June 18, 2015
Alcohol moderation for cancer decline
A case has been made for reducing society’s alcohol consumption as a way to reduce bowel and breast cancer.
The links were made at a conference in Wellington yesterday which looked at alcohol as a carcinogen.
Professor Jennie Connor from the University of Otago’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine the most common cause of alcohol-related death in New Zealand women, both Maori and non-Maori women, is breast cancer.
Alcohol is also a contributor to bowel cancer, the other leading cause of death.
She says it’s not about individual drinking but society drinking.
"The solutions to this line up with the solutions to other alcohol-related issues like family violence and car crashes and lots of other things where if we had a little more regulation, a little more control of alcohol sale and accessibility and promotion, the average amount of drinking in the population would come down and this burden of cancer would come down as well," Professor Connor says.
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