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pw 7oN 1®0033071 I MIOBI,D-TEIMRANI AnD Svrr Nev York, New York July 7, 1964 Statisfics Relate Drinking, Cancer By DELOS 8.3flTA nnlN6 Pryl, t0gasa110fW Statlstlcal sclence now has added heavy drinking to cigar• et smoking as a possible cause of cancer. The conclusion was In part reachei through rom• paring sex ratios ln a for• midable statlrtical baxe, that /a. almost fi3.A00 cancer cases. U men and women were truly equal In all rPspecta you would expect cancer to attack those organs they have in com• mon in more or less equal pro• portions. It Is well known In cancer science that males have more cancers In those organs than do females. But the ttew statistics turned up astor4htng difterences. For' the main part of the ttroat, there were 29 male ctmaers for aach female cancer. For the vonee-box alone (the latynx), the proportion was 27.4 to L For the food tube (the eso• phagus) It was 16.6 to 1. The statisticians then fig• ured in the personal habits of all these people with cancers. They found a"very atrong re. lationship" between cancers of the throat and voloe box with both heavy smoking and heavy drinking. By and large, the men had these habits and the wonen didn't. For esophagus cancer the • relationship with smoking was merel,y "stron;" whereas It was'verv stront•' with drtnk- ittg. That was plaualble aa• atomlcatly. but .atrong•, and tbnat Cancer Hoapitals b~ "very sttrong." relationships tweert 1943 and 1B8Q, The team with cancers of the tongue and was led by Rotten Flamant. af the mouth In general were not plausible statistically. That was so because of drastic drops in the sex tatlos. For each female tongue can• cer there were only 9.3 male ones; for each female mouth cancer, there were 9.8 ma1e. Since these organs can have as much contact with smoke and/ or strong drink as the thnoat and larynx, one would expect the sex ratio to be slmAar. And the ratios becattte slm- ilar when the etatlsUtiene broke tongue and mouth Can• cera down into sub.eites. For the floor of the mouth, where both smoke and drink linger, the ratio was 24.5 male to I female; for the bose of the tongue, where exposure Is at themaxfmu,n,itwas13.9to1. For the middle portion of the esophagus It was 20.4 to 1. The etataurch was s telling organ for comparisons. Taken aa a whole, the sex ratio of etomach Mttoera was a mere 2.8 to 1, whtch Is not slatlip ticcallp adPidoattt. But wRtyt only cattcera of that portion of the stomach vehldt eoaneft with the eaopMgus were corn• pmd, the ratio attntped to 8 to 1, whlch ls sfgniticaut. The stu was teported to the Jo of the Natimoal Canter Inatitute. 8ethesda, Md., by a team of staUetidaaa cf the Ftenok National W glene Institute of Parls. The statistical base was formed by patients of the French Na- -