Air Force fighter pilots face an increased risk of testicular and prostate cancers

[NutLoose]

Bad news :(




Air Force fighter pilots face an increased risk of testicular and prostate cancers, though the exact reason why can not be determined.
The Department of the Air Force published a massive study with nearly 450,000 participants in May, finding the fighter pilots and weapons systems officers were 29 percent more likely to develop testicular cancer, 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma and 23 percent more likely to have prostate cancer.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/fighter-pilots-more-likely-to-get-testicular-prostate-skin-cancer/ar-AAPWz5w

[ORAC]

Duh….

They spend a lot of time above the protective effects of the lower atmosphere and absorb more radiation. Far less, of course, than airline air and cabin crew, so a lower risk.

it would be interesting to see if there is a direct correlation to the hours flown….

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30585313/

[havoc]

Interesting RADAR correlation and medical issues; during briefings BUFF crewmembers sat by position (P,CP,RN,N,EW,G) Observing from the back, the Radar Nav, Navs and Gunners were at various levels of hair loss. Obviously not the same medical issue but wonder if the AF tracked BUFF Crew dogs in their study.

I had the opportunity in the 90s to attend a briefing with Research Engineers working on helmet visors to counter LASER issues. In several conversations with them they related medical issues within their department and staff that worked on RADAR projects.

[OK465]

Used to be because of the unhealthy, overwhelming amount of sexual activity involved with being a fighter pilot.

[ShyTorque]

Allegedly, some of it even involved other people…..:E

[tartare]

A headline like that is just an invitation to banter.
Excessive size of equipment to begin with - combined with compression effect of speed jeans and hard seat pan in high-g turns?

[CoodaShooda]

The melanoma could be a direct response to all the beach volleyball they play?

[gums]

Salute!

I always thot that pulling all the gees might concentrate bad things down low. And then there were all the cosmic rays up in the stratosphere, heh heh.

I tink the rrohids were more of a problem due to the gees and such.....

Gums sends...

[Richard Dangle]

Air Force fighter pilots face an increased risk of testicular and prostate cancers, though the exact reason why can not be determined.

My Bold

Many years ago on a uni course we were given a study demonstrating the statistical link between owning a telephone (a landline, not a mobile, this was early eighties :)) and getting cancer. It was of course, intentionally, hokum. The purpose was to demonstrate the illusions of cause and effect from casual use of statistics.

I note the study period is 1970 to 2004, that's my era, and the era of many folk on here, so its hardly contentious to point out that study sample is going to include a massive majority of old-school military aviators.

In population percentage terms, you going to have a massive bias towards hard-living, party-animal, heavy drinking, red-meat eating, sexually promiscuous, alpha males. How many teetotal vegans do think there will be amongst those 34K last century fighter pilots.

The comparison group (400K+) non-flying military males, could be a little apples and oranges in terms of lifestyle/career profiles. Common sense suggests civilian aircrew/cabin crew would have been a far better comparison group???? (Probably a resource issue stopping that happening.)

If you follow the links and read the study, a very different picture starts to emerge (so often the case as public media so often cherry picks studies to create headlines and readership).

The issues I refer to are detailed in the sections covering "confounding issues" and it pretty upfront that most of it is unknown/undetermined. It also noticeably steers aways from the socially politically "near the knuckle stuff". They have focus on the vietnam era and the F100. I'm thinking booze, shagging, smoking and terrible diet would have been off the clock amongst that cohort. Agent Orange gets a mention as well.

Two other things to note. The overall incidence of all type sof cancer are lower than the population average, so its far from all bad news (the study points out that fighter pilots are a healthy bunch out the box, which again we all know). And that there have been huge swings in the incidence of some of the cancers types over certain quite narrow periods of time, which they admit is yet another significant confusing factor.

tl/dr

Read the whole study. It does not appear that alarming.

In summary, the findings of this study do not justify wholesale changes to cancer preventionrecommendations for U.S. Air Force fighter aviators.


it does appear massively inconclusive and throws up any number of holes:


Because of contradictory evidence in the literature, the tenuous associations in this study thatcould be explained by unmeasured confounding, and the potential for medical interventions to
cause harm (e.g., screening exams leading to unnecessary biopsies), our results do not justify new universal cancer screening recommendations for fighter aviators.





I was once told by a very high ranking academic that the true purpose of all studies was to recommend that more study is needed. That appears to be the case here.

A sensitivity analysis excluding F-100 aviators suggested that particularfighter airframes, not the occupation of fighter aviation, may be more predictive of certain canceroutcomes. Further studies are recommended to elicit airframe factors that may contribute to thesedifferences in cancer incidence and mortality.

[Richard Dangle]

PS

Just to be clear, I'm not dissing the study in anyway whatsoever. I'm saying if you want to understand it, you need to read it. :)

[charliegolf]

Allegedly, some of it even involved other people…..:E

As distinct from a 'talk-asm'?

CG

[charliegolf]

PS

Just to be clear, I'm not dissing the study in anyway whatsoever. I'm saying if you want to understand it, you need to read it. :)

Pshaw! Don't start that malarky!:= There'll be know-alls everywhere on here. Oh, wait...

CG

[NutLoose]

A headline like that is just an invitation to banter.
Excessive size of equipment to begin with - combined with compression effect of speed jeans and hard seat pan in high-g turns?

The headline was simply copied over from the post as it seemed to hit the mark.

You don't thing its anything to do with the amount of radium used on the dials of your big firke orf watches?

[Recc]

PS
Just to be clear, I'm not dissing the study in anyway whatsoever. I'm saying if you want to understand it, you need to read it. :)

There is a curious passage in the "Limitations" section. My main thought as I was reading it was that they were doing a lot of independent tests and that the p-value correction (for multiple comparisons) must be eating up a lot of their power. It turns out that they hadn't adjusted the tests at all. They write: "Had we adjusted the alpha level for multiple comparisons, we may have obtained fewer “statistically significant” results but at the expense of increasing the false negative (or missed discovery) risk. In our judgment, false positives would be less concerning than false negatives."

No real criticism of the authors as they are open about the methods, but if your aim is to avoid false negatives, then why not just choose a higher threshold for the family-wise error rate? The results would at least be a lot more intuitive to the reader. I suspect that this approach wouldn't pass review if submitted to a journal, though possibly the purpose of this report was slightly different to an academic study.

I also wonder whether a false positive would really be less concerning if it were being described to a former fighter pilot!

[Lima Juliet]

Thankfully, on the Tornado F3 the RADAR was mainly broken or concrete ballast…







…Joke! :}

[OK465]

I also wonder whether a false positive would really be less concerning if it were being described to a former fighter pilot!

Well along in years, I quit going to doctors for 'diagnostic care' many years ago for exactly these reasons. Let it surprise me.

Almost 2000 hours in the F-100 and played a lot of beach volleyball in Santa Monica, but I don't think my $9.99 Coleman watch had any radium on it. You can never be too careful.

Allegedly, some of it even involved other people…..https://www.pprune.org/images/smilies/evil.gif

Some of it even involved more than one other person. :}

[gums]

Salute!

Good to see okie post here.

If I ran an insurance company for old farts, I would love those pilots that passed physicals for thirty years that most folks would have flunked. Just the first exams failed many wannabe jocks. The guy in front of me at Pensacola medical exam had a problem, and I got an appointment to Annapolis a week later. Then, another day or two I got the USAFA appointment.

Most of my friends that started with me back in the sixties and went west either got shot down or got some weird cancer and died. Lost two roomies just this past year, and not due to the stoopid virus.

Just as with the climate studies, the authors of this one ask for more $$$ to do another study.

Gums sends...

[ExAscoteer2]

Any Biologist will tell you that: Correlation does not prove Causation.

[meleagertoo]

I wonder...
Is the incidence of testicular cancer somehow related to the self-percieved size of the testicles?
And prostrate troubles due perhaps (!) to the excess flatulence their career path seems to produce?

[ORAC]

So it’s all a load of bollocks?

[Ascend Charlie]

So, the obvious solution to the problem is to use female fighter pilots?

[artee]

So, the obvious solution to the problem is to use female fighter pilots?

But will the female fighter pilots be strong enough to wear the big watches? :cool:

[Less Hair]

Unfortunately this result is no surprise if your sit next to some very strong microwave emitters for a living.
In Germany we had some similar debate with military ground radar observers that ended up with specific lower body cancers sitting next to radar displays with strong radiation.

[langleybaston]

I wonder...
Is the incidence of testicular cancer somehow related to the self-percieved size of the testicles?
And prostrate troubles due perhaps (!) to the excess flatulence their career path seems to produce?

PROSTATE

just saying

[tdracer]

Given that well over 50% of all men will have some form of prostate cancer during their lifetimes, if this study is correct the odds for fighter pilots must be crazy high.

[gums]

Salute!

Given that 99.9% of all males that have eaten brocolli have died, I would take my chances flying the Hun and avoid that green veggie.

From personal experience, I can guarantee that the last thing I was worried about when gettin shot at on a regular basis was having prostsate cancer or lung cancer. I still managed to ruin my lungs from smoking, and likely inhaling toxic fumes on the flight line, but not cancer...just loss of function.

As with the gorebull warming studies, last line is always we need $$ for another study. Hmmmmm....

Gums sends...

[Mk 1]

You don't thing its anything to do with the amount of radium used on the dials of your big firke orf watches?

Given ShyTorque's earlier suggestion I guess that means Fighter jocks are left handed?

[Tengah Type]

Most have told me that they need both hands!

[OK465]

If I'd known about this beforehand, I certainly would have avoided flying fighters and gone into something safer like accounting or lapidary.

Having a number of hours in three of the machines in the study, I guess I'm as good as dead.....

.....although at my age I'm not planning anything particularly long term anyway.

You know, except for a very small range-only radar for gun lead computations, the F-100 didn't even have a real 'radar'. Unlike the F-105 or F-4 which did.

The radar layout in the 727 had the real potential to 'fry' something fleshy. It had a radar dish right in front of the pilots that continuously rotated 360 degrees, with a cutout switch to terminate the radiation while pointed at the cockpit and another switch to restart it again when pointed down range.....

There was no indication to the pilots that the cutout was operating properly. :eek:

[NutLoose]

If I remember correctly didn’t Concorde carry some equipment to monitor radiation at altitude and when it was retired I seem to remember something about it going into JCB’s Gulfstream.

[NutLoose]

Given ShyTorque's earlier suggestion I guess that means Fighter jocks are left handed?


Off topic but watched the Red Bull through the tunnel film and he was wearing a Hamilton watch that detaches then clips to the panel, clever item.


https://www.ablogtowatch.com/hamilton-khaki-takeoff-limited-edition-watch/

See 10 seconds in


https://youtu.be/19fQAxys9q8