Say goodbye to your nuts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7869709.stm

Marijuana testicular cancer link
Frequent or long-term marijuana use may raise a man's risk of testicular cancer, American research suggests.
The study of 369 men, published in the journal Cancer, found being a regular marijuana user doubled the risk compared to those who never smoked it.
The results suggest that it may be linked to the most aggressive form of the cancer.
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said that no previous studies had found a link between marijuana and the disease.


Testicular cancer is one of the most common cancers in younger men, with approximately 2,000 new cases each year in the UK.
Incidence in Europe and North America is far higher than in some other parts of the world, and has been rising steadily for no apparent reason.
Known risk factors for the cancer include previous injuries to the testicles, a family history of the disease, or suffering from undescended testicles as a young child.
The study from scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle is the first to look specifically at marijuana use in relation to the disease.
They studied 369 men aged 18 to 44, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, and quizzed them about marijuana use.
Their replies were compared to those from almost 1,000 apparently healthy control subjects.
Even after adjusting the figures to take account of the other known risk factors, marijuana use remained a clear risk factor for testicular cancer.
Just being a marijuana smoker seemed to carry a 70% extra risk, while those who smoked it regularly, or had smoked from an early age, had twice the risk compared to those who had never smoked it.
A connection was made to nonseminoma, a fast-growing form of testicular cancer which accounts for approximately 40% of all cases, and tends to strike younger.
Puberty chance
Dr Janet Daling, one of the authors, said that puberty might be a "window of opportunity" during which boys were more vulnerable to environmental factors such as the chemicals in marijuana.


"This is consistent with the study's findings that the elevated risk of nonseminoma-type testicular cancer in particular was associated with marijuana use prior to 18," she said. Another research, Dr Stephen Schwartz, said: "What young men should know is first, we know very little about the long-term health consequences of marijuana smoking, especially heavy marijuana smoking, and second, our study provides some evidence that testicular cancer could be one adverse consequence."
The next step, he said, would be to look more closely at cells in the testicles to see if any of them had receptors set up to respond to cannabis chemicals.
Henry Scowcroft, from Cancer Research UK, said: "As the researchers themselves point out, this is the first inkling that there is any association between chronic marijuana use and testicular cancer.
"But the researchers only interviewed a relatively small number of men.
"So before we can reach any firm conclusions about whether this is a cause-and-effect relationship, rather than a statistical blip, the result needs to be replicated in a much larger study."








But again the funny thing with statistics, your risk of getting testicular cancer is pretty damn low to begin with.

 

Eh who wants kids anyway

 

i dont want kids, but i am very fond of my nuts.

in my calculations, the ammounts of pot i smoke, and the incredible ammounts of jacking off i do, it should even itself out...

 

jerkin off is for prostate cancer

 

fuck this 369 men study. i'm telling you fuck this fear propaganda. fuck it.

 

369.. out of millions and millions of marijuana smokers

 

zactly

 

Hence why it's a correlation, not a fact, but you can't ignore the numbers just because you don't like them, we don't have to care about them, but you can't ignore them.

 

i care enough to fuck the numbers because it's a cheap way of influence.

a guy on digg said a poll is not a study.

 

But is there proof to it or does someone saying it's a poll make it better, but it doesn't matter, because a poll is a study. That's how most of this is done, they're not looking at the biological reasons of why, they're trying to make a correlation. Just like like the massive long term study that came out 3-4 years ago that showed smoking pot showed to have no link to lung cancer and may actually help prevent it, there was no giant biological study, it was just watching the habits of people for years.

 

hmm...do you think using a vaporizer would still bring about the same numbers?
it might be some of the other cannabinoids in marijuana other than thc which raises the number. Just a thought.

Also can anyone tell me if cervical cancer is related to testicular cancer?

 

Nah, both sexual organs(well kind of for the clit) but they develop from totally seperate parts in the womb, testicles are related to ovaries. But either way all these cancers are extremely(well entirely) gender/hormonal based so the risk of cancer that is normally passed on in families is substantially less then it would be if it was something like lung or skin cancer which just fucks men and women over equally

 

alright thanks, just making sure. No real history of cancer in my family but my mum is recovering from cervical cancer.
Fuck, getting testicular cancer to me is worse than other cancers..well same goes for any guy i guess

 

^^^ I think this is the biggest singular truth to take from all this. ^^^

 

Perhaps... or they want YOU to make the correlation in order to soften popular support for marijuana decriminalization. I question the timing of all this amid law changes taking place.

 

Oh man I'm sorry to hear that.

Testicular cancer though is actually normally one of the easiest ones to treat. But there is the risk of losing a ball, and that would look extremely odd. God I thought I had it once, turned out to just be a cyst, never been so happy to have a cyst.

Well that might be true, but you have to give a respect cancer research center the benefit of the doubt they're not. I mean is there an ulterior motive any time a report that's positive on weed comes out.

 

if every guy that got cancer of the nads also jerked off..maybe thats the reason..or maybe every guy in the study ate corn flakes..maybe corn flakes make your nuts falloff [i truly fucking hope not]dont believe every thing you read

 

Opinion time... take with grain of salt...

There isn't a study done- health or otherwise- that doesn't have an ulterior motive. Markets are being cultivated to make new medicines more profitable. I'd be willing to bet anything (except perhaps my non-cancerous nuts) that a more compelling link could be made between consumption of dairy and cardiovascular disease & cholesterol problems but because the dairy industry is an established revenue generator and political lobby such studies are not (often) done and if they were the results would be suppressed.

I imagine that there may be a statistical correlation between pot smoking and testicular cancer but would wager that the base incidence is low enough that even weed induced cases are extraordinarily rare among pot smokers.

I do have to wonder now about Lance Armstrong- having survived this whether he practiced a slightly different kind of "doping".

Bad joke, I know.

**edit**
I realize I set myself up to be verbally skewered by insinuating that no studies have been done drawing parallels between dairy and heart disease.

Being effectively an admission that marijuana use hasn't been looked at scientifically, this seems to contradict a fundamental point made in anti drug propaganda looking to create parallels with its use and a host of social and medical ills. Taking a position that weed is completely without adverse effects is very dangerous though and has no place in a frank, open discussion about marijuana use- and neither do scare tactics bent on creating phobias in the minds of the the segment of the population likely deemed most likely to smoke weed.

Your point is well taken however.

 

Did you really just make this metaphor? Like really? Reaaallllllllly?

Jesus someone please post an epic fail picture


Also in terms of jerking off, it has been to shown to lower the risk of prostate cancer.



But also keep in mind as the article said, it's not just a link to testicular cancer itself, it's the fact it's the cancer and the fact the most aggressive form of it it has been linked to.

 

I'll take my chances. I'd rather get this incredibly rare testicular cancer than multiple sclerosis, which my area happens to have a lot of (and cannabis helps prevent.)

I do doubt the study. I'm not saying it's 100% false or anything, but there are so many other things it could be and so many things that we could be missing (and the number so small) that I'm not even going take this particular finding into regard until a more sound body of evidence it built.