I read this yesterday, and it feels like part of the problem (ignoring the fact that J&J doesn't care about people) was that none of the J&J executives could get past the "but it's just talc!" issue either. I feel like if this had been, I don't know, antihistamines with some studies inconclusively pointing to elevated cancer risk they might have actually acted earlier.
The linked article says "long-term perineal talc use increases the risk of ovarian cancer by about 33 percent," not "triples." Towards the end it says a 1 in 53 risk versus 1 in 70.
Still a terrible attempt to hide a known risk, regardless.
They've taken it off all the shelves in stores in Arrakis on the basis of that.
Huh. Somehow the "triples" was in my head.
Arrakis is hot and humid, so maybe the whole place counts as a nether region.
Another thing I suppose we can thank Our Bodies, Ourselves for. Our nethers are just fine, thanks!
I thought baby powder had been all cornstarch for ages because of this. Also, I never quite understood what the function was of baby powder at all. Possibly if I'd ever used it, it would have been clear to me.
4: It's okay. Everybody knows girls are bad at math.
8: If you're moving around in wet undergarments for very long at all you can get some serious chafing that gets very uncomfortable fast. Babies do this, obviously, as do adults who e.g. get very sweaty when exercising or are hiking out in heavy rain. Baby powder goes a long way toward minimizing this.
I feel weirdly certain that I've written a comment substantially identical to 11 on this blog at some point in the past.
Anyway, I know several men whose partners made them stop using baby powder because of the cancer thing.
It's probably not a good substitute for KY.
Does corn starch work as a drying agent? I mostly use it to make custard.
KY is probably an even worse substitute for corn starch.
KY is certainly not recommended for making custard.
I wouldn't recommend custard on the perineum either.
You people are so anal about your recipes.
And I think corn starch tends to facilitate yeast infections.
what about rye flour? i've got a big bag of it.
21. Commonly used in sourdough starters. Probably not a good idea.
Good news! You can use alum instead of talc.
Alum has been a standard virginity restorer in cultures that require such things for ever.
22. that's what i use mine for.
but it would be nice to have another use for it.
maybe a tangy, tart crotch will be the crotch of the 2020s.
Well, there's no pictures of genitalia or anything. But you may or may not want vaginal-tightening.com in your IP history.
2: That kind of stat from, I'm assuming, a retrospective study really does not seem like something you should be able to sue on. It sounds like the kind of thing you see from all those nutritional studies that contradict each other.
24: I did not know that. Before today, actually, 100% of my knowledge about alum came from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
You didn't pay much attention to the subtext then.
Yeah, if you told me that some food had a RR = 1.33 of cancer in some studies, I would be highly skeptical.
For instance, RR for smoking and lung cancer is 30-100. RR for BRCA and breast cancer is 6-8, and for BRCA and ovarian cancer is 5-30. RR=1.33 is pretty small.
Other things that have RR = 1.2-1.9 for breast cancer:
drinking 2 drinks a day
Being above the 80th percentile in BMI
Early menarche
Late menopause
Not having kids or having kids after age 30
Hormone replacement therapy.
Not to be all Fisking on your ass, but shouldn't the OP be edited? You know, so as not to mislead our countless readers who never venture into the comments.
Anal Fisking isn't a known right factor.
I always thought that unless it interfered with me publishing something, an OR of less than 2 wasn't meaningful.
30: Apparently not. As a kid, I just figured alum was something way way sourer than lemons. And I suppose it just hasn't ever come up in conversation since.
I'm not even sure RR is the best measurement. If you take the 1 in 53 and 1 in 70 odds given above, you can calculate how much more often someone who used talc got cancer than someone who didn't. That turns out to be 1 in 218, or 0.46%.
Don't the Japanese use talc in rice and hasn't it been linked to higher incidence of stomach and intestinal cancer?
37: I was joking. I never hear of it before today either.
38: You could argue for other stats, but I think that one would get you beaten by an epidemiologist.
To be clear, I think people should be warned not to put talc near their gonads. There's evidence of a risk for no gain that I can see.
39: Not according to this study - which was the first hit on google, and therefore has to be true
Analysis of data from Japan and Hawaii offers no support for the hypothesis that the use of talc-coated rice increases the risk of developing stomach cancer. This conclusion is based on the observation that Japanese in Japan have very high rates of stomach cancer but consume no talc-coated rice, that Japanese in Hawaii have intermediate rates of stomach cancer but consume considerable amounts of talc-coated rice, and that Filipinos in Hawaii have very low rates of gastric cancer but consume the highest amounts of talc-coated rice of these three groups. Furthermore, secular trends in gastric cancer incidence show a much greater decrease in the incidence of this tumor among the exposed Japanese in Hawaii than among the unexposed Japanese in Japan.
I'm sure there are flaws, but if the chance of something bad happening is one in a trillion, and I suddenly increase it to one in a million, I don't really care that the RR is a million.
So you're now telling me that my friends have suffered from sweaty, chaffed scrotums for nothing?
You do if you work in public health for a population of 300,000,000.
Possibly. But definitely not as an individual risk decision.
45: No. It was a useful distraction from the hollowness of their lives.
49: Why am I insulting urple's friends? I am a horrible person!
It's less of a problem in cooler climates, north of the Moist-On Dicks line.
A little googling didn't do much to change my skepticism.
51: I can't decide if 51 is brilliant or awful, but I think it deserves some kind of recognition.
You could email the link to everybody in the office and ask them.
I can't easily edit at the moment. Sorry.
Also I think my OP title was nice.
So you're now telling me that my friends have suffered from sweaty, chaffed scrotums for nothing?
Goddammit, people. I was charging urple $5 a session.
You can use cornstarch in your hair as a dry shampoo, but it mainly works best if you have light hair, or don't mind looking like you have gray roots. I don't know about baby powder as dry shampoo. You could probably use it but maybe it increases your risk of scalp cancer if you use it.
Some people rub deodorant on their chaffing bits, but I don't know what the cancer risk of that is. I suppose if you pick a hippie deodorant that's not also an antiperspirant it would be ok.
I was in rehab for a month and they wouldn't allow deodorant because (?) some people would be crazy enough to lick it for a high. So we were given talcum powder to use instead. Surprisingly effective. Didn't try to lick it. And was only in for a month so no concern. Though I was thinking of using it again in the very hot and humid months where I live.
I was led to believe that the main reason for high stomach cancer rates among Japanese is that eating highly polished rice contributes to a fiber-poor diet. Bob probably knows.
"Not having kids or having kids after age 30"
You have tea and no tea.
I don't know what happened to my underwear yesterday- I have several pairs that are showing thinning in the crotch because I don't wear any special padded kind when I bike to work, but then yesterday I got to work and went to change into office clothes and the crotch had totally disintegrated- like, true completely crotchless underwear. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if they were that bad when I put them on in the morning, but I can't imagine that one additional bike ride would totally destroy them like that.
62
Maybe the baby powder caused chafing?
If it gets thin enough then once you get one rip the entire thing pretty much disintegrates? I don't know actually, but that makes sense to me - just the motion of biking can put weird stresses on clothing so I can see even a small tear being enough to make the whole thing fall apart over the course of a bike ride.
Is that why cyclists ride in greased-up lederhosen so often?
Somebody explained cycling shorts to me once and I think I've gotten the gist of it.
61
Talcum powder is known to contain between 1 and 4 microscopic space fleets per 100g.
Do your genitals have any sharp edges?
That's the punch line to my favorite inappropriate joke.
The fabric obviously just surrendered in the face of SP's massive balls. No mystery there.
Also I think my OP title was nice.
I think so too.
60: No-one really knows, though people have suggested a high-salt diet, nitrites used in pickling, higher H. pylori infection rates, and high levels of smoking (which would help explain the much higher rate among men than women).
How does cornstarch work as a dry shampoo? I mean, I use shampoo to clean my hair of, I suppose, the natural oils and creases.. If I put cornstarch in it, I feel I would just have hair that was not only greasy but full of cornstarch.
Don't use hair straighteners lightly, Ajay. The natural creases are part of who you are.
I think the idea is that the cornstarch absorbs the grease, and then you comb it out of your hair, taking the grease with it.
Free to live a life of religious fulfillment.
I had a roommate back in the day who used commercial dry shampoo because normal shampoo brought him out in a rash, and it worked exactly as LB describes. I have no idea what was in it.
Sounds like it would make a good deep fry batter.
79 for breastmilk mozzarella sticks
It sounds rather like the sort of thing an ancient Roman might do.
An entirely food-based hygiene regimen? Coconut oil pull for dental? Obvs olive oil with strigil, etc.