Will Talc Make My Vajaja Get Cancer?

   

Good science is generally thought to be based on empirical data, like climate change exists, Sasquatch doesn’t, and nobody really likes the way rutabagas taste.  A critical yet often misunderstood tenet of science is the difference between an association and a cause and effect.  Without completely nerding out on you, let me try to explain the difference.  Hang with me, this is going somewhere, unlike the Calhoun Expressway (it’s just a road, it’s not an expressway…okay I feel better now).

If I was to eat rutabagas every day (I know, I know, fat chance, but bear with me) and then one sad day was told I had cancer of the uvula, then some smart lawyer could claim that my eating a daily portion of rutabagas may have had something to do with causing my cancer.  He would immediately file a 200 billion dollar lawsuit against Canada (the leading source of rutabagas in the world, I can’t make

this stuff up!).  The savvy lawyers for Canada would go to the literature to see if there have been any studies on rutabagas and uvula cancer only to find one study from Angola in 2001 that looked at 50 staunch rutabaga enthusiasts, 2 of whom developed uvula cancer, giving uvula cancer in these Angolans a 1out of 25 chance of getting this unfortunate disease.  The problem, they discover, is that there was no control group, and when they searched Wikipedia, they found that the average Angolian has a 3 out of 25 chance of getting uvula cancer (probably due to watching US reruns of I Love Lucy).  

So indeed, I can say that there may be an association between rutabagas and uvula cancer, but not a cause.  I walk away with no 200 billion and a bruised ego…and uvula cancer.

But what if five years later, a research scientist in Iceland discovers a molecular pathway that shows that a chemical in bananas, say… bananalase, alters DNA in uvular tissue and makes them cancerous. Now we have a true cause and effect and happily my lawsuit against Canada can go forward because I ate a banana on my Fruity Pebbles every morning.  Unfortunately, I died 2 years prior as uvula cancer is a bad mama jama.  In one instance something was simply associated with something else, and in another something caused something else.

If you are still reading after the rambling diatribe, get a life, but my point is that talc (baby powder, clean and dry, etc) has been associated with ovarian cancer, but there has never been any proof of it causing ovarian cancer.  This is a critical distinction (hopefully I don’t have to tell you that by now) because the most important factor in whether you get cancer are those that are causally related.  Most of the controversy surrounds talc that has asbestos and those that don’t.  Most of you know, unless you have been living under a bridge for 40 years, that asbestos has been shown as both an association and causation for cancers, specifically lung cancers.  Not so for ovarian, and especially not something that is applied externally.

In my opinion, I feel it is safe to powder up, but if your really paranoid and think UFOs exists, simply use asbestos free talc.