A few things:
-- First: The evidence for this linkage is fairly weak. There is no one really convincing high-quality study that demonstrates it. They had to do a "meta-study" and put together various weak results to come to these conclusions. Maybe there is a linkage but I would not consider it definitive and it's nowhere near the same level of evidence as there is with cigarettes; the difference is a difference in kind.
-- Second: Even assuming the linkage is there, the marginal risks we are talking about are quite small as Yaah mentioned. To take a risk that is small to begin with and increase it by 18% (if we accept that number) is not to do very much at all.
The following quote gives a good idea of the orders of magnitude involved:
Quote:
The cancer agency noted research by the Global Burden of Disease Project suggesting that 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are linked to diets heavy in processed meat. That compared with 1 million deaths a year linked to smoking, 600,000 a year to alcohol consumption and 200,000 a year to air pollution.
In other words, the deaths caused by the (tentative, not really proven) linkage to processed meats are a drop in the ocean compared to the risks from smoking, heavy drinking or air pollution (in third world countries).
-- Third: It is almost certainly the case that there are many lifestyle factors involving sleep, diet, exercise, etc that lead to increases or decreases in risk of the same (small) order of magnitude as the supposed risk from processed meats. Thus, it is more or less arbitrary and therefore relatively meaningless to isolate this one possible risk factor and ignore a multitude of others (that might also interact with it). Again, that's not the case with something like smoking or heavy drinking, since we are talking about different orders of magnitude.
In short, while there is possibly some linkage that passes tests for statistical significance, it is not a significant risk in absolute terms, not particularly different from a multitude of other lifestyle factors, and nothing whatsoever like the extremely serious risks from something like cigarettes.
The coverage given to this announcement is another good example of a case where the headline says one thing, but the fine print (ie the actual content) amounts to something quite different. The research underlying this may not be completely worthless (though neither is it particularly definitive or of high quality); but the announcement and the headlines surrounding it are disproportionate to what that research actually says. Part of this is simply the usual hype to attract attention and generate clicks; and part of it does serve a more sinister eco-nihilist/green/anti-meat agenda.
-- Finally: The WHO is controlled by the UN, which is pushing
Agenda 21 to control resource use of everyone on the world and guilt trip people for wanting to live a middle class life in the name of "sustainable development" (i.e. depopulation). Their announcement matches their existing agenda and so they are a biased source.
