• jdr@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Come on, you have to say it’s positively correlated rather than causative that’s the whole point of the thread.

    This isn’t a hill I want to die on, but I don’t think it’s a meaningful claim without a bit more nuance.

    • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      No, it’s causal.

      We know the mechanisms by which alcohol causes negative health effects, to basically all the systems in the body.

      It’s not a particularly strong effect for the occasional drinker, but the degree of confidence we have in the correlation is very strong, and we have an underlying model of the biological mechanisms that cause poor health outcomes.

    • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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      1 day ago

      Well, the WHO puts it in the same category as tobacco. Is tobacco just strongly correlated to cancer? And I don’t need to say it is causative, because The Lancet did.

      You can stack that data up against your anecdotes however you like.

      • myyass@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        I wonder if this is something that changed over time. As in preservatives and all sorts of chemicals being added to tobacco or alcohol. For example, I can smoke Japanese cigarettes without a problem. I’ve smoked Vietnam era MRE cigarettes, Old Ukrainian unfiltered cigarettes. But I can’t smoke US made ones since around 2007, they make me sick and taste like ash.

      • jdr@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Did you read that paper? I don’t believe it supports your argument.

        The mechanism by which smoking causes e.g. lung cancer and the significant rate at which it does so is well understood. I’m not convinced the same can currently be said of alcohol.