NIH Cancer Myths Myths

post by belkarx, henry (henry-bass) · 2024-04-25T05:43:47.341Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

Contents

      The trend is that they are identifying statements that are inconclusive as "myths", implying that they've been disproven and can be safely ignored, when this is clearly untrue.
  I present a revised "NIH Cancer Myths Myths" page
    Error: Not endorsing "conspiracies" even when some amount of caution is probably warranted, considering the literature
    Error: Giving misleading answers and then not elaborating
    Misc. commentary
    What They Got Right
None
1 comment

The NIH has a page called Cancer Myths and Misconceptions that you come across if you end up looking into cancer for long enough, aimed at bio-illiterate patients and their families.

Around half the things on that page are wrong at face value, and a solid percentage of those are contradicted by the pages and studies the NIH themselves link as a part of the answer.

This seems bad. The percentage of people that are going to look through the actual studies or even linked cancer.gov pages with expanded info instead of looking at the NIH's incorrect summaries is low, so most people end up getting the wrong impression and making care/preventative decisions based off of that. 

The trend is that they are identifying statements that are inconclusive as "myths", implying that they've been disproven and can be safely ignored, when this is clearly untrue.

I present a revised "NIH Cancer Myths Myths" page

Format: <Class of thing that the NIH did wrong for this "myth"> followed by why it's misleading and some more correct takes (mostly without linked supporting papers, sorry, I'll go back and add them at some point if I feel like it - this is a "source: trust me bro, I looked into most of these thoroughly at various points in my life" writeup :).

Error: Not endorsing "conspiracies" even when some amount of caution is probably warranted, considering the literature

• Rhe Cell Phones page has studies that have positive results for cell phone use increasing at least acoustic neuromas, but each study is discredited by stating their honestly on-par-for-academia flaws (not done for other studies linked on the main page). 

• The EMF and Cancer page also spends most of the time claiming the existing studies are bad/underpowered, and glazes over the one "good" study that supports significantly increased risk of various cancers for workers with high EMF exposure.

Error: Giving misleading answers and then not elaborating

• This response appears to discourage "holistic" treatments with "no herbal products have been shown to be effective for treating cancer", despite a large body of evidence to the contrary (like green tea reliably slowing metastasis, and garlic for slowing tumor growth by immune system support + a bunch of other pathways (GARLIC IS SO OP)). Their linked "more information" page discusses everything that doesn't work, and requires 2+ more clickthroughs to get to any actual studies on supplements, etc.

• Their linked page is written in a way that makes it obvious that stress/high cortisol levels have significant impacts on tumor growth, metastasis, and cancer development, but they discount them because they're correlation studies, without at all discussing the large amount of in vivo research on cortisol (which supports high stress -> increased cancer risk).

• There's some interesting research right now on whether the keto diet kills tumors because they depend glucose as a primary power source, tentative results are "maybe", so /shrug, seems worth mentioning that, as well as its associated risks.

Misc. commentary

• There's actually a really interesting body of literature here, and they link none of it. Hypoxia causes tumors to grow faster because it changes their metabolism, and oxygenation has been suggested as a catalyst to chemotherapy. Boo NIH.

What They Got Right

The following are appropriately nuanced and AFAICT correct responses

• This entry demonstrates that they do add interesting relevant research like that on the association between viruses and cancer, too bad they didn't do that with any other entries

• They're correct that the risk is very low, but from first principles, surgery can definitely get bits of tumor into the bloodsteam -> encourage metastases if your surgeon isn't very careful. Relevant paper I found while poking around that explores ways of stopping the trauma caused by surgery and its secondary effects from encouraging further tumor growth.

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