Monday 26 January 2009

Coffee Gives Your Children Cancer


Coffee gives your children cancer, doctors didn't say today after not carrying out exhaustive research into the link that doesn't exist between caffeine and babies.

The dire warning, as yet unsupported by evidence and based on research that is yet to take place, will come as a shock to the millions of pregnant mothers gagging for a pick me up after a morning's vomiting and coal eating.

Researcher Dr Marcus Cooke of Leicester University said there was a ‘good likelihood’ the study would make a connection but pointed out that it he hadn't actually started any research whatsoever yet. Experts recommended that pregnant women should begin getting scared straight away in preparation for the results and stop their caffeine intake immediately, lest they spawn little cancer babies covered in pustulous tumours.

The unfounded but entirely cromulent 'caffeinogenic' link is based on previous research suggesting that caffeine damages DNA, cutting cells' ability to fend off radioactive cancer rays such as cosmic winds and microwave ovens. Such cell embaddening symptoms have been recorded in children with Leukaemia, which is a cancer. The formula (caffeine+DNA) x babies=cancer clearly illustates just how dangerous coffee, or indeed tea, can be if used during pregnancy.

Dr Cooke added definitively: 'Although there’s no evidence at all of a link between caffeine and cancer, we’re putting two and two together...The idea seems plausible'.

An insider said: 'It would be best for expecting mothers, who are doubtless already quite paranoid about the possibility of any one of a number of actual complications, to take this speculative conclusion very seriously indeed and keep buying The Daily Mail which will almost certainly reveal the cure for cancer any day now'.

7 comments:

  1. Exactly!

    In other news:

    Everything's Fine: Fear It, Fear It.

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  2. Don't forget that it's also recently been proven that having sex gives you cancer if you're under 40:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1128303/Active-sex-life-cuts-prostate-cancer-risk--youre-fifty.html

    And don't think you can get away with it by just having some oral fun, because you'll die from that too:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-453843/Oral-sex-cause-throat-cancer.html

    But! Never fear. You can always pop onto a sunbed to reduce your cancer risk:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1127175/Top-cancer-doctor-says-SHOULD-sunbed-session.html

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  3. To be slightly fair to Dr Cooke (a man who is obviously so fucking pig ignorant of the real world that he's unaware what effect announcing such a study and making such staements will have and who has prejudged his results so is probably an even worse scientist than I was), there is a well-established and quantified link between the amount of DNA damage caused by something and likelihood of that resulting in mutations.
    DNA repair enzymes don't have 100% fidelity, so any breakage leaves the possibility of an error being introduced during the repair.
    Occupational toxicologists use this to assess the likelihood of chemicals being carcinogenic (during my toxicology MSc about a decade ago I studied CrCl6, a common chemical used in the tanning industry).
    For the preliminary caffeine studies there was probably some in vitro work using the Comet Assay which showed that caffeine causes breakages in DNA in sufficient quantities.
    The question is, does caffenie readily reach the nucleus of many rapidly replicating cells? Probably not, and almost certainly not in high enough concentrations to be anything other than a theoretical risk.

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  4. "embaddening"? - Do you read Phil Plait?

    "The Daily Mail which will almost certainly reveal the cure for cancer any day now."

    Of course - and that cure will be ... COFFEE!

    (Captcha: troinc - the sound my brain regularly makes when reading the about the Daily Hate.)

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  5. Good stuff :)
    Surprised you haven't yet published a response to today's Daily Mail headline about a set of grandparents being told that they are not fit to look after theor grandchildren. Although thats not what its REALLY about. According to the daily Mail the real issue is that these children are to be adopted by... *shock, horror*...a gay couple. They are not happy.
    And if you really want to make yourself so angry that you feel the urge to chuck your computer out of the window, then you can read the views of Melanie Phillips.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1130289/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-To-place-children-gay-men-adoptive-mother-father-available-just-uphold-brutal-dogma-sickening-assault-family-life.html

    possibly the most blatant, published homophobia i have read in a long time. Good old MP

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  6. as above^^plus the story about how the 'amoral' internet has created 'generaton sex!' (jan 28th)
    scary...

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  7. The 'GAYS STOLE OUR KIDS' story and 'YOUR KIDS ARE ALL SHAGGING EACH OTHER' are on my to do list.

    ReplyDelete