Eating two portions of fish a week linked to skin cancer, study suggests

We have been told more or less forever that fish is good for us so this is amusing

Often lauded as a superfood, fish has its clear nutritional benefits, providing the body with vital fatty acids and vitamins.

However, too much fish could well be a bad thing. According to a new study, eating two portions per week – as recommended by the NHS – has been linked to an increased risk of skin cancer, the most deadly of its kind.

In the new research, experts from Brown University found that people whose typical daily intake of fish was 42.8g (equivalent to about 300g per week) had a 22 per cent higher risk of malignant melanoma than those whose typical daily fish intake was just 3.2g.

Those eating more fish also had a 28 per cent increased risk of developing abnormal cells in the outer layer of the skin only – known as stage 0 melanoma or melanoma in situ (also sometimes referred to as pre-cancer).

The findings were based on a study of 491,367 US adults and published in the journal Cancer Causes & Control.

Author Eunyoung Cho said the research has “identified an association that requires further investigation.

“We speculate that our findings could possibly be attributed to contaminants in fish, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, arsenic and mercury.”

Other experts said fish was an important healthy food and there was no need to stop eating it.

Dr Duane Mellor, senior lecturer at Aston Medical School, said: “The authors suggest that there could be a link between contaminants in the fish which could increase risk of cancer, but this is likely to affect the risk of more than just skin cancers.

“This study does not have a clear mechanism of how fish intake could increase risk of melanoma – there is no clear evidence that eating fish can lead to an increased risk of developing skin cancer.

“It is important to remember eating two portions of fish per week ... can be a way of including important nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids as part of a healthy diet and this study should not discourage people from including fish as part of a healthy diet.”

Those in the study were aged 62 years on average and reported how often they ate fried fish, non-fried fish, and tuna during the previous year as well as their portion sizes.

The researchers then calculated the frequency of new melanoma cases that developed over 15 years using data obtained from cancer registries.

They took into account factors that could influence the results, such as people’s weight, whether they smoked or drank alcohol, diet, family history of cancer and average UV radiation levels in their local area (to take account of exposure to the sun – a known risk factor for skin cancer).

Overall, 5,034 people (1 per cent) developed malignant melanoma during the study period and 3,284 (0.7 per cent) developed stage 0 melanoma. A breakdown of the results showed that total fish intake was linked to higher risks.

Meanwhile, people whose typical daily tuna intake was 14.2g had a 20 per cent higher risk of malignant melanoma compared with those with a typical intake of 0.3g.

Eating 17.8g of non-fried fish per day was associated with an 18 per cent higher risk of malignant melanoma and a 25 per cent higher risk of stage 0 melanoma, compared with eating just 0.3g.

However, no significant link was found between eating fried fish and skin cancer.

Also, average daily fish intake was calculated at the beginning of the study and may not represent how much people eat over the course of their lives.

Dr Michael Jones, senior staff scientist in genetics and epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “The authors found a higher intake of non-fried fish and tuna was associated with melanoma. These results were statistically significant and therefore unlikely due to chance.

“It is possible people who intake more non-fried fish or tuna have other lifestyle habits that increase their risk of melanoma. The authors considered this and adjusted for some potentially confounding factors.

“However, as the authors acknowledge, this is an observational study (not a randomised trial) and it is possible there are (known and unknown) factors that the authors did not adjust for, or adjust for sufficiently.

“The authors speculate that the association may be possibly due to contaminants in fish, but they did not measure levels of these contaminants in the participants.

“A general healthy balanced diet should include fish and the results from this study do not change that recommendation.”

https://au.yahoo.com/news/eating-two-portions-fish-week-231712938.html

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Locking up some criminals actually can save them — despite what soft-on-crime pols say

For all the patronizing attitude toward New York’s low-level criminals on the part of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his supporters — that thieves and burglars bear no responsibility for their own behavior because they “need help” — not all criminals are mentally ill or irrational in the choices they make.

Exhibit A is Isaac Rodriguez, The Post’s “Man of Steal.” Like most of us, Rodriguez, 23, is a mostly rational person: When the reward or punishment for his behavior changes, he’ll change his behavior accordingly.

Last year, police arrested Rodriguez 46 times for shoplifting, including 37 times at a Jackson Heights Walgreens. Was Rodriguez newly destitute because he lost his job in the pandemic and desperate for bread?

Nope: As he forthrightly notes, shoplifting was his job. He stole high-value goods to resell, to feed his drug habit.

Now, he’s finally at Rikers, serving a sentence until the end of the year for shoplifting at a different drugstore that had taken out a restraining order against him. And Rodriguez is OK with that. He told The Post that “I would’ve died sooner or later” if he “was still out there.”

A reasonable prediction, considering that New York City suffered 1,233 overdoses during the first two quarters of last year (the latest data available), up 80% from pre-pandemic levels and the highest number on record.

Now, Rodriguez wants to get his GED and progress from there. Good for him, and good luck to him — and let’s hope the city does give him the help he needs to achieve this goal.

But how did Rodriguez change his attitude? The carrot may work for some people — but many of us also need the stick. Rodriguez stole, over and over again, because he perceived — correctly — that there was no punishment for such behavior.

Now that he does face such a punishment, he wants to change that behavior so that he doesn’t face such punishment again. With the cycle he got himself into now broken — doing the immediate “work” of stealing for the immediate “reward” of getting high — he wants to think longer term.

What broke the cycle? Not an “alternative to incarceration.” Incarceration.

Look at the ’90s

Indeed, what many people miss about the early-1990s “tough on crime” era in New York City is that it wasn’t an era of mass incarceration. Between 1990 and 2019, the population held at Rikers Island fell from 22,000 on an average day to 7,000. Though the declines started later, the trend is similar at the state-prison level.

This wasn’t because New York had gone soft on crime. It was because people were committing less crime, from shoplifting to car theft to murder.

Why would they do that? It wasn’t because we started making better people or that the drug trade hasn’t long offered an easy temptation above an entry-level minimum-wage job. It was because people knew that pursuing a career of crime wasn’t a rational decision: They would get in trouble.

Incarceration skyrocketed, by contrast, in the ’70s and ’80s. People could get away with lots of low-level crime — until they did something really bad and went to jail and then prison for a long time. This trend is reviving itself, as both crime and the number of people in jail rise again.

Based on what Rodriguez says, it’s a good thing he stole stuff in Queens rather than in Manhattan. As Manhattan DA Bragg has put it, people who commit crime to feed addictions should be afforded “repeated opportunities” to avoid jail because “relapses are part of the road to recovery.”

So is dying. These second — and third, fourth and 46th — chances run out on the street, as the OD rate shows. As Rodriguez told The Post, “This is a blessing in disguise.”

https://nypost.com/2022/06/07/locking-up-some-nyc-criminals-actually-can-save-them/

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U.S. Senate gets ‘Dazed and Confused’ on guns

By Rick Manning

You just cannot make this stuff up. The very politicians who demanded that police be defunded and supported prosecutors who don’t prosecute criminals are pushing their agenda to ban law-abiding citizens from having guns.

And some GOP politicians are now meeting with the blame America first crowd to discuss what “reasonable” gun laws they can enact.

It is enough to make me sick.

But it is the natural result of the Mitch McConnell philosophy to avoid any tough issues so he can squeak by with a 51-vote majority in the Senate in 2023, all with the promise that they can’t do anything positive until the White House is won and occupied on January 20, 2025.

I am a life-long Republican. My family handed out Barry Goldwater for President rulers (gold colored we want a President, not a ruler) to trick or treaters for Halloween in 1964. I was the head of the University of Southern California College Republicans and the Executive Vice President of the California College Republicans.

After running or being campaign and consulting staffs for political campaigns supporting conservative causes like ending the California state inheritance and gift tax and the No on 15 campaign which stopped a statewide handgun ban, I became a state lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Unfortunately, time and again, when the going got tough, GOP legislators looked for ways to be “reasonable”. You got bullet bans, background checks, one gun a month sales, restrictions on individual transactions, and guess what, the left wasn’t satiated.

I became an NRA lobbyist right after a small Chicago suburb, Morton Grove, passed a handgun ban, and the slogan instilled in our then-young lobbying team by NRA Executive Vice President Harlon Carter was “Morton Grove, Never Again.”

So, today years later, we have actor and erstwhile politician Matthew McConaughey wandering the Senate halls urging “reasonable” gun laws. His idea of reasonable is to not allow the same kid we send off to war to be able to buy a rifle at home. His idea of reasonable is to empower police to break into someone’s home to confiscate their firearms due to a random call saying something might be amiss (and good luck getting your guns back once they have been stolen.)

The “Dazed and Confused” actor cannot be faulted for not understanding that the simple act of smoking a joint can get the cops called to storm your castle to find guns. Based upon his personal history, I’m certain that isn’t something he intends.

He cannot be faulted for not realizing that a spousal claim of abuse would be justification for having SWAT teams raging through your home at the break of dawn in search of firearms. Anyone paying attention to the Johnny Depp trial this past week can understand the damage done by false accusations. For someone without the financial means and Hollywood glint in their eye that both Depp and McConaughey possess, good luck getting your stolen property or reputation back.

What he and those politicians who are sworn to uphold the Constitution cannot be excused for is not recognizing that these types of search and seizure raids effectively end the primary concept of our criminal justice system that an American is innocent until proven guilty.

The failures of the Uvalde police and the school resources officer to do their jobs will be litigated in court. The failure of the cower in place hoping, praying active shooter policy predicated on the lie that help is on the way needs to be fully examined. The human instinct of fight or flight exists for a reason, yet we train people to stay and pray with disastrous consequences time after time.

Somewhat obviously, if school buildings were properly secured and willing teachers and school staff were empowered, equipped and trained to fight, our nation’s children would not be sitting ducks.

No one can see what happened in Uvalde and Buffalo and not be affected.

But rather than cower and stay, or just “do something,” isn’t it time for honest members of Congress to be smart and consider real alternatives that get to the root cause of the evil that drives these attacks, rather than acting upon the knee-jerk irresponsible actions demanded by the media?

Somehow, I don’t think this is too much to ask. Even for those politicians who would cower than stand up for individual liberty.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/06/u-s-senate-gets-dazed-and-confused-on-guns/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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