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A study published on Monday by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center claims that marijuana use may increase the risk of getting testicular cancer. As you can imagine, we at the MJO were not too pleased to see headlines such as: "Could smoking pot raise testicular cancer risk?," "Marijuana linked to higher rate of testicular cancer," and "Okay guys if you value your balls drop that joint." After a brief but thorough investigation, it appears to us that even if the research is accurate, the actual risk of smoking marijuana causing testicular cancer is minimal at most.
The Fred Hutchinson study's central thesis is that usage of marijuana increases the risk of getting nonseminoma, a testicular malignancy that tends to strike men between the ages of 20 and 35 and accounts for about 40% of all testicular-cancer cases. The researchers decided to explore a possible link between marijuana and testicular cancer when they noticed that since the 1950s, the incidence of the two main subtypes of testicular cancer, nonseminoma and seminoma has increased by 3% to 6% per year in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand while the use of marijuana in these places has also risen accordingly.
For the population-based, case-control study 369 Seattle-Puget Sound-area men, ages 18 to 44, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer were interviewed about their history of marijuana use. For comparison the researchers also assessed marijuana use among 979 randomly selected age- and geography-matched healthy controls. In order to statistically control for other factors participants were asked about their smoking, alcohol consumption, and their family history of testicular cancer. From their results, marijuana use emerged as a significant, independent risk factor for testicular cancer.
So, you ask, where's the rub? Well, there does not seem any obvious reason to doubt Fred Hutchinson's numbers. They may be wrong, but we have no way of knowing that without doing the research ourselves. Rather, the problem is that, even if the numbers are right, they are meaningless because they are statistically insignificant. The study itself tells you that only 1% of American men get testicular cancer a year, but what it does not tell you is that only 1 out of 100,000 men get nonseminoma, the particular type of testicular cancer they are trying to tie marijuana use to. Moreover, while they are correct that the incidences of nonseminoma and seminoma together has risen 3% to 6% a year, from 1973 to 1978, nonseminona rates themselves only rose 24% whereas seminoma rates have increased a whopping 64%. Thus, the association between the rise in testicular cancer and marijuana use is tenuous at best.
That said, we won't blame you for taking the word of scientific medical research over the musings of a marijuana-centered blog. We feel the same way and even though we, like you, know that marijuana has often been speciously connected to some malady or the other, it is still very unsettling to see the words "marijuana" and "cancer" linked together in so many headlines. Thus, it was nice to be reminded of an older marijuana/cancer connection: "Study: Marijuana Appears to Slow Cancer Growth in Laboratory Setting."
For the population-based, case-control study 369 Seattle-Puget Sound-area men, ages 18 to 44, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer were interviewed about their history of marijuana use. For comparison the researchers also assessed marijuana use among 979 randomly selected age- and geography-matched healthy controls. In order to statistically control for other factors participants were asked about their smoking, alcohol consumption, and their family history of testicular cancer. From their results, marijuana use emerged as a significant, independent risk factor for testicular cancer.
So, you ask, where's the rub? Well, there does not seem any obvious reason to doubt Fred Hutchinson's numbers. They may be wrong, but we have no way of knowing that without doing the research ourselves. Rather, the problem is that, even if the numbers are right, they are meaningless because they are statistically insignificant. The study itself tells you that only 1% of American men get testicular cancer a year, but what it does not tell you is that only 1 out of 100,000 men get nonseminoma, the particular type of testicular cancer they are trying to tie marijuana use to. Moreover, while they are correct that the incidences of nonseminoma and seminoma together has risen 3% to 6% a year, from 1973 to 1978, nonseminona rates themselves only rose 24% whereas seminoma rates have increased a whopping 64%. Thus, the association between the rise in testicular cancer and marijuana use is tenuous at best.
That said, we won't blame you for taking the word of scientific medical research over the musings of a marijuana-centered blog. We feel the same way and even though we, like you, know that marijuana has often been speciously connected to some malady or the other, it is still very unsettling to see the words "marijuana" and "cancer" linked together in so many headlines. Thus, it was nice to be reminded of an older marijuana/cancer connection: "Study: Marijuana Appears to Slow Cancer Growth in Laboratory Setting."
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