Research causes Cancer in rats.

I read the other day that :
"Pint of beer raises cancer risk by fifth, says expert"
The expert - is someone from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). A highly reputable body, I'm sure.

Now what does that mean? it sounds bad - like that's going to increase my chances of getting cancer by 20% right? So that's from what, 80% to 100% or something? How can I (as a beer producer) live with myself? It turns out that they're talking about bowel and liver cancer. I'm mainly interested in bowel cancer (I have my reasons) so let's try to figure out what my odds of getting such a thing are. According to these guys, as a man I have something like a 1 in 18 chance of being diagnosed with colorectal cancer at some point in my lifetime. I'm not saying that's trivial - it's vastly higher than my lifetime chance of winning the UK National lottery jackpot so I should really be taking it more seriously than that (and yet oddly, the BBC don't have a big 50 minute primetime show about bowel cancer - go figure).

Anyhoo -raising my risk of colorectal cancer by a fifth is like saying I have a risk of 1.2 in 18 (am I right?) or about 1 in 15.

If you're interested in the WCRF, you might like to note that in the summer they said that sausages are even worse than beer.