The most unkindest cut of all:
Men with vasectomies may be at an increased risk for the most lethal form of prostate cancer, researchers have found. […]
The lead author, Lorelei A. Mucci, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, emphasized that a vasectomy does not increase the risk for prostate cancer over all. “We’re really seeing the association only for advanced state and lethal cancers,” she said.
So that’s reassuring.
As it is written in the good book, he made the male and female.
And as such they will engage in those certain activities in order to be healthy and happy, this is not written in the good book, though they were told to go forth and multiply.
The thing is, today if you go forth and multiply, you may be on a collision course with the planet as some would say.
Going in a somewhat different direction, not to offend the ladies, a man has to engage in this certain activity to be healthy. Short of that, he may get in trouble with the prostate thing.
This is a purely, though serious, opinion of nonacademic mind.
As the one says “just thinking”
So like, mutilating your body might not be good for you? Who would have thought?
Somebody has to explain the math to me.
Those with a vasectomy have a 20% better chance of developing a more lethal form of cancer over a 20 year period because we move from 16 cases in 1000 w/o vasectomy to 19 cases in 1000 for those with vasectomy.
From the comments –
Martin Dooley
Hamilton Ontario Yesterday
excellent example of how irresponsible it is to highlight the increase in relative risk (20%) without giving equal weight to the increase in absolute risk (
Argh! rest of martin’s comment was that the absolute risk was 0.2%.
Otherwise known as not statistically relevant.
The confidence interval comes very close to 1 which means that the estimate of risk includes “negligible”.
Based on the difference in rates (16/1000 vs. 19/1000), for every 333 men in the study population who had a vasectomy, there was one additional case of high grade/lethal prostate cancer.
Hardly worth considering compared to the benefits of easy pregnancy prevention.
So it is statistically insignificant and once again co-relation does not equal causation. I mean, these parts are in the same neighborhood, but not on the same block, so to speak. Testicular cancer might make me suspicious…