Let them drink tea?
From “The Economist,” London
The coffee froze in the cup as Americans read of a study that linked cancer of the pancreas to their best-loved breakfast drink. That was more than a month ago, but already the scare seems to have been forgotten by a nation of,coffee addicts. Sales are reported to have fallen only minimally if at all. . The scare has not, however, been forgotten by Mr William Black, incensed chairman of Chock Full O’Nuts - the Heavenly Coffee. This month he placed an advertisement - drafted by himself, in longhand — in 33 newspapers, at a cost of more than $llO,OOO, which rebutted the validity of the
research carried out by Harvard University’s School of Public Health. The researchers had found a statistical link between coffeedrinking and cancer of the pancreas; but Mr Black cited statistics to show that this form of cancer (the fourth commonest in America, responsible for 20,000 deaths a year) is no more prevalent in .countries where people drink a lot of coffee than in those where they do not. He also pointed out that animals — and even, occasionally, children — have cancer of the pancreas yet do not drink coffee. Harvard’s researchers failed to discover why coffee causes
cancer, if indeed it does, but they seem to have acquitted caffeine of guilt: no statistical link was found between tea and cancer, even though tea contains caffeine. Tea, however, is unlikely to grow in popularity. It has never fully recovered from the bad name it acquired in the 1770 s when the Boston Whigs argued that it would, if it were allowed to land, prove an “invincible temptation” to the people. After the Boston tea party in 1773, tea became an unpatriotic drink and the American taste for coffee was established. It will take more than the discovery of a statistical link to destroy it.
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Press, 30 April 1981, Page 16
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311Let them drink tea? Press, 30 April 1981, Page 16
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