Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Does everything give you cancer?

I'm sick of being scared by scientific studies

I’m sick of being scared by scientific studies

Tall women are more likely to get cancer. As research findings go, this has to be among the most randomly vindictive scientific conclusions ever to spill out of a university research department into a screaming newspaper headline, and lord knows there have been a few.

Women who breastfeed are less likely to have heart attacks or strokes. Women who don’t breastfeed are more likely to abuse children. Women who are stressed are more likely to have children with asthma (how stressful a piece of knowledge is that?). Men who are circumcised are more likely to suffer erectile problems. Children born to men aged over 35 are more likely to have a cleft lip or palate. Men are more likely to get cancer than women. Homosexual men are more likely to get cancer than heterosexual men. Circumcised men who have sex with women who drink one glass of wine a day during pregnancy are more likely to have a child with a club foot.

OK, so I made that last one up. But the rest are all genuine pieces of research conducted by prestigious universities, published in respected journals, then fed to the health correspondents of national newspapers. Last month, tall women were marked out for death in research published in The Lancet Oncology. ‘In women, the risk of cancer rises by about 16 per cent for every 10cm (four inches) increase in height.’

My, that is precise. It must have taken some serious scientific knowhow to work that out. The question, as with all of these studies, is why? Why did someone decide to find out at what age men were more likely to produce offspring with a correctable facial deformity? Presumably it was meant to empower women to look at a male suitor and think: ‘He’s quite nice-looking, but he’s 34, which means that by the time we have kids I will run an increased risk of having a child with a cleft lip or palate, which is going to be a kerfuffle, so on balance I think I’ll tell him I’m busy tonight.

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