Nobody should be taking a daily aspirin to prevent cancer — even the “experts” agree

Do the math & stop the madness

I would shout, “Stop the madness!” But instead I’ll shout this: “Do the math!”

We’ve seen it a thousand times before. When researchers start making wild claims about drug benefits, a little number crunching usually takes all the steam out of their puffed up sales pitch.

Once again, aspirin is being touted as an inexpensive miracle cancer fighter. But there’s a second miracle! If you DO get cancer, then aspirin can keep it from spreading.

Well…according to the lead researcher, that’s what “seems” to happen.

And it’s all downhill from there. The problem is, I’m afraid there are many people who will believe this stuff and end up going downhill right along with it.

Pie in the sky

You may have heard about these three aspirin studies that hit the mainstream media like a feel-good double rainbow.

This is the kind of junk that TV news commentators love. They deliver the soundbite — “Aspirin cures cancer!” — then quickly move on, never looking too closely at the research behind their blather.

That’s why few, if any, of those commentators included this disclaimer from HealthDay News: “Latest findings don’t mean people should start popping aspirin every morning, experts stress.”

Experts would be stressing just the opposite if these were well-designed clinical trials. But each of the studies was a meta-analysis, so researchers analyzed a number of different trials to draw broad conclusions — NOT hard evidence.

To get an idea of what a long shot the cancer-preventive aspirin miracle is, we can look at a 2010 meta-analysis that was led by Oxford neurologist Dr. Peter M. Rothwell — the same researcher that led these three new studies.

Basically, the 2010 analysis was a forerunner of the new research. Eight aspirin trials were examined, with Rothwell and colleagues concluding that aspirin reduced cancer deaths and benefits increased the longer aspirin was used.

In this case, a website called “Prescribing Advice for GPs” crunched Rothwell’s numbers and found that if 1,000 people took a daily aspirin for five years, about six or seven lives might be saved from cancer death.

Now, those seven lives are important, no doubt. But you’ve got hundreds of people getting no benefit at all, while increasing their risk of gastrointestinal bleeding and potentially fatal hemorrhage.

And that’s why every aspirin study we’ll ever see will always include experts who will warn us not to start popping aspirin every morning.

I just hope that most of the people who heard about these new studies also got the message that this new aspirin miracle is strictly pie in the sky.

Sources: 

“More Evidence Shows That Daily Aspirin Might Combat Cancer” HealthDay News, 3/20/12, nlm.nih.gov

“Effect of daily aspirin on long-term risk of death due to cancer: analysis of individual patient data from randomised trials” The Lancet, Published online 12/7/10, thelancet.com

“Aspirin for cancer prevention?” Prescribing Advice for GPs, 12/20/10, prescriber.org.uk