any ethnic group for most forms of cancer.
So when the IARC irresponsibly fosters headlines that say "Meat kills" certain communities are more vulnerable to this non nuanced information than others. This is especially problematic given that several different cancer causing agents are all lumped into the same category (Group 1 carcinogens) in this recent report, which only leads to more confusion and misinformation. The group also includes sunlight on one end of the spectrum, which occurs naturally and provides the Vitamin D necessary for humans to live, and tobacco, which increases lung cancer risk by 2,500%. This wildly distortive categorization is based on strength of evidence, not degree of risk. Lumping these things together risks the IARC and, by extension, the WHO becoming the boy who cried wolf.
Such linguistic hedging might be okay when you're talking about the likelihood of Tom Brady deflating footballs, but not when you're a respected global organization setting policy standards for a disease that affects hundreds of thousands of lives every year. More importantly, there are other cancer causing agents where research shows a much stronger and deadlier link to cancer than a few processed hot dogs or the occasional visit to a tanning bed.
According to Tobacco Free Kids, smoking is the leading cause of cancer related death amongst African Americans. Smoking beats out AIDS, accidents, diabetes and homicide. For years, WHO reports on tobacco have driven anti-smoking policies as a credible source of the best available research on cancer and its causes. Higher cigarette taxes, anti-tobacco campaigns and other public health efforts have all been effectively implemented as a result.
A little closer to home, literally, is the silent killer asbestos, another Group 1 carcinogen. The cancer causing impact of asbestos has been known since the 1970's but many of America's poor, urban and minority communities still attend schools or live in buildings that haven't sufficiently removed asbestos from walls or foundations. The result? African Americans are often diagnosed much later for asbestos related cancer leading to costly surgery and lower survival rates.
What the IARC reported was that large quantities of processed meat over time, literally a lifetime, may lead to an increased risk of cancer, slightly more so than time in the sun. However on the scale of things that may increase the risk of cancer, bacon and UV light pale in comparison to smoking, asbestos or working for Mr. Burns. Perhaps the WHO, like the villains of old, wanted to put a little fear into the excessive meat eaters all around the world in the hopes that some hyperbolic meat shaming mixed with a cancer scare might improve some diets. Regardless of their intention or mistake, the WHO has already had to walk back their report on meat, downplaying the impact of processed meats on cancer and sheepishly acknowledge that maybe the threat was overstated. In other words, Dr. Evil's super powerful death ray might only give you sunburn.
The key is this, smoking increases your chances of lung cancer by 2,500 percent, and your chances of death after asbestos exposure is 77 percent higher than those not exposed to asbestos. Processed meat at best is going to increase your chance of cancer by less than 20 percent, sunlight and tanning beds by as little as 15 percent, and even those numbers can be mitigated by lifestyle and environmental factors. The World Health Organization should be a reliable and trustworthy source of information about critical health issues, not a frightening shadowy villain dropping hyperbolic health threats and then disappearing into the back pages of magazines for another year - especially when the threats aren't real. Future reports (and their press releases!) must be more nuanced than meat/sunlight/fresh air causes cancer. Policymakers and, by extension, their constituents, need to be able to trust the WHO as the best source of information available.