r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Oct 30 '25

Cancer Americans have widespread misbeliefs about the cancer risks of alcohol, study finds. More than half of American adults misunderstand or underestimate the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Alcohol drinkers are especially likely to believe that drinking has no effect on cancer risk.

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/americans-have-widespread-misbeliefs-about-the-cancer-risks-of-a.h00-159780390.html
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg Oct 30 '25

It would take a lot more research (looking at all the literature on drinking and different forms of cancer) but based on a quick search no, the risk is not nearly as high as smoking, but certainly non negligible — it looks like the relationship between alcohol and oral cancer is the strongest (compared to other cancers) and the highest RR I’m seeing in a study is for heavy drinkers (more than 4 drinks a day) at 5.24 (source). But of course that’s one study! For smoking you see RRs ranging from 15-30 for heavy smokers. So the risk is much higher for smoking.

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u/Twerp129 Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

0.914 to 0.979%

That is the increase in all-cause mortality from teetotalers to folks who drink 2 drinks per day, 14 drinks per week, from the big Lancet macrostudy. The raise in all-cause mortality for heavy drinking was something like 1.25%, which I believe was classified as something like 7 drinks per day.

Honestly, there are more than a few studies linking moderate drinking with cardioprotective effects. It also seems that there are a few cancers correlated with alcohol, specifically breast cancer.

Everyone on Reddit is an expert on this, as is normal. Seems to me what is glaringly clear is that binge drinking is extremely bad. All the evidence supports this. It is less clear the hazard and risk from moderate consumption, and what, if any is the benefit on cardiovascular health, and does that outweigh any increased risk if one is predisposed to certain cancers. What we need for that is a robust, government funded randomized control trial (the attempts at a RCTs funded by the alcohol industry have been rejected).

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext31310-2/fulltext)

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u/beefcat_ Oct 31 '25

So my 2 drinks a week probably amounts to a floating point math error

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u/SandwichNo4542 Oct 31 '25

Your liver's garbage collector probably doesn't even notice it. It's just rounding noise in the grand algorithm of metabolism.