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A major cause of increasing obesity is certainly the campaign against it -- as dieting usually makes people FATTER. If there were any sincerity to the obesity warriors, they would ban all diet advertising and otherwise shut up about it. Re-authorizing now-banned school playground activities and school outings would help too. But it is so much easier to blame obesity on the evil "multinationals" than it is to blame it on your own restrictions on the natural activities of kids

NOTE: "No trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat".

A brief summary of the last 50 years' of research into diet: Everything you can possibly eat or drink is both bad and good for you

****************************************************************************************



29 February, 2008

"Diversity" is bad for your heart

Oh dear! What a nasty finding for the Left we have below. As we know from Putnam's work (See also here), community involvement is lowest where a community is ethnically diverse. Yet this study shows that people living in low community involvement areas have more heart problems. The authors don't put it that way, of course but that is what their study shows. And it makes sense. Being afraid to go outside your front door is stressful and stress is certainly bad for your heart

Home may be where the heart is, but it could be one's surrounding community that helps keep the ticker healthy, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health. "This analysis points to a real effect on real people," said study lead author Richard Scheffler, UC Berkeley professor of health economics and public policy. "It speaks to the value of clubs and social organizations in providing health information and reducing stress, both of which are known to reduce heart disease." The full study is to be published online in the Feb. 28 issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine.

"This is the first study to demonstrate a link between community social capital and prognosis following heart disease," said study co-author Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, professor of social epidemiology in the Department of Society, Development and Human Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Other research has linked social capital to health outcomes, but most of these studies have been cross-sectional, and therefore difficult to draw conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships. The findings of this study take us in the right direction."

The researchers based the degree of social capital in any given county upon the number of people employed in various organizations, including religious, civic, political, social and alumni groups.

There is growing evidence that cardiovascular health is linked to where a person lives, but it had been unclear whether location served as a proxy for other unmeasured factors, including the type of medical treatment or health care available there. To address this gap, UC Berkeley researchers partnered with Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a non-profit integrated health care delivery system. Data was obtained from actual clinical records of nearly 35,000 Kaiser Permanente patients who had been hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome - a term describing symptoms of decreased blood flow to the heart - in Northern California between 1998 and 2002. Patients were tracked for symptoms of recurring heart problems. To protect patient privacy, only authorized Kaiser Permanente personnel had direct access to the clinical records for this study.

"Because we're using actual clinical records instead of self-reported medical information, we have a clearer picture of a person's health status and medical treatment," said Scheffler, who is also director of the Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets & Consumer Welfare at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "And because all the patients are in the same health care system, we avoid the problem of comparing people with different kinds of health plans or who don't have insurance at all. We also were able to follow patients over time to track any recurrence of heart problems, which is very unique."

The authors noted that patients in low-income areas have the most to gain from higher social capital. "Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that social capital helps more those in the lower socioeconomic spectrum," said study co-author Dr. Carlos Iribarren, research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. "Those with greater economic advantage don't seem to benefit, or benefit less, because they have other resources available to them."

The researchers pointed out that patients did not need to be members of any of the community organizations measured in order to benefit. "An area with a high density of social networks and resources changes the character of a community, regardless of whether any one particular individual joins or not," said Scheffler. "It's the opposite of having a liquor store on every corner. You don't have to shop at the liquor stores to be impacted by the type of environment they create."

Thirty-five of California's 58 counties were included in the study. The eight counties found to have the highest levels of community social capital are, in descending order, San Francisco, Lake, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Marin, Tuolumne, Nevada and Alameda. "The majority of information available about the determinants of health is based upon individual behavior," said Leonard Syme, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of epidemiology and study co-author. "This study clearly shows that the world within which people live also has an important impact on health."

Source




Breast Cancer Reprieve

The arrogant and narrowminded FDA eases up a little

In a surprise decision, the Food and Drug Administration played against type and gave approval for Avastin as a treatment for metastatic breast cancer. It was the right option for terminally ill women, who will gain another weapon against a disease that kills about 40,000 every year. In clinical trials, Genentech's biologic drug was shown to control the growth and spread of tumors, doubling the amount of time before illness worsened. That translates into an improvement in quality of life, and the results were corroborated by further studies.

Avastin shouldn't have been controversial. But an FDA panel ruled that "progression-free survival" was not sufficient, because the agency's usual acid test for anticancer agents is extending life overall. Such an analysis overlooks the real benefits to women in the months they have left. But as late as last week, it looked as though approval would be delayed or rejected outright.

The "accelerated approval" granted to Avastin is contingent on follow-up trials, and Avastin could be pulled from the market if future research fails to demonstrate that treatment prolongs life. In an interview with us on Monday, oncology drugs chief Richard Padzur said that the FDA was "not demanding" a survival advantage but would consider it a factor. In 2005, the lung cancer drug Iressa was approved and then withdrawn under similar conditions, and the danger is that history will repeat itself.

As for the notion that the decision portends a shift in the way the FDA evaluates cancer drugs, Dr. Padzur assured us that it "not a new step in our regulatory decision making." He emphasized that prolonging life was still the FDA's primary criterion, and noted that Avastin was green-lighted because its quality-of-life benefits were "statistically robust." Yet the narrowness with which the FDA balances risk and reward was the reason Avastin was contentious -- especially Dr. Padzur's statistical models.

FDA evaluation methods insist on large average effects and simplistic mortality rates. Only about 10% of patients responded to Iressa, for instance, and could be identified by genetic tests; but these targeted results didn't mesh with the arbitrary FDA approach. Other innovative medicines like Provenge (for prostrate cancer) and Junovan (for pediatric bone cancer) are pointlessly blocked by Dr. Padzur's division, and the risk is that Avastin still could be too, whatever its current reprieve.

The finality of life-and-death decisions makes the approval of such drugs fundamentally a moral issue. Avastin may have slid beneath the wire, but the FDA hasn't changed its morally indefensible standard, and further drug approvals are still subject to the whims of a bureaucracy that puts statistical models above the choices of dying patients.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



28 February, 2008

Antidepressants don't work?

The report discussed below has required more thought from me than the usual crap that I find in reports of medical research. The study concerned has many strong features. I note that the study was led by a psychologist. I am not usually very supportive of my fellow psychologists (See here) but I do note that a much higher standard of evidence seems to be required for publication in psychology than in medicine.

In the end, however, I think the study below confirms something I have been saying for some years: That our taxonomy of depression is a big problem. There is a strong tendency for any mental state characterized by suicidal thoughts to be seen as depression. But there are in fact TWO broad mental states characterized by such thoughts: True depression and what used to be called anxious depression. And those states are so different as to be almost opposite. The first is characterized by very low levels of activation and the second by very high levels of activation.

The DSM has now given anxious depression a fancy new name and listed it separately but I doubt that the distinction is as yet commonly made by practitioners. ANY suicidal state will often be given Prozac etc. And where Prozac is probably helpful in livening up true depressives, it would tend to push anxious depressives over the top and cause them actually to commit suicide -- which we know does happen. It is however crazy for a drug that helps some in a category to have the opposite effect for others in the same category so it seems to me that the fault lies with patient categorization. Prozac should be rigorously EXCLUDED as a treatment for anxious depression.

And I think the same distinction helps make sense of the report below. It is true that the therapeutic responses tabulated are often not much different from placebo. That overall statement, however, ignores what seem to me to be important details. The most striking is that in their Table 1, the difference from placebo varies markedly. In some studies, a LOT of the patients were helped by the drug while in others few were. And there were in fact two instances where placebo gave a better response than the drug! The latter result is about as crazy as Prozac driving you to suicide. My hypothesis would be that the samples where few were helped included a lot of anxious depressives and, in the two very deviant cases, a predominance of anxious depressives.

So I think we are still at the "Don't know" stage. I think we need studies from which anxious depressives have been rigorously excluded before we can evaluate the therapeutic effect of drugs on true depressives. If I were prescribing, however, I would certainly give Prozac etc. to anyone who was obviously a true depressive. I suspect that it has a much stronger effect for them than would at first appear from the results of the existing poorly-categorized studies.

I am particularly concerned about the response to this study from NICE. NICE are well-known for depriving Brits of drugs that might help them and I am afraid that this study will cause NICE to issue guidance that will deprive many Brits of relief from their suffering -- leading to suicide in some cases. Not to put to fine a point on it, I think this study could kill. Popular summary of the research follows. -- JR

Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence. The new generation of antidepressant drugs work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression, comprehensive research of clinical trials has found. The researchers said that the drug was more effective than a placebo in severely depressed patients but that this was because of a decreased placebo effect. The study, described as “fantastically important” by British experts, comes as the Government publishes plans to help people to manage depression without popping pills.

More than 291 million pounds was spent on antidepressants in 2006, including nearly 120 million on SSRIs. As many as one in five people suffers depression at some point. With that in mind, ministers will today publish plans to train 3,600 therapists to treat depression. Spending on counselling and other psychological therapies will rise to at least 30 million a year.

The study, by Irving Kirsch, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull, is the first to examine both published and unpublished evidence of the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which account for 16 million NHS prescriptions a year. It suggests that the effectiveness of the drugs may have been exaggerated in the past by drugs companies cherry-picking the best results for publication. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which is due to review its guidance on treating depression, said that it would consider the study.

Mental health charities say that most GPs admit that they are still overprescribing SSRIs, which are considered as effective as older drugs but with fewer side-effects. SSRIs account for more than half of all antidrepressant prescriptions, despite guidelines from NICE in 2004 that they should not be used as a first-stop remedy.

American and British experts led by Professor Kirsch examined the clinical trials submitted to gain licences for four commonly used SSRIs, including fluoxetine (better known as Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor) and paroxetine (Seroxat). The study is published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine. Analysing both the unpublished and published data from the trials, the team found little evidence that the drugs were much better than a placebo.

“Given these results there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed,” Professor Kirsch said. “The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking antidepressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.” He added that the study “raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported”.

The data for all 47 clinical trials for the drugs were released by the US Food and Drug Administration under freedom of information rules. They included unpublished trials that were not made available to NICE when it recommended the drugs for use on the NHS. “Had NICE seen all the relevant unpublished studies, it might have come to a different conclusion,” Professor Kirsch said.

Tim Kendall, a deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, who helped to formulate the NICE guidance, said that the findings were “fantastically important” and that it was “dangerous” for drug companies not to have to publish their full data. He added: “Three of these drugs are some of the most commonly used antidepressants in this country. It’s not mandatory for drug companies to publish all this research. I think it should be.”

SSRIs are not prescribed to patients under 18 because of the risk of suicide.Drugs watchdogs in Europe are considering tighter controls on the development of new medicines, The Times reported this month, and may soon require regulators to monitor psychiatric effects and the risk of suicide more closely during clinical trials.

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said: “The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefits these treatments have provided to patients and their families dealing with depression and their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice. This one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm and concern for patients.” A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said: “Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine is an effective antidepressant.”

Source. Original journal article here

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



27 February, 2008

You There! Step Away From The Happy Meal, Laddie!

Post below lifted from Blue Crab. See the original for links

The increasingly authoritarian "liberals" in Britain are now working on banning the humble McDonald's Happy Meal. The people's republic city of Liverpool is set to enact a ban on the meals. It's for the children, of course.

McDonald's Happy Meals are to be banned in Liverpool over claims they are contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity. The city council is planning to outlaw the meals on the grounds that they are damaging the heath of children - particularly as they offer free toys in order to encourage parents to buy junk food for their children. The Liberal Democrat-controlled authority claims the credit for taking the lead in the campaign that led to the ban on smoking in public places.

Members of Liverpool City Council's Childhood Obesity Scrutiny Group want a bye-law that would forbid the sale of fast foot accompanied by toys. Councillors say the promotional items are used to boost sales through the "Pester Power" phenomenon - children pestering parents for Happy Meal toys. The scrutiny Group has ordered a report from town hall officials that would pave the way for the bye-law that would be the first of its kind in the UK.

Lib Dem councillor Paul Twigger said: "The Scrutiny Group is recommending that a bye-law be enforced to stop the circulation of free toys associated with junk food promotions. "We consider it is high time that cash-hungry vultures like McDonald's are challenged over their marketing policies which are directly aimed at promoting unhealthy eating among children.

"Childhood obesity is a dire threat to the health in this country and it needs to be nipped in the bud urgently. "Children are directly targeted with junk food and McDonald's use the Happy Meals to exploit Pester Power of children against which many parents give in. "In most Happy Meals the toy is sold with a burgers containing four or five tablespoons of sugar, along with high-calorie fries and milkshakes. "These fattening meals are being shamelessly promoted through free toys and it is clear that it is going to take legislation to combat the practice.

The left has become much worse than what they rebelled against forty years ago. They now think their groupthink mentality is the only way to think and that decisions must not be made by anyone but them. The lovely "cash-hungry vultures" remark is especially telling. It just doesn't say what Mr. Twigger thinks it does. Nice jackboots, Mr. Twigger.




Obesity "kills more people than terrorism"

So does slimness. It's the people of middling weight who live longest. So FORCE-FEED THE SKINNIES!

A GLOBAL fight against flab would save more lives than the war on terror now that obesity-related chronic diseases have emerged as among the world's biggest killers. Lawrence Gostin, a US government adviser who helped draft laws in the US to combat bioterrorism, will tell a global health summit in Sydney today that he considers chronic diseases the greater of the two threats to humanity. "The human costs are frightening when we consider that obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life expectancy since data collecting began in 1900," Professor Gostin said.

The Oxford Health Alliance of private and public sector groups that want to reduce obesity and smoking rates will issue a "Sydney Resolution" during the three-day meeting, which starts today. The resolution will be sent toKevin Rudd ahead of the Prime Minister's own high-profile think tank, the 2020 summit, in April. It will recommend ways to reduce sugar, fat and salt content in food, improve labelling, regulate advertising, make fresh food more affordable, workplaces healthier and cities more cycle- and pedestrian-friendly.

Summit facilitator Rob Moodie from the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne said that eating too much, exercising too little and smoking were proving ultimately more dangerous than the acts committed by terrorists.

They had contributed over time to global epidemics in heart disease, diabetes, lung disease and some cancers. "It's in the hundreds of thousands times more deadly in terms of claiming victims," Professor Moodie said. "There are really three or four diseases that cause 50 per cent of the world's deaths, and a huge amount of it is preventable." Professor Moodie said governments needed to control and reduce the economic incentives that were driving unhealthy lifestyle choices. "Making fat is good for business," he said. "Unhealthy foods and unhealthy drinks sell far better than healthy ones. "Inactivity is much more the norm - and it makes more money - whether it is cars, or e-entertainment or video games."

Professor Moodie said it would take "a lot of political guts" to pursue solutions to obesity such as imposing congestion charges, shifting money to public transport, parks and cycle ways, changing city planning practices, and regulating advertising to children. However, it made no sense to spend just 2 per cent of the health budget on public health and similar measures to keep people out of hospitals, when unhealthy lifestyles accounted for about half the burden on taxpayers, he said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



26 February, 2008

Diet and cancer: Now EVERYTHING is good for you!

The medical literature gets more amusing by the day!

A new study suggests that women who eat diets rich in meat and dairy may have a decreased risk of breast cancer, while those who bulk up on fiber, fruits and vegetables show a lower risk of ovarian cancer.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Cancer, add to questions surrounding the role of diet in women's risk of the cancers. High alcohol intake has been consistently linked to breast cancer risk, but when it comes to other facets of the diet, studies have yielded conflicting results, according to the researchers on the current work, led by Dr. Valeria Edefonti of the University of Milan. Some studies, for example, have found that women who eat a lot of red and processed meat are more likely to develop breast cancer than other women; but other studies have found no such link. Saturated fat, found mainly in animal products, has been tied to higher breast cancer risk in some studies, but not in others.

While many of these studies have looked at single nutrients or food groups, another way to address the question is to look at dietary patterns -- the combination of nutrients and foods that a person tends to favor. For their study, Edefonti and her colleagues assessed dietary patterns among 3,600 women with either breast or ovarian cancer, and 3,413 healthy women of the same age.

Using detailed dietary questionnaires, the researchers identified four common dietary patterns in the study group: an "animal product" pattern, which was heavy in meat and saturated fat, but also zinc, calcium and certain other nutrients; a "vitamins and fiber" pattern, which besides fiber was rich in vitamin C, beta-carotene and other nutrients found in fruits and vegetables; an "unsaturated fat" pattern that contained high amounts of vegetable and fish oils, as well as vitamin E; and a "starch-rich" pattern high in simple carbohydrates, vegetable protein and sodium.

Overall, the study found, women who followed a pattern rich in vitamins and fiber had a 23 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer than women who consumed the lowest amounts of those foods and nutrients. On the other hand, the animal-product pattern was linked to a similar reduction in breast cancer risk. Women who followed the unsaturated-fat pattern had a slightly reduced risk of breast cancer, while the starch-rich diet was tied to elevated risks of both cancers.

It's not yet clear what to make of the findings, in part because they show associations between dietary patterns and cancer risk -- and not that the foods directly affect cancer development.

Source

See also International Journal of Cancer, February 1, 2008.




And now cholesterol is good for you too!

People with very low cholesterol levels seem to be at increased risk of developing stomach cancer, Japanese researchers report. Some studies have linked low cholesterol levels to higher death rates from cancer in general, Dr. Kouichi Asano, of Kyushu University, Fukuoka, and colleagues explain in the International Journal of Cancer. "With respect to gastric cancer, a limited number of studies suggest this inverse association, while others do not."

The researcher looked into this in a study involving some 2,600 residents of Hisayama, Japan, who were followed for 14 years. Gastric cancers developed in 97 subjects. After accounting for age and gender, stomach cancer rates rose significantly with descending cholesterol level. For example, among subjects with the highest cholesterol levels, the gastric cancer rate was the equivalent of 2.1 cases per 1000 persons per year; among those with the lowest cholesterol, the rate was 3.9 per 1000 person-years.

"Our data suggest that patients with low serum cholesterol should consider regular gastro-intestinal examination for the prevention of gastric cancer," the investigators conclude.

Source

See also International Journal of Cancer, February 15, 2008

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



25 February, 2008

New drug 'curbs alcoholism'

QUEENSLAND scientists have discovered that a revolutionary anti-smoking drug could also be used to curb alcohol addiction, gambling and even depression. Clinical trials of the wider possible benefits of the drug, Champix, will start in the US next month, and if successful, could be available for a range of addictions within two years.

Dr Selena Bartlett, a neuroscientist from the University of Queensland, said she was convinced of the drug's potential to treat alcoholics, after just one dose of the drug cut alcohol consumption in rats by 50 per cent. She said Champix worked by latching on to "good feeling" receptors in the brain to block cravings for substances.

Dr Bartlett is working on the project at one of the world's top alcohol and addiction centres - the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Centre - at the University of California in San Francisco. As director of the pre-clinical development group she leads a team of scientists, including two colleagues from the University of Queensland. She said her laboratory had shown that the drug, already approved for nicotine addiction, also curbed alcohol dependence. "The finding is particularly encouraging as the animals did not turn to drinking in excess after the drug was stopped, a common pattern when people take current drugs to curb alcohol consumption," Dr Bartlett said. "The drug probably reduces both drinking and smoking because nicotine and alcohol trigger the same reward circuitry in the brain."

Dr Bartlett said that about 85 per cent of alcoholics smoked, so if clinical trials confirmed Champix was effective against alcoholism, physicians could prescribe it to treat both conditions. It is also hoped the drug could be used to treat problems such as gambling addictions, depression and other drug addictions in the same way.

The anti-smoking drug Champix was made available in Australia last month. It is listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and found to be up to four times more effective than other drugs.

Source




Weight loss means hard work

SERIOUS slimmers must be prepared for a hard slog if weight loss plans are going to work, a new report suggests. American reseachers have revealed that you need to walk for about 90 minutes - every day - in order to stay slim. It would mean covering a distance of some 45kms a week.

The finding comes from the world's largest study of slimmers which featured more than 5,000 participants. Each dieter had lost at least 30 pounds (13kg) and kept it off for at least a year before joining the National Weight Control Registry at the University of Colorado-Denver.

Successful long-term dieters were disciplined about eating and did large amounts of exercise. Walking, combined with weight training or aerobics, was their favourite activity - and they burned 2,800 calories or more a week.

Dr Rena Wing, co-founder of the registry, told the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper: "To burn off that many calories, you would need to walk 28 miles (45kms) a week - more than a marathon. That's about four miles each day. That will take 90 minutes a day. "There's no way round it. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you really need to change your lifestyle."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



24 February, 2008

Dietician: No such thing as a healthy pizza

Given her stupid assumptions, she would be right

A BRISBANE dietician claims the Heart Foundation's "red tick" program may be inadvertently contributing to Australia's obesity epidemic. Writing in today's Courier-Mail, accredited dietician Julie Gilbert also claims the credibility of the Heart Foundation's endorsement has been severely damaged after a takeaway pizza chain paid $20,000 to become the latest fast-food company to gain endorsement. Ms Gilbert claims the tick may actually encourage dieters to gorge on foods such as pizza because they mistakenly believe they are low in fat and calories.

The Heart Foundation last week awarded its red tick to a chain of takeaway pizzerias on the grounds they were healthier than the mass-market alternatives. Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars, which has 16 stores in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, created six new pizzas to win the branding icon. It reduced the saturated fat and salt and boosted fibre in its pizzas. Products made by fast-food companies such as McDonald's and Jesters Pies also are among more than 1200 foods currently awarded the tick. Fees range from a minimum $3000 annual licence to 0.25 per cent of sales of ticked foods.

But Ms Gilbert claims pizza remains a high-salt and high-fat meal. "And just because it has the tick does not mean it is OK to park your bum in front of The Biggest Loser and eat the whole damn thing," Ms Gilbert writes.

The foundation says it has responded to public demands for healthier food choices by challenging pizza companies to provide healthier meals.

Source




That lovely "healthy" organic food

Andy Valy had never before purchased Bolthouse Farms carrot juice, but decided to pick some up - it was organic, after all, so he figured it was the "healthier" choice. But the choice was near deadly. He and his wife, Susanna Chen, contracted a severe case of botulism from drinking the contaminated juice in late August and early September 2006. They became violently ill, suffered paralysis, slipped into a coma and required a ventilator to breathe. The Toronto couple never fully recovered and are now planning to sue the California company that manufactured the drink.

"I may be in a wheelchair the rest of my life," Chen said yesterday, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at pictures taped to the wall of her hospital room - painful reminders of a life they once shared. The photos document their love of ballroom dancing and some of the seniors amateur competitions they were featured in - a passion they nurtured despite Valy's busy job as a manager in a packaging company and Chen's hectic schedule as the owner of five boutiques. In the pictures, the pair is beaming, her svelte figure draped in elaborate gowns as he twirls her on the dance floor. "I would rather dance again than have any money," said Chen, hooked up to an oxygen tank at the Lyndhurst Centre rehabilitation hospital, where she's been since her release last month from the critical care unit of another hospital. "I want to dance again and be useful. I've lost my freedom, my health and my future."

Her comments were echoed by the visiting Valy yesterday. "There's no amount of money that could ever make up for this," said Valy, who spent eight months in hospital and still grapples with respiratory problems, chronic pain and dizziness. He can barely lift his arms above his waist. "Our life has changed dramatically. Our plans have been shattered."

Thinking back to the juice, which he unsuspectingly consumed after Chen had already been hospitalized with mysterious symptoms, he says: "The strangest part is there was no taste, no flavour, no indication it was as poisonous as it turned out to be."

A massive recall was issued for three brands of the company's carrot juice when four people in the United States and three in Canada, including one in Quebec, were poisoned in the summer and fall of 2006. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, botulism is a rare paralytic disease caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Symptoms generally appear within 36 hours and include trouble swallowing, blurred vision, difficulty speaking and paralysis. In some cases, respiratory failure can result in death.

When the cases first appeared, officials at Bolthouse Farms said the carrot juice could not have developed botulism if properly stored. Yesterday, company spokesperson Andrea Beard refused to comment on the case.

Following the recall, Toronto Public Health confirmed the juice found in the Toronto home by Valy's daughter - a nurse who finally put two and two together in a case that had baffled doctors - had been properly refrigerated. It was sent for testing and came back positive for botulism. "Doctors at the hospital said it was one of the worst cases (of botulism poisoning) they'd ever seen in the world," said the couple's lawyer, Michael Shannon, who has been in touch with lawyers representing three victims in Georgia. Particularly unsettling, he said, is that doctors can't make a prognosis because such severe cases are so rare.

Although he wouldn't disclose how much the lawsuit demands, Shannon said he is launching it in California because, unlike Canada, there is no legal limit there to damages claimed for pain and suffering. In addition to their physical and emotional difficulties, the couple has faced an enormous financial burden. Neither has returned to work, and Chen's clothing shops are struggling, Shannon said. The couple currently pays for a personal support worker to aid Chen 12 hours a day. They expect they will need round-the-clock help when she is discharged

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



23 February, 2008

Protein boosts early babies' brains

Brain damage with premmies is always a worry so this is very encouraging news

Premature babies given a diet richer in proteins have higher IQs as adolescents, a study at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has found. The improved diet also changed the structure of their brains later in life, the scientists found, by increasing the size of the caudate nucleus. This is linked to higher intelligence.

The study tested verbal IQ levels and carried out brain scans among two groups of adolescents born prematurely in the 1980s. One group was given a high-protein diet in the four weeks after birth; the other a standard diet.

Elizabeth Isaacs, who led the research, published in Pediatric Research, said: "The data presented here are among the first to show that the structure of the human brain can be influenced by early nutrition. "Scientists have speculated that the size of the caudate nucleus might be influenced by nutrition in infancy, when the brain is undergoing its chief growth spurt. We now see that cognitive effects of early diet that we previously reported in childhood persist into adolescence."

Source




Diabetes discovery

Scientists are closer to finding a cure for diabetes after they showed that human stem cells injected into mice can transform themselves into cells capable of producing insulin. A team in California made the discovery using adult mice. Abstract follows:

Pancreatic endoderm derived from human embryonic stem cells generates glucose-responsive insulin-secreting cells in vivo

By Evert Kroon et al.

Development of a cell therapy for diabetes would be greatly aided by a renewable supply of human beta cells. Here we show that pancreatic endoderm derived from human embryonic stem (hES) cells efficiently generates glucose-responsive endocrine cells after implantation into mice. Upon glucose stimulation of the implanted mice, human insulin and C-peptide are detected in sera at levels similar to those of mice transplanted with ~3,000 human islets. Moreover, the insulin-expressing cells generated after engraftment exhibit many properties of functional beta-cell transcription factors, appropriate processing of proinsulin and the presence of mature endocrine secretory granules. Finally, in a test of therapeutic potential, we demonstrate that implantation of hES cell-derived pancreatic endoderm protects against streptozotocin-induced hyperglycemia. Together, these data provide definitive evidence that hES cells are competent to generate glucose-responsive, insulin-secreting cells.

Nature Biotechnology, 20 February 2008

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



22 February, 2008

Fat Fascism building

Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said. The chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce wants world leaders to agree a global pact to ensure that everyone is fed healthy food. [Like what? McDonald's can prevent heart disease. But maybe that is not what he had in mind] Professor Philip James said the challenge of obesity was so great that action was needed now, even without clear evidence of the best options. He also called for stricter rules on marketing and food labelling.

Professor James, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, was speaking in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He commented: "This is a community epidemic that is actually a response to all the wonderful apparent industrial and economic development changes that we've seen, with a collapse in the need for physical activity, and now a targeting of children to make profits by big industry in food and drink. "We have to change that, and it will not come unless we have a coherent government-led strategy. The issue is: have we got the political will?"

He added that it was important that all food used a "traffic lights" labelling scheme so that consumers could immediately assess fat, sugar and salt content. "This is a form of public education which is being resisted mightily in Brussels with intense lobbying of commissioners who've just announced that they won't go down the British road," he highlighted. "So we're in the process of trying to make it clear that if you're concerned about the health and economics of a society you should take this seriously."

Ten percent of the world's children are either overweight or obese, twice as many as the malnourished, said Professor James. "A huge range of analyses show that we have not been looking at the problem of children's nutrition and well-being properly. "They're disadvantaged from birth, their academic achievement is impaired, their earning power is diminished, and they almost certainly have a life expectancy which is less than that of their parents."

New data from Scandinavia showed that the weight of a child at the age of 7-12 predicted whether or not they were going to die early from heart disease or other problems, he said [but die later of other problems]. "We now have to think in a totally different way and recognise that it's the life cycle," he added. "Because these children start off being born small, they are then exposed to totally inappropriate environments, and they are therefore super-sensitive."

Another expert, Professor Rena Wing, presented research at the AAAS in Boston suggesting that large-scale changes in diet and exercise were needed to prevent obesity [They sure are!]. A study of 5,000 men and women who lost an average of 70lbs (30kg), and kept the weight off for six years, shows that large lifestyle changes - such as exercising 60 to 90 minutes a day - were needed to keep people slim. "The obesity epidemic won't go away simply because people switch to skimmed milk from whole milk," she said. "They need to substantially cut their calories and boost their physical activity to get to a healthy weight - and keep minding the scale once they do."

Source




Cheaper chickens: a slap in the face of British food snobs

The outraged reaction to Tesco's decision to sell chickens for $4 is stuffed with an unpalatable mix of snobbery and fearmongering

Tesco hits a new low with arrival of the 1.99 pounds ($4) chicken', screamed a headline in the Independent. When the paper said `low', it wasn't referring to the price. `While Sainsbury's has committed to massive improvements in animal welfare, Tesco is showing its ethical credentials with this race to the bottom', declared the research director of Compassion in World Farming. The fact that a supermarket could be widely criticised for cutting its prices reveals much about the topsy-turvy, screwed-up debate about food today.

Tesco's decision to slash the price of its Grade A broiler chickens, rather than making the more ethically acceptable free-range variety cheaper, comes almost immediately after celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a television crusade against broiler production. In Hugh's Chicken Run on Channel 4, Fearnley-Whittingstall produced two crops of chicken side-by-side: one using typical intensive methods; the other using free-range principles. The intensively produced chickens, bred to grow quickly, had less space to move in, were kept awake almost constantly and suffered from leg problems. As a result, some of them - though not many - had to be destroyed. The free-range chickens, bred to grow more slowly, were able to roam around outdoors. However, some of the free-range birds also had to be destroyed because they acquired an infection - something which the broiler birds stuck indoors were never exposed to.

In his show, Fearnley-Whittingstall frequently argued that in selling such cheap chicken (it was `two-for-a-fiver', then - now you can get three for six quid), Tesco was complicit in the lowering of welfare standards for chickens. So it must have felt like a personal slap in the face for the posh River Cottage chef when Tesco launched its latest deal to make the birds even cheaper. `I'm very surprised [at Tesco] because everybody is selling out of free-range chicken', said Fearnley-Whittingstall. `To launch a 1.99 chicken is in direct contradiction to a statement [Tesco chief executive] Sir Terry Leahy made last summer, when he said he didn't want to get into a food price war on chicken.'

Tesco, however, is unrepentant. It has promoted the latest price cut as a helping hand to families suffering from `mortgage worries, energy price rises and inflation'. Yet it seems that for a big company to ignore the ethical pestering of a celebrity do-gooder and provide its customers with what they want - good, affordable food - is beyond the pale these days. Numerous commentators and reporters are attacking Tesco for acting `unethically'. Ironically, Hugh's Chicken Run seems to have communicated at least one clear message to viewers: you can get two chickens for a fiver at Tesco! Sales of bog-standard chicken rose by seven per cent after the series ended. This suggests that while the ethical hectoring of food snobs like Fearnley-Whittingstall might get liberal and green-leaning commentators hot under the collar, it doesn't have much of an impact on the British public. When you've got a family to feed, having access to a good dinner for relatively little money is a good thing - and if we really gave a damn about chickens and their `feelings', well, we wouldn't eat them in the first place.

Of course, Tesco is not providing cheap chicken for the love of it. Rather, it thinks that a high-profile promotion such as this will get more shoppers into its stores and increase its turnover. Sainsbury's, on the other hand, has always pitched itself as being a bit classier, middle-class and right-on than Tesco, and so it uses a bit of PR about its ethical values to get a different kind of shopper into its stores. Both companies are interested primarily in making money. But as long as that means producing and selling food cheaply and efficiently, surely that is good news for the rest of us?

Underpinning the reaction to Tesco's price cut is a feeling that food is becoming too cheap - that we no longer know the true value of what we eat. If only we would pay more for our meals, then they would be tastier, healthier and more `ethical'; they would be more morally filling, apparently. It is certainly true that you get what you pay for, and it's nice to have the option of a `posh' chicken every now and then. But it is far from clear why returning to the days when food absorbed 30 per cent or more of the average household budget is anything to celebrate. Such a reversal would inevitably mean sacrificing other things that we enjoy doing, and it would put some foods out of the reach of poorer families altogether. The food snobs' explicit attempt to prevent food from being made cheaper could have a detrimental impact on people's living standards.

What really underpins the outraged reaction to ever-cheaper chicken is snobbery: a sense that the dumb masses don't know what is good for them. Some anti-Tesco (or perhaps Tescophobic) commentators write about the `zombies' who work and shop there, and claim - without a smidgen of evidence - that cheap meat is poisoning poor people. Better if they didn't have meat at all, I suppose, and lived instead on tinned beans and potatoes. Indeed, the chicken snobbery is liberally basted with a mixture of fears: that the food we eat will not only poison our bodies (through making us obese and stuffing us with additives), but will also poison our minds (through making us think that animal cruelty is okay) and poison our communities (through driving the local butcher and baker out of business).

This sense of superiority over the thick, cheap meat-scoffing masses permeates today's food campaigning: it's there in the blame-the-parents scaremongering of Jamie Oliver's TV and political crusade to improve school dinners and police the lunchbox, and in the food fears spread by the likes of Sun columnist Jane Moore and the anti-supermarket rant Tescopoly by Andrew Simms. While most of the British public buys and enjoys cheap and nutritious food, and then gets on with the more interesting parts of their lives, sections of the commentariart bizarrely work themselves into a frenzy about dangerous chickens or turkey twizzlers.

Our food is not killing us. In fact, never in the history of Britain has such a wide variety of safe and healthy food been affordable to so many. When the well-to-do start lecturing companies and customers about their selling and eating habits, it's not just the chickens that need a good roasting.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



21 February, 2008

New life for vitamin C theory?

Case study "evidence" is pretty worthless. There are always a certain number of spontaneous remissions anyway. So we must await double blind studies at this stage

Three cancer patients who were given large intravenous doses over a period of several months had their lives extended and their tumours shrunk, doctors reported yesterday. A 49-year-old man diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer in 1996 was still alive and cancer-free nine years later, having declined chemotherapy and radiotherapy in favour of regular infusions of vitamin C.

A 66-year-old woman with an aggressive lymphoma who had a "dismal prognosis" in 1995 was similarly treated and is still alive 10 years later. A 51-year-old woman with kidney cancer that spread to her lungs diagnosed in 1995 had a normal chest X-ray two years later. The findings were confirmed by pathologists. Although they do not prove the vitamin cured the cancer they do increase the "clinical plausibility" of the idea, the researchers say.

Vitamin C therapy was first promoted by Linus Pauling, the Nobel prize winner, 30 years ago. Dr Pauling's claims sparked the continuing boom in sales of vitamin C, but attempts to confirm his findings failed and high-dose vitamin C became an "alternative" therapy.

The latest study, published in the Canadian Association's Medical Journal, could trigger renewed interest in Dr Pauling's claims. Studies show that vitamin C is toxic to some cancer cells but not to normal cells. The problem has been delivering a high enough dose.

The researchers say attempts to replicate Dr Pauling's work failed because they used oral doses of the drug which is rapidly excreted. However, injections achieve blood levels 25 times higher that persist for longer. At these very high doses, the blood level of vitamin C is high enough to selectively kill cancer cells. Several clinical trials of vitamin C therapy are about to start, including one at McGill University, Montreal, the authors say.

Source




More governmment health dictatorship for Britain?

Paternalistic plan to deter smokers: Permit to be required. Big Julian has been pushing this idea for some time

A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone who does not pay for a government smoking permit has been proposed by Health England, a ministerial advisory board. The idea is the brainchild of the board's chairman, Julian Le Grand, who is a professor at the London School of Economics and was Tony Blair's senior health adviser. In a paper being studied by Lord Darzi, the health minister appointed to oversee NHS reform, he says many smokers would be helped to break the habit if they had to make a decision whether to "opt in".

The permit might cost as little as 10 pounds, but acquiring it could be made difficult if the forms were sufficiently complex, Le Grand said last night. His paper says: "Suppose every individual who wanted to buy tobacco had to purchase a permit. And suppose further they had to do this every year. To get a permit would involve filling out a form and supplying a photograph, as well as paying the fee. Permits would only be issued to those over 18 and evidence of age would have to be provided. The money raised would go to the NHS."

Le Grand said the proposal was an example of "libertarian paternalism". The government would leave people free to make their own decisions but it would "nudge them" in the right direction. He said there was a parallel in pensions law. If workers were automatically enrolled in a pension scheme, few would choose to opt out. But if they had to make a conscious decision to opt in, most people would stay out. "Breaking the new year's resolution not to smoke would be costly in terms of both money and time ... [This] would probably have a greater impact on poor smokers than on rich ones, hence contributing to a reduction in health inequalities."

The paper, written by Le Grand and Divya Srivastava, an LSE researcher, acknowledges: "Administratively it would require addressing the problem of the existing black markets and smuggling in tobacco; but this should probably be done anyway." They add: "Politically, this might be viewed by some as giving people a 'licence' to smoke; and by full-blooded libertarians as a subtle and hence even more dangerous form of paternalism - paternalism squared. "On the other hand, the popularity even among smokers of the smoking ban in public places suggests that firm actions in this area can lead to political as well as health pay-offs."

The paper also proposes incentives for large companies to provide a daily "exercise hour" for employees and a ban on salt in processed food. A Department of Health spokeswoman said last night: "We will be consulting later this year on the next steps for tobacco control. Ministers are looking for input from a full range of stakeholders."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



20 February, 2008

Hilarious medical ignorance

Read the report below and see if you can see what these ivory-tower ignoramuses missed -- something that everyone in their job should have known. I give the answer at the bottom

The frustrating quest to develop a vaginal gel to prevent HIV infection was dealt a fresh blow as researchers said the first prototype to complete advanced clinical trials was ineffective. Carraguard, a candidate microbicide produced by the Population Council that had spent three years in large-scale "Phase 3" trials, was unable to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus, the investigators said.

But the gel was found to be safe for long-term vaginal use, a finding they described as extremely promising. "This is the first phase 3 microbicide efficacy trial to be completed with no safety concerns," said principal investigator Khatija Ahmed. "However, the study was unable to show Carraguard's efficacy in preventing male-to-female transmission of HIV."

The trial ran from March 2004 to March 2007 at three sites in South Africa among 6262 women. Half the volunteers were given the Carraguard gel and condoms, while the other half were given a placebo gel and condoms. All were given HIV education and safer-sex counselling. In the Carraguard group, 134 new HIV infections occurred, slightly fewer than the 151 in the placebo group. But Khatija Ahmed said the difference was not statistically significant and did not constitute evidence Carraguard was effective.

It is the third major setback in the seven-year-long drive to develop a vaginal microbicide, the term for a cream that would block or kill the AIDS virus during vaginal intercourse. Microbicides are one of the most eagerly-sought avenues in the war on AIDS, where at present there is neither a cure nor a vaccine and prevention depends on the condom or abstinence. Scientists are grappling for a means by which women, who are physically more at risk from AIDS infection than men, can protect themselves without having to rely on male consent to wear a condom....

South Africa has become a key testing ground for strategies against the global AIDS pandemic. It has 5.5 million people with HIV or AIDS, the highest number of any country in the world.

Source

What these politically correct South African megabrains missed is that AIDS is almost always transmitted via ANAL intercourse and anal intercourse is the traditional African method of contraception. The gel in the vagina didn't work because the black women got the AIDS through their ASSHOLES!




Bosses less likely to have cancer: Australian study

The stuff below is just a data dredging operation accompanied by a whole heap of speculation. Data dredging is when you look at a heap of data and highlight whatever differences you find there -- ignoring the fact that there will be a lot of differences there by chance alone. But that bosses are healthier is no surprise. That middle class people are healthier generally is a very common finding

Managers are less likely to have cancer, while shop assistants have a greater chance of suffering back pain and nurses have a higher rate of heart disease, according to a new Australian study. The survey, which is published Monday in the Medical Journal of Australia, analysed the records of more than 4,200 workers aged between 45 and 64 and found that about two-thirds had a medical condition.

It found that older workers with chronic conditions were more likely to be employed in certain industries such as retail, and health and community services, researcher Deborah Schofield said. "In the retail trade there was a significantly higher risk of musculoskeletal conditions -- so that's things like back injuries, or if you've injured your shoulder or arthritis," she told AFP on Sunday. "And then cardiovascular disease came out significantly higher in health and community services."

Schofield said that these findings jarred with the expectation that more muscle or bone injuries would be among construction workers or those in the transport, forestry or agriculture sectors where heavy lifting was required. "But, in fact, the reverse is what we found," she said.

"What we think happens is that retail, being part-time and not too heavy an occupation, that people, if they have those sort of injuries, (it means) they can remain in the workforce," she said.

Interpreting the data regarding cancer was also difficult. By occupation, the study found that the relative risk of a manager having neoplasms, or cancerous tumours, was found to be 0.25 compared to 0.40 for a tradesperson and 0.74 for labourers. "We don't know of any reason why they (managers) would be at lower risk as a result of being in that occupation," said Schofield, who is an associate professor at Sydney University, "What we think is that it may be that if you do have cancer that you're in secure jobs with very good sick leave arrangements so you're in a position to take time out of the workforce if you need to."

Schofield said it was possible that bosses sitting up in their corner offices were less exposed to carcinogens than other workers but this could not be proven. "So we don't think that you are necessarily, if you're in those jobs, less likely to get cancer. It's possibly more to do with your work arrangements when and if that does happen," she said.

Schofield said it was likely that illness forced people out of jobs, which resulted in lower rates of diseases in some industries. "This would seem to be the case for occupations such as tradespersons and labourers," which had low levels of all the medical conditions surveyed, she said.

Source.

More details here. Journal abstract here

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



19 February, 2008

IS FOLATE GOOD FOR OLDIES TOO?

You might think so from the results below but look again. It appears that it was only CHANGES in folate that were correlated with dementia onset. Having low folate levels at the beginning was no problem. The inference is that folate levels and dementia have a common cause rather than one causing the other. Note also this recent expert comment about folates causing bowel cancer. And that this study showed that folate INCREASES dementia. So even if the results below were more positive, it would still be unwise for oldies to take folate. Abstract below:

Changes in folate, vitamin B12, and homocysteine associated with incident dementia

By Jae-Min Kim et al.

Objectives: Prospective findings have not been consistent for folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine concentrations as predictors of dementia. This study aimed to investigate both baseline concentrations of folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine and changes in these concentrations as predictors/correlates of incident dementia.

Methods: Of 625 elderly patients without dementia at baseline, 518 (83%) were followed over a 2.4 year period and were clinically assessed for incident dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Serum concentrations of folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine were measured at the baseline and follow-up assessments. Covariates included age, sex, education, disability, depression, alcohol consumption, physical activity, vascular risk factors, serum creatinine concentration, vitamin intake and weight change.

Results: Only baseline lower folate concentrations predicted incident dementia. The onset of dementia was significantly associated with an exaggerated decline in folate, a weaker increase in vitamin B12 concentrations and an exaggerated increase in homocysteine concentrations over the follow-up period. These associations were reduced following adjustment for weight change over the same period.

Conclusions: Incident dementia is more strongly associated with changes in folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine than with previous concentrations. These changes may be linked to other somatic manifestations of early dementia, such as weight loss.

Source




SOME BUREAUCRATIC WISDOM EXPLODED

Effect of training and lifting equipment for preventing back pain in lifting and handling: systematic review

By Martimo KP et al.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether advice and training on working techniques and lifting equipment prevent back pain in jobs that involve heavy lifting.

DATA SOURCES: Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, Cochrane Back Group's specialised register, CINAHL, Nioshtic, CISdoc, Science Citation Index, and PsychLIT were searched up to September-November 2005. Review methods The primary search focused on randomised controlled trials and the secondary search on cohort studies with a concurrent control group. Interventions aimed to modify techniques for lifting and handling heavy objects or patients and including measurements for back pain, consequent disability, or sick leave as the main outcome were considered for the review. Two authors independently assessed eligibility of the studies and methodological quality of those included.

For data synthesis, we summarised the results of studies comparing similar interventions. We used odds ratios and effect sizes to combine the results in a meta-analysis. Finally, we compared the conclusions of the primary and secondary analyses.

RESULTS: Six randomised trials and five cohort studies met the inclusion criteria. Two randomised trials and all cohort studies were labelled as high quality. Eight studies looked at lifting and moving patients, and three studies were conducted among baggage handlers or postal workers. Those in control groups received no intervention or minimal training, physical exercise, or use of back belts. None of the comparisons in randomised trials (17,720 participants) yielded significant differences. In the secondary analysis, none of the cohort studies (772 participants) had significant results, which supports the results of the randomised trials.

CONCLUSIONS: There is no evidence to support use of advice or training in working techniques with or without lifting equipment for preventing back pain or consequent disability. The findings challenge current widespread practice of advising workers on correct lifting technique.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



18 February, 2008

Social class and cancer detection

By Dr. Syed Ashraf Imam

The Muslim guy writing below is not a very good researcher or he would not be peddling the old snake-oil about mammogram screening. Its utility is now regarded as dubious. In the circumstances, I don't think any of his other statements can be taken at face value either. My guess is that he is just another leech trying to bleed the taxpayer in the name of doing good

When I first joined the fight against breast cancer nearly 30 years ago, the tools we used were primitive. Mammography was very much in an experimental form and our diagnoses were often flawed. Even the treatments we used then seem primitive by today's standards. Fortunately, for most women, breast cancer is no longer a death sentence. Improvements in detection, treatment, education and our understanding of the disease have allowed us to take great leaps forward to eradicating it. However, those of us in the field are reminded every day that we are not there yet. In California alone, nearly 20,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer per year. And more than 4,000 women die from the disease.

Therefore, the mantra in our fight is early detection. And there's a reason for it. Women who discover breast cancer at an early stage have a better chance of surviving. Breast cancer at its early stage is more often detected in women in higher-income groups than those in lower incomes. Unfortunately, this disparity makes this disease deadly for the least fortunate among us.

The reality of early detection rarely has anything do with luck. The women who are diagnosed at an early stage are more often those with access to proper health care and an advanced awareness of the disease. They are more likely to receive appropriate treatment in time, and, therefore, more likely to survive. Their counterparts, who do not have access to information and care comprise the bulk of those women diagnosed with late stages of breast cancer, the life-threatening stage of the disease.

It's simple to see why this is the case. Among uninsured women over 40, only one-third have yearly mammograms. In contrast, 64 percent of women with health insurance received such an examination last year. With such obvious disparities, it would seem that a few easy remedies would be in order. First and foremost is giving more women access to health care in California. We're ranked 44th in the nation in providing women access to healthcare, with 21 percent of women without access. That ought to change.

Luckily, we have begun to move in the right direction in Sacramento. The California Department of Health Services' Every Woman Counts program has already invested millions of dollars in state funds toward increasing access to care for under-insured women. As a result, more women can get the screenings for the early detection of breast cancer and possibly treatment they wouldn't otherwise receive. Unfortunately, the program has the funding to provide health care for only one-fifth of the 1.2 million eligible women. As a result, the current level of available funds is far from being adequate.

We can do better than that. Los Angeles is joining the Komen Community Challenge - a national grassroots campaign to close the gaps in research, public policy and access to quality care. Susan G. Komen for the Cure is asking communities to rally together in order to close these deadly gaps. In California, it means asking state legislators to provide $12 million in funding for the State Department of Public Health Services' Every Woman Counts program, providing another 24 percent of eligible women access to care that could save their lives. If our leaders in Sacramento step up the plate, Every Woman Counts really will serve every woman who needs it - and no woman will ever be turned away.

As a researcher I recognize the important role of science in our fight to eradicate breast cancer. I also know that we can't just fight breast cancer in the laboratory alone. Let's come together and close the gaps that make breast cancer deadlier for some women than others. The past three decades have seen us greatly reduce the number of women who die from breast cancer.

Source




Study Links Diet, Activity to Lung Cancer Risk: Eat Your Veggies, Work Outside for Cancer Prevention

It's just another stupid study based on self-reports -- with no doubt the usual class bias of such studies. There was NO measurement of ACTUAL vegetable consumption

Eating four or more servings of green salad each week as well as working outside in the yard or garden a couple of times a week may significantly lower the chance of developing lung cancer in smokers and nonsmokers, according to a recent study. "The results are exciting because the study is applicable to everyone, and it may have a positive impact on the 15% of people who are diagnosed with lung cancer who are non-smokers," says Michele Forman, Ph.D., lead author on the study and a professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Epidemiology. Forman adds that although this is a very preliminary analysis, the results give researchers important clues about how smokers and non-smokers might be able to reduce their risk of developing lung cancer. [Policy recommendations made on the basis of "a very preliminary analysis"??]

This study sought to determine if physical activity and diet have an impact on whether people develop lung cancer. Forman says frequency of eating salad is a marker of vegetable consumption. Gardening was chosen as a physical activity because a wide range of people can participate in it, and other physical activity did not appear to influence risk prediction. It is one of the few activities people with lung cancer report doing.

The investigators found that physical activity like gardening reduced the risk of developing lung cancer by: 45% in former smokers; 33% in smokers. Smokers who eat three servings or less of salad a week have double the chance of lung cancer compared to smokers who eat four or more salads weekly, according to the study results.

Researchers used a food-frequency questionnaire for participants to report about their diets during the previous year in healthy patients or the year before diagnosis of lung cancer in patients. Data was collected on: Cancer patients a year prior to diagnosis; Cancer-free individuals a year prior to interview. Participants also were asked about physical activity, including sports and other forms of exercise, throughout their adult years.

These findings are part of an ongoing study that is examining several risk factors for lung cancer. It matches people being treated for lung cancer at M. D. Anderson with cancer-free people who are patients at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, a private physician group in Houston. More than 3,800 participants are involved in the study.

What's next? Forman says more research is needed on the connection between lifestyle and cancer. "We do not know yet whether these habits of eating well and exercising are markers for other lifestyle factors that might be even more important, such as lack of alcohol consumption," she says. "We have a lot of puzzles in the picture yet to analyze."

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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17 February, 2008

Ho hum! A "new" but old THEORY: Too much junk food `raises the risk of cancer and dementia'

The idea that junk food leads to insufficient micronutrient intake is sure to be popular among the do-gooders but is unproven garbage. There are usually half a dozen different foods in a hamburger and all are common dietary constituents: Meat, bread, lettuce, tomato, pickle etc. If such foods are inadequate, we are all going to DIE!

And note again that Australians eat all the "wrong" foods in great quantities but have exceptionally long life expectancies. Pesky!

Eating too much junk food may contribute to cancer, dementia, stroke and other diseases through a lack of vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients in the diet, according to a new theory. Professor Bruce Ames, of the Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute, California, believes that many common disorders associated with ageing can be traced in part to poor diet earlier in life. The research that he presented to the conference yesterday suggested that taking regular multivitamin supplements could protect against some bad effects of micronutrient deficiencies.

This idea is contradicted by other studies that have shown little benefit to health in taking vitamin and mineral supplements, suggesting that they are no substitute for a balanced diet rich in fruit and vegetables.

Professor Ames emphasised that his idea was theoretical and he accepted that much more work into the effects of supplements was needed to provide sound medical advice. He said that shortages of 15 micronutrients, including magnesium and vitamin D, had been associated with greater levels of DNA damage to cells and a raised risk of cancers.

Fifty-six per cent of Americans obtained less than the recommended daily amount of magnesium from their diets; 12 per cent consumed insufficient zinc; and most African-Americans were deficient in vitamin D, which was mainly synthesised by exposure to sunlight and was often lacking in people with dark skins who were living at higher latitudes. "Most of the world's population, particularly the poor, has inadequate intake of one or more micronutrients that a varied and balanced diet should provide," he said. "Social concern is low because no overt pathology has been associated with these levels of deficiency."

Whereas serious vitamin or mineral deficiencies had symptoms, such as scurvy for vitamin C and ricketts for vitamin D, mild shortages generally had none. Professor Ames said that it was possible that the body compensated for such shortages by rebalancing metabolism, so that individuals stayed alive for the short term at the cost of their long-term health. "The consequences of this homoeostatic response are, for example, DNA damage (future cancer), adaptive immune dysfunction (future disease), and mitochondrial decay (future cognitive dysfunction and accelerated ageing)," he said. "Much evidence supports this idea that micronutrient shortages accelerate ageing."

Source




Herbal hope for Alzheimers?

A jar of browny-green goo is all it took to end Dr Stephen Minger's doubtsabout whether traditional Chinese medicine could teach anything to Western science. When a colleague walked into the leading stem cell scientist's lab at King's College London with a Chinese remedy that he believed could boost brain cell growth, and asked if he could test his theory on some neurons that Dr Minger had grown in his lab, he wasn't keen.

"My first thought was `you're not putting that on my cells'. But it turned out to be amazing stuff. It really stimulated the cells to grow; they grew like weeds," recalls Dr Minger, the ponytailed scientist who has has been in the spotlight since 2003, when his team created the UK's first lab-grown human embryonic stem cells. These are the "blank-slate" cells that have the power to turn into any cell of the body and may be key in producing more effective treatments for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's.

But for all of his scientific credentials, Dr Minger is about to step out of the conventional and into the alternative. At the time of the "green-goo" incident, neither he nor his colleague had the time or money to investigate further the ancient remedy that produced such an astonishing effect. But the experience stayed with Dr Minger and he began to view Chinese medicine in a different light. If its remedies could make brain cells grow, could they help to treat diseases that destroy the brain such as Alzheimer's?

Now the Government has asked him to head a two-year project aimed at strengthening links between UK and Chinese scientists. He immediately thought of using the project as a way of probing the ancient cures of traditional Chinese medicine, often referred to as TCM, to see if they can be converted into modern treatments.

The project starts this month. Dr Minger will fly to Shanghai to bring together Alzheimer's scientists in the UK with Chinese researchers in the hope of mining TCM for new medicines for the disease. He believes that the traditional system, based on energy flow in the body, yin and yang, anecdotal evidence and treatments made from ground-up plant and animal products, can help evidence-based Western medicine. So do many drug developers in the West who are turning their attention to TCM in the hope that the thousands of remedies in its armoury may have tangible biological and therapeutic effects. "I think there are clearly active ingredients in some of these plant extracts which have potent biological effects," says Dr Minger. "It's not that surprising when you look at the fact that Taxol, a cancer treatment, originally came from yew, and aspirin from willow. Assuming that this project works, TCM could represent a whole new class of drugs that no one has had access to before."

He believes that there is a pressing need for new Alzheimer's treatments. "It is such a huge healthcare burden; it's projected to bankrupt most Western countries in the next 50 years. There are almost no therapies and the existing ones work only on a subset of people. Plus, in most cases, they only slightly slow the progression of the disease." Rebecca Wood, the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, agrees that looking for potential cures in Chinese medicine could open up new avenues of treatment. "It's always worth looking at the unusual. We shouldn't assume we've got all the answers here. Just because something is traditional doesn't mean that it doesn't have active compounds in it."

In fact, experts estimate that one in four prescription medications used in the UK was originally developed from plants. Dr Paul Francis, a neuroscientist at King's College London and one of the Alzheimer's researchers who will join Dr Minger in China, points out that even some of the conventional Alzheimer's medications prescribed in the UK started off as shrubs. "If you look at the three drugs currently available, one of them came from daffodils and snowdrops," he says. Further, many current conventional treatments are based on Chinese herbal remedies, including a possible treatment for dementia.

In recent years the Chinese Government has invested huge sums into investigating whether its vast library of traditional remedies can be converted into orthodox treatments. "The Chinese are very committed to this," says Dr Minger. "They have state-run labs that are doing nothing except investigate TCM."

But developing conventional drugs from these ancient cures is not an easy process as a single remedy can contain many different plant ingredients. How do you know which one is responsible for the curative effect, and is this effect due to one ingredient or a combination?

The process starts with scientists identifying a remedy that they think may have therapeutic potential. Using modern technology - and working by a process of elimination - they test each fraction of the remedy for biological activity, discarding the pieces that have no effect. They continue until they have sieved the remedy down to a point where only a few chemical constituents remain, which they deduce must be the ones that elicit the therapeutic effect. Artificial copies of the active chemical are then made and tested on patients in clinical trials.

But why can't they just give patients the traditional remedies in their native form? Because, Dr Francis says, they are not guaranteed to have any medicinal effect, and, more importantly, they may be dangerous. No two traditional remedies are the same, he says, unlike a pharmaceutical treatment where each pill has an identical composition. The remedies also need to undergo conventional scientific testing to make sure that they won't interact with other medication. This involves a barrage of safety tests, test-tube studies and, eventually, trials in patients. "Any chemical, even a natural chemical, can have side-effects," says Dr Francis.

Dr Minger, who believes that East-West scientific collaborations are the way forward for UK researchers, says that he may also use it to investigate whether TCM holds any potential treatments for cancer. "China is going like gang-busters, particularly if you're thinking in terms of medicine and pharmaceuticals. In many cases their labs are as good, if not better, than labs here or in the US. A lot of Chinese scientists also are moving back. When you ask them why, they say it's too good a place not to be right now."

Does Dr Minger anticipate any culture clashes? "Most of the Chinese guys are Western-trained so it's not that difficult to work together," he says. Plus, much of their science is regulated to the same level as UK science. The only potential problem he sees is the traffic. "It takes for ever to get anywhere. When you're scheduling something, you have to pack in so much extra time to get from one place to another." And he has learnt from the green goo incident how important it is to have no preconceptions. "I think it just takes a little bit of open-mindedness

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



16 February, 2008

Heart benefits from red wine no different from other alcohols

This is a VERY limited study but it is consistent with the fact that benefits have previously been found from various sources of alcohol intake (such as beer) -- but it is something of a poke in the eye for the resveratrol freaks

The potential health benefits of a single glass of polyphenol rich red wine are no different to any other alcoholic beverage, according to new research. Researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital conducted a study on thirteen volunteers to test whether red wine, proven to be high in polyphenols, differed to other alcoholic drinks in affecting heart health.

According to the research, red wine and alcohol consumption were found to have virtually identical impact on health, with one drink of either substance helping to reduce the work rate of the heart.

The findings, which are published in the February edition of the American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology, could challenge the perception that polyphenol content of red wine is responsible for cardiovascular benefits. Red wine has been linked to extended survival rates of mice and prevented the negative effects of high-calorie diets, in other testing, due to the presence of the polyphenol, resveratrol.

The study, supported by Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, was conducted therefore to better understand the link between health benefits and moderate red wine consumption. With population surveys linking lower levels of heart disease to European countries with high-fat diets that also regularly consumed red wine, researchers hoped the testing could better explain this so-called "French paradox."

An occasional single serving of red wine, like any other alcoholic beverage was found to improve heart health, according to the researchers. The study said this was the result of alcohol's relaxing affect on blood vessels. However, after a second drink the heart rate, amount of blood being pumped in the body, and sympathetic nervous system action all increased, the study said.

At this point, researchers said that blood vessels became less able to expand in response to increased blood flow, reversing any beneficial effects obtained by a consumer after a single serving of wine or alcohol. Researcher Dr. John Floras said that findings from the testing had thrown up some unexpected results.

"We had anticipated that many of the effects of one ethanol drink would be enhanced by red wine," he stated. "What was most surprising was how similar the effects were of red wine and ethanol."

Floras added that that the American Heart Association (AHA) did not recommend consuming a single red wine or alcoholic drink as a means of improving hearth health, as long-term affects of continued consumption were unknown.

"Our findings point to a slight beneficial effect of one drink - be it alcohol or red wine - on the heart and blood vessels, whereas two or more drinks would seem to turn on systems that stress the circulation," he stated. "If these actions are repeated frequently because of high alcohol consumption these effects may expose individuals to a higher risk of heart attacks, stroke or chronic high blood pressure."

All 13 participants in the study were aged between 24 to 47 years of age. These respondents, consisting of a group of seven males and six females, were all selected as healthy non-smokers, who were neither heavy drinkers or abstainers. The participants attended three separate morning sessions in which they consumed a set standard drink of red wine, ethanol or water on a random, single-blind basis, two weeks apart. The standard drink was a either a 4 ounce (120ml) serving of red wine or a 1.5 ounce (44ml) spirits shot.

The wine used in the trial was a moderately priced pinot noir with a verified high t-resveratrol content, selected by The Quality Assurance Laboratory of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the researchers said.

Found in: American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Volume 294, Pages 605-612, doi:10.1152/ajpheart.01162.2007. "Dose-related effects of red wine and alcohol on hemodynamics, sympathetic nerve activity, and arterial diameter" Authors: John S. Floras, Jonas Spaak, Anthony C. Merlocco, et al.

Source




Sugary drinks (and fruit) increase the risk of developing gout?

The first thing to note about this garbagy study is that only 1.6% of the people surveyed got gout. What about the other 98.4% who did not get gout? Don't they prove that drinking pop does NOT give you gout? And even in the afflicted group there would have been many factors contributing to the problem. So this study leads to NO health recommendations at all. And I can't resist pointing out that by the same logic they found fruit and fruit juice to be bad for you! Popular summary followed by abstract below:

Sugary soft drinks could be harming more than our waistlines. In the British Medical Journal this week, a new study has found that men who drink sugar-sweetened soft drinks are more likely to develop gout -- an extremely painful joint disease caused by excess uric acid in the blood.

The usual dietary advice for gout sufferers is to restrict intake of meat and alcohol, but the authors suggest that soft drinks should now be added to the list. The study involved 46,393 men aged 40 years and over with no history of gout. At the start of the study, and then every two years, participants completed a dietary survey and were given a medical examination. Over the following 12 years, there were 755 cases of gout. The risk of developing the disease was 85 per cent higher among men who consumed two or more servings of sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day compared to those who consumed less than one serving per month. Diet soft drinks were not associated with an increased risk of gout.

Source

Soft drinks, fructose consumption, and the risk of gout in men: prospective cohort study

by: Hyon K Choi, Gary Curhan

Objective: To examine the relation between intake of sugar sweetened soft drinks and fructose and the risk of incident gout in men.

Design: Prospective cohort over 12 years.

Setting: Health professionals follow-up study.

Participants: 46,393 men with no history of gout at baseline who provided information on intake of soft drinks and fructose through validated food frequency questionnaires.

Main outcome measure: Incident cases of gout meeting the American College of Rheumatology survey criteria for gout.

Results: During the 12 years of follow-up 755 confirmed incident cases of gout were reported. Increasing intake of sugar sweetened soft drinks was associated with an increasing risk of gout. Compared with consumption of less than one serving of sugar sweetened soft drinks a month the multivariate relative risk of gout for 5-6 servings a week was 1.29 (95% confidence interval 1.00 to 1.68), for one serving a day was 1.45 (1.02 to 2.08), and for two or more servings a day was 1.85 (1.08 to 3.16; P for trend=0.002). Diet soft drinks were not associated with risk of gout (P for trend=0.99). The multivariate relative risk of gout according to increasing fifths of fructose intake were 1.00, 1.29, 1.41, 1.84, and 2.02 (1.49 to 2.75; P for trend <0.001).

Other major contributors to fructose intake such as total fruit juice or fructose rich fruits (apples and oranges) were also associated with a higher risk of gout (P values for trend <0.05).

Conclusions: Prospective data suggest that consumption of sugar sweetened soft drinks and fructose is strongly associated with an increased risk of gout in men. Furthermore, fructose rich fruits and fruit juices may also increase the risk. Diet soft drinks were not associated with the risk of gout

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



15 February, 2008

Fast-food harms liver, but helps your heart

So if you are at risk from heart disease, eat at McDonalds! But sugar is bad for you! A rather silly study on the whole but fun nonetheless. What a study of force-feeding tells us, who could say? Note also that the preliminary report of this study reveals that the results were much more complex than described below

A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the docu-movie "Supersize Me." But investigators, reporting their findings on Thursday, were also stunned to find that a relentless regimen of burgers, fries and soda also boosted so-called good cholesterol, seen as a key measure of cardiovascular health.

Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks. The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake.

Blood samples were taken before, during and after the experiment to monitor levels of an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase, or ALT, a potential marker for liver damage often seen among heavy drinkers and patients with hepatitis C. Levels of ALT increased sharply after only one week, and quadrupled on average over the entire period, said lead researcher Frederik Nystrom, a doctor at the University Hospital of Linkoping. "The results scared me," he told AFP. "One of the subjects had to be withdrawn from the study because he had 10 times the normal ALT levels."

For 11 of the 18 subjects, ALT rose to levels that would normally reflect liver damage, even among individuals who did not drink any alcohol, although no such damage occurred, he said. Two of the individuals had liver steatosis, or fatty liver, in which fat cells build up dangerously in the liver, he said. Steatosis is associated with the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, which has taken on epidemic proportions, especially in industrialised countries.

Published in the British Medical Association's journal Gut, the study "proves that high ALT levels can be caused by food alone," said Nystrom. That signs of liver damage were linked to carbohydrates was another key finding, he said. "It was not the fat in the hamburgers, it was rather the sugar in the coke," he said.

But the most startling result implies that an intensive fast food diet might have some health benefits too, apparently from fat. "We found that healthy HDL cholesterol actually increased over the four-week period -- this was very counter-intuitive," Nystrom said. HDL, sometimes called "good cholesterol," seems to clean the walls of blood vessels, removing excess "bad cholesterol" that can cause coronary artery disease and transporting it to the liver for processing.

Nystrom has yet to publish the cholesterol findings, but said they were consistent with the so-called "French Paradox." For nearly two decades, scientists have wrestled to explain how the French can consume a diet rich in fats -- from abundant butter, cream, cheese and meat -- yet have generally low levels of heart disease and hypertension. "The study showed that the increase in saturated fat correlated with the increase in healthy cholesterol," he said.

The young Swedish guinea pigs ate at least two fast-food meals a day, and terminated the study once they had gained a maximum of 15 percent in weight. On average, they tipped the scales 6.5 kilos (14.3 pounds) more, but one ballooned by 12 kilos (26.4 pounds).

Nystrom got the idea for his study from the 2004 Oscar-nominated documentary "Supersize Me," in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock asked doctors to monitor him over a 30-day period in which he ate at McDonalds morning, noon and night. Doctors were so alarmed by changes in his blood chemistry -- including skyrocketing levels of ALT -- that they begged him to halt his experiment. "I wasn't just inspired by the movie, I copied it to the best of my ability," said Nystrom.

The movie helped spur a change of tack by fast-food corporations to include healthier options on their menus. On their websites, McDonald's and Burger King highlight salads and low-fat products -- alongside the classic burgers and colas -- and offer guidance on balanced diets and a healthy lifestyle.

Source




Sitting down is now bad for you

But jogging is bad for you too because it crunches your joints. And swimming is bad because swimmers drown a lot. And walking outdoors is bad because you might get cancer from the sun. So just DIE!

SITTING down is about to join smoking and junk food on the list of vices that increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease. New Australian research shows that half-an-hour in the gym will not make up for the waist-expanding damage caused by spending the rest of the day sitting. But the good news is that pottering about the house or gently walking around the office while on the phone might be enough to keep you fit.

The study, which will appear in the April issue of Diabetes Care, joins the growing body of evidence suggesting too much sitting might undo the benefits of exercise. The study measured the intensity of physical activity in 168 subjects over seven days. It found that, regardless of how much moderate-to-vigorous exercise they did or their total sedentary time, those who took more breaks from sitting had lower waist circumferences, lower body mass indexes and lower levels of triglycerides and glucose in blood.

Higher levels of triglycerides, or blood lipids, have been linked to a heightened risk of heart disease and stroke. High blood glucose levels are linked to the development of diabetes, which itself is a major risk factor for heart disease. "What this shows is there are benefits in just getting up regularly and interrupting your sedentary time," principal researcher Genevieve Healy of the University of Queensland said.

Researchers behind the Stand Up Australia project have written to the Rudd Government requesting $3.5million for a two-year study into the impact of prolonged sitting on the health and productivity of workers. The study would also develop and test strategies for reducing sitting time on the job. The project is a a collaboration between the Baker Heart Research Institute and the International Diabetes Institute, which will merge this year, and the universities of Melbourne and Queensland.

The latest study builds on work that is shifting the health promotion focus from purposeful exercise, such as jogging or cycling, to lower intensity activity throughout the day.

The Australian research has been backed up by US studies, which show the sheer effort of standing up is enough to double the metabolic rate and the amount of calories burnt. "If you stand up, you are much more likely to end up pacing or pottering around and that seems to make a crucial difference," Professor Marc Hamilton from the University of Missouri told Britain's Daily Mail.

His studies found that the enzymes responsible for breaking down fat are suppressed when a person is sitting instead of standing. "To hold a body that weighs [77 kilograms] upright takes a fair amount of energy from muscles," he said. "There is a large amount of energy associated with standing every day that can't easily be compensated for by 30 to 60 minutes in the gym."

Studies by associate Professor David Dunstan, of the International Diabetes Institute, linked subjects who spent more time watching television with risk factors for diabetes and heart disease, regardless of their levels of moderate-to-vigorous exercise.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



14 February, 2008

Blue-collar workers have more illness

That there is an association between lower social class and more illness is very well-established and this article confirms that. The direction of causation given below is pure speculation, however. Even if all these guys had remained unemployed, they would probably still have more illness. People in poorer health and less fit people generally may often have to take more menial work. And picking out particularoccupations for more or less of some ailment is pure data-dredging. The occupations would be likely to differ purely on a random basis. Epidemiological studies are useful for hypothesis-testing or hypothesis-generating but they do not enable causative inferences by themselves

BLUE-collar workers such as cleaners, truck drivers, fruit and vegetable growers and meat processors are at higher risk of developing cancer than their office-based counterparts are, a new study warns. Hairdressers and sewing machinists were also found to be far more susceptible to bladder cancer than other workers.

Scientists believe exposure to potentially toxic chemicals, dyes, pesticides and viruses are causing spikes in job-related diseases.

The research from Massey University's Centre for Public Health Research in New Zealand - published in two international journals - revealed the full extent of modern occupational cancer risks.

Apple and pear growers have been singled out as five times more likely to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, while plant nursery staff recorded a four-fold increased risk. "An elevated non-Hodgkin's lymphoma risk was observed for field-crop and vegetable growers and horticulture and fruit growing, particularly for women," the study author, Andrea 't Mannetje said. "Meat processors had an elevated risk, as did heavy truck drivers, workers employed in metal product manufacturing and cleaners."

Reasons for the higher risk include exposure to animal viruses, cleaning chemicals, petrochemicals, trace metals and lubricants. Farmers who spray pesticides manually are likely to be at greater risk than those who use machines, according to Dr 't Mannetje. The use of carcinogenic chemicals called aromatic amines is blamed for increased rates of bladder cancer in hairdressing and sewing machine work. While several forms of the chemicals are banned, similar substances are still used in common fabric and hair dyes.

Source




Australia: Bureaucrats ban the evil peanut

Peanut butter sandwiches have been banned from a Government building because of concerns the smell could trigger a deadly allergic reaction. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission building in Sydney's CBD has outlawed all peanut products from the building for fear an employee could go into shock and die from the fumes. Taking the nanny state mentality to the extreme, the commission has begun erecting signs in hallways, kitchens and conference rooms declaring them a "Peanut Free Zone".

The ban, which came into effect this week, is believed to have followed a situation where a staff member became concerned after free peanut butter samples were handed out on Town Hall train station. An email to staff said: "You may have noticed the new peanut free zone posters we've just placed around the floor just to help us remember not to bring any peanut products to work. "For those who collected the freebie peanut butter samples from town hall (sic) this morning, please take these home as the smell will trigger a reaction."

As well as the peanut butter sandwiches, the ban prevents staff from eating chicken satay, Pad Thai, Snickers bars, Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and anything else containing peanuts at work. The email said the nut moratorium covers the entire floor of the building, which houses a total of seven government departments. They include the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commission, Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, the Disability Discrimination Commission, Privacy Commission, Race Discrimination Commission and the Sex Discrimination Commission.

Staff said they were "bemused" by the new rule but were prepared to obey it to save a colleague's life. A Human Rights Commission spokesman said the ban was informal and was necessary because one staff member had such an acute allergy to peanuts they needed to constantly carry an adrenaline syringe in their pocket in case of a reaction. There was no enforcement process in place, and the signs were meant to inject humour into the situation.

Concerns about peanut allergies have grown after highly publicised deaths including Sydney schoolboy Hamidur Rahman, who died after being dared to eat peanut butter at a school camp. Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's Rob Loblay said it was impossible to trigger an allergic reaction from smell but a sufferer could become "extremely distressed and anxious".

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



13 February, 2008

Diet drinks are fattening

Consuming low-calorie drinks may increase the risk of putting on weight, according to scientists in the United States. They have suggested that people who choose diet drinks containing artificial sweeteners tend to overcompensate and consume more calories than those who do not.

Although the rise in obesity has corresponded with a growth in low-calorie soft drinks, designed to make keeping weight down easy by replacing sugar with saccharine or other sweeteners, scientists who conducted experiments using rats at Purdue University, in Indiana, have suggested that the opposite may be happening. They found that rats fed on yoghurt sweetened with saccharine ate more calories, gained more weight and put on more body fat than rats that were given yoghurt sweetened with glucose.

Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson, who conducted the experiments, have suggested that, by breaking the connection between a sweet sensation and high-calorie food, the use of saccharine changes the body's ability to regulate how many calories it consumes. "The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharine can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming the same food sweetened with a higher-calorie sugar," they conclude in their report, which is published in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience.

They admit that their results may seem counterintuitive and might not be welcome to nutritionists and doctors who have long recommended low-calorie or no-calorie sweeteners. But they say that their findings match emerging evidence that people who drink more diet drinks are at higher risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome, a collection of medical problems such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure and insulin resistance that put people at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.

People and animals learn that eating certain foods has consequences. Sweet tastes signal calories. If that link is broken, the researchers suggest, then the individual loses the ability to judge how many calories are being consumed. One controversial theory is that calorie consumption is signalled by a rise in body temperature after eating. The greater the rise in body temperature, the more aware the individual is that a lot of calories have been consumed.

In the experiments the rats that were used to eating low-calorie yoghurt showed a smaller rise in temperature after eating a different, calorie-loaded meal. It appeared that their ability to detect calories had been blunted, leading to overeating.

Normally, the researchers say, sweet foods provide a stimulus that strongly predicts that someone is about to take in a lot of calories and their ingestive and digestive reflexes gear up for that intake. But when false sweetness is not followed by lots of calories the system gets confused. Thus, they argue, people on low-calorie diets may eat more - or expend less energy - than they otherwise would. If their theory is correct, then artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame K, which taste sweet but do not provide calories, could have similar effects.

The results did not surprise Richard Cottrell of the Sugar Bureau. He said that there had been a number of studies that suggested a link between use of low-calorie sweeteners and weight gain and that dietary studies in humans "do not support the idea that avoiding sugar is a predictor of low body mass index, quite the contrary".

Dr Cottrell said that the evidence suggested that people who chose low-calorie drinks tended to consume more calories. "The advocates of low-calorie products tend to rely on evidence from covert substitution experiments, where the subjects don't know their food has been doctored. But even these experiments suggest that compensation kicks in slowly over a few days. People who know they are `banking some goodness' by taking, say diet drinks, are inclined to overindulge."

Source




Risk-averse world demands the unattainable

Comment on the latest extension of British bureaucracy. New drugs are to be suicide-rated

For drug manufacturers, the hurdles constantly get higher. Patients demand drugs that work effectively but which are targeted so precisely that they have no side-effects. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that such products are possible, but there is hardly a drug on pharmacists' shelves that does not have at least one undesirable side-effect.

Some of the cosiest and most familiar drugs are among the worst offenders. Take aspirin. We all do. This centenarian is a genuine lifesaver, with a near-miraculous list of battle honours. It is effective against pain, but more aspirins are swallowed to protect against heart disease than headaches. Worldwide, more than 60 billion doses are taken every year. Yet if it were invented today, aspirin could never be marketed. Its most dangerous side-effect is damage to the stomach lining, causing ulcers and bleeding. In under16s, it can trigger a rare but potentially fatal condition, Reye's syndrome.

No drug with two such damaging side-effects would get far in today's risk-averse world. Yet it is impossible to deny that, overall, aspirin has done far more good than harm. By expecting drugs to be completely safe we are throwing away potentially valuable products too readily. Whenever new safety rules are introduced, costs rise and it becomes less and less profitable to produce drugs that have a limited market.

So people with rare diseases suffer. "Orphan drug" designations, whereby companies are given incentives to develop less profitable drugs, may help a little but the cost pressures inevitably drive companies to seek big-market drugs, the only way they can get their money back.

The problem then is that a rare side-effect may loom large simply because of the huge number of people taking the medication. It looks awful if thousands of people suffer side-effects and join in class actions, but if tens of millions are taking the drug the numbers suffering may be only one in a thousand or less. The other 999 are alleviating their symptoms and enjoying life.

Side-effects of drugs for treating depression are especially tricky to assess. There is evidence that they may increase suicidal thoughts, if not actual suicide, among adolescents. This may mean that teenagers plunged into gloom are lifted sufficiently by the medicine so that they see the possibility of controlling their lives once more. Thinking of suicide could be a sign of improvement.

If every drug is to be assessed for suicidal thoughts, it creates another barrier, another set of costs, and another reason for rejecting promising medicines because of a side-effect that may be tiny when compared with potential benefits.

The reductio ad absurdum of the search for complete safety is stasis. No new drug will ever be approved because fear has paralysed innovation. Everybody will lose. There will be no new medications, and we will be forced to fall back on those approved in earlier times when standards were lower. So by seeking perfect safety we will end up with drugs that are actually less safe, but familiar. It's enough to give you a headache. I'd recommend an aspirin.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



12 February, 2008

The baby-bottle scare

A general background article on it below. The scare is quite idiotic and is nothing more than an attention-getting exercise for those who promote it. They say that baby bottles can release an incredibly tiny amount of a particular chemical. And what is the problem with that chemical? It acts like a normal and common human hormone that is found in both men and women. The extra effect given off from the baby bottle chemical would in other words be the tiniest fraction of something that we normally deal with every day anyway! And even IF it were a harmful chemical in big doses it does not follow that it would be harmful in small doses. Many things (e.g. common table salt) can be harmful in big doses but beneficial in small doses! If you need any more information after that see here

If a new report is to be believed, an entire generation of children has grown up drinking a toxic chemical from their earliest months: bisphenol A. A consortium of North American environmental and health groups released a paper Thursday showing that many major-brand baby bottles leach bisphenol A, and is now calling for a moratorium on the use of the compound - used to make polycarbonate plastic - in food and beverage containers.

Researchers tested 19 baby bottles purchased in nine U.S. states and Canada. Bottle brands included Avent, Dr. Brown, Evenflo, Disney, Gerber and Playtex. When the bottles were heated to 175 degrees F (80 degrees C), every one of them leached bisphenol A at about 5 to 7 parts per billion. The report also suggested that because of the chemical makeup of bisphenol A, it may leach more in fatty or acidic liquids, such as milk or apple juice, than in water.

It's a parent's nightmare. But before you panic, consider this: U.S. and E.U. health and environment authorities still stand behind polycarbonate plastic, putting the safe level of daily bisphenol A exposure at more than 25 times the levels found in baby bottles. (The Canadian agency, Health Canada, is currently reviewing its bisphenol A policy; conclusions are due in May.)

So who's right? Opponents of bisphenol A say official safety figures are far too high, given what the chemical, which mimics the hormone estrogen in the body, does in animals. In the lab, even low exposure levels - adjusted for body weight - have been linked to a variety of sex-hormone-imbalance effects, including breast and prostate cancer, early puberty, miscarriage, low sperm count, and immune-system changes. Critics also claim that in developing infants, such sex-hormone effects may come into play at exposure levels far below what health authorities have deemed safe for adults. "The reproductive system is developing, the brain is developing, the immune system is developing," David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, told a news conference Thursday on behalf of the environmental agencies. Knowing that, he said, it is "absolutely obscene" to expose infants to the compound. Legislation has been proposed in several U.S. states to limit or ban the use bisphenol A. And a handful of stores, including Whole Foods and Patagonia, have yanked polycarbonate bottles from their shelves.

Still, the scientific establishment disagrees. In a 2006 summary explaining its review of bisphenol A safety, the European Food Safety Authority argued that animal trials of the chemical simply don't tell us very much about humans. For one thing, when humans ingest the compound, it's quickly excreted through the urine; when rats and mice eat it, it's released into the bloodstream and remains in the body much longer - with much more time to throw off the body's sex-hormone balance, causing nasty effects.

So far, the human data on bisphenol A have been "really inconclusive," says Antonia Calafat, a research chemist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing a lack of big quality studies testing the chemical's effects in humans. In order to prove definitively that bisphenol A is not harmful to people, researchers would need to conduct large, lengthy trials, such as those that finally concluded that thimerosal-containing vaccines do not cause autism in children. That would require rounding up a control group of participants with very little exposure to bisphenol A - no small feat. Calafat's recent findings showed that, among roughly 2,500 Americans tested in 2003 and 2004, more than 95% already had traces of bisphenol A in their urine. Alternatively, researchers could test how higher-than-average doses of bisphenol A affects people. Again, a likely dead end. "As a scientist it would be pretty much unethical to do that study knowing what [bisphenol A] does in animal studies," says Laura Vandenberg, a post-doc fellow at Harvard Medical School who researches bisphenol A, and is a critic of its use.

The obvious solution may seem to be, when in doubt, ban it. If there's a chance that bisphenol A hurts kids, then why run the risk? Certainly, parents have little interest in waiting for scientific evidence when they think their children's health is in danger. Hence, the many state legislators who want to limit bisphenol A's use now. But without evidence, anything could be considered potentially harmful. Right now, U.S. and E.U. health and environment authorities still believe the best evidence supports continued use of regular polycarbonate baby bottles.

Polycarbonate plastic is used for a reason: It's useful. Hard, shatterproof, lightweight and clear, it's in a huge range of products from water bottles and food storage containers, to lenses in eyeglasses and car headlights, CDs and DVDs, and even bulletproof glass. "Whether you realize it or not, you use it in your life every day," says Steven Hentges, head of the polycarbonate group at the industry lobby organization American Chemistry Council. There are, of course, alternatives to polycarbonates, like glass and other plastics. And for the growing number of consumers opposed to bisphenol A, there's no shortage of online resources to help find them.

Source




US study finds genetic link to child obesity

A study of more than 5,000 pairs of twins has found that a child's risk of becoming overweight is mostly down to nature, not nurture. The research into children aged between eight and 11 showed that the variation in a child's body mass index and waist circumference was 77% attributable to genes and 23% to the environment in which they grow up.

Overweight children are more likely to become overweight or obese adults, a condition that can contribute to ill health and increased cancer risk in later life. The results are published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "This study shows that it is wrong to place all the blame for a child's excessive weight gain on the parents; it is more likely to be due to the child's genetic susceptibility," said Jane Wardle of University College London.

A twin study allows scientists to work out the extent of the genetic contribution to a pattern of behaviour compared with the environmental contribution. Identical twins, who share all their genes, are compared with non-identical twins, who share half their genes. By spotting behaviour or traits that occur more often in identical rather than non-identical ones, scientists can work out the relative contribution of genetics.

Study author Susan Carnell, a psychologist at University College London, said that genetically influenced behaviour was not inevitable. "One of the ways genes could be acting is through behaviour, ie food intake and physical activity, and these things are under our conscious control. Genes just might make it more difficult for some people than others."

Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK's director of health information, said: "This research highlights the importance of doing all we can to encourage children to eat healthily. "If genetic influence is strong, we must try to counter these inherited tendencies by providing the healthiest possible environment, and educating parents on the importance of a well-balanced diet and an active lifestyle."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



11 February, 2008

Amusing naivety: Homosexuality in Samoa

These guys must never have heard of the Margaret Meade debacle "Growing up in Samoa" -- reports that were totally vitiated by dishonest responses from Samoans. At least the authors appear to be aware of the other glaring methodological weakness in their work: Failure to compare childless homosexuals with childless heterosexuals. Their research so far justifies NO conclusions whatsoever

Studies of some unusual men in the remote Pacific have led scientists to surprising conclusions about homosexual and other genderbending behaviors. One of these conclusions: sexual attraction to members of the same sex may have an evolutionary function, though past studies had failed to find one. A second assertion to emerge from the work is that psychologists should reconsider the way they classify as a "disorder" transsexualisma strong desire to be the opposite sex.

The research focuses on a remarkable group of men who have sex with men, though they defy much conventional wisdom on what being "gay" is. They form a broadly accepted social class in Samoa, a south Pacific island nation.

The studies are directed in part toward resolving a scientific mystery: why does homosexuality persist in the world? It seems to make little evolutionary sense. Evolutionary theory, the lens through which most scientists study biological traits, holds that in each population, the genes of members who reproduce the most come to dominate the gene pool. That's because these individuals, unsurprisingly, spread their genes most widely. By that logic gays, who reproduce little, shouldn't exist. Yet they do, along with some evidence their tendencies may have a genetic component. What gives?

The explanation, many scientists argue, could be that the childless gays put extra efforts into helping raise nephews and nieces. That would boost the children's chances of survival, and someday reproduction. These youths, even if not gay, might share with their aunt or uncle a few genes promoting homosexualityensuring a clutch of "gay genes" in every generation.

One problem with this proposal: it has failed past scientific tests. A few studies have found gays aren't especially helpful to their families. Those results have worked in favor of an opposing argument, that homosexuality has no evolutionary function. Scientists who back this view say homosexuality is an aberration, so it has about as much biological function as a birth defectnone.

Mainstream physicians no longer consider homosexuality a disorder, but it was only in 1994 dropped from the American Psychiatric Association's handbook of mental disorders. Transsexualism, or "gender identity disorder," is still listed, though the manual says it's only a disorder if it causes the patient significant distress.

In the new studies, Canadian psychologists sought to test some of these competing ideas by visiting Samoa, a relatively unwesternized land. By studying people who they said live closer to the ways of humanity's "ancestral" past, the researchers said they hoped to assess possible evolutionary functions for homosexuality and the roles of other genderblurring behaviors.

The idea about gays helping their kin, called the kinselection hypothesis, might have failed past tests because these were done in modernized Western societies, the researchers said. Gays might help relatives more in traditional, triballybased cultures, the scientists claimed, because these often have tighterknit families and fewer antigay biases that could alienate gays. Moreover, the researchers argued, the traditional environment is more appropriate to study, as it's more like the setting in which humans mainly evolved.

Men who habitually have sex with men are socially accepted in Samoa, where they're known as fa'afines. Some characteristics of fa'afines, the psychologists said, are quite foreign to Western concepts of homosexuality: notably, they have sex only with men who are considered "straight," not with each other. But they are Samoa's equivalent of what Westerners would call gay men.

Based on fa'afine responses on questionnaires, compared to responses of heterosexual Samoan men, the researchers concluded that fa'afines put "significantly" more effort into raising nephews and nieces. The childcare activities that saw stronger input from fa'afines included babysitting, buying toys, tutoring, exposing the children to art and music, and contributing to daycare, medical and education expenses, the surveys indicated.

It's the first study to offer real evidence for the kin selection hypothesis' basic prediction, "that androphilic ["gay"] males should direct more altruistic behavior toward kin than gynephilic ["straight"] males," the team wrote in a report of their findings. The paper appeared in last May's issue of the research journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

But more studies will be needed, wrote the authors, Paul Vasey and colleagues at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. A stronger study would compare the fa'afines to childless nonfa'afines, they noted. In their own study, 58 percent of the "straight" respondents had children, who might have diverted their attention from nephews and nieces.

In another study, Vasey and Nancy Bartlett of Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia concluded that psychologists' assessment of transsexualism as a disorder, at least for children, should be revised.

The relationship between transsexualism and homosexuality, if any, is unclear, though some experts say that many boys with "gender identity disorder" become gay.

Vasey and Bartlett wrote that fa'afines they interviewed seldom recalled being "distressed" by feeling or acting like a girl in childhood. Most such distressthe researchers concluded based on that and other factorsarises in Western societies because of the stigmatization of such children.

Source




Anti-fungal pill (Lamisil) death link

This is far from conclusive but one wonders why it is used internally at all. It is pretty effective topically

THREE people have died and several others have suffered serious liver reactions after taking a popular tablet to treat fungal infections, the drug regulator says. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has issued a warning about serious adverse side effects reported with oral Lamisil, a pill formulation for ringworm and nail fungal problems.

The medication is commonly prescribed to people who do not respond to topical fungal creams, but the regulator's Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (ADRAC) warns it can cause liver failure. The committee has received 722 adverse event reports related to Lamisil, known generically as terbinafine, including 70 liver reactions, 61 implicating the tablet form as the sole suspected drug. Those affected ranged from 20 to 85 years old, with half suffering their liver reaction within the first month of taking the pills.

"Most of the reports document minor abnormalities of liver function but three describe fatal liver failure, 10 describe hepatitis, and 12 describe jaundice," the committee's latest drug reactions bulletin states. "Full recovery was noted in 27 reports but 34 cases had not recovered and the outcome remained unknown in nine."

One case described in the bulletin involved an 81-year-old woman with previously normal liver function. "(She) developed cholestatic hepatitis some three weeks after commencing oral terbinafine treatment 250mg daily for a fungal infection of the big toe," according to the bulletin. "The patient subsequently died in hepatorenal (liver) failure." [How do we know it was due to Lamisil? She might have died anyway at that age]

This is the first ADRAC report linking Lamisil to liver dysfunction, but three others dating as back as far as 1996 have implicated the drug in the blood condition dyscrasia. The committee warned prescribers that the oral formulation should only be prescribed short-term and as a last resort. "Doctors prescribing oral terbinafine should be confident there is a clear indication for its use," the bulletin states. "Oral terbinafine should be prescribed only after topical therapy has failed and for the shortest time possible, in accordance with the current product information."

A spokesman for the drug's manufacturer, Novartis, said that serious and life-threatening liver reactions were rare and well documented side-effects of oral anti-fungal medications. The company said it agreed with the advice issued by ADRAC.

Meanwhile, the committee also received 12 reports of reactions in patients taking both the blood-thinning drug warfarin and anti-arthritis supplement glucosamine. It appeared some complementary medications could increase the activity of warfarin, the bulletin stated. The committee recommended that patients on warfarin have their blood tested within a few days of starting or changing the dose of a complementary medicine.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



10 February, 2008

Heavy cellphone use tied to poorer sperm quality

I think this just proves that real men don't spend a lot of time on the phone. Women are certainly great phone-users so maybe effeminate men are too

Spending hours on a cellphone each day may affect the quality of a man's sperm, preliminary research suggests. In a study of 361 men seen at their infertility clinic, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found an association between the patients' cell phone use and their sperm quality. On average, the more hours the men spent on their cell phones each day, the lower their sperm count and the greater their percentage of abnormal sperm.

The findings, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, add to questions about the potential health effects of cell phones and other wireless devices. Some studies, for example, have linked long-term cell phone use to a higher risk of brain tumors, though many other studies have found no such connection. The concern is that, over time, the electromagnetic energy emitted from mobile phones could theoretically harm body tissue -- by damaging DNA, for example.

However, the new findings do not prove that cell phones somehow damage sperm, according to the researchers. "Our results show a strong association of cell phone use with decreased semen quality. However, they do not prove a cause-and- effect relationship," lead researcher Dr. Ashok Agarwal told Reuters Health.

He and his colleagues based their findings on semen samples from 361 men who came to their infertility clinic over one year. All of the men were questioned about their cell phone habits. In general, the researchers found, sperm count and sperm quality tended to decline as daily cell phone hours increased. Men who said they used their phones for more than four hours each day had the lowest average sperm count and the fewest normal, viable sperm. "We infer from our results that heavy cell phone use ... is associated with a lower semen quality," Agarwal said. But whether cell phones somehow directly affect men's fertility is not clear.

Agarwal said he and his colleagues have two studies underway aiming to shed light on the issue. In one, they are exposing semen samples to electromagnetic radiation from cell phones to see what, if any, effects occur. The second is a follow-up to the current study that is assessing a larger group of men. Agarwal said this study is more rigorously designed and will account for certain other factors like lifestyle habits and occupational exposures that might affect sperm quality.

Source




Let's call a ceasefire in the 'war on obesity'

In tackling an imaginary fat epidemic, the British government is intruding into our lives, guilt-tripping parents and stigmatising chubby children

New year, same old obesity panic. Yesterday, the UK government launched its latest strategy document on tackling fatness, Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives (1). Like every other measure the government has ever announced on obesity, it promises greater intrusion and regulation of our everyday lives, and to make our society a more fraught and joyless place.

The report opens with a smiling prime minister, Gordon Brown, assuring us that: `Heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes have taken the place of nineteenth-century diseases as the illnesses that curtail life prematurely, cause long-term incapacity, reduce quality of life, and on which we focus our healthcare resources.' These diseases `represent as big a threat to our ambitions for world-class services as a lack of investment in the National Health Service did 10 years ago', he says - a neat double-whammy of fearmongering and self-congratulation for his government's health spending.

So how bad is the `obesity problem', or `epidemic', as the government likes to call it? The new strategy document says it is on a par with that other planetary emergency that is pushing us towards oblivion: `[We] are facing a public health problem that the experts have told us is comparable with climate change in both its scale and its complexity.' Climate change is now the new model of how to build a social panic to justify government intervention, as we have noted previously on spiked (see The dangers of fried food and a fried planet, by Rob Lyons). With `global warming' implanted in the public consciousness as a product of man's greed and folly, a phenomenon that could end up killing off humanity, it has become a cheap, easy fallback phrase for our scaremongers-in-chief who want to issue dire warnings on everything from terrorism to bird flu to overeating.

In truth, however, there is no `obesity epidemic'. What really lies behind the government's obsession with our waistlines is not a burning necessity to slim down an apparently waddling nation, but rather a deeply unhealthy urge on the part of officialdom to monitor our lifestyles and attitudes.

Some critical experts question whether there is an `obesity problem' to be solved at all. Of course a small percentage of the population is very fat. These morbidly obese individuals do struggle with a range of health problems because of their weight. They need help - although many of the current solutions for morbid obesity, like surgery to reduce stomach size, seem to be as risky and severe as the problems they're designed to fix.

However, the vast majority of people, from `normal' weight through to the mildly obese, do not face any particular difficulty as a result of being overweight. In fact, the definitions of `overweight' and `obese', and the way the two terms are used interchangeably in popular discussion of the issue, blur the distinction between normal body shapes and the morbidly obese. In adults, these definitions are based on body mass index (BMI) (basically, a ratio of weight to height). A BMI of 25 or more is defined as `overweight', while a BMI of 30 is regarded as `obese'. But most of the population has a BMI greater than 25, so by definition, most of us are `ill'. As it happens, recent statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest there is little difference in mortality figures for those with a wide range of BMIs, including those who are at the lower end of the `obese' range (see Who's afraid of. being fat?, by Patrick Basham and John Luik).

For children, the situation is even more complicated because their bodies are going through rapid changes. As a result, adult definitions of obesity are generally regarded as unsuitable for children. In the new report, government ministers state `a third of children are either overweight or obese'. Apart from the familiar problem of blurring `overweight' and `obese' to produce a more startling number, it is worth noting that the figures used are based on an outdated definition. A different and more widely accepted definition of childhood obesity suggests fewer children are affected. (For further discussion of this area, see Fattened statistics by Peter Marsh.)

As the American academic Paul Campos neatly put it, maybe the best way to win the war on obesity is to stop fighting it; to stop waging war on actually quite normal people who enjoy eating nice, rich foods.

Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives argues that the problem of obesity is, at core, an imbalance of `energy in' (food consumption) with `energy out' (our metabolism plus our physical activity). We all have to take responsibility for our weight, the authors argue, but there are also `genetic, psychological, cultural and behavioural factors which. have an important role to play'. In other words, as well as having to tolerate the ongoing tsunami of advice and lectures from government advertising campaigns, media health experts and doctors about our personal behaviour, we should also expect to see big changes in our environment and culture in the name of tackling the illusory obesity epidemic.

The reorganisation of aspects of society around the war on obesity is already happening, and it is undermining parents and unnecessarily stressing out children. There have been changes to school meals that dictate much more rigidly what children eat during the day, and there are regular inspections of kids' lunchboxes to check that they aren't secretly consuming chocolate or fizzy drinks. Such measures not only deny children the sugary perks of childhood that the rest of us enjoyed; they also implicitly undermine parental authority. If a teacher or other school employee rifles through a child's lunchbox and sends a stern letter about the contents to mum or dad, what message does it send to the child? That your parents cannot be trusted; that the health-aware and caring authorities know better than your mother how you should be brought up.

The weighing and measuring of children's BMI has now been institutionalised in some schools. Children are given a letter for their parents, like a school report advising mum and dad on little John or Jane's `progress' in the subject of weight and healthiness. As Dr Michael Fitzpatrick has argued on spiked, these public weigh-ins, effectively designed to measure children's obedience to New Labour's new health regime as much as their weight, will cause distress to perfectly happy and healthy children who may simply be carrying a bit of puppy fat or childhood chubbiness: `The mass weigh-in will inevitably stigmatise overweight children and provoke widespread anxiety and distress among both children and parents.' (See Stop bullying fat kids, by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick.)

Meanwhile, the ban on junk food advertising during kids' TV programmes exposes the illiberal edge to the war on obesity. You may not care very much whether massive corporations like Coca-Cola can book a 30-second slot during Dora the Explorer, but we should be concerned when the authorities take it upon themselves to control the dissemination of images and information in the name of protecting us from our own worst instincts. It is censorship of the most patronising kind (see Advertising is a free speech issue, by Brendan O'Neill).

On top of these developments, Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives outlines some new and pointless proposals. The document suggests there should be a unified system of colour-coded food labelling to warn people of the fat, salt, sugar and calorific content. Cookery classes will be made compulsory for 11- to 14 year-olds, even though many schools simply don't have the facilities to host such classes. UK health secretary Alan Johnson, displaying the anti-obesity crusader's dictatorial instincts once more, says he wants to use planning legislation to prevent burger bars being built in the vicinity of schools. Yet according to the Local Government Association: `There is no evidence that where fast-food joints are located makes the slightest bit of difference to obesity.' (2)

From turning home economics into a pious lecture on good food/bad food, to marking every fatty or salty food product in supermarkets with a red warning label, to restricting the building of burger joints. it seems the government wants to win the war on obesity by making eating food - one of the everyday joys of our lives - into such a tedious and scary task that we all might just give it up.

The war on obesity is a joyless and fear-underpinned initiative. Its effects could well include making parents feel guilty and chubby children feel isolated (possibly even making them the victims of anti-fat bullies); and the war will likely turn the everyday pleasure of eating into a fraught task, while making society and TV ever-more tightly policed arenas. New Labour, a government without any wider vision of how to lead or change society, has become obsessed with micro-managing our lives. And its micromanagement is increasingly backed up by some fairly nasty measures. At the start of this month, Gordon Brown indicated that patients could be denied treatment if they didn't stop smoking, lose weight or exercise more, as part of a NHS `constitution' (3).

It is time there was a ceasefire in the war on obesity - and time that the government decommissioned and put beyond use its weapons of fearmongering and fatty-bashing.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



9 February, 2008

Get lazy, age faster

This seems reasonable enough. We didn't evolve to sit in armchairs all day. But the stuff below is little more than speculation. There's still a lot we don't know about telomeres and their regeneration

People who are physically active in their spare time seem biologically younger than sedentary types, researchers report. Regular exercisers are already known to have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity and osteoporosis, according to scientists. But beyond this, "inactivity. may influence the aging process itself," the researchers wrote, reporting their findings in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Lynn F. Cherkas of King's College London and colleagues studied 2,401 white twins who filled out questionnaires on physical activity, smoking habits and socioeconomic status, and provided blood samples for DNA tests.

The researchers measured the length of segments of chromosomes called telomeres. Their length, which decreases throughout a person's life, is seen by some biologists as a possible marker of biological age. [Hmmm... ]

People who were less physically active in their leisure time had shorter telomeres in their white blood cells than those who were more active, Cherkas and colleagues found. "The most active subjects had telomeres the same length as sedentary individuals up to 10 years younger, on average," they wrote. The relationship "remained significant after adjustment for body mass index, smoking, socioeconomic status and physical activity at work."

Sedentary lifestyles shorten telomeres probably through a process called oxidative stress, in which oxygen, although essential to life, causes chemical damage to cells, the researchers said. Exercise may also reduce psychological stress, they added, and this may affect aging.

"U.S. guidelines recommend that 30 minutes of moderateintensity physical activity at least five days a week can have significant health benefits," the authors wrote. "Our results underscore the vital importance of these guidelines. adults who partake in regular physical activity are biologically younger than sedentary individuals."

Source




Beware of raw eggs

The owner of a cafe that infected scores of patrons with salmonella has apologised to those who became ill. Venus cafe owner Maree Little cried yesterday as she spoke of the devastation of knowing food prepared at her Rosny Park eatery had made at least 79 people seriously ill, including mourners at funerals which her business had catered for. She too became ill after eating food from the cafe, which had been made unknowingly with contaminated eggs. She said she felt compassion for all those who had been sick, including her five-year-old granddaughter and five Venus staff who were all hospitalised.

"I want to sincerely apologise to all of our loyal customers, staff and other members of the community who've fallen ill as a result of eating food from Venus cafe," she said. "We profoundly regret that our business has been associated with this salmonella outbreak and we feel for everyone who has been admitted to hospital, or become sick as a result of eating at our cafe. "It has devastated me and the staff as well. Our heart certainly goes out to those (sick) people because we know what they are going through." The apology came after the Mercury revealed a 66-year-old Hobart man was struck down with salmonella after lunching at Venus and spent the past 12 days in hospital. The hospitalised man was finally able to go home yesterday and said he was grateful that Venus had apologised and that the Tasmanian Greens were pushing for regulatory changes to prevent further salmonella outbreaks.

The Health Department has confirmed the outbreak at Venus was caused by an aioli salad dressing and dipping sauce which was made from raw eggs. The contaminated food was served in the cafe on January 24-25 and at several catered functions including funerals at Millingtons in Mornington. Ms Little said it was unfortunate that her business had unknowingly used contaminated eggs provided by an external egg supplier. She said her business, which she had run for 16 months, would not use raw egg in any product ever again.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



8 February, 2008

Severe stress in pregnancy may be tied to kids' schizophrenia

A bit of chicken and egg here. They report that schizophrenics are more likely to have had relatives die while they (the schizos) were in utero. Perhaps the relatives of schizophrenic people die earlier because they too are schizo to some extent and schizophrenia is life-threatening in various ways

Children of women who suffer an extremely stressful event -- such as the death of a close relative during pregnancy's first trimester appear more likely to develop schizophrenia, a study reports.

Past research already bears out, somewhat, "the common conception that a mother's psychological state can influence her unborn baby," the researchers wrote in reporting their findings. "Severe life events during pregnancy are consistently associated with an elevated risk of low birth weight and prematurity," continued the scientists, Ali S. Khashan of the University of Manchester, U.K., and colleagues. Their paper appears in the February issue of the research journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

Schizophrenia, a disabling mental illness tied to abnormal brain structure, is increasingly believed to begin in early brain development, the investigators added. Environmental factors, including those occurring during pregnancy, and genes may interact to influence risk, they noted.

The scientists used data from 1.38 million Danish births from between 1973 and 1995. Using a national registry, the scientists checked whether any of the mothers' close relatives had died or suffered cancer, heart attack or stroke during the pregnancies.

Risk of schizophrenia and related disorders was about 67 percent higher among offspring of women exposed to the death of a relative during the first trimester, the team found. This risk was unaffected by deaths of relatives at any other time during or shortly before the pregnancy, they added, and the link they found seemed significant only for people with no family history of mental illness.

A possible explanation for the results, they said, is that chemicals released by the mother's brain in response to stress may affect the fetus' developing brain, especially early in pregnancy when protective barriers between mother and fetus are weak.

Source




Stuff your face! Make a mint!

Britain: State-sponsored incentives, like paying obese people not to eat so much, will never work

Do you remember the sepia-tinted days when shopkeepers would give you 5p for the return of an empty fizzy-drink bottle? For me the memory of this early recycling venture excites a flush of shame. As children, our gang would pilfer the glass bottles from neighbours' porches and backyards and stuff our faces with sherbert on the profit. My more hard-faced schoolfriends went farther and would steal full bottles of Tizer from shop shelves, empty the contents down the grate, then return them to the same outlet, smiling innocently, to collect their wages of sin.

Fizzy-pop bottle crime was my instant thought when I read that the Government is considering giving fat people cash or vouchers to lose weight. What kind of crazed, inverted logic is this? Pay people to lose weight and you give them a motive to gain it in the first place. Don't be thin and a loser, folks. Eat all the pies and - wayhay! - it's payday. If history has taught us anything it is that where state-sponsored financial incentives are involved, human beings will find a way to double bluff the system.

We all heard the allegations during the foot-and-mouth epidemic that some farmers were deliberately infecting their livestock to claim the handsome compensation. Or the stories about people nicking M&S clothes just so they could return them sans receipt and take advantage of their generous refund policy. And the theory that some parents in this country push for their children to be prescribed Ritalin, the drug that combats attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, because they will then qualify for the 40 pounds or so a week "attendance allowance" that accompanies it.

Few anecdotes illustrate the point better than one submitted to the letters page of The Times this week about a town in Italy plagued by snakes where locals were paid each time they brought in a skin to the authorities. Guess what? It emerged that people were breeding snakes to trouser the money.

If the Government wants to give away cash, surely it should convey the right message and reward the already thin, the ones who don't eat buckets of KFC and who subscribe to gyms. Otherwise you may as well do something as daft as paying criminals to give up crime. Oh, hold on. Gordon Brown has considered that one before - a plan for troublemaking teenagers to be paid in vouchers, 20 pounds for every week in which they didn't make trouble.

It is fairly obvious that by introducing a system in which one can profit from obesity, one makes obesity a little more attractive. There are plenty of people in this country who fervently believe that disadvantaged teenage girls deliberately become pregnant so that they will land themselves a council flat.

What do the new obesity proposals do other than up those stakes? It's not just any kid you want, girls - it's a fat kid! Feed them Mars Bars and double your money.

Source




A great way to create drug-resistant bugs and unleash them on the community

Mass antibiotic treatment for Australian Aboriginal communities planned

CANBERRA is considering mass antibiotic treatments in remote Aboriginal communities to combat the spread of sexually transmitted infections. An article in the Medical Journal of Australia suggests entire indigenous communities should be treated in places where infections are widespread. Report co-author Professor Frank Bowden says that in some northern Australian communities one in four young women is infected by either chlamydia, gonorrhoea or trichomoniasis.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday said she was alarmed by the situation and something must be done. "The current approach doesn't seem to be working. We haven't been able to reduce the number of STDs in indigenous communities - in fact they're increasing," Ms Roxon told ABC radio. "Obviously this is a serious public health issue and we do need to look carefully at how we can do things better."

The plan touted in the journal was a radical new approach to tackling rising STI rates based on a blanket treatment scheme similar to current practice for the infectious eye disease trachoma. The scheme would replace the current "screen and treat" programs, which have done little to improve the dire statistics showing one in four indigenous women has an STI. Under the plan, adults and children in indigenous communities with an STI rate over 10 per cent would automatically be offered a four-drug treatment covering chlamydia, gonorrhoea and a third disease, trichomoniasis - without being screened first to see if they have the disease. Treatment would start as young as 10 to combat rising STI rates in children.

Professor Bowden and Melbourne-based sexual health physician Katherine Fethers wrote in the journal that treating STIs in this way would be controversial because sex-related diseases were wrapped up in issues of morality, privacy, stigma, shame and discrimination. But they argue that the current health promotion approach for people in poverty and social hardship was problematic and even "dangerously naive". They said under-resourcing has meant that screening programs had had limited success in turning around rising rates. They said their proposal was in keeping with World Health Organisation practice for other types of diseases, and would be contingent on informed consent from each individual. However, the details of how it would be delivered would require "much debate and consideration", they said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



7 February, 2008

Obesity hardwired in rats

This SHOULD be no surprise. There is plenty of evidence of similar processes in humans

OBESITY may be hard-wired into the brain from birth, according to a new animal study that appears to bolster the notion that some people are more prone to pile on the pounds than others. The study showed that obese rats had faulty brain wiring that impaired their response to the hunger-suppressing hormone leptin.

In obesity-prone rats, "it seems that appetite and obesity are built into the brain," said Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "The neurodevelopmental differences in these animals can be seen as early as the first week. "The results show that obesity can be wired into the brain from early life. The three-million-dollar question now is how to get around the problem."

Leptin plays a central role in fat metabolism. Produced by fat tissue, it acts as a signal to the brain about the body's energy status. Its role in weight regulation is still unclear, but what scientists do know is that the brain calibrates the need for food intake based in part on leptin levels. Previous research had shown that the brains of obesity-prone rats were insensitive to these leptin signals, so the researchers looked for brain abnormalities that could explain this. They found defects in the brain circuits that relay leptin signals throughout the hypothalamus - the brain's central switchboard for regulating conditions in the body. While the rats' condition might be improved by exercising and eating right, the findings suggest that the propensity to gain weight can't be reversed, Prof Bouret said.

If the findings were replicated in humans, then those individuals who were genetically predisposed to obesity because of the way their brains were configured would have to be very careful about "diet and energy balance", said Richard Simerly, another researcher who worked on the study.

The findings also fly in the face of the one-size-fits-all approach that characterises much of the discussion about weight management and weight loss in the media, said Mr Simerly, who is director of the neuroscience program at the Saban Research Institute at the University of Southern California. "The message in the media that weight regulation is all a matter of nutrition or lifestyle choices does a disservice to people whose biology predisposes them to obesity," he said.

The study appears in the February issue of Cell Metabolism

Source




British teachers ordered to 'police children's lunchboxes'

The intrusion of the British State into people's lives grows daily. They make Hitler and Mussolini look like amateurs in some respects

School lunchboxes could soon be monitored by dinner ladies to ensure children are eating healthy meals, ministers said. Under the Government's obesity strategy, all schools will be expected to design a "healthy lunchbox policy" on what makes a nutritional packed lunch over the next year. Some parents may even be asked to sign a form agreeing to ban unhealthy foods from their children's lunches.

If a packed lunch is deemed to contain too much fat and sugar, parents could be sent warning letters or their children's meals confiscated. Although the Government has already unveiled proposals to make canteen lunches much healthier, it is concerned many parents do not have clear advice about what should be included in a healthy packed lunch.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Schools Secretary Ed Balls praised a Hertfordshire school which has designed lunchbox menu ideas for parents. These include falafel and houmous pitta bread with a tomato and avocado salad, followed by fruit yoghurt. The Government has also called on heads to stop children from leaving schoolgrounds during lunchtimes.

But critics have attacked the plans, claiming it is a gimmick. Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat's health spokesman, said: "Childhood obesity begins in the home, so the proposed lunchbox police won't tackle the problem's root causes." Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said: "Many parents will say these are our children and we know what we're doing. "We don't need politicians to tell us what to put in our lunchboxes."

Source




Gym Germs

When you grab a set of weights, hold the treadmill's handrails or hit the mat to stretch, do you ever stop and think about all of the other gym goers who have done exactly the same thing? If not, dermatologists say, you should. While logging a half-hour of circuit training will obviously do your body good, touching equipment that might have been recently handled by another sweaty, sick or infected person could do the opposite. And athlete's foot is just the beginning

Experts warn that if you're using a shared yoga mat, for example, you could be at risk for ringworm, which causes red, scaly rings on the skin's surface. Coming into contact with sweat left behind on a machine could lead to a staph infection, usually manifesting in the form of pimples or boils. If not treated properly, it can invade the bloodstream. "I don't want people to avoid going to the gym, because it's a healthful activity," says Dr. Joshua Fox, founder of the New York-based practice Advanced Dermatology and a spokesman for the American Academy of Dermatology. "But you have to prepare and use common sense."

Rosemary Lavery, a spokeswoman for the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) , says the organization isn't aware of any documented cases in which someone has contracted the sometimes deadly staph infection methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus from a gym. MRSA is transmitted most frequently by skin-to-skin contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But, to be safe, the nonprofit group aimed at promoting the health club industry recently re-released a list of tips and tactics to help its 5,600 U.S. member clubs prevent staph and MRSA infections. They include providing disinfecting wipes or spray for cleaning equipment, using a bleach solution when laundering club towels and encouraging gym goers to do their part, too.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



6 February, 2008

Compulsory cookery: another half-baked idea

Teaching children how to cook should be about taste and pleasure - but the UK government is only interested in obesity, salt intake and telling us how to live

From September 2008, secondary schools with cooking facilities will have to teach practical cookery to every 11- to 14-year-old. The remaining 15 per cent of schools without such facilities will be expected to teach the compulsory classes by 2011. Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, schools and families, explained the rationale for compulsory cookery lessons: `Teaching kids to cook healthy meals is an important way schools can help produce healthy adults.' (1) Pupils will learn to cook a variety of dishes, including a `top eight' of healthy recipes, officials said. Cookery is undoubtedly a worthwhile activity that should be passed down to the next generation, so why do Balls' proposals sound more like a cause for indigestion than celebration?

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, was right when he complained that, `just six months ago, ministers promised heads greater flexibility in the curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds. Now they have fallen at the first fence, creating another entitlement and more compulsion for this age group.' (1) Indeed, when it comes to education, no other government has so over-egged their interference in the teaching profession, or turned up the heat so high on what schools should force-feed their pupils. So alongside `citizenship' classes, compulsory key skills, environmental `awareness' initiatives and proposals for `money management skills', educationalists now have to add salad making skills to their `must do' timetable. At this rate, will there be any academic nutrition left on the menu?

As it happens, cookery lessons can be an enriching feature of the school timetable. Where once, as a part of a gendered curriculum, `home economics' might have prepared girls for their domestic role, contemporary cookery lessons serve up rather more universal fare. Aside from the enjoyment of creating dishes from basic ingredients, school students learn, for instance, how to co-operate with others. And through food preparation they learn that life is about giving rather than childishly taking. Cookery lessons also provide a little space where secondary school students can develop social skills. It was always rather apt that in the teen-angst film Gregory's Girl, the romantic plotting and scheming took place in cookery lessons or during lab experiments. When it comes to serving up subtle lessons in independence and social maturity, cookery lessons can play host to all sorts of simmering relationships.

The same, however, cannot be said of Balls' soggy proposals. Only this government could take something so effortlessly enjoyable and beneficial to school students as cooking and bludgeon it to death with a rolling pin. There isn't an ounce of genuine enthusiasm, or even a gram of understanding, for the humanistic qualities involved in cookery. Instead the classes in coercive cookery are another sideshow from the irrational `war on obesity' and the banal sermons on health and healthy eating. No doubt Balls' ideal recipes will be a fixed menu of five fruit and veg a day, small portions and nothing resembling taste and enjoyment. Goodbye toad-in-the-hole and chocolate sponges, and anything that dares to contain salt or fat. Was cookery meant to be as appealing as guzzling cod liver oil?

Indeed, it is striking that the government is so obsessed with food yet shows no real appreciation for it. For Balls and Brown, food is only valued for its nutritional content rather than the sensual pleasure it gives us. Food should be judged on taste, not `health'. Officials' philistine attitude towards food reduces humans to little more than animals, biological entities in need of the right `fuel'.

However, there is more to Balls' coercive cookery lessons than a misguided reading of vegetarian recipes. As Dr Michael Fitzpatrick recently observed (see Healthy in mind, body.what about spirit?), healthy eating is now `the highest form of ethical virtue recognised in contemporary society'. In this sense, forcing school pupils to take lessons in healthy eating can be seen as part of an attempt to inculcate the new moral and behavioural codes yet further. Tackling the level of obesity amongst the young may be given as the ostensible justification but the policy impulse here is moral. The measures aim to socialise children into accepting that sanctions could arise against them if they don't follow the government's lifestyle diktat.

By making healthy cookery classes compulsory, the government is explicitly stating that for future generations, when it comes to deciding what to eat, personal choice will be a thing of the past. Already Ken Livingstone has suggested that mothers feeding their children burgers and chips through school railings should be arrested by the police. How long before food inspectors in supermarkets make sure we're following the right `healthy eating' plans?

In the past, subjects and aspects of schooling were made compulsory on the grounds that they allowed the next generation to make a worthwhile contribution to public life. Transforming a subject more associated with the home than the world of work or intellectual development into a compulsory subject simply institutionalises the colonisation of our private sphere by the government and state authorities. Far from cookery lessons enriching young people's experience of the education system, it's yet another recipe for social control and moral conformity. Surely it's time to put a lid on lifestyle diktat?

Source




Vaccine for C.diff?

A vaccine to help stamp out the deadly C diff superbug has been developed by British scientists and could be available within three years. The jab would save thousands of lives a year in the UK alone. It could be used both to treat severely-ill patients and mass-vaccinate pensioners, who are most at risk of the killer bacterium. Tests on more than 200 patients suggest that the jab is safe, causing few side-effects other than the occasional red arm or headache.

In one US trial, a course of injections rapidly cleared up infections which had lingered for up to two years. Larger-scale trials on hundreds of patients in British hospitals are being planned in conjunction with the Department of Health.

Scientists are warning that a new strain of Clostridium difficile has emerged which is resistant to antibiotics developed to treat it. But the vaccine, from the Cambridge biotech firm Acambis, could tackle all forms of the bug because it works in a different way. Like the tetanus jab, the vaccine centres around not the bug itself, but the poisons it produces. C diff creates toxins which irritate the lining of the bowel, causing diarrhoea and, in the worst cases, a potentially fatal infection of the abdomen. Treating the poisons with formaldehyde ensures they no longer harm the body. However, they are still recognised by the immune system, priming it to produce antibodies capable of attacking and destroying the bug.

Dr Michael Watson, of Acambis, said: "The toxins work together to blow up cells. "If you imagine them as a dangerous criminal, the formaldehyde essentially handcuffs it. "It still looks like a dangerous criminal but it can no longer use the knife or shoot the gun." C diff, which thrives in filthy conditions, infects more than 1,000 pensioners a week and contributes to almost 4,000 deaths a year. Although antibiotic treatment does have some success, many patients relapse, with successive bouts of diarrhoea making them weaker and weaker.

It is hoped that like the tetanus vaccine, a course of three or so injections will provide long-lasting protection which can be topped up every ten years or so with a booster shot. One of the trials showed the jab could be used to treat and clear up recurrent diarrhoea. The most severely ill of the patients studied, a 71-year-old woman, had been taking antibiotics almost continuously for nearly two years to try to combat more than ten bouts of diarrhoea. The other two patients - a man and a woman - had been battling the bug for up to nine months. Four shots of the vaccine over two months prevented the diarrhoea returning in all three cases.

In a strategy similar to flu vaccination, everyone over the age of 65 or so could be offered the chance to have the jab. Dr Watson said: "Clostridium difficile costs Europe o1billion a year in healthcare costs. You could view that as saved money or saved beds." Dr Marina Morgan, a consultant medical microbiologist at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, said: "There is a desperate need for something to tackle this problem. It is a nightmare. "Norovirus (the winter vomiting bug) is dreadful but it is shortlived and people get better on their own. "C diff kills people and the more we have to fight C diff the better. This sounds amazing."

Professor Mark Enright, of Imperial College London, said the jab seemed promising, despite the small number of patients studied so far. "I don't really see a downside to it. Vaccination is much better than treatment - it is better not to get something than get it and try to kill it off later."

Clostridium difficile exists naturally in the stomach of many healthy adults, where it is kept under control by 'friendly' bacteria. The problems start if the balance of bacteria is disturbed, perhaps as a result of taking antibiotics for another infection. Once the "friendly" bacteria are killed off, the C diff can multiply and produce the harmful toxins. Spread, via hardy spores, is swift. But simple soap and water can keep hands from transmitting the bug while powerful disinfectants can be used to clean floors.

While it is unclear why pensioners are most a risk, they tend to be in hospital more often and for longer than younger people. In addition, immunity tends to decline with age. In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, C diff was blamed for 2,247 deaths and implicated in another 1,560.

The large-scale testing needed to ensure the jab is both safe and effective means it is three to five years away from the market. Professor Mark Wilcox, a C diff expert from Leeds University, cautioned that the weakening of the immune system with age might mean that the vaccine works less well in the elderly. He added: "This will be an expensive vaccine to develop. "Having said that, the cost of C diff is considerable, so even if it does turn out to be a rather expensive vaccine, if it is efficacious it could be money well spent."

The latest mutation of C diff has been found to be resistant to the drug metronidazole. It means that only one medicine, vancomycin, is now left to treat the bug. Health experts have warned hospital bosses and staff to be extra vigilant for signs of the new strain and report any patients not responding to treatment.

Source




Bill would make it illegal to feed the obese

Three legislators want to make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese customers in Mississippi. House Bill No. 282, which was introduced this month, says:

Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

The proposal would allow health inspectors to yank the permit from any restaurant that "repeatedly" feeds extremely overweight customers. The bill, written by GOP Rep. W. T. Mayhall Jr., was referred to the Judiciary and Public Health committees, but The Jackson Free Press doesn't expect it to garner much support in the statehouse. About two-third of Mississippians are considered overweight or obese, according to a recent analysis of federal health data.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



5 February, 2008

The never-ending cellphone scare

There are lots of snooty people who have a need to believe that anything popular is contemptible so there will always be those who scour for "dirt" on mobile phones. A pity that the facts are so pesky. The guy below is still gullible in some ways but he can see stuff that is REALLY obvious

Mobile phones, deodorants and coffee are extremely unlikely to cause cancer, according to a new risk report designed to combat urban myths about what causes the disease. But Australian cancer specialist Professor Brendan Stewart put smoking, drinking alcohol and deliberate exposure to sunlight in the highest risk bracket. His report is published today in the academic journal Mutation Research Reviews, coinciding with World Cancer Day.

The aim of the myth-busting exercise was to calm public fears and prevent pointless hysteria, focusing instead on the real causes of cancer. Endless media articles had left the public confused and alarmed, said Professor Stewart from the University of NSW.

His article, titled "Banding carcinogenic risks in developed countries: A procedural basis for qualitative assessment", looks at all the available research to determine not just which chemicals or activities are most likely to cause cancer, but also which are of greatest threat to the public.

He said the most ridiculous myths were that there was asbestos in tampons and that dioxins could leach out of plastic and into water bottles, for example if those bottles were left in a warm car. Also extremely unlikely to cause cancer, despite public fears, are coffee, artificial sweeteners, deodorants, dental fillings and breast implants.

Of proven risk, and absolutely top of the list, is smoking tobacco, followed by passive smoking. "In terms of most deaths caused and the potential to save the most lives, cigarettes are number one," he said. "Cigarettes are the only consumer product which are lethal when used in accordance with the manufacturer's intention. In terms of proven risk, tobacco smoking and asbestos are equal in terms of the nature of the evidence; but in terms of numbers of people dying, tobacco is far worse."

Professor Stewart said drinking alcohol, deliberate exposure to sunlight and occupational exposure to some chemicals, including asbestos, were all proven to cause cancer. Air pollution, solarium tanning, smoking marijuana and some chemicals in processed meats are all likely to cause cancer, but this has yet to be definitely proven.

"People are incredibly confused," Professor Stewart said. "When they read stories in the media about different studies in isolation it is difficult for them to know how much concern they should attach to it. "I found a way of ordering the evidence in terms of carcinogenicity and the evidence of the circumstances of exposure. It is important to ensure that attention given to proven means of preventing cancer is not reduced by unnecessary public concern about risks that may have no impact at all."

Cancer Council Australia chief executive Ian Olver said the study was very useful in enabling people to put the risks they had heard about in one-off studies in perspective. "Professor Stewart has been quite clever; he has taken the likelihood of the chemical causing cancer and married that with the likelihood of exposure and developed a sliding scale to put chemicals in a high- or low-risk category. He has brought together a lot of useful data so the public are not unduly frightened by the myriad of reports."

Source




Spinal injury progress?

A FORMER Russian circus artist, who recovered from a broken back and has since helped thousands of people suffering from spinal injuries, is keen to open a clinic in Britain. Valentin Dikul, who defied doctors' predictions that he would never walk again after he fell from a trapeze, went on to set several weightlifting records. He has since treated dozens of British patients who travelled to Russia to undergo his unconventional therapy.

"I've opened up clinics in France, Italy, Japan and most recently in Poland," said Dikul, 70, who has received offers to set up in Britain. "Over the years I've had many patients from Britain, but I can't treat all foreigners who come to me as I have limited bed capacity for people with more serious injuries. "With the right local partner, I'd be happy to open up a clinic in Britain because it would make things much easier for British patients." Dikul, who runs several clinics in Moscow, said he has 136,000 applications for treatment from 36 countries, including Britain.

His patients, including paraplegics who have been told by their doctors that they will never walk or use their hands again, are put through a gruelling regime of exercise designed by Dikul, who broke his back aged 24 when a cable on his trapeze snapped. His method seeks to encourage certain nerves and muscles to compensate for those that no longer function. As patients embark on a rigorous physical therapy programme, which lasts at least a year, their bodies are said to learn to reroute nerve impulses to healthy muscle groups, creating greater freedom of movement.

Dikul said his method is not a miracle cure that heals all his patients. But he claimed to have helped thousands of people who had been confined to wheelchairs to walk again. "Normally people with spinal cord injury are taught to adapt to their environment, how to turn on a TV or light switch with a remote control, or work at a computer with his teeth, if need be," said Dikul, a bear of a man renowned for his iron will and quick temper. "What I'm trying to do is return the patient to the highest percentage of movement possible. Not everyone who comes here will walk again, but everyone will improve."

David Heard, who runs Sportability, a British charity, welcomed the possibility of a Dikul clinic in Britain. He first met the Russian 10 years ago when he arrived in Moscow with a friend who had damaged his spinal cord in a car accident. They were so impressed by Dikul's methods, they brought three of his therapists back to Britain and opened a centre providing similar treatment. "I was pretty amazed by what I saw," recalled Heard, who later sent 30 Britons to Dikul's clinic but was forced to close his own when he ran out of funds. "It is not a method suited to everyone, and of course results vary depending on the extent of the damage, but there's no doubt that he gets results."

After both his parents died, Dikul fled his orphanage to join a Soviet circus, where he became an accomplished trapeze artist. Refusing to give up hope after his accident, he studied anatomy and developed exercises so gruelling that he would sometimes pass out from exhaustion on the floor. After six years' rigorous training he took his first unaided steps. Two decades later he was back in the circus, juggling balls weighing 7 stone, lifting two-ton trucks and bending coins with his bare hands. "I make no false promises," he said. "There's no quick cure here and in some cases we can do little. It's a painful and tough process and ultimately it all boils down to willpower. That's what cured me and that's what I tell my patients."

Source




ADHD drugs not worth it

A leading child psychiatrist says doctors should cut back on using stimulants for ADHD after a study showed the drugs could stunt growth and had limited effect. Sydney University professor Joseph Rey, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry, is urging doctors to review their patients' need for stimulants, the mainstay of treatment for hyperactivity disorders. Professor Rey said the Australian medical community should take notice of new findings from a major US study which suggested Ritalin and dexamphetamine, the drugs most commonly used to treat ADHD, were of limited use.

The study of almost 600 children revealed that while those on stimulants did better than kids on behavioural therapy or no treatment at 14 months, there was no difference between the groups after three years. It also confirmed the drugs could stunt growth.

Prof Rey said the results of the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) study should change attitudes to ADHD treatment. ``While results of one study rarely justify drastic changes of practice, the findings underscore the complexity of ADHD, show that stimulant drugs are far from being a silver bullet and that there is much we do not yet know,'' Prof Rey wrote in the latest Medical Journal of Australia. ``This does not mean that stimulants no longer have a place in the treatment of ADHD. ``However, that place has shrunk and clinicians should be circumspect when assessing the need for ongoing treatment, (for example) through medication breaks.''

Research shows up to 11 per cent of Australian children aged six to 17 have the chronic condition, which is characterised by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. Stimulant drugs are used widely, with prescribing rates increasing almost tenfold over the past decade. Rates are highest in Western Australia where almost five in every 100 children are on the medication. In 2006, there were 264,000 prescriptions nationwide for the most popular stimulant, Ritalin.

Initial results from the NIMH study released in 1999 showing the short term benefits of medication were influential in driving up prescription rates. But the results of the two-year follow-up showed children in the other treatment groups - those on tailored psychosocial treatment or routine community care - had essentially ``caught up'' to those on medication taken alone or combined with behavioural therapy.

Prof Rey said this leaves long term benefits in doubt and and suggests there might be a certain amount of ``growing out'' involved with the condition. ``Much needs to be done to clarify who benefits the most from medication, at what developmental point stimulants are most useful and for how long they should be taken,'' he said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



4 February, 2008

Now the beach is bad for you!

Perhaps we should all just hop into our coffins immediately! I suppose it would be churlish of me to say that this research proves only that Miami beaches are polluted. The "study" does not seem to have reached journal publication so I cannot look at the almost certainly weak methodology



BEACHGOERS should take notice: sitting on the wet sand or swimming in the sea for too long may increase the risk of catching an unpleasant stomach bug, a new study found. The University of Florida study found that the more time spent on the wet sand or in the water, the greater the chance of suffering from gastroenteritis. While water pollution monitoring is a standard part of "quality control" in many tourism-dependent cities, the same cannot be said of the sand.

"Our objective was to understand whether beach sand could pose a health risk to beachgoers," said Tonya Bonilla, a reseacher at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine's department of infectious diseases and pathology. "What we found was that there was no increased health risk due to exposure to sand on the upper beach," she said. But "the longer the period of time people spent in the water and in the wet sand, the higher the probability they would experience some gastrointestinal illness," she said.

Beach sand often has some degree of contamination from seabird waste, or other fecal waste. Microbes concentrate naturally around the waterline, in the water and also are tracked around on bathers' feet, researchers found.

They looked at three beaches north of Miami: Hobie Beach, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. "There is an increase risk of acquiring gastroenteritis the longer a bather either sits in the wet sand or stays in the water," said Jay Fleisher, professor College of Osteopathic Medicine-Nova Southeastern University. "The probability that an individual will become sick increases over expected non-exposure rates from six out of 1,000 people for 10 minutes exposure to aprox. Twelve out of 100 people for a two hours stay in the wet sand," he said. "For exposure to water, these rates increase from seven out of 1000 people affected over expected non-exposure rates for a 10 minutes stay to aproximately seven out of 100 people exposed for a 70-minute stay."

Source




But stilettos are good for you!

At least the researcher admits that the conclusion was reached before any evidence was gathered. She's no scientist

WOMEN who simply can't resist a new pair of stilettos can walk a little taller. Scientists have discovered that high-heeled shoes - blamed for stress fractures and joint pain - can have some health benefits. A new study has found that wearing a pair of moderately high heels can tone the body, condition muscles and even improve a woman's sex life without the need for onerous exercise sessions.

Maria Cerruto, a urologist at the University of Verona who led the study, said she conducted her tests because she wished to tackle "bizarre" nonscientific theories blaming high heels for a range of ills, including schizophrenia. "As a woman who loves heeled shoes, I tried to find something healthy in them. In the end I achieved my goal. Heels affect pelvic floor activity, reducing pain and improving your health. We now hope to prove that wearing heels during daily activity may reduce the need for pelvic exercises."

High heels have been a fashion item since the 1600s but over the past 50 years they have been blamed for a variety of health problems ranging from bunions, stress fractures and knee pain to an increased risk of arthritis.

Manolo Blahnik, whose high-heeled shoes were fetishised by Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the American television series Sex and the City, welcomed the research. "This is wonderful news," he said. "I've been hounded for years about how bad it is for posture, but I always thought it was contradictory. "Until my mummy was 87 she was wearing 5in heels and she looked wonderful. She is my living example that heels are good for you. "When you put on a high heel it makes life more exciting. In the 1980s it was all about power, but today it's shifted; it's about elegance. If you're a woman, it's a way to appeal to the male species, it's a way to attract. And it works. I have men who tell me that heels have saved their marriage. "I think there's a limit, though. Anything over 11.5cm [4«in] is just too much. You can't walk properly; it's no longer elegant."

The research, to be reported in the journal European Urology, involved measuring electrical activity in the pelvic muscles of women when they held their feet at different angles. Cerruto studied 66 volunteers aged under 50. She discovered that women who held their feet at a 15-degree angle to the ground, the equivalent of a 7cm [2€in] heel, showed up to 15% less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles. The results suggest the muscles are more relaxed when women wear higher heels, increasing their strength and ability to contract. "Women often find it difficult to complete their exercises. This may prove a solution," Cerruto said. "Like many women, I like high-heeled shoes, and although they are sometimes uncomfortable I continue to wear them in an effort to appear more slender and taller. It's good to know they have potential health benefits."

An official guide to better sex, provided by NHS Direct, advises women to become more aware of their "pleasure muscles" - pelvic floor muscles - and advises them how to exercise them to aid sexual arousal. The NHS recommends that women, particularly before and after pregnancy, should do pelvic floor exercises up to five times a day.

But the study prompted a mixed response from fitness instructors. Zoe McNulty runs a class for women with high heels in London called "Sweat and Stilettos". The session is designed to improve their comfort and strength while wearing heels on the dance floor. McNulty believes heels can improve muscle tone in women's legs, thighs and buttocks. "As soon as you put yourself on your toes you are throwing your sense of gravity out of line. And you've got to compensate elsewhere, which means you work muscles that you wouldn't normally use. You do get more toned," she said. "Just walking around in heels can make people fitter, but the danger is whether they can hold their postures properly. That's where my class comes in."

Matt Roberts, a personal trainer whose clients have included Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Natalie Imbruglia, Mel C and John Galliano, was more cautious. "A woman wearing high heels will hold the muscles tight to compensate," Roberts said. "When you are standing on tiptoes you have to clench the buttocks, the inner thighs and the pelvic floor muscles. It would potentially give them a short-term tension and toning. But the negative effects can outweigh the positive. "The knees and metatarsals are put under strain, the hips are out of position. It can lead to long-term health risks."

Source




Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Sounds interesting but early days yet, of course

Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works. The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of d,j. vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer's disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a "pacemaker" for the brain. Three patients have been treated and initial results are promising, according to Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, who is leading the research.

Professor Lozano said: "This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity - turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained."

The discovery had caught him and his team "completely by surprise", Professor Lozano said. They had been operating on the man, who weighed 190kg (30st), to treat his obesity by locating the point in his brain that controls appetite. All other attempts to curb his eating had failed and brain surgery was the last resort. The treatment for obesity was unsuccessful. But, while the researchers were identifying potential appetite suppressant points in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain associated with hunger, the man suddenly began to say that memory was flooding back.

"He reported the experience of being in a park with friends from when he was around 20 years old and, as the intensity of stimulation increased, the details became more vivid. He recognised his girlfriend [from the time] ... The scene was in colour. People were wearing identifiable clothes and were talking, but he could not decipher what they were saying," the researchers write in Annals of Neurology, published today.

The man, who has not been identified, was also tested on his ability to learn lists of paired objects. After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, his performance on two learning tests was significantly improved. He was also much more likely to remember a list of unrelated paired objects with the electrodes turned on than when turned off.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Professor Lozano said: "His performance improved dramatically. As we turned the current up, we first drove his memory circuits and improved his learning. As we increased the intensity of the current, we got spontaneous memories of discrete events. At a certain intensity, he would slash to the scene [in the park]. When the intensity was increased further, he got more detail but, when the current was turned off, it rapidly decayed."

The discovery surprised the scientists as the hypothalamus has not usually been identified as a seat of memory. The contacts that most readily produced the memories were located close to a structure called the fornix, an arched bundle of fibres that carries signals within the limbic system, which is involved in memory and emotions and is situated next to the hypothalamus.

Professor Lozano is a world authority on deep-brain stimulation who has undertaken 400 operations on Parkinson's disease sufferers and is developing the technique as a treatment for depression, for which he has performed 28 operations. He said the discovery of its role in stimulating memory had wide implications. "It gives us insight into which brain structures are involved in memory. It gives us a means of intervening in the way we have already done in Parkinson's and for mood disorders such as depression, and it may have therapeutic benefit in people with memory problems," he said.

The researchers are testing the approach in six Alzheimer's patients in a Phase 1 safety study. Three have so far had electrodes surgically implanted. The electrodes are attached via a cable that runs below the skull and down the neck to a battery pack stitched under the skin of the chest. The "pacemaker" delivers a constant low-level current that stimulates the brain but cannot be perceived by the patient.

Professor Lozano said: "It is the same device as is used for Parkinson's disease. We have placed the electrodes in exactly the same area of the hypothalamus because we want to see if we can reproduce the findings in the earlier experiment. We believe the memory circuits we are stimulating are close by, physically touching the hypothalamus. "It is a very effective treatment for the motor problems associated with Parkinson's disease and it has been used on 40,000 people. We are in the early stages of using it with Alzheimer's patients and we don't know if it will work. We want to assess if we can reach the memory circuits and drive improvement. It is a novel approach to dealing with this problem."

British researchers welcomed the discovery. Andrea Malizia, a senior lecturer in psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol who is studying deep-brain stimulation as a treatment for depression, said: "If they had said let's stick an electrode in the hypothalamus to modify Alzheimer's disease, I would have said 'Why start there?' But, if they have had a serendipitous finding, then that is as good. Serendipitous findings are how a lot of discoveries in science have been made." Ayesha Khan, a scientific liaison officer at the Alzheimer's Disease Society, said: "This is very cutting-edge research. It is exciting, but the initial result is in one person. It will need much further investigation."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



3 February, 2008

Chemotherapy of no benefit for many younger breast cancer patients

Popular summary below followed by journal abstract:

A young woman is told she has breast cancer. She undergoes lumpectomy and possibly radiation treatment, and then must endure chemotherapy. Her hair falls out. She must be given antibiotics to prevent infections caused by damage to the immune system. Then the worst of insults --- She reads the newspaper and finds out chemotherapy was of no benefit. According to a recent study, chemotherapy for breast cancer patients under age 40 is of no value and should be abandoned. About two-thirds of breast cancers are hormone receptor-positive. Tumor cells have receptors or docking ports for estrogen on their surface.

Source

Efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy according to hormone receptor status in young patients with breast cancer: a pooled analysis

By Jos A van der Hage et al.

Introduction: Breast cancer at a young age is associated with an unfavorable prognosis. Very young patients with breast cancer therefore are advised to undergo adjuvant chemotherapy irrespective of tumor stage or grade. However, chemotherapy alone may not be adequate in young patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. Therefore, we studied the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy in young patients with breast cancer in relation to hormone receptor status.

Methods: Paraffin-embedded tumor material was collected from 480 early-stage breast cancer patients younger than 41 years who participated in one of four European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer trials. Using immunohistochemistry on the whole series of tumors, we assessed estrogen receptor (ER) status and progesterone receptor (PgR) status in a standardized way. Endpoints in this study were overall survival (OS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS). The median follow-up period was 7.3 years.

Results: Overall, patients with ER-positive tumors had better OS rates (hazard ratio [HR] 0.63; P = 0.02) compared with those with ER-negative tumors. However, in the subgroup of patients who received chemotherapy, no significant difference in OS (HR 0.87; P = 0.63) and DMFS (HR 1.36; P = 0.23) was found between patients with ER-positive tumors or those with ER-negative tumors. These differences were similar for PgR status.

Conclusion: Young patients with hormone receptor-positive tumors benefit less from adjuvant systemic chemotherapy than patients with hormone receptor-negative tumors. These results confirm that chemotherapy alone cannot be considered optimal adjuvant systemic treatment in breast cancer patients 40 years old or younger with hormone receptor-positive tumors.

Breast Cancer Research 2007, 9:R70




N.M. tax would target TVs, video games

The thought that people might be entitled to decide for themselves how much outdoor activity they want to do is obviously alien to these Greenie Fascists

Dave Gilligan remembers being pushed outside to play baseball and other sports, but feeling it just wasn't for him. So the 24-year-old business owner is skeptical about a proposal to nudge kids off the couch and out the door by taxing televisions and video games sold in New Mexico. The idea could backfire, he says. "If you take a kid that's just playing his X-Box or whatever and you take him outside and you make him play baseball, he's going to hate it," said Gilligan, co-owner of Gamers Anonymous, an Albuquerque video game store. "There's nothing wrong with sitting at home playing games. Everybody's doing it now."

But a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot. The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state. Supporters of the tax - which would be the first of its kind in the nation - say outdoor programs have been shown to improve students' abilities in the classroom, boost their self-confidence and teach them stewardship and discipline. "We believe that an outdoor education program in New Mexico could be funded through a tax on the very activities that are divorcing kids from nature, promoting more sedentary lifestyles," said Michael Casaus, Sierra Club's New Mexico youth representative. "One of those culprits is TV and what we call screen time."

Blogs dedicated to the gaming world have been abuzz over the proposal, with critics complaining that they shouldn't have to foot the bill for parents who don't know how to raise their children. Some have seized the moment to talk about gaming's benefits. Gilligan, for example, says he learned to read at a young age thanks to video games. He also attributes his interest in art to gaming. "I'm not a very athletic person," he said. "I kept playing video games and eventually my parents accepted that, and now it's my career and I make good money so I'm happy."

Sean Bersell, a spokesman for the Entertainment Merchants Association, said the video game industry has fueled advances in computer technology, such as faster processors and better graphics and sound. Supporters of the tax are wrong to suggest that such complex problems as low test scores and childhood obesity can be solved by turning off the TV, said Bersell, whose group represents about 125 retailers in New Mexico. "Targeting a small category of entertainment as somehow a major contributor to these problem is just not justified and frankly it's not supported by a scientific consensus," he said. The tax would put New Mexico retailers at a disadvantage as they compete with online stores and retailers that offer downloadable games, Bersell warned.

Supporters argue that just as health programs are often supported by excise taxes on cigarettes or alcohol, an excise tax on games and TVs would provide a steady source of cash for outdoor education. Legislative analysts have said the tax would generate about $4 million a year. New Mexico State Parks already offers outdoor programs, but the funding is just a fraction of what the tax would bring in

Source




Australia: Hope for cancer revolution

A QUEENSLAND scientist is developing a drug that could revolutionise cancer treatment for millions of people world-wide. Derek Richard, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, says he has found how to uniquely kill cancer cells without destroying healthy ones - a discovery that could see the end of aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments.

Although more than two years of testing still have to be undertaken, researchers believe it could be the medical breakthrough scientists have been seeking for decades. Highly toxic chemotherapy is currently the only option for most cancer patients, but it also kills off healthy cells, which can lead to severe nausea, fatigue, hair loss and even death.

Dr Richard has identified a human gene - hSSB1 - which cancer cells need to survive, but normal cells can function without. He is now developing a drug that can target the hSSB1 gene, destroying cancer, without harming healthy cells and with much less risk to the patient. "It will be a universal drug that will be used for most cancers," he said.

He is working in partnership with Melbourne firm Cancer Therapeutics (CTx), which will fund $4 million for the drug's development. Clinical trials are expected to start in two years, with the drug being made universally available within six years

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



2 February, 2008

Calcium tablets 'raise risk of heart attacks'

So milk is bad for you now, apparently. This is a data-trawling exercise so the differences obvserved could well be random. If you examine enough variables, you are sure to find some that differ on chance alone

Calcium supplements taken by about a million women could increase their risk of suffering heart attacks and strokes, scientists said yesterday. Researchers found that women aged 55 and over who took the tablets to combat osteoporosis were almost 50 per cent more likely to have a heart attack than those given placebos. Their chances of having a stroke during the five years of the study were elevated by more than a third.

Three million people in Britain suffer from osteoporosis, with one in three women and one in 12 men suffering from it during their lifetimes. The bone-wasting condition causes someone to break a bone, often a wrist, spine or hip, every three minutes. Some researchers have previously suggested that calcium supplements could protect against cardiovascular disease by reducing levels of bad LDL cholesterol. However, the evidence has been unclear. The supplements have also become popular following recent research showing that they can reduce weight gain in older women.

The new study, published on the British Medical Journal website, examined incidents of cardiovascular disease among women in New Zealand taking 1,000mg calcium supplements every day. Doctors in Britain recommend that women who have been through the menopause take 800-1,200mg of the supplements per day to reduce the risk of fractures. The new findings could also apply to women who do not take calcium supplements but consume a lot of dairy products, giving them a higher than average level of natural calcium in their diet.

Prof Ian Reid, of Auckland University, the lead author of the study, said that the increased risk of vascular disease seemed to outweigh the benefits of the supplements. Prof Reid used data from a previous study on bone fractures in which half of almost 1,500 healthy post-menopausal women aged 55 years or over were given daily calcium supplements, while the rest received placebos. Researchers found that women in the supplement group were 49 per cent more likely to have a heart attack and 37 per cent more likely to have a stroke, than those on placebos.

Judy O'Sullivan, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "More rigorous research is needed before any firm conclusions are drawn. "Anyone who has been advised by their doctor to take calcium supplements to protect their bones should not stop doing so in light of this study alone."

Source




Fat comeback?

FAT could be back - in a healthy way - after an overhaul of guidelines that tell us what to eat and how much to put on our plates. After concerns about spiralling obesity rates led to fats being removed from the traditional five food groups, some nutritionists are pushing to return them to the table in the biggest review of Australia's national dietary advice in a decade.

The well-known healthy eating pyramid may also make a comeback, after it was replaced for a pie-style graphic in the Australian Guide To Healthy Eating devised for the Federal Government in 1998. The new food guide could have up to seven core food groups: bread and cereals; vegetables; fruit; dairy; meat, fish and poultry; meat alternatives such as legumes; and "healthy" fats.

The Heart Foundation says the low-fat diet advocated since the mid-1990s starves our bodies of essential nutrients and wants so-called healthy fats such as margarine and vegetable oils to be considered dietary staples again. "For a long time, the message around lowering the [number] of kilojoules in our diet was centred on cutting out all fat, but that's not healthy - we need to have some fats in the diet," the foundation's national nutrition manager, Barbara Eden, said.

The review will also look at the controversial claim that even the most careful vegetarian diet cannot substitute for the iron, zinc and omega-3 fatty acids found in meat, chicken and fish.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************



1 February, 2008

HA! I certainly saw this one coming:

Antioxidants 'could raise risk of cancer'. How pesky for the health freaks who have been gobbling them up!

TAKING antioxidant supplements won't reduce cancer risk, and could raise the risk in smokers, according to a new analysis of a dozen studies of more than 100,000 patients. Smokers who took beta carotene supplements could be increasing their risk of smoking-related cancer and death, the researchers said.

While antioxidants have been touted for cancer prevention, different antioxidants have different effects, which may also vary depending on the part of the body involved, Dr Aditya Bardia of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues noted in their report.

The researchers looked at 12 trials that compared antioxidant supplements with placebo on cancer incidence and mortality. They found that overall, antioxidant supplements didn't reduce the risk of cancer. When they looked separately at beta carotene, they found the nutrient actually increased cancer risk by 10 per cent among smokers. There was also a trend toward a greater risk of dying from cancer with beta carotene supplementation.

Selenium supplements reduced cancer risk by 23 per cent among men, the researchers found, but had no effect on women. While vitamin E had no anti-cancer effect overall, Dr Bardia and colleagues did find that supplementation with the nutrient was tied to a 13 per cent lower prostate cancer risk.

A large study looking at vitamin E supplementation for prostate cancer is underway, the researchers noted. While future studies of beta carotene and vitamin E for cancer prevention were "very unlikely" to show effectiveness, such studies of selenium "could be warranted", the researchers said.

Source




Eating chocolate could give you weaker bones

Chocolate is good for you/bad for you, good for you/bad for you, good for you/bad for you. Will the changes of tack never end? Probably not

Eating lots of chocolate could lead to weaker bones and a greater chance of suffering a fracture, according to a study. Women who ate chocolate every day were found to have less dense bones than women who ate it less than once a week, Australian scientists said. The study comes less than a month after The Lancet journal warned against viewing chocolate as a health food because the antioxidants called flavanols are taken out because they taste bitter

According to the new study, women who ate chocolate daily had an overall bone density 3.1 per cent lower than those who consumed it less than once a week. Critics said the difference was extremely small, and it was likely healthy women ate a generally better diet and exercised more.

Source




Maccas defeats the haters

The self-elected elite despise Maccas but the people know a good deal



The reinvented fast-food chain McDonald's has bounced back from the Super Size Me controversy to serve a record number of Australians in the past year. An average of 1.2million Australians [out of a total population of 20 million] a day walked through the golden arches in 2007. The franchise, which has 762 restaurants across the nation, notched double-digit growth over the calendar year, a McDonald's Australia spokeswoman said. But only 15percent of sales were its healthy eating options such as salads and fruit juices. The top seller was the cheeseburger.

"Last year was simply our best year ever," Helen Farquhar, McDonald's director of marketing and senior vice-president, said. The fast-food giant has prevailed despite the negative publicity generated by Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary Super Size Me, which highlighted the filmmaker's 11-kilogram weight gain and associated health problems after he ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. "There's no doubt that there was huge media coverage given to Super Size Me but it applied more to the US than here," Ms Farquhar said.

"The claims made in that film were untrue in Australia because we were already on a journey of reinvention and had already expanded our menu . and put nutritional labelling on our products when that [film] came out in Australia."

A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed last year that Australia had the fifth highest adult obesity rate behind the US, Mexico, Britain and Greece. Dr Linda Schachter, a physician at The Centre for Bariatric Surgery in Victoria, which specialises in the surgical treatment of obesity, said it was "incredibly disappointing" to hear that more people than ever were eating McDonald's. Dr Schachter said while some people might choose healthier options at McDonald's, the fact was many still ordered fries, which were high in fat. "Society is getting more overweight and obese and it's disappointing to think that nearly 5percent of Australians are eating McDonald's every day," she said.

Ms Farquhar said the reason for strong business growth was because McDonald's was "not just about burgers and fries any more. "We've broadened our appeal and are responding to consumers who are demanding high-quality products," she said. The $2.5 billion company has been transformed over the past six years after a decade of declining sales. Its menu now features lighter options such as salads and sandwich wraps and food is cooked in an oil blend that has 85percent less trans fatty acids. Since 2006 McDonald's has had "percentage daily intake" information on its packaging, so that customers can see the energy content and nutrients in its food.

Andrew Koch, director of independent Sydney agency The Marketing Factor, said McDonald's had repositioned itself in the fast-food market by addressing the issues of fatty food and obesity. "Their advertising used to be aimed at kids, whereas now they offer a broader range of products and are bringing the whole family in. They've convinced the parents too now," he said.

Susie Burrell, an obesity dietitian at Westmead Children's Hospital said, "At the end of the day, McDonald's is a fast-food restaurant." She said while there were healthier options available, children were not going to go to McDonald's and choose a deli choice option over a cheeseburger. But Ms Farquhar said: "We actually sell more salads than any other [fast-food] restaurant or convenience store across the country."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

*********************