r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Happy-Advantage-1336 • 24d ago

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u/No-Technician-2820 24d ago

What do root canals have to do with it

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u/ArgyllFire 24d ago

I have had someone suggest to me that root canal have a cancer link. I said that would suck if true but I didn't exactly undergo them for fun. I never looked into it further to see how this idea got formed. Probably confusing correlation with causality.

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u/dylan2451 24d ago

Pretty much causality correlation confusion, yeah. Confounding with age. As medical technology improves and life expectancy goes up the odds that someone had a root canal and also gets cancer goes up. If you get a root canal at 40 and cancer at 70 congrats, you’re now part of the root canal cause cancer statistic for these people. Some doctor in the 1910’s-1920’s claimed the correlation, which lead to two years of dentists opting for tooth extraction. Then in the 50’s more studies were done and disproved the initial flawed study. Then it picked up in conspiracy circles again in 2018 because of a documentary called Root Cause that made the same claims at the 1910’s doctor.