Lin Qingshun (Professor, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine) There are a lot of health rumors on the Internet, especially the diet with cancer-causing doubts is the most concerned (or the products with anti-cancer effects), so it is also the most widely circulated. In my personal website "Scientific Health Care" alone, there are more than 100 rumors related to cancer. The following article is selected from the most classic ones, namely, Nine-story Tower and Hot Drink. Of course, there will be more readers who care about this topic in the future, and they can also visit my website regularly. It is a rumor that the nine-story tower causes cancer. Since June 2006, an online article that the nine-story tower can cause liver cancer has begun to spread. The following is the result I traced. The English name of the Nine-story Tower is Basil, and the scientific name is Ocimum basilicum. With the scientific name, relevant medical materials can be searched in the public medical library. If you add the keyword Cancer, you can search for information related to cancer. At present, only five medical papers are engaged in the research on the relationship between the nine-story pagoda and cancer. However, their experiment is to see whether the extract of the nine-story tower can inhibit the growth of cancer cells in Petri dishes. More importantly, they come to the conclusion that the nine-story tower seems to have anti-cancer effect. Then, why do online articles say that the nine-story tower will cause cancer? The following three points are copied from this online rumor: "There is an ingredient in the nine-story tower called Eugenol (English translation of eugenol powder, a chemical used in dentistry to treat toothache), which has been proved to cause liver cancer. Eugenol's Chinese name is "safrole". To know that this toxin will accumulate in the body, the cancer index of Chinese people is rising year by year, which is related to the food they eat. This article first says that Eugenol's translation is clove powder, and then it is safrole (the bull's head is not the horse's mouth, which is a typical online rumor). However, in fact, these two translations are both wrong. Eugenol's correct translation is eugenol or eugenol (this phenol is not the other powder). Anyway, is eugenol really proved to cause liver cancer? Use the keywords Eugenol and Cancer to search in the public medical library, and you will find 220 papers. However, after reading a few articles, it will be found that the real concern is not eugenol, but Methyl-Eugenol. From a document published by the World Health Organization in 20 13, it can be seen that the so-called carcinogen from the nine-story tower is methyl eugenol, not eugenol. More importantly, the carcinogenicity of methyl eugenol was tested in mice with a high dose of several hundred times the usual intake. I think, unless someone eats the nine-story pagoda as a green vegetable every day, it is really not easy to eat it and cause cancer. Also, the online article that "this toxin will accumulate in the body" is not correct. In fact, the intake of methyl eugenol will soon be excreted from the urine, and there is no accumulation. Therefore, the "confirmation" mentioned in online articles will lead to liver cancer, but it is completely proved by me to be nonsense. 20/kloc-June, 2006, both Chinese and English media talked loudly about the cancer caused by hot drinks, which were reprinted crazily on Facebook, and the wailing came and went. But how many people saw the original? Not to mention, how many people can understand that. The original was published in Lancet Oncology, which is a medical journal with great weight, but it is not a research report, but is positioned as "news". The authors who signed the news were ten experts who released the news on behalf of a "working group" composed of 23 scientists invited by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The task of the working group is to evaluate the carcinogenicity of coffee, Mate (a popular drink in South America) and "very hot drinks". The conclusion of the evaluation is that coffee and Madai tea are not carcinogenic in themselves. However, if you drink it at high temperature, it may be carcinogenic. Here, the cancer referred to by "carcinogenicity" is only esophageal cancer. The judgment of "possible carcinogenicity" is based on "limited evidence". Limited evidence comes from two aspects: human investigation and animal experiments. The human survey asks: Do you drink hot, warm or cold? In other words, there is no real temperature data. In fact, if you are asked, "What's the temperature of your tea?", can you answer it? So, what about animal experiments? There are two reports, one is to fill rats with 65-degree water, and the other is to fill rats with 70-degree water, both of which contain carcinogenic chemicals. In other words, both studies are testing whether high temperature will promote carcinogenicity of carcinogens. Excuse me, are carcinogens added to the hot water, tea or coffee you drink? Unfortunately, the news media and the internet have almost all become "drinks above 65 degrees will cause cancer." Also, please note that the two animal experiments used pipes to pour hot water directly into the esophagus of mice. Excuse me, is this how you drink hot drinks? These two experiments completely ignore that when we drink hot drinks, it is through the judgment of lips and mouth that we decide whether to let the drinks enter the esophagus. If it is too hot, we will instinctively spit out the drink. In other words, it is impossible for drinks above 65 degrees to enter our esophagus. Therefore, the so-called evidence, first, there is no temperature data in human surveys. Second, animal experiments do not conform to human conditions at all. This kind of news is good for reference, so there is no need to make a fuss. References: 20 16 years, original paper on carcinogenicity of drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages [source] 20 16 years, experiment on carcinogenicity of hot drinks in mice, Recurrent acute thermal diseases inducements neurophagical hyperproliferative premalignant diseases in mice neurophagus. [Source] In 2003, hot drinking caused cancer in rats, Promotion effects of hot water on n-nitrosomatylbenzilamine-induced esophageal tumorigenesis in F344 rats. [Source] This article is taken from Pseudoscience at the Table/Lin Qingshun (Professor, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine)/One Heart Culture.