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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".

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



31 May, 2007

Burgers revival on British school menus

Food freaks forced to back down



England's school food watchdog has denied it is watering down its healthy food guidelines after many pupils opted out of school dinners. Seven months after healthy food guidelines were introduced, the School Food Trust is revising the standards. Canteens will now be allowed to offer manufactured meat products like pies, sausages and healthier burgers four times a fortnight instead of just once. The trust said it was responding to calls for more clarity and flexibility.

New standards were brought into force in September 2006 after TV chef Jamie Oliver revealed the poor nutritional standards of meals on offer in school canteens. But a number of reports and surveys, including one for the BBC, suggest that fewer pupils have been taking school meals.

A trust spokeswoman said the 2006 standards were always going to be refined and clarified, but denied the move was a result of pupils opting for the chip shop instead of the school canteen. "We undertook consultations with cooks, schools and manufacturers and decided clarifications of the standards were needed. "Having listened to people we understand how difficult it is to get from having chips and Turkey Twizzlers every day to not having burgers and chips at all. "There's still a ban on lower quality economy burgers - schools have to serve a good quality one and it might be grilled."

She added: "It's about being informed about making these choices and understanding that having burgers every day is not a choice that is normal. "This is a response to help and encourage children make healthy choices, not because swarms of them are going to the chip shop."

The changes to the meat products restrictions mean canteens will be able, no more than once a fortnight, to offer pupils one item from each of the following four groups:

• Burgers, hamburgers, chopped meat and corned meat
• Sausages, sausage meat, link, chipolata and luncheon meat
• Meat pies, meat puddings, Melton Mowbray pie, game pie, Scottish pie, pasty, pasties, bridie and sausage rolls
• Any other shaped or coated meat product

Other changes mean kitchens can now serve breadsticks and crackers - as long as they are served with fruit, vegetables or dairy foods. They were previously banned along with crisps, salted nuts and other flavoured snacks, but the trust thought they might encourage pupils to eat more fruit, vegetables and dairy food.

School kitchens are still being encouraged to serve more fruit, vegetables, fresh meat and fish, and deep-fried food should not be served more than twice a week. A small snapshot survey of secondary schools for the trust suggested the take-up of the new healthier, school meals has remained roughly stable. Some 30% of the 74 secondary schools that responded said they had seen a reduction in the numbers of pupils having school meals, while a further 30% said they had seen an increase. The rest said things had not changed.

The survey suggests the results were better in primary schools. A poll of 206 for the trust found half had seen no change, a third had seen an increase and just under a fifth had seen a decrease.

Source




Big advance in cornea surgery

Australian surgeons have restored a man's vision by performing a procedure that eliminates the need for a complete transplant of the cornea. The procedure causes fewer complications and restores eyesight faster than a cornea transplant, doctors say. Rasik Vajpayee, head of the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital's corneal unit in Melbourne, who performed the surgery, said it was an exciting development. "This new treatment has the potential to help sufferers of endothelial corneal blindness to see again, offering them the ability to lead an independent life," Professor Vajpayee said.

Diseases of the cornea -- the clear surface at the front of the eye that lets it focus -- can lead to blurred vision or blindness. Previously, doctors would make a large incision in the eye, remove the diseased or damaged cornea and replace it with a donated cornea, using sutures. Although the procedure has a 90 per cent success rate, it can take 12 months for the eye to heal and patients can experience complications, including infection and distorted vision. Some require corrective surgery if the replacement cornea becomes loose.

In the new procedure, which rarely requires sutures, surgeons make a small incision in the eye and remove only the diseased layer of the cornea, which is then replaced with a layer of healthy donor tissue. "Previously we were replacing the whole cornea, which has about five layers," Professor Vajpayee said. "But there is a serious shortage of corneas around the world. This procedure could allow us to treat two or three patients with tissue from the same donor."

Professor Vajpayee said surgeons had performed the procedure on hundreds of patients in the US, with great success. "The complete transplant uses up to 20 sutures, which all have to be removed," he said. "This has better outcomes and patients recover faster."

David Wall's vision has improved daily since a fortnight ago, when he became the first Australian to undergo the procedure. The 75-year-old's eyesight had deteriorated significantly over the past year. "Eventually I couldn't see anything out of my left eye, it was just a blur," Mr Wall said. "It was affecting my balance and I had to concentrate really hard on the ground when I walked, so I didn't fall." Mr Wall said he could already see objects and read large letters. "It's getting better each day -- I'm very happy with it."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



30 May, 2007

SMOKING: ANOTHER NAIVE STUDY FROM THE CRUSADING BMJ

Most medical journals have their faults but the BMJ journals deliberately sacrifice good scholarship. Articles with a politically correct conclusion are almost certain to be accepted there regardless of their scholarly merit. The following hopelessly naive article is a case in point. It ignores the possibility that the group of "light" smokers are different to start with -- that many of them are smoking "light" because they already have real health concerns. The study therefore proves nothing. Journal abstract follows:

Light Cigarette Smoking Impairs Coronary Microvascular Functions as Severely as Smoking Regular Cigarette

By Hakan Gullu et al

Background: Smoking is the most prevailed and the most preventable risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Smoking of low-tar, low-nicotine (light cigarette) cigarette looks like less hazardous than smoking regular cigarette for general population due to the lower nicotine and tar yield.

Purpose: In this study, we compared the chronic and acute effects of light cigarette and regular cigarette smoking on coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR).

Methods: 20 Regular cigarette smokers (mean age:24.8~5.0) and 20 light cigarette smokers (mean age:25.6~6.4), and 22 nonsmoker healthy volunteers (mean age: 25.1~4.2) were included. In the first run, each subject underwent echocardiographic examination including CFVR measurement after 12 hours fast and smokeless period. Two days after, in the second run, each subject smoked two cigarettes, which were their usual cigarette, in a closed room within 15 minutes. Then, within 20-30 minutes, each subject underwent echocardiographic examination including CFVR measurement.

Results: CFVR values were significantly and similarly lower in the light cigarette smokers and the regular cigarette smokers compared to the controls (2.68~0.50, 2.65~0.61, 3.11~0.53, P=0.013) (Table 1). Post hoc Sheffe analysis revealed that in both smokers group, CFVR values were significantly lower than that in the controls. Before smoking and after smoking paired t test revealed that smoking of two light cigarettes acutely decreased CFVR from 2.68~0.50 to 2.05~0.43 (P=0.001), and smoking of two regular cigarettes acutely decreased CFVR from 2.65~0.61 to 2.18~0.48 (P=0.001).

Conclusion: Smoking of low-tar, low-nicotine cigarette impair CFVR as severely as regular cigarette.

A media summary below:

LOW-TAR "light" cigarettes are just as damaging to heart blood flow as regular cigarettes, finds a new study in the journal Heart . Researchers recruited 62 participants in their mid-20s with no history of heart disease. Twenty had smoked low-tar, low-nicotine cigarettes (8 milligrams tar, 0.6 milligrams nicotine) for at least three years. Another 20 had smoked regular cigarettes for the same period (12 milligrams tar, 0.9 milligrams nicotine), and the rest were non-smokers. All participants were given a fitness test, with the smokers tested 30 minutes after smoking two of their normal cigarettes within a 15-minute period. Coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR) - a measure of how well the heart's blood vessels can stretch in response to increased blood flow - decreased from 2.68 to 2.05 after smoking in the low-tar group, and from 2.65 to 2.18 in the regular cigarette smokers, while CFVR was 3.11 in the non-smokers. The findings show that switching to "light" does not reduce the hazards of smoking, say the authors.




Bird flu antibodies look good

RESEARCHERS in Switzerland have successfully immunised mice against the H5N1 strain of bird flu using human antibodies taken from survivors of the deadly virus, according to a study released today. The antibodies, reproduced at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, also vastly enhanced the survival rate of infected animals, pointing the way to a treatment for people stricken with the often lethal disease, said Antonio Lanzavecchia, co-author of the study and director of the Institute's immune regulation laboratory. "We are very confident that this data can be reproduced in humans,'' he told AFP, saying that the antibodies "provided immediate, short-term immunity'' in mice.

The H5N1 bird flu has killed millions of wild and domestic fowl across the world since it first emerged in the late 1990s, and has caused 185 fatalities out of 306 known cases - most since 2003 - in humans, according to the World Health Organisation. Experts fear that the virus could mutate into a form easily communicable among people as happened during the great flu epidemic of 1918, which caused some 50 million fatalities. In the experiments, mice were injected with antibodies generated from the blood of avian flu survivors in Vietnam, where more than 40 people have succumbed to the disease since 2003. The country's first human case of H5N1 in 18 months, meanwhile, remained in an intensive care unit yesterday in Hanoi.

The mice were then exposed to the same strains that proved so deadly in humans. The treatment provided virtually complete protection, according to the study, published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine. As important, said Mr Lanzavecchia, was the efficacy of the antibodies in neutralising the virus in mice that had been infected as much as 72 hours earlier. The antibodies significantly reduced the amount of virus found in the lungs - by a factor of 10 to 100 - and almost completely stopped it from reaching the brain or the spleen. By contrast, none of the untreated mice in a control group survived.

The development of a vaccine against a possible global H5N1 pandemic has been a major focus of scientists in the field, many of whom are gathering at the end of this week in Paris for the second International Conference on Avian Influenza in Humans. But relatively little attention had been devoted to antibodies, which acted differently, Mr Lanzavecchia said. A vaccine induces a long-term or permanent immune response, but typically takes weeks or months to take effect. Vaccines are also useless to a patient once the disease has struck.

Antibodies, however, worked immediately, and were relatively easy to manufacture on an industrial scale. But the protection was only likely to last a few months, he said. This could still be critical in saving the lives of those infected, who typically seek medical help only a couple of days after flu-like symptoms appear. Antibody treatment could also immunise frontline nurses and doctors during a possible pandemic.

Because it was not possible to conduct regular clinical trials due to the lack of cases, regulators in the US and Europe had authorised a ``fast track'' approval process for an antibody-based drug, Mr Lanzavecchia said. If a treatment showed the same results in two animal models, including one on primates, and then passed a safety analysis, it could then go to market. This process took between three and four years, he said. The research has been funded by Britain's Wellcome Trust, the second largest medical research charity in the world, as well as the US National Institute for Health and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



29 May, 2007

Scientists find more genes linked to breast cancer

I was rather pleased personally to read the report below. QIMR is located about 15 minutes drive from where I live and I did in fact meet Georgia Chenevix-Trench socially some years ago -- a very pleasant lady despite her frightening surname. My congratulations to her on her research. I write without fear or favour, however. I was quite dismissive of research by another QIMR group on May 21st

AUSTRALIAN scientists have helped to uncover four new genes involved in breast cancer and believe they hold the magic key to exposing all others behind the deadly disease. The breakthrough is being heralded as the most significant in the field of breast cancer genetics for more than a decade. "This is huge, absolutely huge, because now we know how to find them all," said Queensland researcher Georgia Chenevix-Trench, who was involved in the landmark international study of more than 40,000 women.

In research released yesterday, the collaborators revealed four genes that slightly increase a woman's chance of developing breast cancer. Everyone carries these genes but those who carry specific abnormal variants will have a 10 to 30 per cent increased risk of disease. The find sharply boosts the number of known low-risk genes to five, after the group publicised the discovery of another gene, Caspase 8, earlier this year.

Although the latest developments are promising, scientists say there is no point screening women for these dangerous variants until 30 or 40 more have been uncovered. A woman would need to carry multiple bad variants to really increase their cancer risk, said Dr Chenevix-Trench, of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. Dr Chevenix-Trench said the most exciting aspect of the research, published in the international journal Nature, was that researchers now understood how to find these genes.

Source




AH! WHAT A LAUGH! VITAMINS AND WEIGHT LOSS

The American Journal of Epidemiology is usually at the top of my list for amusing absurdities but I think I am going to have to add "Archives of Internal Medicine" to my list of guffaw-provoking reading. One of their latest articles is a real lulu. I will reproduce below first the Abstract and then a media summary. See if you can spot the absurdity:

Calcium Plus Vitamin D Supplementation and the Risk of Postmenopausal Weight Gain

By: Bette Caan et al

Abstract:

Background: Obesity in the United States has increased significantly during the past several decades. The role of calcium in the maintenance of a healthy body weight remains controversial.

Methods: A randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was performed with 36 282 postmenopausal women, aged 50 to 79 years, who were already enrolled in the dietary modification and/or hormone therapy arms of the Women's Health Initiative clinical trial. Women were randomized at their first or second annual visit to receive a dose of 1000 mg of elemental calcium plus 400 IU of cholecalciferol (vitamin D) or placebo daily. Change in body weight was ascertained annually for an average of 7 years.

Results: Women receiving calcium plus cholecalciferol supplements vs women receiving placebo had a minimal but consistent favorable difference in weight change (mean difference, -0.13 kg; 95% confidence interval, -0.21 to -0.05; P = .001). After 3 years of follow-up, women with daily calcium intakes less than 1200 mg at baseline who were randomized to supplements were 11% less likely to experience small weight gains (1-3 kg) and 11% less likely to gain more moderate amounts of weight (>3 kg) (P for interaction for baseline calcium intake = .008).

Conclusion: Calcium plus cholecalciferol supplementation has a small effect on the prevention of weight gain, which was observed primarily in women who reported inadequate calcium intakes.

A Media summary below:

CALCIUM and vitamin D supplements could help postmenopausal women to control their weight, according to research in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine . The study included 36,282 women aged 50 to 79 who were randomly assigned to receive either 1000 milligrams of calcium plus 400 international units of vitamin D each day, or an inactive placebo. Participants were weighed each year for approximately seven years. At the end of the study, women who took the supplements weighed an average of 130 grams less than those who did not. The benefits were greatest in women who were not previously getting their recommended daily intake of calcium, with those in the supplement group weighing an average of 190 grams less than those in the placebo group by the end of the study. The authors suggest that calcium and vitamin D may help to break down existing fat cells and prevent the development of new fat.

Dja geddit? Popping all those pills over all those years helped the ladies lose all of one quarter of one pound! Wotta laugh!

A more honest conclusion to the study would have been something like: "Calcium and vitamin D supplements were found to be unimportant to weight control in this study".

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

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



28 May, 2007

Diabetes scare -- again over a tiny risk

Post lifted from New Editor. See the original for links

My father takes Avandia for his diabetes, so naturally I was a little alarmed when I saw the USA Today headline: Diabetes Drug Called Heart Death Risk. But one must turn to page 2 of the print version to get to the pertinent facts.

Taken together, the studies involved more than 27,000 patients. There were 86 heart attacks and 39 deaths from heart disease among Avandia patients; there were 72 heart attacks and 22 deaths among patients not taking the drug.

The story makes it sound as if GlaxoSmithkline were trying to cover up the risks, when in reality the test results were available on a website the company set up for the purpose of disclosure. The USA Today writer calls the website "obscure," showing obvious anti-corporate bias. Government officials are doing the "who knew what when" thing, as if 17 deaths in 27,000 diabetes-afflicted people is cause for government action.

It's true that 39 deaths instead of 22 is a 64% increase. But 17 deaths out of 27,000 is .0006, or 6 hundredths of one percent. That's barely within statistical significance.

Vioxx was taken off the market for an elevated risk that was fairly tiny compared to the number of people taking it, and by all accounts, suffering from arthritis pain much less because of it.

3.5% of the subjects on Vioxx had suffered a heart attack or stroke, compared with 1.9% on placebo

Merck volutarily took Vioxx off the market. But USA Today ran a story that makes Merck seem shadowy, marketing relentlessly while withholding information about danger. But anyone on Vioxx would tell you about how it made their daily life less painful.

Marjorie Chepp of Milwaukee had been taking Vioxx for nearly two years. Her doctor first prescribed it for a knee injury, but Chepp found that it also relieved her osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. She asked to remain on it.

Why, in a free country, can't adults in consulation with their doctor make an educated risk decision about a drug that works?




Scientific fraud

Replication is the only test of truth and I myself repeatedly assist those who wish to replicate my research findings

You have to wonder at some people. I have been wondering at Jon Sudbo, a Norwegian scientist who published a paper in The Lancet in 2005 showing that a certain class of painkillers cut the risk of oral cancer. Sudbo, it turned out, made the whole lot up. And he was astoundingly dim in the way he went about inventing his 908 patients: he gave 250 the same date of birth.

As I learnt at a terrific conference in London last week, hosted by the charity Fraud Advisory Panel, there are many more Sudbos out there but scant means of spotting them. The handful who are found must be a tiny minority, said Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature. And so, he says, we need to consider "going the extra mile" to find them. He is considering whether some studies, especially ones that make headlines, should be replicated before going to press.

Science operates on an assumption of honesty - raw data are rarely scrutinised by either institutions or journals, and academics are encouraged to work independently. Rogue researchers feed off this culture of trust: busy superiors and colleagues often sign off research papers and grant applications without reading them. Fame ensues and grants and citations roll in. And so it becomes hard to "out" a suspect. Do you snitch to your head of department, for example? To your vice-chancellor? Might he or she wish to conceal an issue that could make the institution look culpable? If the person moves and you divulge your suspicions to his new employer, can you be sued?

One solution is to make whistleblowing easier. On Friday the Research Integrity Office, a panel set up last year to promote good practice in biomedical research, launched a confidential hotline for the reporting of misconduct in universities, industry and the NHS (0844 7700644). About 1 per cent of clinical trials are thought to be suspect. This can distort the literature and put patients at risk.

It is a useful step but a modest one: it does not deal with bad behaviour in the physical sciences. And the onus is still on the host institution to investigate and punish. As Dr Campbell told me, some institutions take this responsibility more seriously than others. Woo Suk Hwang, the South Korean biologist who falsely claimed to have cloned a human embryo and extracted embryonic stem cells from it, was brought down chiefly by his own university. Others close ranks.

The conference brought a provocative contribution from Nicholas Steneck, a scientific fraudbuster from the University of Michigan, who pointed out that while plagiarism is undesirable, it may do less harm than the commoner practice of altering data analysis methods to achieve a desired result [See the righthand column of this blog for MY comment on the statistical analyses characteristic of medical research]. Professor Steneck asked: "What does plagiarism do to the literature? Not very much - as long as the plagiariser is accurate." And provided, of course, that the person whose work you're copying has higher standards of integrity than you.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



27 May, 2007

POT-USING MOTHERS HAVE DUMBER OFFSPRING

Particularly if you are a rat. Journal abstract below followed by plain English summary:

Hardwiring the Brain: Endocannabinoids Shape Neuronal Connectivity

By Paul Berghuis et al.

The roles of endocannabinoid signaling during central nervous system development are unknown. We report that CB1 cannabinoid receptors (CB1Rs) are enriched in the axonal growth cones of gamma-aminobutyric acid-containing (GABAergic) interneurons in the rodent cortex during late gestation. Endocannabinoids trigger CB1R internalization and elimination from filopodia and induce chemorepulsion and collapse of axonal growth cones of these GABAergic interneurons by activating RhoA. Similarly, endocannabinoids diminish the galvanotropism of Xenopus laevis spinal neurons. These findings, together with the impaired target selection of cortical GABAergic interneurons lacking CB1Rs, identify endocannabinoids as axon guidance cues and demonstrate that endocannabinoid signaling regulates synaptogenesis and target selection in vivo.

Summary:

The effects of marijuana are mediated by cannabinoid receptors on neurons in the brain, and a causal relationship between marijuana use during pregnancy and permanent cognitive deficits in the offspring has been identified. Berghuis et al. (p. 1212) now define the molecular hierarchy that controls marijuana actions within single neurons and show that activation of cannabinoid receptors by their natural ligands controls the establishment of functional connections between neurons in the brain. These findings define the cellular context through which prenatal marijuana use perturbs brain development.




Keep the government out of my clogged arteries!

Food Fascism as a civil liberties issue

Do you think lawmakers in Hartford should decide what you can eat when you go out in Greenwich or Stamford or Norwalk? Do you think they should keep unhealthy options away from you?

They've taken one step closer to banning trans fats from being used in any restaurant in the state, not because the production of trans fats uses child labor, not to reduce our dependence on foreign trans fats, and not even because trans fats deplete the ozone. None of those tired excuses for interfering in your life were even trotted out.

This was pure paternalism. They think it's bad for you. Therefore, you shouldn't have the option to decide otherwise. Can't a guy even eat a nice, greasy basket of fries anymore without the nanny state slapping his hand?

Eating trans fat does not cause more crime or put pushers on school grounds ("Hey, buddy, want some trans fat?" is not a commonly heard schoolyard expression).

The worst possible thing trans fat will do is kill you, and you alone-if you eat way too much of it. But it's your life. Who gets to make decisions about your life and the amount of risk you can take?

Can you go skydiving? Rock climbing? Can you attempt to hike Mount Everest, or should we file papers for permission from Connecticut's Senate Deputy Minority Leader John McKinney (R-Fairfield), one of the co-sponsors of the trans fat legislation? Can you take stressful or dangerous jobs? Can you drive a car? Can you eat raw fish on rice? Can you enlist and ship out to Iraq?

No one ever forced you to eat trans fats. You can go to another restaurant, or start your own, or eat at home, or order different food. You may not even want the choice of eating trans fat, since you, a healthy person, would never choose it anyway. Perhaps you are okay with this legislation, even though it was underhandedly tacked on as an amendment to a bill to repair a swimming pool.

If you are okay with them making those kinds of decisions for you, then logically you should be okay with them telling you what kind of healthy career opportunities are available to you, what kind of healthy spouses you can marry, what kind of friends you can have, and what kind of person you can vote for, especially if the options they take away from you are ones you weren't really considering anyway.

The real issue isn't even about the trans fat. It's about who runs your life when not a single other person is even remotely involved. As an aside, if you think the government should make this decision for you because otherwise you would be eating up public funds with health-care costs, then that same logic applies to the government deciding your friends, job, dates, hobbies, etc., because otherwise you might be depressed or hospitalized and take up public funds again.

The problem is the size of the government. You can bathe in trans fat in your own home if you want to, because that's out of the government jurisdiction. If they could, they'd regulate that too, but they can't, so they stick to regulating restaurants, because for some reason we've allowed them that leeway without any limits on what they can do with that power.

To paraphrase a famous poem by Martin Niemoller:

First they took the alcohol, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't an alcoholic.

Then they took the marijuana, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a pothead.

Then they took the tobacco, and I didn't speak up, because I didn't smoke.

Then they took the trans fats, and I didn't speak up, because I didn't eat it anyway.

Then they took the chocolates, and I didn't speak up, because I didn't have a sweet tooth.

Then they took my TV and internet, and by that time, there was no one to speak up for me.

They were all at the gym working out.

And I hate exercise

If you let the government take away this choice from you by force, you are authorizing them to do it about other choices as well, and you won't be able to argue later that it's none of their concern. And the next choice they take away might be something you used to like.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



26 May, 2007

Alcohol and pregnancy: Bureaucracy trumps science

Lying to people as a way of getting them to behave in an approved manner is a hoary old Leftist strategy -- e.g. their patently absurd but endlessly-repeated claim that there is no such thing as race

Women who are pregnant or trying for a baby should stop drinking alcohol altogether, the Government's leading doctors give warning today. The new advice radically revises existing guidelines, which say that women can drink up to two units once or twice a week. Fiona Adshead, the deputy chief medical officer, said that the change was meant to send "a strong signal" to the thousands of women who drank more than the recommended limit that they were putting their babies at risk. But she admitted that it was not in response to any new medical evidence

Women are often confused about what drinking in moderation really means, the new guidelines say, and surveys suggest that many accidently or deliberately exceed the limit. "Our advice is simple: avoid alcohol if pregnant or trying to conceive," Dr Adshead said. "We have strengthened our advice to women to help ensure that no one underestimates the risk to the foetus." She suggested that bottles of beer, wines and spirits should carry the new warning that pregnant women give up drinking. However, it emerged yesterday that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists intended to stick with its advice that moderate drinking was perfectly safe, which could leave many pregnant women confused. The college said that it would examine the new advice and decide whether to adopt it "in due course".

The change brings Britain into line with a growing list of countries which recommend abstinence. For years, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have recommended that pregnant women abstain from alcohol. France joined them last autumn, saying that research had linked moderate levels of drinking and permanent brain damage.

Research from the Office for National Statistics has shown a sharp rise in fatal drinking habits among women. The study, of "preventable mortality", found that the annual rate of alcohol-related deaths had risen by two thirds between 1993 and 2005, to 1,873. However, the statistics only refer to death certificates where alcohol-related conditions such as cirrhosis are specifically mentioned. Charities put the annual death toll for both sexes at about 22,000.

Ministers were moved to act over drinking in pregnancy after recent research found that 9 per cent of expectant mothers drink more than the recommended limit. Other data found that a quarter drink right up to the limit. The existing advice to drink in moderation has been in place for about ten years. Previously, midwives regularly told pregnant women to drink up to eight units a week, and even recommended Guinness to prevent anaemia.

Heavy drinking can cause foetal alcohol syndrome, an incurable condition resulting in retardation, poor memory and, in the worst cases, facial abnormalities. About 1 in 1,000 babies are born with the syndrome each year worldwide. But a milder condition, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, is more common, affecting more than 6,000 children in Britain each year, and is a leading cause of learning difficulties.

Because many women do not realise that they are pregnant for the first few months, the advice was extended to those trying to conceive as well. It also states that should a pregnant woman choose to carry on drinking, she should not get drunk and keep to the previous recommendation of one to two units once or twice a week in order to minimise risks to the baby.

Source




Deceitful cancer scare -- those wicked "pollutants"

In her article below, Elizabeth Whelan seems surprised to find utter junk in a mainstream academic journal. If she read this blog, she would know that it is in fact routine

For years, self-appointed "environmental advocates" have generated press releases claiming that "chemicals" in our air, water, food, and consumer products such as cosmetics pose a risk of cancer. Nearly twenty years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council caused a national panic by asserting that the agricultural chemical Alar posed a cancer risk to children (a claim that was later determined to be false). Advocates on Long Island have long claimed -- with a paucity of evidence -- that the elevated breast cancer rate in that area is the result of exposure to environmental chemicals like PCBs and DDT. These assertions can be dismissed as pure scare tactics, as they are not based on scientific data which have survived the rigor of the peer review process and been published in a professional medical journal.

But data and conclusions reported in peer review journals are sound and trustworthy, right? Apparently, we can no longer assume that peer review journals are free of "junk science." The peer-reviewed journal Cancer, a publication of the American Cancer Society (ACS), just published a special online supplement that clearly meets the definition of "junk"in every way.

This journal, which boasts a long and distinguished list of editorial advisors, featured an article by Dr. Julia Brody, the executive director of the Silent Spring Institute and researchers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The journal supplement section was funded by the foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Brody is the principal investigator of the Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study -- a study of exposures to "mammary carcinogens" from air and water pollutants, pesticides, detergents, plastics, and cosmetics. Why is this study "junk"? Let me count the ways:

First, the conclusions drawn by the authors, namely that environmental pollutants cause breast cancer, are not based on human studies but instead on high-dose animal studies. The authors identify a series of synthetic chemicals that cause breast tumors in rodents and then leap to the assumption that these chemicals also cause breast cancer in women.

There is now a nearly-universal rejection by scientists of the use of laboratory rodent data to predict human cancer risks. Thus, it is astounding that this lengthy paper is predicated on the assumption that rodents are just "little women." Indeed, in a companion article in the same Cancer supplement -- this one written exclusively by staff members of the Silent Spring Institute -- the authors recklessly elevate the role of rodent tests by asserting that "identifying chemical carcinogens in animal studies is currently the primary means of anticipating cancer effects in humans." If indeed that statement were true, we would be classifying a whole host of natural foods as "cancer risks" because they naturally contain chemicals that cause cancer in rodents -- including mushrooms (hydrazines), table pepper (safrole), and bread (ethyl carbamate)

Second, the authors brazenly conclude that, while they cannot state with confidence how many breast cancer cases annually are due to exposure to trace levels of "chemicals" (including pesticides, ingredients in cosmetics and other "environmental pollutants"), they feel the evidence (what evidence?) is strong enough to warrant "strategies" to reduce exposures in an effort to reduce breast cancer risk.

Further, it is clear from the affiliation of the senior author that this "study" was in no way neutrally conducted. In its own description, the Silent Spring Institute claims to be "a non-profit scientific research organization dedicated to identifying the links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer." The study was commissioned by the Susan G. Komen foundation's "environmental factors and breast cancer" project. Thus from the get-go the assumption is that breast cancer is causally linked to "environmental" factors -- specifically chemicals in the environment. This article is not science -- it is environmental advocacy.

Apparently, the peer reviewers of this paper were unfazed by the authors' conclusion that trace chemicals cause breast cancer, despite the fact that this idea is completely at variance with our understanding of the epidemiology of breast cancer. No serious cancer causation expert believes exposure to trace levels of environmental chemicals contributes to the toll of breast cancer.

In the latest edition of the "bible" of cancer epidemiology (Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, edited by Schottenfeld and Fraumeni), the authors reviewed the causation of breast cancer by assessing the role of "environmental factors" in the causation of breast cancer -- meaning factors other than heredity, age, gender, etc. They considered the influences of reproductive factors (for example, having a first child at an early age may offer protection), use of hormones, weight, and nutritional factors (obesity after middle age is a risk factor for breast cancer). They then evaluated the claim that "other environmental factors" contribute to breast cancer risk -- including exposure to trace levels of pesticides and industrial chemicals. They concluded that evidence from large pooled human studies found no association between exposure to trace chemicals like PCBs and DDT and breast cancer risk: "Overall, recent studies have not found evidence of increased risk of breast cancer, and [pollutants] appear unlikely to be major breast cancer risk factors."

A quick review of the Pub Med articles bank reveals numerous epidemiological articles looking for a possible link between breast cancer risk and PCBs, DDT, and other chemicals -- and they end with the conclusion that "the combined evidence does not support an association with breast cancer risk." ACS's own Detailed Guide: Breast Cancer What Are the Risk Factors for Breast Cancer? says "research does not show a clear link between breast cancer risk and exposure to environmental pollutants." Yet the Cancer article made little mention of the fact that human epidemiological studies contradict the conclusions that are based on lab-rat "evidence."

Media, interested in sensationalizing environmental health risks, used this story uncritically. The LA Times headline was "Common Chemicals Linked to Breast Cancer." Readers were led to believe that "overall exposure to mammary gland carcinogens is widespread" -- when there is no legitimate science to back up such a frightening claim. And of course, such reporting predictably sparked outrage: an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle blasted "cancerous chemicals" and went even further than the study authors did, asserting that these chemicals may be a more important factor in determining breast cancer risk than genetics. The editorial called for more laws, more regulations to protect women from "carcinogens."

The American Cancer Society has done the cause of breast cancer prevention a disservice by publishing this article. ACS has tarnished the much-touted image of the peer review process as something superior to the "science by press release" approach. The article diverted attention from scientifically-based ways of reducing breast cancer risks (including using FDA-approved medications as a means of chemo-prevention -- an approach that shows great promise).

Recent news documents that fewer women are getting mammograms over the past several years -- a decline that reversed the salutary trend of the past twenty years. This is important, and women need to be reminded to get their mammograms. Yet, instead of focusing women's attention on the critical importance of early detection -- and the good news about treatment and very low rates of recurrence -- the ACS has supported unfounded fears of inescapable, invisible, chemical agents causing cancer in helpless women.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



25 May, 2007

HAVING BABIES PROTECTS WOMEN FROM SKIN CANCER

So if you have the sort of "olive" skin that predisposes to melanoma, should you throw away your pills? Not really. The sampling below is impressive but the effects noted were small and melanoma has a very low incidence in most populations anyway (Estimated lifetime risk of 1 in 75 for American Caucasians). The word "parity" below is used in a peculiar medical way -- meaning the number of kids you have had. It's sort of fun that having kids seems to protect men too! Perhaps that's another reason not to take the findings too seriously. If families tend to go out in the sun less than singles, it would make sense, though. That big ball in the sky is the main cause of melanoma. It's nice to see "may be" used in the conclusion to an epidemiological article. We would have got a lot more definiteness if the article had been about "obesity"

Reproductive History and Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma: A Comparison between Women and Men

By Jeanette Kaae et al.

To evaluate whether previously observed associations between parity and cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) risk in women reflected a biologic mechanism or resulted from uncontrolled confounding by lifestyle factors associated with parity (e.g., patterns of sun exposure), the authors investigated the effect of reproductive history (parenthood) on CMM risk in both women and men. Using information from Danish national registers (1968-2003), the authors established a population-based cohort of more than 3,500,000 persons with information on parenthood and CMM. Relative risks were estimated using Poisson regression models. Overall, number of children was significantly associated with a woman's risk of CMM (p = 0.004), with the lowest risk being seen among women with many births. Women aged 25 years or older at their first birth had a 24% (95% confidence interval: 16, 33) higher risk of CMM than younger women. Ten or more years after the birth of her youngest child, a woman had a 15% (95% confidence interval: 5, 27) higher risk of CMM than she did in the first 10 years. Similar results were observed in men. The similarity of effects for men and women suggests that lifestyle factors, rather than exposure to pregnancy hormones, may be responsible for the observed associations between reproductive history and CMM risk in women

Source




Tall guys get more prostate cancer

More fun from The American Journal of Epidemiology. What would I do without it when I want a laugh? The findings below are quite a mixture but fatties come out pretty well. It is tall guys who had better watch out! The effect was small, however, and only found by looking at real shorties versus real tallies. Perhaps tall guys get more women and overwork their prostates that way. As is usual in epidemiology, nobody knows

Anthropometrics and Prostate Cancer Risk

By Alyson J. Littman et al.

Studies on obesity and prostate cancer risk are inconsistent, perhaps because of differential effects on aggressive and nonaggressive cancers. Participants included 34,754 men residing in Washington State (aged 50-76 years at baseline) in a prospective cohort study who were recruited between 2000 and 2002; 383 developed aggressive (regional/distant stage or Gleason sum 7-10) and 437 developed nonaggressive disease through December 2004. Compared with normal-weight men (body mass index (kg/m2) <25), obese men ~30 kg/m2) had a reduced risk of nonaggressive disease (hazard ratio = 0.69, 95% confidence interval: 0.52, 0.93; p for trend = 0.01). Overweight men (25-29.9 kg/m2) had an increased risk of aggressive disease (hazard ratio = 1.4, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 1.8), but there was no increased risk for obese men (p for trend = 0.69). Body mass index of >25 at age 18 years was associated with increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer; obesity at ages 30 and 45, but not 18, years was associated with reduced risk of nonaggressive prostate cancer. Height (fourth vs. first quartile) was associated with an increased risk of total prostate cancer (hazard ratio = 1.3, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 1.6), which did not differ by aggressiveness. There were no associations of prostate cancer with age at which maximum height was reached. Results from this study demonstrate the complexity of prostate cancer epidemiology and the importance of examining risk factors by tumor characteristics.

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

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



24 May, 2007

Sun tans are REALLY bad for you

Leave the brownness to people who are born that way. The differences noted below do seem to be unusually strong. Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma is a type of cancer and no fun at all. The incidence of the disease concerned is however not high so may be of limited concern unless there is a family history of it. Note: "A person's risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma during their lifetime is about 1 in 50. The average age at diagnosis is 60 - the elderly have the highest risk of getting NHL". About 20,000 Americans die of it each year.

The study below does of course suffer from the usual epidemiological ambiguities. It could for instance be argued that tanning is just a proxy for a more outdoorsy lifestyle and that it is that lifestyle which conduces towards NHL rather than tanning as such. So you may be OK if you get your tan in a studio. If I were a frequent tanner, however, I would look into the matter in more depth. For instance, Californians and Australians are big on tanning. Do they therefore get more NHL? I have not had time to look.

Ultraviolet Radiation Exposure and Risk of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

By Yawei Zhang et al.

Sun exposure has been suggested to increase the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The authors analyzed data from a population-based, case-control study of Connecticut women between 1996 and 2000 to study the hypothesis. Women who reported having had a suntan experienced an increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with increasing duration (ptrend = 0.0062) compared with women who reported never having had a suntan. An almost threefold increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was observed among women who reported having had a suntan for less than 3 months per year and a suntan history of more than 60 years (odds ratio = 2.8, 95% confidence interval: 1.6, 4.9) compared with those who reported never having had a suntan. For women who reported having spent time in strong sunlight between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the summer, a 70% increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was observed for the highest tertile of duration compared with the lowest (odds ratio = 1.7, 95% confidence interval: 1.2, 2.4). The risk increased with increasing duration of time spent in strong sunlight in summer (ptrend = 0.0051). The risk appears to vary by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma subtypes. Further investigations of the role of ultraviolet radiation on the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are warranted




The easy way to get pregnant

I was unable to find the article referred to below in its alleged source but generalizing from people on a Chinese diet to Western women seems strange. I think the underlying message must be that all Western women get enough of the vitamin as it is. The last sentence would certainly indicate that

A bowl of cereal for breakfast or a baked potato for lunch could help a woman conceive. Research has found that eating foods rich in vitamin B6 can more than double the chances of becoming pregnant. Women who have plenty of the vitamin in their diet are also only half as likely to miscarry their baby in the critical first weeks of pregnancy. With millions of women already taking vitamin B6 supplements to combat premenstrual syndrome and alleviate morning sickness, the study adds to the evidence of the vitamin's role in reproductive health. It is thought that B6 - which is found in high levels in potatoes, fortified cereals, bananas, milk, eggs, and poultry - plays a key role in the development of the placenta.

The U.S. researchers looked at how levels of vitamin B6 affected the reproductive health of more than 300 healthy young women in south-western China who were trying for a baby. Scientists measured levels of vitamin in the women's blood and checked their hormone levels every day for a year. The results revealed a clear link between vitamin B6 and conception. Those with the highest levels of the vitamin were 2.2 times more likely to conceive than those with the lowest levels. The women were also half as likely to miscarry in the first six weeks of pregnancy, the American Journal of Epidemiology reported.

Earlier work by the same researchers showed that the vitamin appeared to ward off miscarriages later in pregnancy and halve the risk of premature birth. The University of Massachusetts researchers said: "Taken in their entirety, these observations suggest that maternal vitamin B6 status may influence reproductive events through the entire course of pregnancy, from conception through delivery."

The researchers did not recommend how much vitamin B6 prospective mothers-to-be should take. However, the Food Standard Agency advises women to take 1.2mg of the vitamin a day, and says this is possible with a balanced diet. It advises against taking daily supplements of more than 10mg, as high levels of the vitamin have been linked to loss of feeling in the arms and legs.

Other recent research has shown that a low-fat diet can dramatically cut the chances of pregnancy.

The study, carried out at the Harvard School of Public Health, showed that drinking a pint of semi-skimmed or skimmed milk or eating two pots of yoghurt a day almost doubles the risk of anovulatory infertility. Anovulatory infertility is an increasingly common condition in which women stop ovulating. Eating full-fat dairy products has the opposite effect. A bowl of ice cream a day was found to be enough to boost the chance of having a child.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



23 May, 2007

Prostate test

A simple blood test for aggressive forms of prostate cancer has moved a step closer with the discovery that a genetic marker is linked to the most serious forms of the disease. The marker, called 8q24, lies on chromosome 8 and was originally discovered by deCODE, a genetics company that made a deal with the Government of Iceland to use health data from the closely knit Icelandic population to search for genes that cause common diseases.

Scientists from Northwestern University, in Chicago, reported yesterday at a meeting of the American Urological Association in Anaheim, California, that men who carry this marker have more aggressive tumours and are more likely to have had a close relative who will suffer prostate cancer.

Earlier work by deCODE and Northwestern has shown that about 15 per cent of Americans of European origin carry the marker, and 30 per cent of African-Americans. This work also showed that carrying the marker increased the risk of getting prostate cancer by 60 per cent.

The new research is important because tests for prostate cancer are poor. The PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test has its uses, but cannot reliably differentiate prostate cancers that need treatment from those that can simply be monitored.

Many men may be unaware they have prostate cancer and die of something else. Slow-developing cancer are best left, with treatments focused on more aggressive cancers. So a test that could reliably identify dangerous cancers at an early stage would be invaluable. The Northwestern study of 550 prostate cancer patients showed that those who carry the 8q24 marker have a 40 per cent chance of having a close family member with prostate cancer, whereas those who do not carry the marker have a 20 per cent chance. "These findings will help us to understand the mechanisms underlying prostate cancer," said Brian Helfand, assistant research professor of urology at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine and a co-principal investigator of the study. "They hold great promise for the development of new treatments and prevention. "We found that the carriers of these 8q24 markers had more aggressive tumors," he said. Patients who were carriers had cancers that were more likely to spread into the lymph nodes and were more difficult to remove surgically.

The patients in the study had been treated by Professor William Catalona. Professor Helfand said: "We have the best-detailed prostate cancer population to perform this study because Dr Catalona has a rich database and follow-up on all of his patients."

Since the discovery of the 8q24 marker was published last year by deCODE, Professor Catalona, and two other research groups, the research has been confirmed by a number of other groups. This is the first time that a genetic mutation associated with prostate cancer has been found in a large segment of the population.

Source




A drink a day may slow dementia

The findings below are fairly weak but add to the now considerable body of evidence that alcohol is one of the most widely useful drugs we have

In older people with mild cognitive impairment, having a drink now and then - up to an average of one drink of alcohol each day - may delay progression to dementia, new Italian research suggests. "While many studies have assessed alcohol consumption and cognitive function in the elderly, this is the first study to look at how alcohol consumption affects the rate of progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia," study authors Dr Vincenzo Solfrizzi and Dr Francesco Panza, from the University of Bari in Italy, said.

In the study, reported in the medical journal Neurology, the researchers assessed the occurrence of mild cognitive impairment in 1445 subjects and the progression to dementia in 121 patients with mild cognitive impairment. The participants were between 65 and 84 years of age at the start of the study, and they were followed for 3.5 years. Alcohol use was assessed starting the year before the survey.

Drinking was not associated the development of mild cognitive impairment, according to the report. However, once mild impairment occurred, subjects who had up to one drink per day of alcohol had an 85 per cent reduced risk of dementia compared with those who abstained. The benefit was seen with both alcohol in general and with wine in particular.

Having more than one drink a day, however, offered no protection against dementia compared with abstaining, the report indicates. "The mechanism responsible for why low alcohol consumption appears to protect against the progression to dementia isn't known. However, it is possible that the arrangement of blood vessels in the brain may play a role," Dr Solfrizzi and Dr Panza conclude.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



22 May, 2007

Cold virus hits cancer cells for six

The potential of coxsackie viruses in this application has been known at least since 2004 so it is good to see clinical trials now getting underway

AUSTRALIAN researchers have found that a common cold virus can kill cancer cells in a test tube and in mice. Now the treatment will be tested on humans. The coxsackie virus, which can cause colds in healthy people, has shown it can infect and fight certain cancer cells, in particular melanoma, breast cancer and prostate cancer.

The clinical trials will be funded by publicly listed anti-cancer biotechnology company, Viralytics. Company board member and University of Newcastle Associate Professor Darren Shafren said the virus attacked particular cancer cells but largely left normal cells alone. "One of the nice things about these viruses is they're quite aggressive. They can actually kill cancer cells in a test tube within six to 12 hours of coming into contact with the virus," he said. "[The cancer cell] is a bit like a balloon. It swells up until there's so much virus inside it, it just bursts and then the virus that bursts out is free to start again in an adjacent type of cancer cell. It totally destroys the cancer cell."

Viralytics has completed one human clinical trial which involved injecting three late-stage melanoma patients, who had failed or refused conventional treatments, with a small dose of the virus. Associate Professor Shafren said the trial was mainly to test the safety of the virus, not to monitor whether it reduced the cancer. "We don't want to get people's hopes up but basically we found that these three patients tolerated the treatment quite well," he said. "We didn't get any serious adverse affects from the singular injection which we saw as quite a conservative dose."

In the next two trials due to start soon in separate major Australian teaching hospitals, the dosage will be upped. In one trial, nine late-stage melanoma patients will have the virus injected into the tumour. The second trial will have 26 patients with cancers including melanoma, breast cancer and prostate cancer, having the virus delivered intravenously.

Associate Professor Shafren said the key to the treatment would be finding the right delivery method. Patients will be monitored for a significant period of time to see if the virus reduces the spread of the cancer. "We're still looking for some signs of proof that we're actually killing cancer cells," Associate Professor Shafren said. "What we're hoping with this therapy is that you can actually kill cancer cells outside of the site of injection." Associate Professor Shafren said while the treatment had worked successfully in mice "a lot of things that work in mice don't translate into any clinical benefit for humans". However, he said the concept of treating cancer with viruses was gaining momentum as a potential combination with therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation.

Source




WiFi scare: Just another bureaucrat defending his patch and the media looking for scares

No evidence of safety will ever suffice for some in this area but we have of course noted the huge upsurge of brain cancer since a billion people got cellphones [/satire]

Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, has called for a review of the health risks of wireless technology after an investigation into its effects on children. The BBC’s investigative programme Panorama claims that wi-fi networks in schools can give off three times as much signal radiation as phone masts. Current government advice says that phone masts should not be sited near schools without consulting parents and teachers, because children are thought to be more vulnerable to radio-frequency radiation.

The programme-makers measured radiation levels from a wi-fi-enabled laptop in a classroom in Norwich. It found that the signal strength was three times higher than that of a typical phone mast. Wi-fi, or wireless fidelity, allows a computer user to connect to the internet at broadband speeds without cables. More than two thirds of secondary schools and nearly half of primary schools have wi-fi. Panoramaspoke to nearly 50 schools and only one had been alerted to possible health risks. Others had been told that there was no risk.The Government says that wi-fi poses no health risks, citing advice from the World Health Organisation.

In 2000 Sir William produced a report on the impact of mobile phone masts on health. He found that: “There may be changes, for example in cognitive function . . . There were some indications that there may be cancer inductions . . . There was some molecular biology changes within the cell. . . ”

The levels of radiation found in the Norwich classroom were 600 times lower than the levels deemed dangerous by the Government. It uses data from the International Commission on NonIonizing Radiation Protection, which bases exposure limits on a thermal effect. In other words, the radiation has to be strong enough to cause a heat effect before it is restricted. Dr Olle Johansson, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, has carried out experiments on radiation similar to or lower than wi-fi and found biological implications. Asked if the commission was right to set limits based on thermal effect, he said: “That’s just rubbish. You cannot put emphasis on such guidelines.”

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



21 May, 2007

DOES MEAT GIVE YOU SKIN CANCER?

The study below is just another weak epidemiological one so cannot in any case be taken too seriously but note that the most common skin cancers -- BCCs -- were NOT shown to be affected by a meat diet and that the more serious cancers -- SCCs -- were shown as meat-related only on the very borderline of statistical significance. That the subgroup of the sample with a cancer history who then got more cancers were big meat-eaters could mean anything -- including a determination among them to enjoy life while they could. What it CERTAINLY shows is that the sample matters and since this sample had no known representativeness, no generalizations can be extracted from it

Dietary pattern in association with squamous cell carcinoma of the skin: a prospective study

By Torukiri I Ibiebele et al.

Background: The role of diet in the development of skin cancer is inconclusive, and the effect of the combined consumption of foods has never been reported.

Objective: We prospectively investigated the association between dietary patterns and cutaneous basal cell (BCC) and squamous cell (SCC) carcinoma.

Design: Principal components analysis of 38 food groups was used to identify dietary patterns in 1360 adults aged 25-75 y who participated in a community-based skin cancer study in Nambour, Australia, between 1992 and 2002. We obtained baseline information about diet, skin color, and sun exposure factors. Multivariate-adjusted relative risks (RRs) for BCC and SCC tumors were estimated by using negative binomial regression modeling.

Results: Two major dietary patterns were identified: a meat and fat pattern and a vegetable and fruit pattern. The meat and fat pattern was positively associated with development of SCC tumors (RR = 1.83; 95% CI: 1.00, 3.37; P for trend = 0.05) after adjustment for confounders and even more strongly associated in participants with a skin cancer history (RR = 3.77; 95% CI: 1.65, 8.63; P for trend = 0.002) when the third and first tertiles were compared. A higher consumption of the vegetable and fruit dietary pattern appeared to decrease SCC tumor risk by 54% (P for trend = 0.02), but this protective effect was mostly explained by the association with green leafy vegetables. There was no association between the dietary patterns and BCC tumors.

Conclusion: A dietary pattern characterized by high meat and fat intakes increases SCC tumor risk, particularly in persons with a skin cancer history.



Diabetes breakthrough

QUEENSLAND scientists are developing a drug that could prevent people from becoming diabetics. Professor Ian Frazer said initial tests had been carried out and researchers were planning overseas clinical trials of the drug. If successful, it could be used to treat patients at risk of developing Type 1 diabetes, the former Australian of the Year said.

In Type 1 diabetes the body's immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, a hormone that controls sugar levels. The drug would work by changing the body's immune response and preventing it from attacking itself. Australia has one of the highest rates of Type 1 diabetes in the world with about 140,000 people affected. If not properly managed it can lead to blindness, kidney disease and heart disease.

Prof Frazer, who is famous for developing a cervical cancer vaccine, said Type 1 diabetes had reached epidemic proportions. "We can identify who is at risk from developing diabetes by doing blood tests or by knowing they have a family history of the disease, but we can't use that information to prevent them from getting it," he said. "But using a drug to change the body's immune response would stop the body attacking itself and prevent diabetes occurring. "This is part of a worldwide effort in this area and we like to think we are at the forefront of it."

The research, led by Professor Ranjeny Thomas, was carried out at the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. It has been welcomed by diabetics who endure daily insulin injections and a strict diet to control the illness. Dr Gary Deed, president of Diabetes Australia and a GP in Brisbane, was encouraged by Prof Thomas's research. "Something like this would be great because we could identify that diabetes was present in a family, say if a brother or sister had it, and then give the sibling a medication so they don't ever have to go through it," he said. "Diabetes is a chronic illness and you really wouldn't wish it on anyone. It's really sad when you diagnose young children with it. "I have a three-year-old patient and she can't inject herself so her parents have to. The burden it puts on families as well as the stress on individuals is really terrible to see."

Schoolgirl Amy Leverington, 13, was diagnosed with the disease in December 2004 and injects herself four times a day with insulin. She has a five-year-old brother and three-year-old sister who she hopes will never have the disease. "It would be excellent to be able to give them a drug and guarantee they will never have to go through what I do," she said. "Any step forward into finding a cure is a positive step."

Source




More on "The Secret"

Mentioned here yesterday

PUBLISHING phenomenon The Secret has been slammed by a health expert as ridiculous and unhelpful. The book, which has sold more than five million copies worldwide, could encourage readers to be self-obsessed, greedy and deluded, some experts say.

The Secret, by former Melbourne reality show producer Rhonda Byrne, says people can get whatever they want simply by thinking positively. It also suggests that people are poor, ill, overweight and disadvantaged by not thinking positively enough. The book and accompanying DVD became a publishing sensation after US TV tastemaker Oprah Winfrey devoted two shows to it.

More than 500,000 copies of the book will be printed for Australian readers by the end of next month, according to publisher Simon and Schuster. The Secret seems certain to eclipse other top-selling New Age phenomenons including Conversations With God, The Da Vinci Code and The Law of Attraction.

"But there's nothing new in Rhonda Byrne's book," said Melbourne psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg. "It's cognitive behaviour therapy taken to ludicrous extremes. "It's really not helpful."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



20 May, 2007

Heart risks no bigger for smaller babies

Smaller babies may not be as vulnerable to heart disease later in life as first thought, according to Australian research that challenges world health warnings. A report by the George Institute for International Health claims that the well recognised link between birth weight and coronary heart disease has been overestimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The WHO says small babies are more likely than bigger newborns to develop heart problems as adults, but research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows the difference is not that significant. "There was support for a small association between birth weight and an individual's future risk of heart disease (but) the relationship is not as strong as earlier studies have suggested," said lead author Dr Rachel Huxley, director of nutrition at the institute based at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. The researchers found any effects that birth weight may have on heart disease were dwarfed by other risk factors operating in adult life, such as smoking and obesity. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in Australia, accounting for 38 per cent of all deaths in 2002 and claiming the lives of more than one in three adults.

The study suggests that one kilogram higher birth weight is associated with a 10 to 20 per cent reduced risk of heart disease later in life, compared with smaller sized babies. However, researchers say intervening during pregnancy would have little effect on boosting the baby's size, and would only translate into a two per cent lower risk of heart disease. "By comparison, interventions that focus on getting individuals to make lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking, exercising and eating sensibly would substantially lower the risk of heart disease and are more achievable than strategies aimed at increasing birth weight," Dr Huxley said.

Source




Self-help quack makes a fortune



She was named by Time as one of the world's 100 most influential people, but there are some secrets Rhonda Byrne would rather not divulge to the universe. She has amassed a $48.5 million fortune sharing The Secret with the world, but the overnight self-help guru and former Channel Nine producer, who claims simply asking the "universe" and using the "law of attraction" can do everything from cure cancer to create fortunes, has become increasingly secretive about her roots back home in Australia.

Late last month reports surfaced in Britain about Byrne's mother, Irene Izon, 74, who lives on Melbourne's outskirts. "She has made so much money that I have to pinch myself," Izon told a British journalist, David Cohen. "We talk on the phone most days. I miss her. I am so proud of her. Last week, she told me she'd made $20 million in just a few months, which just blows me away, and that she was giving away 10 per cent to charity. She said she wants to fly me over to visit her in Los Angeles in the summer. Though when I asked her last week, she said she hadn't bought the plane ticket. She is very generous giving all those millions to charity, but I have to admit she hasn't given me a single dollar, though I'm expecting she'll send me some financial help soon. That's what she told me. In the meantime, I'm OK. I get by on my state pension of $1050 a month."

Since Cohen's piece ran in London's Evening Standard and in Edinburgh's Scotsman, Izon and family have gone to ground. Izon's number has disappeared from directories and her mobile is permanently switched off. "You have to contact her publicity people ... The entire family has been instructed by Rhonda not to talk to the media," a family member told PS.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



19 May, 2007

DIETING WON'T ROT YOUR BONES?

It is a matter of some concern that dieting can thin out your bones. This is a particular concern among older women -- who are at higher risk of brittle bones anyway. The study below purports to reassure such women -- but it is garbage. What on earth can we infer from 44 women of unknown representativeness examined over a very short time period? The small sample size alone would make it unlikely that statistically significant differences would be detected. That such a piece of nonsense was published is probably best explained by the fact that it suits the obesity warriors -- who are quite prepared to risk people's health with their socially-driven (not medically-driven) propaganda

Adequate and High Calcium Intakes Protect Premenopausal Women from Bone Loss during Weight-Loss Dieting

Premenopausal weight loss increases women's risk of later osteoporotic bone fractures, a risk that is greater for overweight than obese women. However, it is unclear whether high calcium intakes prevent bone loss in overweight women who are losing weight. Reporting in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Riedt and colleagues conducted a study at Rutgers University to measure the effects of normal (1.0 g/day) or high (1.8 g/day) calcium intake during weight loss on bone mineral density and bone mineral content in overweight premenopausal women. Forty-four women with an average body mass index (in kg/m2) of 27.7 were divided into 3 treatment groups: weight loss with high calcium intake, weight loss with normal calcium intake, and weight maintenance with normal calcium intake. The study included 1 month of calcium supplementation alone and 6 months of weight-loss treatment plus calcium. Calcium was administered via calcium citrate tablets and calcium-rich foods, and subjects also received 400 IU of supplemental vitamin D each day. Women receiving weight-loss treatment lost an average of 5.5 kg over 6 months, with equal losses in the normal- and high-calcium groups. Both weight-loss groups maintained pretreatment bone mineral density. Furthermore, although fractional calcium absorption declined in all groups over the first 6 weeks of weight reduction, the subjects appear to have absorbed enough calcium to stay in calcium balance. Bone turnover markers such as osteocalcin; plasma concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, an index of vitamin D status; and concentrations of parathyroid hormone, which is secreted in response to low blood calcium, were all stable throughout the study. The authors conclude that a moderate rate of weight loss does not endanger bone health in overweight premenopausal women who have normal or high calcium intakes.

Source

Journal Abstract

Premenopausal overweight women do not lose bone during moderate weight loss with adequate or higher calcium intake

By Claudia S Riedt et al.

Background:Weight loss is associated with bone loss, but this has not been examined in overweight premenopausal women.

Objective:The aim of this study was to assess whether overweight premenopausal women lose bone with moderate weight loss at recommended or higher than recommended calcium intakes.

Design:Overweight premenopausal women [n = 44; x(~SD) age: 38 ~6.4 y; body mass index (BMI): 27.7 ~ 2.1 kg/m2] were randomly assigned to either a normal (1 g/d) or high (1.8 g/d) calcium intake during 6 mo of energy restriction [weight loss (WL) groups] or were recruited for weight maintenance at 1 g Ca/d intake. Regional bone mineral density and content were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and markers of bone turnover were measured before and after weight loss. True fractional calcium absorption (TFCA) was measured at baseline and during caloric restriction by using a dual-stable calcium isotope method.

Results:The WL groups lost 7.2 ~ 3.3% of initial body weight. No significant decrease in BMD or rise in bone turnover was observed with weight loss at normal or high calcium intake. The group that consumed high calcium showed a strong relation (r = 0.71) between increased femoral neck bone mineral density and increased serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D. No significant effect of weight loss on TFCA was observed, and the total calcium absorbed was adequate at 238 ~ 81 and 310 ~ 91 mg/d for the normal- and high-calcium WL groups, respectively.

Conclusion:Overweight premenopausal women do not lose bone during weight loss at the recommended calcium intake, which may be explained by sufficient amounts of absorbed calcium.




Cosmetics cruncher

Few people can drop words such as avobenzone or dipotassium into a conversation with confidence. Paula Begoun can. The make-up artist turned self-styled "cosmetics cop" has been applying, assessing, smelling, blotting and smearing make-up and skincare her entire adult life. She knows her emollients from her silicones better than most cosmetic chemists. Her self-published beauty "anti-bible", Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, which set out to torpedo the beauty industry's more outrageous claims about the efficacy of their formulations, has sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and a seventh edition is about to be released.

And Begoun's work extends beyond the page. The Seattle author is holding a series of seminars around Australia aimed at helping women understand the hollow promises behind much of the goop they put on their face. The two she scheduled in Melbourne for this Sunday sold out quickly after they were advertised online.

Begoun's reputation for dished up common sense and the odd tirade about false cosmetic claims, precedes her. "I'm a very strange woman," she says. "Every time I think I'm over it, I get passionate again, even after 30 years. I talk to a new reporter, I get worked up. The amount of money I see people wasting on really bad products never fails to astound me."

Begoun's suspicions that the fairy dust being spruiked by the cosmetics companies might often be little more than pretty packaging surfaced in 1977. As a young make-up artist, she took a job on a cosmetics counter pushing Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden make-up lines. Her scepticism was immediate. Personal experience making up other people's faces told her that astringents weren't good for unclogging pores - yet that was what her bosses insisted she tell customers. Products claiming to treat acne would often make skin red and irritated. And mascaras that claimed to be flake-proof deposited blankets of black dandruff over the wearer's face.

Begoun began steering customers away from products she felt were a waste of money and soon found herself out of a job. But as one compact snapped shut, another opened: Begoun decided she wanted to call the industry into line. The result was Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me and her website, cosmeticscop.com, where she analyses ingredient lists and marketing claims using published and peer-reviewed scientific data. Of course, there is also Begoun's own make-up line, sold through her website, which she insists is affordable, well-formulated and avoids pointless marketing hype.

And what hype it is. A brief glance through her book reveals just how many of the products that pop up repeatedly on beauty editors' "best of" lists are duds - at least according to Begoun's research. Maybelline's Great Lash mascara for instance, whose distinctive green and pink tube contains the world's best-selling lash enhancement, "does not," according to Begoun, "build any thickness and has a tendency to smear". The salicyclic acid in Elizabeth Arden's Eight Hour Cream is present in such small amounts as to make it "ineffective as an exfoliant". The Multiple from NARS, a highlighter colour cream that has magazine editorial staff clawing each other during their in-house beauty sales, has an "extraordinary price for what amounts to sheer, shiny colour", Begoun writes.

And don't get her started on the big-name, big-ticket moisturisers such as La Prairie, La Mer and others. "I love Cate Blanchett but she's wrong," she says when asked about the popularity of luxury skin care line SKII, which has the Australian actress as its ambassador. Her voice becomes brisk; "I mean, I'm sure her contract isn't wrong but their formulations are ordinary, their sunscreens are bad and they come in a jar. You'd do better using Olay's Regenerist." And incidentally, this would cost about a fifth the price of SKII.

Begoun's revelations are not new. The last edition of Don't Go hit the bookshelves in 2003 and the cosmetics cop has largely lain low since then. According to one cosmetics company representative in Australia, when Begoun released her own make-up line, her credibility when it came to assessing the formulations of her rivals was shot to pieces. Begoun scoffs at her critics. "You just have to take one look through my book to see that I think there are some fantastic products," she says. "I would hardly praise them if it was all about selling my own stuff."

In the 10 years since the first edition of the book, Begoun says the industry has made huge improvements, with more products approved in the yet-to-be-released 2008 edition. But, Begoun adds, "In terms of misleading claims, false advertising and overpriced products, it has gotten worse". It's the new "miracle ingredients" or "patented secrets" or celebrity endorsements, which crowd our fashion magazines and TV advertisements every day, that raise Begoun's hackles the most. Once analysed, many of these formulations are found to be ineffective or, worse, harmful to the skin. Yet, Australians spend more than $370 million a year on skincare.

For those of us who'd prefer to shell out for something that will benefit our complexions, Begoun says that when it comes to skincare "it must have sunscreen". "Every single minute of every day that your skin sees daylight, it is being damaged. And no cream in the world can reverse it."

She warns against anything that comes in a jar, explaining that any useful ingredients will be rendered useless with excessive contact to air. Begoun's new book also gives detailed recommendations about water binding agents, alcohol content and levels of AHAs and antioxidants.

When it comes to make-up, Begoun believes you can kit out your entire face, easily, for less than $100. She recommends Revlon foundations ("great texture and colours"), Rimmel for eyes and cheeks and lipstick from pretty much anyone. And she says, be wary of lip glosses. There is no need to pay big bucks for a premium brand such as Lancome's Juicy Tubes when practically every line makes a similar product, she says.

It's puzzling why the big cosmetics houses don't improve their products. If exposing products to air destabilises them, why not ditch the jar in favour of something opaque and airtight? If ingredients such as menthol, eucalyptus and camphor irritate the skin, why use them? Begoun believes the answer lies with the consumer. We apparently like the sensation of unscrewing a jar and playing with a cream. We respond well to the tingling sensation of harsh ingredients, believing they're working. Artificial fragrances may trigger allergies but no one will buy a night cream if it smells like petrochemicals.

But it's this preference power that might force cosmetics companies to adopt more face-friendly formulas. Spend your money wisely and more products that protect and enhance the skin should become available. And what to do with all the money you've saved on over-priced but empty promises? Save it for later. Botox and laser resurfacing don't come cheap.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



18 May, 2007

Vaccine for hypertension?

It sounds most unlikely. As far as I can tell, hypertension is more a symptom than a disease. Do I detect an upcoming iatrogenic disaster here?

British scientists have developed a vaccine to control high blood pressure which could save tens of thousands of lives a year in the UK alone. Based on a protein found in limpets, it would need a course of just three jabs, with a booster every six months.

High blood pressure, which affects a third of all adults, doubles the risk of dying from heart disease or stroke and is blamed for 60,000 deaths a year in Britain. It is currently treated with pills, but they can cause side-effects and some patients simply stop taking them. Now the Cheshire-based drug firm Protherics says its vaccine will make it much easier for people to control their blood pressure. "Improving compliance in this way could save thousands from life-threatening complications such as heart attack or stroke," said the company's Dr Andrew Heath.

The jab, which has been successfully tested on people, uses the limpet protein to attack a hormone called angiotensin, which is produced by the liver. Angiotensin raises blood pressure by narrowing arteries. The vaccine, however, turns the body's immune system against the hormone.

Protherics is planning trials of an improved version of the jab, which is ten times more effective at stimulating the immune system than its original formula. People who have tried it have suffered few side-effects, although one in ten did complain of a brief, flu-like illness. A successful jab would guarantee its manufacturers a healthy share of the 12 billion pounds spent around the world annually on blood pressure medicines.

Ideally, patients would be given an initial course of three injections, with a week or fortnight between each jab. A booster shot every six months, or even once a year, would keep blood pressure low. The Swiss firm Cytos Biotechnology is developing a similar vaccine which uses an empty virus shell to spur the immune system into action. Zurich-based Cytos, which is also developing anti-smoking, obesity and flu vaccines, has already shown that its jab is effective at lowering blood pressure. But the reduction was less than that achieved by tablets already available on prescription. Further trials are due to later this year.

British heart doctors welcomed news of the jab, which should be on the market within five years. Professor Graham Mac-Gregor of the Blood Pressure Association said: "Raised blood pressure is the most important cause of death from strokes and heart attacks in the UK. "If you have to take blood pressure tablets, you have to take them for the rest of your life and some people find that difficult. "Finding other ways and better ways of trying to lower blood pressure without side- effects would be very much welcome."

Dr Mike Knapton of the British Heart Foundation said: "More than one in five heart attacks in Western Europe is caused by a history of high blood pressure. A vaccine is an interesting approach but more research will be needed."

It is not known how much the vaccines will cost but they are not expected to be much more expensive than current blood pressure tablets, some of which cost just a few pence a day. Available privately at first, the jabs will not be offered on the NHS unless the Government's drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, decides their benefits outweigh the costs. In time, the vaccine may be given to ward off problems in young men and women with a family history of heart disease.

Some blood pressure tablets already available work by targeting angiotensin, either by cutting production of the hormone or by stopping it from working properly. But many people stop taking the daily tablets simply because there are no obvious signs that they are boosting their health. Others give up after suffering side effects. Beta blockers, a major type of blood pressure pill, can cause fatigue, cold hands and feet, nausea, diarrhoea and impotence. They have also been linked to the risk of stroke.

Last month experts from the London School of Economics warned that the stress of modern life could be spawning an epidemic of heart disease, with half of Britons suffering from high blood pressure by 2025. A growing reliance on fat and salt-laden fast food, coupled with long working hours, is blamed for sending blood pressure soaring.

Source




Cure for baldness! -- Maybe

In a discovery that could lead to a cure for baldness, it has been shown for the first time that hair can be regrown. The research overturns a longstanding belief that loss of hair follicles in adulthood is permanent. An American team of scientists found that, under the right conditions, skin has the ability to revert to a more primitive state and then regenerate normally, producing new hair.

The research was carried out in mice and involved researchers cutting away a piece of skin tissue. "We've found that we can influence the skin to heal in a way that includes all the normal structures of the skin, such as hair follicles and oil glands," said the team leader, George Cotsarelis, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist. The new hair the mice produced was indistinguishable from their existing hair.

Professor Cotsarelis said the findings could have applications for a range of hair-loss conditions, not just male baldness. The researchers also found they could suppress the growth of hair in the healing skin. This meant hairy people might also benefit in future, he said.

Cheng-Ming Chuong, of the University of Southern California pathology department, said the study, which was published in the journal Nature, could have even wider implications for medicine. "[It is] an unexpected finding that could change our current understanding of repair and regeneration in adult mammals", said Professor Chuong, who was not a member of the team.

The team showed that the healing process triggered an embryonic state in the skin in which dormant genes were re-awakened. These genes instructed stem cells to move to the area of the injury and begin to make new hair follicles. By increasing or reducing the levels of the proteins produced by these genes, known as wnt proteins, the team was able to increase or decrease the number of new hair follicles that grew.

A University of Melbourne researcher, Justine Ellis, said the role played by wnt proteins in hair follicle regeneration was one of the study's most important finds. It might be possible to develop treatments for baldness, based on these proteins, which would not require the skin to be cut. But she said the hair would still be subject to the conditions that made it fall out in the first place. If regeneration could be coupled to an effective treatment that prevents hair loss "then we might really be onto something". Dr Ellis said new treatments based on the mice study could take years to develop. "This research is in its infancy in its applications for the human scalp."

Male baldness is about 80 per cent genetic and Dr Ellis was a member of the Australian team that discovered the first gene linked to male baldness. Several genes are thought to be involved in the condition, she said, and understanding what was wrong with the genes, and the cellular mechanisms they affected that made the hair fall out, could also lead to new ways to overcome hair loss. She said some men were happy being bald, and some women like the look. "But it can also really blow a man's confidence when he loses a lot of hair. Finding a cure or a way to stop hair loss is really important for some people."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



17 May, 2007

Even thin people can be too fat!

Note the entirely unjustified assumption that all fat is bad for you

If it really is what's on the inside that counts, then a lot of thin people might be in trouble. Some doctors now think that the internal fat surrounding vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas - invisible to the naked eye - could be as dangerous as the more obvious external fat that bulges underneath the skin. "Being thin doesn't automatically mean you're not fat," said Dr Jimmy Bell, a professor of molecular imaging at Imperial College, London. Since 1994, Bell and his team have scanned nearly 800 people with MRI machines to create "fat maps" showing where people store their fat.

According to their data, people who maintain their weight through diet instead of exercise, are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. "The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined," said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain's Medical Research Council. Without a clear warning signal - like a rounder middle - doctors worry that thin people may be lulled into falsely assuming that because they're not overweight, they're healthy. "Just because someone is lean doesn't make them immune to diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease," said Dr Louis Teichholz, chief of cardiology at Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey.

Even people with normal Body Mass Index scores - a standard obesity measure that divides your weight by the square of your height - can have surprising levels of fat deposits inside. Of the women scanned by Bell and his colleagues, as many as 45 per cent of those with normal BMI scores (20 to 25) actually had excessive levels of internal fat. Among men, the percentage was nearly 60 per cent. Relating the news to what Bell refers to as TOFIs, or people who are "thin outside, fat inside," is rarely uneventful. "The thinner people are, the bigger the surprise," he said. He said that they have even found TOFIs among people who are professional models.

According to Bell, people who are fat on the inside are essentially on the threshold of being obese. They eat too many fatty, sugary foods - and exercise too little to work it off - but they are not eating enough to actually be fat. Scientists believe we naturally accumulate fat around the belly first, but at some point, the body may start storing it elsewhere. Still, most experts believe that being of normal weight is an indicator of good health, and that BMI is a reliable measurement. "BMI won't give you the exact indication of where fat is, but it's a useful clinical tool," said Dr Toni Steer, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council.

Doctors are unsure about the exact dangers of internal fat, but some suspect it contributes to the risk of heart disease and diabetes. They theorise that internal fat disrupts the body's communication systems. The fat enveloping internal organs might be sending the body mistaken chemical signals to store fat inside organs like the liver or pancreas. This could ultimately lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or heart disease.

Experts have long known that fat, active people can be healthier than their skinny, inactive counterparts. "Normal-weight persons who are sedentary and unfit are at much higher risk for mortality than obese persons who are active and fit," said Dr Steven Blair, an obesity expert at the University of South Carolina. For example, despite their ripples of fat, super-sized Sumo wrestlers probably have a better metabolic profile than some of their slim, seated spectators, Bell said. That's because the wrestlers' fat is primarily stored under the skin, not streaking throughout their vital organs and muscles.

The good news is that internal fat can be easily burned off through exercise or even by improving your diet. "Even if you don't see it on your bathroom scale, caloric restriction and physical exercise have an aggressive effect on visceral fat," said Dr Bob Ross, an obesity expert at Queen's University in Canada.

Because many factors contribute to heart disease, Teichholz says it's difficult to determine the precise danger of internal fat - though it certainly doesn't help. "Obesity is a risk factor, but it's lower down on the totem pole of risk factors," he said, explaining that whether or not people smoke, their family histories and blood pressure and cholesterol rates are more important determinants than both external and internal fat.

When it comes to being fit, experts say there is no short-cut. "If you just want to look thin, then maybe dieting is enough," Bell said. "But if you want to actually be healthy, then exercise has to be an important component of your lifestyle."

Source




Deep-thinking movie star things legislation can prevent depression!

Brooke Shields says postpartum depression is more prevalent than anyone wants to admit, and that it's time for US lawmakers to pass legislation to help new mothers. "There is an entire population of women suffering," the actress told George Stephanopoulos in an interview broadcast today on ABC's This Week. "And it's time, I believe, for Congress to step in and prevent that, and actually save lives and save potential tragedy," she said.

Shields made headlines last year when she acknowledged taking antidepressants after her first child was born - and Tom Cruise publicly criticised her for using the drugs.

She told Stephanopoulos that she experienced acute postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter, and it was devastating to her family. "I had gone through numerous attempts to have a baby, and then I finally did have this perfect, beautiful, healthy baby, and it all but destroyed me," she said. She said a bill being considered by Congress would be "an easy gift to give to women everywhere."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



16 May, 2007

FDA gives epidemiologists a black eye

I have grouched at some length about what epidemiologists customarily do -- take a large body of data and go fishing for correlations within it. Any correlations so found could well be random so are grounds for hypothesis testing only. They don't give us grounds to do anything else -- such as change our diets.

The proper scientific way to test something is to start out with a specific hypothesis and test it by an intervention. That is, take two groups that start out the same and give only one group some treatment or other that your hypothesis dictates. If the two groups end up differing in some predicted way, you might really be onto something.

It looks like an FDA consultant insisted on the proper method in the evaluation of a new prostate drug called Provenge:

"Hopes for Provenge were high because in late March a panel of FDA advisers voted 13-4 that there was substantial evidence that it was effective, potentially paving the way to approval. Shares tripled to more than $18 immediately, because the FDA usually follows the advice of such panels.

But from the start there were reasons Dendreon might be a special case. The question posed to the panel on efficacy had been changed, and some panelists seemed less than completely convinced of efficacy. Dendreon's clinical trials were small, containing only 225 patients, and had failed to meet their primary goals. It was only after taking a second look that Dendreon was able to argue that the trials seemed to show Provenge extended patients' lives.

Three top cancer researchers wrote to the FDA saying that Provenge should not be approved; all three letters were obtained by the Cancer Letter, an industry newsletter. Two of them had served on the panel and voiced their concerns then.

But the third letter, published last week, was the most compelling. It came from Thomas Fleming, a University of Washington statistician who is one of the world's experts on understanding clinical trials. Five years ago, he warned against approving AstraZeneca's lung cancer pill Iressa because clinical data were not convincing. He was right--Iressa failed in a big clinical trial, and its use was severely restricted.

Fleming wrote that he was invited to participate in the March 29 panel that voted to approve Provenge, but declined because he had done some consulting for Dendreon. He wrote that he was kept awake the night the panel voted. The survival data might look compelling, he wrote, but because the trial had not been designed to prove Provenge extended lives, there was a big risk that the results were a fluke.

So "fishing" for favourable results was ruled as telling us nothing. Bravo!




More on the "Mediterranean diet" religion

The journal article concerned is not yet online so I cannot critique it in detail but that tiny differences are being treated as meaning something goes without saying. Only a quarter of one percent of those studied got lung disease so how you hope to conclude anything from diffences among that group rather escapes me. I doubt that the differences were even statistically significant. And this is just more of the usual epidemiological data fishing.

The Mediterranean diet has been a fetish among epidemiologists ever since low levels of heart disease were observed in Greece and Italy. To acknowledge that Greeks and Italians might be GENETICALLY different from Northern Europeans would be politically incorrect, of course. Diet had to be the cause of why Greeks and Italians did better. Greeks and Italians don't live especially long however. For instance, Australians have a diet that is as far away from the Mediterranean in composition as Australia is geographically, yet they live longer than Greeks and Italians. And the long-lived Japanese have a quite different diet too. But we must not let facts upset a medical consensus, must we?

A traditional Mediterranean diet rich in fruit, vegetables, whole grains and fish can cut the risk of developing serious lung disease by half, researchers say. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an umbrella term for conditions such as emphysema and bronchitis. It leads to damaged air-ways, making it harder for people to breathe.

Smoking is the most important risk factor for getting COPD, which experts predict will become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020. Not all smokers develop the disease, which has led researchers to examine how genetic and environmental factors, such as diet, play a role. A study released before it is published today in the journal Thorax, found that eating a Mediterranean diet cut the risk of developing COPD in half. Meanwhile, people who ate a Western-style diet, with a high intake of refined grains, cured and red meats, desserts and French fries, were more than four times as likely to develop COPD.

The research, led by Dr Raphaelle Varraso, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, followed the health of 42,917 men taking part in the US Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. All were asked about their medical history, diet and life-style, including how much they smoked and exercised. Between 1986 and 1998, 111 self-reported cases of newly diagnosed COPD were identified among the men. Even after adjusting for age, smoking and other risks, those men who ate a Mediterranean diet were found to have a far reduced risk of developing COPD. The more closely the diet was followed, the lower the risk of developing COPD over the 12-year study period.

The researchers concluded: “In men, a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and fish may reduce the risk of COPD, whereas a diet rich in refined grains, cured and red meats, desserts and French fries may increase the risk of COPD.”

It is not the first time that the Mediterranean diet has been hailed for helping to prevent medical conditions. Last month researchers from Britain’s National Heart and Lung Institute, the University of Crete, Venezelio General Hospital in Crete and the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barce-lona found that a Mediterranean diet helped to prevent children developing asthma and respiratory allergies. And last year US researchers found that eating a Mediterranean diet could reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Other researchers have shown that people live longer if they follow the diet.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



15 May, 2007

YET ANOTHER KICK UP THE BEHIND FOR THE EVIDENCE-ALLERGIC ELECTRICITY SCAREMONGERS

If people working in close proximity to electrical installations suffer no ill effects from it, what ground is there to be worried about electricity pylons near your home?

Popular summary:

ELECTROMAGNETIC fields (EMF) such as surround electrical power supplies and appliances have been thought to increase the risk of leukaemia, brain and breast cancers. But a study in Occupational and Environmental Medicine concludes that these do not pose a hazard to electricity supply workers. Researchers examined the health and employment of more than 28,224 workers at 99 electricity companies in Denmark between 1968 and 2002. Depending on their role, employees were classified into three levels of exposure to EMF - background, medium and high. The data was then linked to the Danish Cancer Registry (where all new cases of cancer in the country have been recorded since 1942). There was no evidence of an increased risk of leukaemia, brain or breast cancers among workers exposed to any level of EMF.

Journal abstract:

Risk For Leukaemia And Brain And Breast Cancer Among Danish Utility Workers - A Second Follow-Up

By Christoffer Johansen et al.

Objective: To update a study of risks for leukaemia, brain cancer and breast cancer in a Danish nationwide, population-based cohort of utility employees.

Methods: We applied a multivariate statistical model including information on age, duration of employment, date of first employment and level of occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields.

Results: We observed no increased risk for these cancers among 28 224 individuals with more than 3 months of employment in whom cancer had not been diagnosed before first employment.

Conclusion: Our results do not support the hypothesis of an association between occupational exposure to magnetic fields in the electric utility industry and risks for leukaemia, brain cancer and breast cancer.




AGAIN: THE POOR HAVE POORER HEALTH AND SUFFER MORE INJURY

It is really unforgiveable that so many medical research reports are politically correct to the extent that they fail to consider socio-economic status as a confounding factor. The journal abstract below would appear to show a strong SES effect:

Hospital injury rates in relation to socioeconomic status and working conditions

By A d'Errico et l.

Objectives: To describe the risk of work injury by socioeconomic status (SES) in hospital workers, and to assess whether SES gradient in injury risk is explained by differences in psychosocial, ergonomic or organisational factors at work.

Methods: Workforce rosters and Occupational Safety and Health Administration injury logs for a 5-year period were obtained from two hospitals in Massachusetts. Job titles were classified into five SES strata on the basis of educational requirements and responsibilities: administrators, professionals, semiprofessionals, skilled and semiskilled workers. 13 selected psychosocial, ergonomic and organisational exposures were assigned to the hospital jobs through the national O*NET database. Rates of injury were analysed as frequency records using the Poisson regression, with job title as the unit of analysis. The risk of injury was modelled using SES alone, each exposure variable alone and then each exposure variable in combination with SES.

Results: An overall annual injury rate of 7.2 per 100 full-time workers was estimated for the two hospitals combined. All SES strata except professionals showed a significant excess risk of injury compared with the highest SES category (administrators); the risk was highest among semiskilled workers (RR 5.3, p<0.001), followed by nurses (RR 3.7, p<0.001), semiprofessionals (RR 2.9, p = 0.006) and skilled workers (RR 2.6, p = 0.01). The risk of injury was significantly associated with each exposure considered except pause frequency. When workplace exposures were introduced in the regression model together with SES, four remained significant predictors of the risk of injury (decision latitude, supervisor support, force exertion and temperature extremes), whereas the RR related to SES was strongly reduced in all strata, except professionals.

Conclusions: A strong gradient in the risk of injury by SES was reported in a sample population of hospital workers, which was greatly attenuated by adjusting for psychosocial and ergonomic workplace exposures, indicating that a large proportion of that gradient can be explained by differences in working conditions.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



14 May, 2007

Aspirin for bowel cancer

Taking an aspirin a day for five years can help to prevent bowel cancer, researchers say. A study found that taking a daily dose of 300mg or more of aspirin over a prolonged period could prevent the cancer later in life. Incidence of bowel cancer was reduced by up to 74 per cent within ten to 15 years of treatment starting.

The cancer typically takes at least ten years to develop from pre-cancerous growths in the gut. Doctors generally advise against long-term aspirin use because of the risk of serious side-effects such as internal bleeding and stomach ulcers. But the authors of the study, reported today in The Lancet, say that for people with a higher-than-average risk of bowel cancer the benefits may outweigh the risks.

Each year, about 35,000 men and women in Britain have bowel cancer diagnosed and more than 16,000 die from the disease. It is the third most common type of cancer in Britain, and, if it is diagnosed early, one of the most treatable.

The research, led by Professor Peter Rothwell from Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, revisited patients from two trials conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Using aspirin for five years was found to have reduced the incidence of bowel cancer by 37 per cent overall, and 74 per cent during the ten to 15 years after the trials started. The protective effect of aspirin appeared to be consistent regardless of age, sex, race or country of origin. It was also seen in individuals who had a close family relative with bowel cancer, which normally raises the lifetime risk between two to four times.

Source




ASPIRIN LESS HELPFUL TO WOMEN

Media summary

ASPIRIN is less effective for women than men in treating heart disease, according to a new study in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Aspirin stops blood from clotting. Overall, a low dose of aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke, but some people respond better than others. Researchers randomly selected 100 patients with heart disease attending a scheduled appointment with their cardiologist. Each had taken aspirin within 48 hours of visiting the doctor. Researchers took blood samples and used a device called the VerifyNow Aspirin Assay to test how much of the blood clotted together in response to a chemical. The greater the clotting reaction, the more resistant the patient to aspirin therapy. Women were four times more likely to be resistant to aspirin, with an increased clotting reaction compared to men.

Journal abstract:

Aspirin Resistance in Patients with Stable Coronary Artery Disease with and without a History of Myocardial Infarction

Michael P Dorsch et al.

BACKGROUND: Aspirin therapy is a cornerstone in the prevention of atherothrombotic events, but recurrent vascular events are estimated to occur in 8-18% of patients taking aspirin for secondary prevention after 2 years. Estimates of biologic aspirin resistance vary from 5% to 60%, depending on the assay used. However, the relationship between biologic measurements of aspirin resistance and adverse clinical events remains unclear.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether patients with documented myocardial infarction (MI) while on aspirin therapy (cases) were more likely to be aspirin resistant than were patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) who had no history of MI (controls) and to assess clinical predictors of aspirin resistance in patients with stable CAD.

METHODS: This case-control study examined aspirin responses using the VerifyNow Aspirin Assay system in 50 cases and 50 controls who had taken a dose of aspirin within 48 hours of presentation to the clinic visit. Odds ratios were estimated to determine the association between aspirin resistance and MI. Independent predictors of aspirin resistance were determined using univariate and multivariate analyses.

RESULTS: An increase in the prevalence of aspirin resistance among cases (16% vs 12% in controls) was not observed (OR 1.40; 95% CI 0.45 to 4.37; p = 0.566). In the overall CAD population, female sex was independently associated with aspirin resistance (OR 4.01; 95% CI 1.15 to 13.92; p = 0.029).

CONCLUSIONS: Additional large studies are required to understand whether biologically defined aspirin resistance is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular events, with special attention paid to sex differences.

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

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



13 May, 2007

DON'T BOTHER WITH POLYUNSATURATED FOOD

Polyunsaturated fat is in fact more likely to kill you than saturated fat is. See the evidence reviewed below

That diet might play a part as a cause of CHD was hypothesised by another American doctor, Ancel Keys, in 1953. Using data from seven countries in his 'Seven Countries Study', Keys compared the death rates from CHD and the amounts of fats eaten in those countries to demonstrate that heart disease mortality was higher in the countries that consumed more fat than it was in those countries that consumed less. (At that time, data from many more countries were available. It seems that Keys ignored the data from those that did not support his hypothesis.) And so the 'diet/heart' hypothesis was born.

But how do we know it is true? It is all very well having a theory, what you have to do then is prove it. In medicine, the usual way is to select two groups of people, as identical for sex, age, and lifestyle as possible. One group called the control group, carries on as normal while the other, called the intervention group, tries the new diet, drug or whatever. After a suitable time, the two groups are compared and differences noted.

Keys' fat-diet/heart disease hypothesis was persuasive so, to test it, several large-scale, long-term, human intervention studies were set up in many parts of the world. These involved hundreds of thousands of subjects and hundreds of doctors and scientists and cost billions of dollars in an attempt to prove that a fatty diet caused heart disease.

Framingham Heart Study

The most influential and respected investigation of the causes of heart disease is the Framingham Heart Study. This study was set up in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, by Harvard University Medical School in 1948 and is still going on today. It was this study that gave rise to the dietary 'risk factors' with which we all are so familiar today. The Framingham researchers thought that they knew exactly why some people had more cholesterol than others - they ate more in their diet. To prove the link, they measured cholesterol intake and compared it with blood cholesterol. Although subjects consumed cholesterol over a wide range, there was little or no difference in the levels of cholesterol in their blood and, thus, no relationship between the amount of cholesterol eaten and levels of blood cholesterol was found. (Although it is interesting that women who had the highest levels of cholesterol in their blood were ones who had eaten the least cholesterol.)

Next, the scientists studied intakes of saturated fats but again they could find no relation. There was still no relation when they studied total calorie intake. They then considered the possibility that something was masking the effects of diet, but no other factor made the slightest difference. After twenty-two years of research, the researchers concluded:

"There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD in the study group."

On Christmas Eve, 1997, after a further twenty-seven years, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) carried a follow-up report that showed that dietary saturated fat reduced strokes. As these tend to affect older men than CHD, they wondered if a fatty diet was causing those in the trial to die of CHD before they had a stroke. But the researchers discount this, saying:

"This hypothesis, however, depends on the presence of a strong direct association of fat intake with coronary heart disease. Since we found no such association, competing mortality from coronary heart disease is very unlikely to explain our results."

In other words, after forty-nine years of research, they are still saying that they can find no relation between a fatty diet and heart disease.

Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial

One of the largest and most demanding medical studies ever performed on humans, The Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (known in the medical world, by its initials, as MR. FIT) involved 28 medical centers and 250 researchers and cost $115,000,000. The researchers screened 361,662 men and deliberately chose subjects who were at very high risk to ensure that they achieved a statistically significant result. They cut cholesterol consumption by forty-two percent, saturated fat consumption by twenty-eight percent and total calories by twenty-one percent. Yet even then they didn't succeed. Blood cholesterol levels did fall, but by only a modest amount and, more importantly, coronary heart disease was unaffected. Its originators refer to the results as "disappointing" and say in their conclusions:

"The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on Coronary Heart Disease or total mortality from this multifactor intervention."

The Tecumseh Study

The Tecumseh Study attempted to correlate blood cholesterol levels measured one day with the amounts of fats eaten the previous day - but found none. Interestingly, It was demonstrated that people who ate the least cholesterol had the highest levels of blood cholesterol. Although not looking for it, this study also found that blood cholesterol levels were quite independent of whether the dietary fats were saturated or unsaturated. Thus another 'diet-heart' hypothesis, that only saturated fats are to blame, was invalidated.

WHO European Coronary Prevention Study

The results of the World Health Organisation's European Coronary Prevention Study were called "depressing" because once again no correlation between fats and heart disease was found. They had cut saturated fats down to only eight percent of calorie intake daily, yet in the UK section there were more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group.

The North Karelia Project

North Karelia, which had Finland's highest rates of heart disease, was compared with neighbouring Kuopio in The North Karelia Project. In North Karelia, risk factors were cut by seventeen percent over the period of the study. In North Karelia there was a reduction in both CHD mortality and total mortality. Also this study shows, however, that in Kuopio, the control group, where there were no restrictions, there was an even bigger decline in both CHD and total mortality. These studies suggest that adopting a 'healthy' lifestyle may actually have inhibited the decline in heart disease. They certainly give it no support.

This paper does not allow me to go through the more minor studies but they all show little convincing correlation between either the amount of fat eaten and heart disease or the type of fat eaten and heart disease. A review of twenty-six studies published in 1992 concluded that:

"Lowering serum cholesterol concentrations does not reduce mortality and is unlikely to prevent coronary heart disease. Claims of the opposite are based on preferential citation of supportive trials."

One that seemed to support the 'healthy' recommendations was a Finnish trial published in 1975. In the five years that the trial ran, cholesterol levels were lowered significantly, and the study was hailed as a success. But in December 1991 the results of a 10-year follow-up to that trial found that those people who continued to follow the carefully controlled, cholesterol-lowering diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn't - some success! Professor Michael Oliver, writing in the British Medical Journal commenting on the results, writes

"As multiple intervention against risk factors for coronary heart disease in middle aged men at only moderate risk seem to have failed to reduce both morbidity and mortality such interventions become increasingly difficult to justify. This runs counter to the recommendations of many national and international advisory bodies which must now take the recent findings from Finland into consideration. Not to do so may be ethically unacceptable."

Despite this wealth of evidence, nutritionists and the media continue to mislead us. They tell us, for example, that the recent fall in the numbers of heart deaths in the USA is because Americans are eating less fat. The graph below, however, shows clearly that while CHD in the USA peaked in the 1950s and has fallen consistently since, this is against a background of rising fat intake.

It is difficult to understand how the fat hypothesis gained such credibility in the USA as its history more than most does not support it. The North American continent had been opened up by explorers and trappers who lived, very healthily, as did the Amerindians, almost entirely on fresh meat and pemmican. As real pemmican is half dried lean meat and half rendered animal fat, and as fat has over twice the calorific value of protein, more than seventy percent of the energy in their diet came from fat.

Dieticians also say that the British had less CHD in the 1940s when fat was rationed. However, the decade of rationing went on into the early 1950s with fat being the last food to come off ration in 1954. Again the graph shows clearly that the most rapid rise in CHD occurred during that period. Also, during the period of rationing, British farmers had a very low incidence of heart disease when one would have expected their intake of fats, particularly animal fats, to have been higher than most.

Experience in other countries

Keys based his fat-causes-heart disease hypothesis on a comparison between countries. When we are told that we are 'the sick man of Europe', we are also compared to other countries. So lets do a similar comparison.

1. In Japan, intakes of animal fat have more than doubled since the end of the Second World War. Over the same period their incidence of coronary heart disease has fallen consistently. In Israel too an increased consumption of saturated fats was followed by a fall in coronary deaths.

2. The dietary changes in Sweden parallel those in the USA, yet heart disease mortality in Sweden was rising while American rates were falling.

3. There is also a threefold variation in rates of heart disease between France and Finland even though fat intake in those two countries is very similar.

4. Among south Asians in Britain there is an unusually high incidence of heart disease, yet living on largely vegetarian diets, they have low levels of blood cholesterol and eat diets that are low in saturated fat.

5. Indians in South Africa have probably the highest rates of coronary disease in the world yet there is no apparent reason why they should based on the current dietary hypotheses.

6. Until recently, Indians in India had a very low incidence of heart disease while using ghee (clarified butter), coconut oil and mustard seed oil - all of which are highly saturated. The epidemic of heart disease in India began only after these were replaced with peanut, safflower, sunflower, sesame and soybean oils, all of which are high in polyunsaturated oils.

7. Lastly, the World Health Organization is apparently in ignorance of epidemiological data that do not support its recommendation to reduce dietary saturated fat. While it talks of coronary heart disease being responsible for most deaths in Caribbean countries, fat intake there is remarkably low.

Polyunsaturated fats

The arguments for the polyunsaturated fat hypothesis are no more convincing than those for the cholesterol theory. The claim is that unsaturated fats have a protective or preventative effect on CHD. But in Israel, when consumption of polyunsaturated fats was about twice that of most Western countries, there was a very high incidence of CHD. Those given high polyunsaturated diets in a trial in New South Wales fared significantly worse than those on a free diet. And this is the finding in most trials that have increased the ratio of polyunsaturated fats.

From as early as 1971, an excess of cancer deaths has been reported in trials using diets that were high in polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats are also blamed for a doubling in the incidence of gallstones in the general public.

One of the pioneers of the polyunsaturated-fat-prevents-CHD hypothesis was the American cardiologist E. H. Ahrens Jr.. After twenty-five years of further research, however, he concluded that it was "irresponsible" to continue to press the polyunsaturated fat recommendations on the general public. He went on:

"If the public's diet is going to be decided by popularity polls and with diminishing regard for the scientific evidence, I fear that future generations will be left in ignorance of the real merits, as well as the possible faults in any dietary regimen aimed at prevention of coronary heart disease."

Another of the original proponents of the low-fat, low-cholesterol hypothesis, and a member of the Norwegian Council for Diseases of the Heart and Arteries, Professor Jens Dedichen of Oslo, also changed his mind. In the 1950s Norway launched a cholesterol-lowering regimen in which soy margarine, that is high in polyunsaturated fatty acids, replaced butter, and soy oil was used extensively. During the subsequent 20 years the increase in the use of soy-based products was accompanied by a steep and continuing rise in deaths from coronary thrombosis. Professor Dedichen drew attention to the failure of the programme - and received a very hostile reaction from his colleagues.

Also castigated were members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council of America when in a report of May 1980, they stated that prevention of heart disease could not be achieved by reducing blood cholesterol using either diet or drugs, and said that such measures should be abandoned.

More here




WHY IS SO MUCH MAINSTREAM "SCIENCE" BOGUS?

I originally wrote a version of this post for my Greenie Watch blog but it is relevant here too

Ever since I first started doing research into environmentalism over 30 years ago, it has seemed obvious to me that they are simply a revival of mankind's most primitive religion -- nature worship. Awe before nature is in fact probably so primitive and goes back so far that it has to an extent been hardwired into us.

But many religions are extremely destructive of human welfare -- with Islam being a rather obvious example -- and the plainly misanthropic (people-hating) nature of environmentalism was obviously always going to be a big problem. That problem was for many years obvious in only minor ways. An outright people-hating message was obviously never going to gain much traction so Greenies had to present their demands for change under the old Leftist label: "It is for your own good". And convincing people that something is for your own good when it is actually bad for you is a hard sell. As a result, the nature-worshippers DID inadvertently do us some good in that some of the things they pushed for -- such as cleaner air and water -- really were good for us.

Of late, however, Greenies have really hit the jackpot. They have finally found something that is REALLY bad for us that they can push to the credulous as being good for them. I refer, of course to the global warming craze. It has for some time seemed to me that the vast economic destruction that this craze has already got underway establishes environmentalism as a really evil religion.

But, while there is no doubt that environmentalism is a misanthropic religion, I have come to doubt that that the environmentalists are really most to blame for their excesses. I think there is another force at work which is doing most of the damage. And it is the same force that underlies most Leftism: Excess ego. But it is not ego in politics that is the problem. It is ego in science. It is dishonest science that gives the global warming scare its legs. The average Greenie is just part of a Greek chorus in the background.

But am I not being absurd? How can I say that scientists are on a large scale ego-filled to the point of dishonesty? And how does ego come into science?

Let me initially make clear what I am saying: I am saying that scientists pump up the global warming scare not because they are subscribers to the Greenie religion (though they may well be) but because it inflates their egos. And the clearest proof that ego inflation is a hugely distorting influence on science comes from an area of science that has very little to do with environmentalism and which is arguably the most respected area of scientific research: The medical literature.

So am I now REALLY descending into absurdity? I wish I was. If we cannot trust the academic literature of medicine for an objective view of reality, whom can we trust? I will not attempt to answer that question but I do want to point out that it is crystal clear that we CANNOT trust the academic medical literature. Anyone who knows anything about that literature will know how subject to fashion it is and how what is proclaimed as bad for you in one era is in a later era proclaimed as good for you (e.g. alcohol).

There is more than fashion at work, however. As I document daily on my Food & Health Skeptic blog, there is a constant flood of absurdities appearing in the medical literature. There needs to be more than fashion behind that. And what is behind it is simply attention-seeking. Every scientist wants to be seen as someone who has "discovered" something. But real discoveries are rare so the slightest hint that a scientist has observed something going on will be trumpeted worldwide. And because real discoveries are rare, any purported discovery will be piled onto by lots of other scientists who want to be in on the glory of having made a contribution to the elucidation of this new phenomenon.

The clearest example of this is the cholesterol and polyunsaturated fats obsession. To cut a long story short, there is NO evidence that a low cholesterol diet lowers the amount of cholesterol in your blood nor is there any evidence that saturated fats in your diet are bad for you. In fact, some studies have shown that people on a diet low in saturated fats die SOONER. I have a research review up -- just above this post -- that sets out in detail the evidence concerned. Yet we are still bombarded with messages about the desirability of a diet low in cholesterol and low in saturated fats. Our supermarkets are full of products that prominently and proudly proclaim that they are "low" in those constituents.

So why have the research findings not got through to the general public? Because scientists themselves ignore research that does not suit them. Let me tell you why:

The "easy" area of medical research is epidemiology: Take a large group of patients. Get reports from them on where they stand on a variety of attributes (e.g. how fat they are or how much fat they eat) and then wait to see who dies. Once you have got a large enough group of dead patients you then look through your files to see if there is something that the dead patients tend to have more of. Very often you find something, as you would on chance alone. Real scientists refer to such a procedure as "data dredging" and discount it but real scientists are a rare breed. Attention-seeking scientists are far more common and it is their reports of such rubbish findings that fill the medical literature.

But such rubbish findings are a godsend to other scientists. They can then put in for big funding to study this new finding. There is a new bandwagon that they can leap onto. But the only really conclusive way of verifying or falsifying the new "finding" is a longditudinal double-blind study -- i.e. you have to get a large and representative group of people and get half of them to change their ways in some respect (e.g. eat less fat). You then wait for years and see which group dies soonest. And at the end of that time what do you find? You typically find that the epidemiological hypothesis is not confirmed. The intervention (change) you have done to people's habits is just as likely to have done harm as good but most often it has done nothing at all. And that is where the cholesterol and saturated fat research has arrived at after all the years during which the "evil fat" gospel has been rammed down people's throats.

So where do you go from there? Do you admit that the theory you have built your career on (and which has delivered to you a cornucopia of research dollars) was all wrong? I think you can guess the answer to that. What you say is: "More research is needed" -- and carry on as before. And the poor old mug taxpayer coughs up more dollars to keep the nonsense alive.

And much the same applies to global warming theory. It initially looked good but, as more and more evidence accumulates, the holes in it get bigger and bigger. You can see that in the IPCC reports. They have progressively scaled down their predictions of what sea-level rise we are to expect. But there is NO WAY that they can admit that the whole thing is a crock so, as the evidence turns against them, they ratchet up the hysteria to keep those research dollars flowing. And it works. "More research is needed" has become the mantra of many politicians too.

But it leaves the average person totally betrayed. Attention-seeking medical scientists have led him towards useless lifestyle changes that may even harm him and attention-seeking climate scientists have led him to support political programs that will certainly impoverish him. So dishonest science is in fact a far greater evil than the rather wacky tribe of kneejerk nature-lovers.

Clinging to disproven theories is also rampant in my own field of academic specialization -- psychology -- but, fortunately, nobody takes much notice of psychologists.

For more on the poor track record of epidemiological "findings", see the sad caution from a medical researcher that I reproduced as part of my post about the latest vitamin D nonsense. Note also another review article on cholesterol and fat myths that I have linked to before.




Revolt against food faddism in Australian schools

MONTHS after state schools were ordered to dump junk food from their menus, most are still serving pizza, hot dogs, ice-cream and other processed foods. The Government introduced the "traffic light system" in its Smart Choices program to tackle childhood obesity on January 1, but half of schools have failed to get the balance right. Pizzas and hot dogs were labelled under the system as "amber" foods - to be served only occasionally - but Queensland Association of School Tuckshops spokeswoman Chris Ogden said schools were lagging. "A few have gone all 'green', but it is much easier to stick a tray of sausage rolls in the oven than make up salad rolls and wraps, that sort of thing," she said. "We can buy in pre-chopped lettuce and carrot but they come at a premium price."

Under the laws, foods are divided into "green" or healthy choices like salads, and "amber" or processed foods including low-fat pies, hot dogs and pizza. "Red" choices are limited to twice a term, which has made staging sausage sizzle fundraisers a nightmare at some schools.

A random survey of more than 100 primary school menus by The Courier-Mail showed very few indicated which choices were amber, green or red. Of the eight menus which were colour-coded, 45 per cent of the offerings were either amber or red. Eagleby South State School, in Logan, even offered daily "meal deals" such as a dagwood dog, juice and packet of chips for $2.70 and a pie, juice, Paddle Pop and packet of chips for $4.

Ms Ogden said although many schools tried hard, it was impossible to stop students from buying restricted foods outside the school grounds. "There's a fast food outlet near every school, whether it's a service station, a supermarket or a KFC or McDonald's," she said.

Responding to reports MacGregor State High School students had eaten 60 McDonald's burgers in one sitting, an Education Queensland spokesman said the students had not been on their lunch break and had had permission from their parents to leave the school.

Quality Food Services, which distributes food to about 800 school tuckshops, said pie sales had dropped under the Smart Choices guidelines because the new low-fat, low-salt varieties were relatively bland. Spokesman Glen Bound said tuckshops could not compete with local shops offering junk food. "It's a big problem at Runcorn State High, where the shop around the corner has changed its menu to suit the students. Their business has gone through the roof," he said. He had heard of students at other schools having pizzas delivered to the fence, and an enterprising student who took a backpack full of soft drink to school to sell to classmates.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



12 May, 2007

BEING FAT IS GENETIC

Journal abstract below:

A Common Variant in the FTO Gene Is Associated with Body Mass Index and Predisposes to Childhood and Adult Obesity

Timothy M. Frayling et al.

Obesity is a serious international health problem that increases the risk of several common diseases. The genetic factors predisposing to obesity are poorly understood. A genome-wide search for type 2 diabetes-susceptibility genes identified a common variant in the FTO (fat mass and obesity associated) gene that predisposes to diabetes through an effect on body mass index (BMI). An additive association of the variant with BMI was replicated in 13 cohorts with 38,759 participants. The 16% of adults who are homozygous for the risk allele weighed about 3 kilograms more and had 1.67-fold increased odds of obesity when compared with those not inheriting a risk allele. This association was observed from age 7 years upward and reflects a specific increase in fat mass.

Plain language summary below:

To be considered robust, genetic association studies must be confirmed in more than one independent set of subjects. Frayling et al. present a genome scan of DNAs from a large case-control study for type 2 diabetes and identify a common genetic variant associated with obesity and a risk of being overweight. These findings were confirmed in 12 additional cohorts, among a total of 38,759 individuals. On average, individuals homozygous for the high-risk allele weighed nearly 3 kilograms more than individuals homozygous for the low-risk allele. The effect was consistent across samples, across ages (from 7 years upward), across genders, and irrespective of diabetes status.




Cancer treatment without toxic side-effects (maybe)

DRUG-infused bacteria will be used to target and kill cancer cells without toxic side-effects in a world-first discovery by Australian scientists. The nanotechnology takes the teeth out of the bacteria cell so it cannot cause disease, but then uses the cell as a delivery system for cancer treatment. Scientists who made the discovery believe the novel nature of the drugs will save countless lives and keep patients from having to endure debilitating chemotherapy sessions, in which healthy cells are also unavoidably poisoned.

"The breakthrough is using bacteria as drug carriers that go straight to the cancer cell rather than conventional therapy that floods the body,'' Dr Jennifer MacDiarmid said. "They don't have a chromosome so they can't cause disease like a normal bacteria.''

The technology has been developed so the delivery system recognises the markers of certain cancers and latches on to the appropriate cells, releasing the drug inside the tumours and causing less havoc to healthy tissue.

The technology was created by Sydney scientists working for a private company that is partly funded by both State and Federal Government grants, and has been welcomed by cancer experts. The breakthrough drug system will go through human trials by the end of the year and should be available to cancer patients in a few 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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



11 May, 2007

New drug for diabetics

A diabetes drug based on the saliva of an endangered lizard goes on sale today. Byetta is a synthetic version of a chemical that helps the Gila monster to survive despite its peculiar eating pattern. An adult Gila, named after the Gila river in North America, may eat only three to four times a year, consuming a third of its bodyweight in food each time.

To metabolise such monstrous meals, the colourful lizard secretes a hormone-like molecule called exendin-4. This primes the lizard to receive the incoming nutrients by stimulating insulin secretion, among other effects. The functions of exendin-4 are very similar to those of a human hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). This hormone triggers the production of insulin in response to raised blood sugar.

In type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin may fail to respond adequately to changes in blood glucose concentrations after a meal. Byetta, developed by Eli Lilly, the American pharmaceuticals group, is designed to correct this defect in cases of type 2 diabetes that cannot be adequately controlled by dietary changes or by the use of other drugs, such as metformin. It stimulates the beta cells, suppresses the secretion of glucagen (a hormone that has the opposite action to insulin) and slows the emptying of food from the stomach. It lasts much longer in the body than GLP-1.

In trials, half the patients given Byetta with metformin achieved good glucose control, and the combination also helped them to lose weight.

Source




What a crock!

Do I really need to comment on this? Don't we all start moving our eyes at a great rate as soon as we get out of bed? We even move them when we are dreaming, in fact

Moving your eyes from side to side for 30 seconds every morning can boost memory by up to 10 per cent, a study suggests. Students who took part in the eye exercise tests found that their memory recall was boosted by a spot of eye jiggling. The exercises work, it is thought, because the eye movements cause the two hemispheres of the brain to interact more efficiently with each other.

Research led by Andrew Parker of Manchester Metropolitan University, identified the potential exam revision technique while studying false recall. “This could be important in situations where we feel uncertain, unclear or maybe even just confused about what we may have done or said,” he said. “It may help someone recall an important piece of information for an exam or for a shopping list.”

He presented 102 university students with recordings of a male voice reading 20 lists of 15 words. The subjects were then handed a list of words and asked to pick out those that they had just heard. On average, the students who had moved their eyes from side to side performed 10 per cent better than the rest. Up and down eye movement was of no use at all to recall. Contained within the lists were “lure” words that were not in the spoken list but were similar to some of those that were. Students who had moved eyes sideways were 15 per cent better at ignoring the misleading words.

Dr Parker said: “Our work shows that true memory can be improved and false memory reduced. One reason for this is that bilateral eye movements may improve our ability to monitor the source of our memories. He said that people are often confused over whether a memory is real or imagined, such as whether a bill was paid or a door locked. “The problem is to determine the source of one’s memory — real or imagined. Bilateral eye movements may help us to determine accurately the source of our memory,” he said.

He came up with the idea of testing students and getting them to move their eyes after previous research indicated that some memories are dependent on the level of activity between the brain’s two hemispheres. The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Brain and Cognition, anticipated a reduction in false memory but were taken aback to find that the eye movements assisted recall of true memories. “The effects are so counter-intuitive,” Dr Parker said. “That such a straightforward experimental manipulation can bring about enhanced memory for studied information and lower the number of memory errors is quite exciting.”

More work has to be done to establish in what contexts the technique will be effective and whether it really will help in an exam. But he added: “If one does forget something then it will do no harm to try moving one’s eyes from side to side — to see if it does make a difference.”

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



10 May, 2007

THE DANGEROUS SCARE ABOUT CHOLESTEROL

I originally put the post below up around 18 months ago. Seeing that the cholesterol juggernaut (See one small instance here) still seems to be rolling on like an unsinkable Titanic (sorry about the mixed metaphor), I think I need to repeat it:

"If you eat too much cholesterol, or saturated fat, your blood cholesterol will rise to dangerous levels. Excess cholesterol will then seep through your artery walls causing thickenings (plaques), which will eventually block blood flow in vital arteries, resulting in heart attacks and strokes.... Scientific hypotheses don't get much simpler than this: the cholesterol, or diet-heart, hypothesis, which has broken free from the ivory towers of academia to impact with massive force on society. It has driven a widespread change in the type of food we are told to eat, and consequently the food that lines the supermarket shelves. Many people view bacon and eggs as a dangerous killer, butter is shunned, and a multi-billion pound industry has sprung up providing 'healthy' low-fat alternatives.

However, all is not what it seems. The cholesterol hypothesis can be likened to a cathedral built on a bog. Rather than admit they made a horrible mistake and let it sink, the builders decided to try and keep the cathedral afloat at all costs. Each time a crack appeared, a new buttress was built. Then further buttresses were built to support the original buttresses. Although direct contradictions to the cholesterol hypothesis repeatedly appear, nobody dares to say 'okay, this isn't working, time to build again from scratch'. That decision has become just too painful, especially now that massive industries, Nobel prizes, and glittering scientific careers, have grown on the back of the cholesterol hypothesis. The statin market alone is worth more than 20 billion pounds each year.

In reality, cracks in the hypothesis appeared right from the very start. The first of these was the stark observation that cholesterol in the diet has no effect on cholesterol levels in the bloodstream: 'There's no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we've known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn't matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.' Ancel Keys PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota 1997.

A bit of a blow to a cholesterol hypothesis, you might think, to find that dietary cholesterol has no effect on blood cholesterol levels. However, as everyone was by then fully convinced that something rich and 'fatty' in the diet was the primary cause of heart disease, nobody was willing to let go.

So the hypothesis quietly altered, from cholesterol in the diet to saturated fat in the diet - or a bit of both. As if cholesterol and saturated fat are similar things. In reality, this could hardly be further from the truth. Saturated fat and cholesterol have completely different functions in the body, and they have very different chemical structures....

It is true that Ancel Keys appeared to have proven the link between saturated fat consumption and heart disease, but when it came to the major interventional trials, confirmation proved elusive. The MR-FIT trial in the USA was the most determined effort to prove the case. This was a massive study in which over 350,000 men at high risk of heart disease were recruited. In one set of participants, cholesterol consumption was cut by 42 percent, saturated fat consumption by 28 percent and total calories by 21 percent. This should have made a noticeable dent in heart disease rates.

But nothing happened. The originators of the MR-FIT trials refer to the results as 'disappointing', and say in their conclusions: 'The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on Coronary Heart Disease or total mortality from this multifactor intervention.'

In fact, no clinical trial on reducing saturated fat intake has ever shown a reduction in heart disease. Some have shown the exact opposite: 'As multiple interventions against risk factors for coronary heart disease in middle aged men at only moderate risk seem to have failed to reduce both morbidity and mortality such interventions become increasingly difficult to justify. This runs counter to the recommendations of many national and international advisory bodies which must now take the recent findings from Finland into consideration. Not to do so may be ethically unacceptable.' Professor Michael Oliver, British Medical Journal 1991

This quote followed a disturbing trial involving Finnish businessmen. In a 10-year follow-up to the original five-year trial, it was found that those men who continued to follow a low saturated fat diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn't.

It is not as if this was one negative to set against a whole series of positive trials. In 1998, the Danish doctor Uffe Ravnskov looked at a broader selection of trials: 'The crucial test is the controlled, randomised trial. Eight such trials using diet as the only treatment has been performed but neither the number of fatal or non-fatal heart attacks was reduced.' As Ravnskov makes clear, no trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat.

Much more here




The Trouble With Science

The article above raises the question of why false beliefs are so prevalent in medical science. The article below by economist Robert Higgs was originally written as a commentary on the twisted "science" of the global warming scare but it applies equally well to medical science. As a much-published academic myself, I agree strongly with his observations

In following the discussion of global warming and related issues in the press and the blogosphere, I have been struck repeatedly by the assumption or expression of certain beliefs that strike me as highly problematical. Many writers who are not scientists themselves are trading on the prestige of science and the authority of scientists. Reference to "peer-reviewed research" and to an alleged "scientific consensus" are regarded as veritable knock-out blows by many commentators. Yet many of those who make such references appear to me to be more or less ignorant of how science as a form of knowledge-seeking and scientists as individual professionals operate, especially nowadays, when national governments - most notably the U.S. government - play such an overwhelming role in financing scientific research and hence in determining which scientists rise to the top and which fall by the wayside.

I do not pretend to have expertise in climatology or any of the related physical sciences, so nothing I might say about strictly climatological or related physical-scientific matters deserves any weight. However, I have thirty-nine years of professional experience - twenty-six as a university professor, including fifteen at a major research university, and then thirteen as a researcher, writer, and editor - in close contact with scientists of various sorts, including some in the biological and physical sciences and many in the social sciences and demography. I have served as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a number of large private foundations. I was the principal investigator of a major NSF-funded research project in the field of demography. So, I think I know something about how the system works. It does not work as outsiders seem to think.

Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from being an important control, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to being a complete farce, where they are not. As a rule, not surprisingly, the process operates somewhere in the middle, being more than a joke but less than the nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny that outsiders imagine it to be. Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to reject a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports. As I have always counseled young people whose work was rejected, seemingly on improper or insufficient grounds, the system is a crapshoot. Personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion, and a great deal of plain incompetence and irresponsibility are no strangers to the scientific world; indeed, that world is rife with these all-too-human attributes. In no event can peer review ensure that research is correct in its procedures or its conclusions. The history of every science is a chronicle of one mistake after another. In some sciences these mistakes are largely weeded out in the course of time; in others they persist for extended periods; and in some sciences, such as economics, actual scientific retrogression may continue for generations under the misguided (but self-serving) belief that it is really progress.

At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.

Researchers who employ unorthodox methods or theoretical frameworks have great difficulty under modern conditions in getting their findings published in the "best" journals or, at times, in any scientific journal. Scientific innovators or creative eccentrics always strike the great mass of practitioners as nutcases - until their findings become impossible to deny, which often occurs only after one generation's professional ring-masters have died off. Science is an odd undertaking: everybody strives to make the next breakthrough, yet when someone does, he is often greeted as if he were carrying the Ebola virus. Too many people have too much invested in the reigning ideas; for those people an acknowledgment of their own idea's bankruptcy is tantamount to an admission that they have wasted their lives. Often, perhaps to avoid cognitive dissonance, they never admit that their ideas were wrong. Most important, as a rule, in science as elsewhere, to get along, you must go along.

Research worlds, in their upper reaches, are pretty small. Leading researchers know all the major players and what everybody else is doing. They attend the same conferences, belong to the same societies, send their grad students to be postdocs in the other people's labs, review one another's work for the NSF, NIH, or other government funding organizations, and so forth. If you do not belong to this tight fraternity, it will prove very, very difficult for you to gain a hearing for your work, to publish in a "top" journal, to acquire a government grant, to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific-conference panel discussion, or to place your grad students in decent positions. The whole setup is tremendously incestuous; the interconnections are numerous, tight, and close.

In this context, a bright young person needs to display cleverness in applying the prevailing orthodoxy, but it behooves him not to rock the boat by challenging anything fundamental or dear to the hearts of those who constitute the review committees for the NSF, NIH, and other funding organizations. Modern biological and physical science is, overwhelmingly, government-funded science. If your work, for whatever reason, does not appeal to the relevant funding agency's bureaucrats and academic review committees, you can forget about getting any money to carry out your proposal. Recall the human frailties I mentioned previously; they apply just as much in the funding context as in the publication context. Indeed, these two contexts are themselves tightly linked: if you don't get funding, you'll never produce publishable work, and if you don't land good publications, you won't continue to receive funding.

When your research implies a "need" for drastic government action to avert a looming disaster or to allay some dire existing problem, government bureaucrats and legislators (can you say "earmarks"?) are more likely to approve it. If the managers at the NSF, NIH, and other government funding agencies gave great amounts of money to scientists whose research implies that no disaster looms or no dire problem now exists or even that although a problem exists, no currently feasible government policy can do anything to solve it without creating greater problems in the process, members of Congress would be much less inclined to throw money at the agency, with all the consequences that an appropriations cutback implies for bureaucratic thriving. No one has to explain all these things to the parties involved; they are not idiots, and they understand how the wheels are greased in their tight little worlds.

Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that "we must act now" by imposing government "solutions" of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what degree of risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it's a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a sound scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best-qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking - worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists - nevertheless.

In this connection, we might well bear in mind that the United Nations (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees) is no more a scientific organization than the U.S. Congress (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees). When decisions and pronouncements come forth from these political organizations, it makes sense to treat them as essentially political in origin and purpose. Politicians aren't dumb, either - vicious, yes, but not dumb. One thing they know above everything else is how to stampede masses of people into approving or accepting ill-advised government actions that cost the people dearly in both their standard of living and their liberties in the long run

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



9 May, 2007

Gamma knife treatment



Tammy Guzman finished her shift as a cashier at the Goodwill store on Arden Way, returned to her apartment and found her son Anthony complaining. "Ahh, my head hurts," he whined. A warm shower and a snack, she thought, would help her 5-year-old feel better. But the freckly faced redhead got worse. He lay on the loveseat screaming, his mouth twisted to one side, his little limbs shaking, his eyes rolling up and back. After a frantic ambulance ride to Sutter Memorial Hospital, Anthony Guzman was admitted to the intensive care unit with a rare congenital abnormality, a tangle of vessels that had ruptured and were now spilling blood into his brain.

The diagnosis -- a bleeding arterio-venous malformation -- not only put Anthony in grave danger, but left his mother and the doctors overseeing his care facing a dilemma. Brain surgery to remove the malformation and stop the bleeding could kill Anthony or, at best, leave him paralyzed, blind or with severe language and mental disabilities.

Waiting out the hemorrhage could be deadly, too. But if he survived this, neurosurgeon Sam Ciricello told Guzman, her son would likely be an excellent candidate for gamma knife treatment. A precision dose of radiation through the gamma knife could destroy the abnormality, eliminate the risk of additional bleeding and give him a shot at a normal life.

Now, two months and almost two weeks after that trip to the emergency room, Anthony is back home, raising havoc with his little half-sister Jada, ready to return to his kindergarten class at Greer Elementary School and jumping up and down on his mother's loveseat.

This day almost never came. Shortly after his hospital admission, a special X-ray of the vessels surrounding the malformation convinced Ciricillo and fellow neurosurgeon Edie Zusman that the safest approach was to let Anthony wait out and recuperate from the hemorrhage.

It was a calculated risk. "It's never easy to sit and watch a child get sicker," Ciricillo said. "But sometimes you have to take a chance that the child is going to get sicker to get a better outcome in the long run."

Guzman put her trust in the surgeons. "I am not a doctor, so I don't know," she said. "What else am I going to do? I was just really wanting my baby to be alive." Relying on her boyfriend and others for help with her other child at home, Guzman spent day and night at the hospital, eventually abandoning her job and taking on debt to stay by his side.

At first, Anthony just got sicker. The bleeding on his brain caused swelling and dangerous pressure inside his skull. He was lapsing into a coma. To increase his odds of surviving, doctors used strong sedatives to keep him comatose and immobile. They hooked him up to a ventilator to help him breathe and covered him with a cool blanket to quiet his restless body and mind so he could begin to heal.

But Anthony continued to deteriorate as the brain pressures kept rising. After three days in the coma, Zusman opted to perform a risky procedure to relieve the pressure. She drilled a tiny hole into Anthony's skull and inserted a drain to remove a small amount of cerebral spinal fluid. "It was clearly a life-and-death situation," said Zusman. "The goal was to get the best long-term outcome, for him to be able to move his arms and legs and have a joyful life."

The risk paid off. Anthony's condition steadily improved, the pressure gradually dropping to normal levels as excess fluid dried up. "When the brain swelling is that severe, a tiny volume difference makes a huge difference in pressure," explained Ciricillo. After 11 days, Anthony was eased out of the coma. When he awoke, he was alert but the hemorrhage had left him weak on his left side and temporarily unable to walk.

By the end of April, Anthony had regained most of his physical strength and coordination. He was ready to undergo the gamma knife treatment. Anthony seemed almost eager on Thursday to get the job done, helping the gamma-knife nurse push a cart full of equipment through the hospital corridors and hardly wincing when the anesthesiologist inserted a needle into his tiny hand to start the medicine that would sedate him for the next several hours.

A frame was secured onto Anthony's head, and the medical team -- a radiation oncologist, radiation physicist and Ciricillo - used measurement tools and magnetic resonance images of his brain to pinpoint the location and geometry of the malformation and to develop a computerized treatment plan.

Anthony was then placed on the gamma knife table, his head inside a 350-pound titanium helmet dotted with 201 14-millimeter holes through which the tiny radioactive beams -- or gamma knives -- would seep.

Doctors will not know for several weeks or even months how well the radiation worked to destroy the malformed vessels and shut down their blood flow. But they are confident Anthony is on the road to lasting recovery.

On Friday, all signs pointed in that direction, as Anthony played video games and gleefully tormented his little sister.

Amid the happy chaos, Guzman was cautiously optimistic. "I am feeling good, she said. "I am relieved at least that the procedure is over. I hope it's going to stick."

A savings account to help with the Guzman family expenses has been set up with U.S. Bank under the name Tammy and Anthony Guzman.

Source




Wrinkle cream rip-off

WOMEN paying up to $175 for anti-wrinkle creams are being ripped off by false and misleading advertising by cosmetic giants, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. The makers of Lancome, Clinique, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and Payot have all been ordered to withdraw advertisements in the past year after complaints to Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The TGA's complaints panel found while the creams, peels and serums were only cosmetics, they were making claims that were therapeutic, or which would make a physiological difference. In one case, Estee Lauder argued that because they were known as a cosmetics firm and their product Perfectionist Correcting Serum was being advertised in a fashion magazine "readers could not reasonably expect the product to have a therapeutic use". They told the TGA the product used optical technology among other things to blur the effect of wrinkles. This was despite promising in their advertisement their $160 product could fill in and smooth out expression lines instantly and "helps the skin amplify its natural collagen production".

The complaints panel said it was unable to accept the claim was merely cosmetic and had "no doubt" it was a therapeutic claim. In another complaint, the panel said it was concerned about the comparison Payot made between its $175 Payot Rides Relax to injections of the wrinkle-relieving toxin Botox. The panel ordered Payot to withdraw its claims that the serum was "wrinkle correcting".

The Australian Consumers Association would like to see the TGA having the power to fine the cosmetics industry instead of merely ordering them to withdraw their ads. ACA health policy officer Viola Korczak said the companies were continually trying to push the boundaries when making claims about their products. "It is in the companies' interests to put out an ad with a misleading claim because if someone does lodge a complaint, by the time it is processed, the ad could have run for weeks or months," said Ms Korczak. "There is little incentive for them to follow the rules."

She said a breach of the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code was no more than a slap on the wrist. The ACA has a member on the complaints committee, along with representatives of doctors, pharmacists and alternative health care professionals. Ms Korczak said the committee was under-resourced, had a backlog of complaints and did not monitor advertisements itself but relied on complaints. However, in what is a multi-million dollar dirty tricks war, most complaints are made by rival companies and few by genuine consumers. Unless the product is registered as therapeutic, cosmetic companies can only use terms relating to the appearance or look of the skin, hair or nails.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



8 May, 2007

More crap from the BMJ

From the comments below, one would never guess that sugar is a natural and valuable nutrient and that NO harm from the changes mentioned below has been shown. It's just modern-day Puritanism

Manufacturers have doubled the amount of sugar in some foods in the past 30 years. The increases were seen across dozens of food types. Even fruit was not immune, with companies selecting sweeter varieties to cater for the public’s changing palate. The research comes amid increasing concern over the ill-effects of sugar. Rocketing sugar levels have contributed to tooth decay and an increase in the incidence of diabetes.

A recent article in the British Medical Journal said that sugar was as dangerous as tobacco and posed a greater threat to world health. “Sugar should be classified as a hard drug, for it is addictive and harmful,” it said.

The latest study, of food composition since 1978, found some of the biggest increases were in breakfast cereals and wholemeal bread. Kellogg’s Special K has nearly twice the amount of sugar it did in 1978. At 17g per 100g, it contains a similar amount to vanilla ice-cream. A typical loaf of wholemeal bread had a third more sugar in 2002 than it had 1978. Hovis wholemeal bread has even more sugar, with 3.7g per 100g. Sainsbury’s wholemeal bread has 3.5g sugar per 100g. This means there is a teaspoon of sugar in every three slices.

In data from a 1978 industry handbook, cans of tomato soup had 2.6g of sugar per 100g. Many soups today contain double that. Waitrose tomato soup had almost three teaspoons of sugar (6.4g) per serving. Between 1978 and 2002, the average banana’s sugar level rose from 16.2g per 100g to 20.9g. Sugar in pears increased from 7.6g per 100g to 10g. Sugar in carrots rose from 5.4g per 100g to 7.4g.

The consumer group Which? revealed last month that ready-meals contained up to 23.1g of sugar per 100g. After a campaign to reduce salt intakes, the Food Standard Agency now wants to reduce added sugar. A spokesman, Ian Tokelove, said: “We naturally have a sweet tooth and manufacturers have been quick to use that to increase sales in a crowded marketplace. It’s been one of the first things to be added when companies want to make a product a bit different.” Experts say that sugar levels could rise further as a byproduct of the campaign against salt.

Jack Winkler, professor of nutrition policy at London Metropolitan University, said that European trade reforms were making sugar cheaper. “It’s hard to think of a more irresponsible policy than cutting the price of sugar in the middle of an obesity epidemic,” he told The Sunday Times.

Waitrose said that it was reducing the sugar in its tomato soup. Jenny Walton, of Kellogg’s, said that extra sugar was added to some cereals because other ingredients, such as salt, had been reduced. Hovis said: “Hovis Wholemeal does contain a small amount of brown sugar. The quantities do not affect the nutritional benefits of the bread.” Sainsbury’s said that it was reviewing products to decide whether sugar and salt levels could be reduced.

Source




Math and health care

A good point below from Shiller Math

Every day each of us makes decisions and judgment calls - both in our personal and professional lives - based on our understanding of probability theory. If our understanding is flawed, the consequences can be serious. Here is a case in point:

A hypothetical doctor gives a test for a certain disease to every one of her patients, and her patients are representative of the population, where, on average, one in 1,000 people get this disease. The test has a 5% false positive rate: if the test result is positive for the disease, there's a 5% chance that you do not actually have it. The test has a 0% false negative rate: if the test is negative for the disease, you do not have it.

A patient tests positive for the disease. What is the probability the patient actually has it? See if you can figure it out the answer before reading on...

Over half the doctors surveyed got the answer wrong. This has serious implications for our health care system, our economy, and our well being. If a doctor tells that patient that the probability of having the disease is 95%, most patients would take that as nearly certain and will undergo treatment, no matter how hard or potentially disruptive or even life-threatening that might be. But if a doctor tells that patient that the probability of having the disease is actually under 2%, which is in fact correct, most patients would make very different decisions, such as undertaking additional testing.

Here's the math: Say 1,000 people take the test. On average, one person will have the disease and will test positive for it (there are no false negatives). Of the other 999 people, 5% of them will also test positive, even though they don't have the disease. Five percent of 999 is pretty close to 50, so approximately 51 people will test positive. But only one of the 51 actually has the disease! Under 2%.

Proper understanding of probability helps us make better decisions in life. Who knew good math could cause happiness?

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

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



7 May, 2007

Blindness cure for some?

A British hospital has made the world's first attempt to treat blindness with a revolutionary gene therapy. Surgeons at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London operated on Robert Johnson, who was born with a rare sight disorder known as Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), which deteriorates with age. Mr Johnson, 23, who had genes inserted into one eye, could see only outlines during the day and very little at night before having the procedure yesterday. He is one of a dozen young patients selected for the first clinical trial to test the new therapy, which has already proved successful at restoring the sight of dogs in tests.

It will be months before the researchers know whether their work has been a success, but it is thought that the therapy could be used to treat a wide range of inherited sight disorders in adults and children. The LCA disorder is caused by a defect in a gene called RPE65, which prevents the light-sensitive layer of cells in the retina at the back of the eye from working properly. Usually these are cells that detect light, but in Mr Johnson's case they are damaged and prevent him from seeing properly.

The operation, conceived by researchers from University College London, involved injecting working copies of the defective gene into the back of the eye. Surgeons used a harmless virus or "vector" to carry the gene into the cells. It is hoped that the replacement genes will enable the retina to detect light - and eventually restore Mr Johnson's sight. The trial, funded by the Department of Health, involves 12 adults and children with LCA, for which there are currently no effective treatments.

During preliminary studies, the vision of dogs with the defect was restored to the extent that they were able to walk through a maze without difficulty; something they could not do before the treatment. The purpose of the Moorfields trial is to find out how safe and effective the intervention is for humans. The researchers hope that their work could lead to ways to treat more common sight problems, such as age-related macular degeneration, which affects about 250,000 Britons. Most previous gene therapies have been developed in an attempt to treat different types of cancer.

Before surgery, Mr Johnson told the BBC that he had mixed feelings. He said: "It's very difficult to say how I'm feeling. I keep ranging from extreme nervousness to a bit of excitement."

Professor Robin Ali, the lead researcher, based at the Institute of Ophthalmology, has spent 15 years working with colleagues developing the technique. He said yesterday: "I can't help feeling somewhat apprehensive. There is so much riding on it and we have all been waiting for a very long time." His colleague, James Bainbridge, who carried out the surgery, said that there was no guarantee that it would be a success. However, he added: "It is very encouraging that we can deliver genes to an extremely fragile site in the eye without complications."

The surgery required incredible precision. Robert Maclaren, the assistant surgeon, said yesterday that he was pleased with how things went. "We couldn't have asked for a better result," he said. Professor Ali added: "There are many forms of retinal degeneration, meaning the use of gene therapy treatments must be individually developed, then tested in a separate clinical trial specifically for that disease. "However, the results from this first human trial are likely to provide an important basis for many more gene therapy protocols in the future."

Source




Left-handed women 'may not live as long'

A study suggests that women who are left-handed have a higher risk of dying, particularly from cancer and cerebrovascular disease - damage to an artery in the brain or an artery that supplies blood to the brain. While it could be a chance finding and the evidence is far from conclusive, numerous reports have associated left-handedness with various disorders and, in general, a shorter life span, Dutch researchers note in their report in the journal Epidemiology. "Left-handers are reported to be underrepresented in the older age groups, although such findings are still much debated," write Dr Made Ramadhani and colleagues from University Medical Centre Utrecht. It is estimated that about one in 10 people are lefties.

Among 12,178 middle-aged Dutch women the researchers followed for nearly 13 years, 252 died. When left-handed women were compared with the other women, and the data were adjusted for a number of potentially confounding factors, lefties had a 40 per cent higher risk of dying from any cause, a 70 per cent higher risk of dying from cancer, and a 30 per cent higher risk of dying from diseases of the circulatory system. Left-handed women also had a two-fold increased risk of dying from breast cancer, close to a five-fold increased risk of dying from colorectal cancer, and more than a three-fold higher risk of cerebrovascular mortality.

The underlying mechanisms remain elusive, although genetics and environmental factors may be involved, Ramadhani and colleagues suggest. Much of the research into handedness and mortality has been fuelled by the hypothesis that left-handedness is the result of an insult suffered during pre-natal life, which ultimately leads to the early death.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



6 May, 2007

Now pistachios get a nod

Incorporating pistachios into the diet can significantly reduce cholesterol and help to prevent narrowing of the arteries, research suggests. Nuts have a reputation as being salty, fatty and high in calories. In fact, they contain protein, fibre and in many cases their fats are of the healthy type. In 2003 the US Food and Drug Administration allowed nuts - including walnuts, peanuts, almonds and pistachios - to carry a "qualified health claim" asserting there was evidence that they could lower the risk of heart disease, because of their effects on cholesterol.

The latest trial, focusing on pistachios, adds to the evidence by showing that one or two handfuls of the nuts can reduce cholesterol levels. Volunteers who ate three ounces (85g) of pistachios a day for one month lowered their total blood cholesterol by 8.4 per cent. Crucially, levels of "bad" cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), went down by 11.6 per cent, while the balance between LDL and "good" cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), was also changed. Participants on the pistachio diet had less LDL relative to HDL after four weeks.

The volunteers did not simply add pistachios to their normal diet. Instead, they were put on diets that lowered the total fat they consumed, and also on lower-fat diets that incorporated either 1.5 or 3oz of pistachios a day. [So the study proves nothing about pistachios] The findings were presented at Experimental Biology, a meeting in Washington DC.

Source




Heart attack gene

A test that determines whether people have an inherited vulnerability to heart attacks is to be developed after scientists discovered a genetic variant that can double the risk of having one at an early age. The DNA test, which is being developed by an Icelandic company, has been assisted by two separate studies that identified a genetic profile that increases a person's susceptibility to heart attacks and coronary heart disease. The most damaging variant, which is carried by between a fifth and a quarter of the white European population, raises the chances of a heart attack, at any age, by up to 60 per cent. In early middle age, it has an even greater impact: it doubles the risk for men younger than 50, and for women younger than 60, researchers found.

Coronary heart disease is the biggest cause of death in developed countries such as Britain. In England, about 275,000 people have a heart attack each year, and 110,000 people die of heart disease.

While many other factors, particularly diet, exercise and smoking, have a greater impact on the risk than genes, the discovery should eventually allow doctors to identify patients with a high genetic vulnerability. They could then be advised to change their lifestyle accordingly, to reduce the risks, or treated at an earlier stage with cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins. In the longer term, insights into how the genetic variant increases risk might also be used to assist the design of new drugs.

The Reykjavik-based biotechnology company deCODE Genetics, which conducted one of the studies, said that it now intends to develop a test that would incorporate other genetic variants that contribute to heart attacks. It said in a statement: "deCODE plans to bundle this discovery with other genetic variants it has linked to risk of heart attack into a DNA-based test for gauging inherited risk of myocardial infarction [heart attack]. "The company believes that such a test, particularly for those with other risk factors, may enable individuals and their doctors to adopt more informed and thus potentially more effective prevention regimes."

Ruth McPherson, director of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in Canada, who led the second study, said: "If we can identify genetic factors which influence heart disease risk, over and above known risk factors, we can do a better job of identifying those people who will benefit most from early intervention to reduce their risk." The two studies, which are published in the journal Science, scanned hundreds of thousands of single-letter DNA spelling mistakes known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips"), in search of variants that might be linked to heart attacks. Both alighted on an SNP that lies close to two genes called CDKN2A and CDKN2B. Each person inherits two copies of this stretch of DNA, one from each parent. When people inherit two copies of the SNP variant, they have a subtantially higher risk of heart disease than those with two normal copies.

The Icelandic study found an increased risk of around 60 per cent, while the Canadian researchers put their risk at 30 to 40 per cent higher. One normal copy paired with one copy of the variant raised the risk by 15 to 20 per cent. The deCODE study also looked at the risk of early heart attacks, before the age of 50 in men and 60 in women. It found that two copies of the variant doubled the risk, while one copy increased it by 49 per cent.

Independent researchers welcomed the findings. However, they cautioned that it is likely to take some time before genetic tests are developed or used in clinics. Genes remain less important than lifestyle factors in the onset of heart disease, they said. Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "Trying to find genes that put some families at an increased risk of heart attacks is like trying to find a collection of needles scattered amongst a field full of hay stacks. "The significance of these two studies is that two independent research teams have homed in on the same hay stack - a region of DNA within chromosome 9. "This makes it very likely that they are close to identifying a needle - an important gene in that region. "However, this will take a lot more research and - once found - the gene will be only one of several factors that are important. This research represents an important step along a very long journey, but a step in the right direction."

Tim Chico, of the University of Sheffield, said: "This is very interesting scientifically, but it won't change the way patients are investigated or treated at the moment. "We must not forget that 90 per cent of the risk of a heart attack comes from things like smoking, cholesterol, diet, lack of exercise and diabetes. "Whatever our genetic make-up, we can all reduce our chances of heart disease by improving our lifestyle."

Source




Maggots cure superbug: "Maggots are being used to help successfully treat MRSA patients in record time, according to a study by the University of Manchester. Researchers used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetics whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA. All but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, instead of the usual 28 for conventional treatment. Professor Andrew Boulton, who published the results in Diabetes Care, will now do further tests, funded by Diabetes UK. Maggots eat dead tissue and bacteria, leaving healthy tissue to heal. The group of diabetics, aged between 18 and 80, had sterile larvae applied between two and eight times - depending on the size of foot ulcer - for four days at a time. All but one was cleared of the superbug. "This is very exciting," Professor Boulton said yesterday. "If confirmed in a randomised controlled trial, larval treatment would offer the first noninvasive and risk-free treatment of this problem."

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

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



5 May, 2007

Marijuana both good and bad?

A chemical found in cannabis could be used to treat schizophrenia with fewer side-effects than existing antipsychotic drugs, research suggests. Though cannabis can provoke psychotic symptoms, these effects appear to be caused chiefly by one of its components; and another compound that damps down its effects has potential as a medicine, scientists said.

The findings, to be announced at a conference that opens in London today, offer a possible explanation for anecdotal reports of increasing cases of psychosis and schizophrenia triggered by the drug. As concentrations of tetra-hydracannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive element that can provoke psychosis, have risen, levels of the beneficial chemical, cannabidiol (CBD) have fallen. This could mean that users are being exposed to higher doses of the damaging chemical, while receiving less CBD, which tends to balance THC's effects.

"There is a possibility that there are good guys and bad guys in cannabis," said Markus Leweke, of the University of Cologne. "THC is the bad guy, but there is a small body of literature that suggests CBD may prevent the induction of psychotic symptoms. Our study supports that view." There are no official statistics on how cannabis use is affecting levels of mental illness, but there is growing evidence that the drug can induce psychosis and schizophrenia.

Scientists also report anecdotal evidence that more young people are developing schizophrenia as a result of using the drug. Robin Murray of the Institute of Psychiatry, said: "There is no robust evidence on cannabis-induced psychosis, but there are a lot of anecdotal reports it is increasing. Psychiatrists specialising in adolescence who used to have no interest in psychosis are now holding clinics with lots of patients with psychosis related to drug use." Comparisons of US drugs seizures in the 1960s and the 1990s show that THC levels have increased significantly as growers breed plants with more powerful psychoactive effects, and it is known that CBD content goes down as THC increases.

In the research, which will be presented at the Institute of Psychiatry's international conference on cannabis and mental health, Dr Leweke investigated the effects of CBD on 42 patients with acute schizophrenia. Some were given CBD, while others received a standard anti-psychotic drug called amisulpride. Both groups had fewer psychotic symptoms, but the CBD group also experienced fewer side-effects. Common side-effects of amisulpride include weight gain, sexual dys-function and liver problems.

In two studies to be presented to the conference, scientists have found new evidence linking THC to psychosis. Philip McGuire and Zerrin Atakan, of the Institute of Psychiatry, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of patients who took THC, and found that it reduced activity in a region involved in inhibiting inappropriate behav-iour. As activity in this region dropped, the subjects became progressively more paranoid. A second study, by Deepak Cyril D'Souza, of Yale University, found that THC administered intravenously worsened the symptoms of patients with schizophrenia.

Source




Cure for osteoporosis?

Millions of women could be protected against life-threatening hip fractures by a once-a-year treatment with a new drug. More than 14,000 women die every year in Britain after breaking their hips as a result of the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, which affects up to three million people. The new treatment cuts the risk of such fractures by more than 40 per cent. Almost half a million women, mostly aged over 50, are prescribed drugs for the disease. Well-known sufferers include Rosalind Shand, the mother of the Duchess of Cornwall, Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Lessing. the novelist.

The 15-minute treatment means that women can be protected against developing brittle bones without having to remember to take pills regularly. Poor adherence to treatment is a major problem in the development of osteoporosis. The new drug, zoledronic acid (Aclasta) has been tested on almost 8,000 women in a trial that included patients from Aberdeen, Sheffield, Liverpool and Glasgow. They were given annual infusions of either Aclasta or a placebo, and followed for three years. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed a 70 per cent reduction in fractures of the vertebrae of the spine, and a 41 per cent reduction in hip fractures. Breaks elsewhere in the body, such as the wrist, were reduced by 25 per cent.

There are more than 60,000 hip and 120,000 vertebral fractures every year in Britain, according to the National Osteoporosis Society. One in five of those who suffer a hip fracture dies within three months. Drugs for the disease, including the class called bisphosphonates to which Aclasta belongs, are given normally as pills that are taken daily or weekly. They are effective but do not always achieve their full potential because women stop taking them. One study in the US of bisphosphonate users who were followed for two years, found that only 43 per cent took the full course prescribed to them.

Professor Dennis Black, of the University of California, who led the new study, and his co-authors concluded: "A regimen of infusions once a year appears to ensure that patients will have a full treatment effect for at least 12 months. In contrast, many patients who receive prescriptions for oral bisphosphonates stop treatment, and most appear to be taking less than 80 per cent of their prescribed pills by 12 months." The National Osteoporosis Society welcomed this "exciting new treatment", saying that when it is available, it will add to the choice of drug treatments available for people at risk of breaking a bone due to osteoporosis. "An annual intravenous preparation may prove to be a convenient, cost-effective strategy," the society said.

Richard Eastell, Professor of Bone Metabolism at the University of Sheffield and a co-author of the study, said that the findings provided potential good news for thousands of women. "The ability to only have the treatment once a year does mean that it simplifies the whole regimen. There is no doubt that Aclasta reduces vertebral fracture, hip fracture and other breaks," he said.

David Reid, of the University of Aberdeen and a co-author, said that the hip fracture data was particularly relevant. "Preventing hip fractures remains the holy grail of treating osteoporosis, as we know that six months after a hip fracture, nearly a fifth of patients will be dead. Reducing hip fractures by 41 per cent is therefore highly clinically significant."

Professor Juliet Compston of Cambridge University, a specialist in osteoporosis, said that the intravenous administration of Aclasta ensured that treatment was delivered correctly. The side-effects of the infusion appeared to be manageable, although Professor Compston was concerned about a rise in atrial fibrillation (a heart rhythm disturbance) in some patients, but this could be due to chance, she said.

Aclasta is made by Novartis, which funded the study. It is currently licensed for use in Britain in the treatment of Paget's disease of the bone, and a 100ml infusion containing 5mg of the drug (the dose in the trial) costs the NHS 284 pounds.

Source




Sunscreen 'last line of defence'

As someone with very fair skin, I myself have always thought that staying in the shade was the way to go



Cancer experts say they won't tamper with Australia's punchy "Slip, Slop, Slap" anti-sun slogan in light of new research which downplays the role of sunscreen. An international review of sun protection has warned that protective clothing and hats are a far superior way to guard against skin cancer and the ageing effects of the sun. The study, published in the prestigious Lancet journal, relegates sunscreens to the last line of defence, saying they have potential to be "abused" so users can spend more time in the sun.

International reports have suggested a rethink of the world-famous 26-year-old Australian slogan which urges people to slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, and slap on a hat, in that order. "That would mean changing it to 'Slip, Slap, Slop,' to put sunscreen at the back of the line, but it's probably not smart to fiddle with such a successful slogan," said Ian Olver, head of Cancer Council Australia, which manages the sun smart campaign. "You'd risk throwing the baby out with the bath water and losing the whole message, and that would be a disaster."

But Prof Olver said the organisation agreed the priorities for sun protection had changed, with protective clothing and hats clearly far superior to screens. People relied on sunscreen alone too often, largely due to the "brown is beautiful" pro-tanning messages still promoted in the mass media, Prof Olver said. Sunscreen was typically applied too sparingly, too infrequently and rubbed in too thoroughly "which can essentially rub it off the skin all together", he said. "We definitely agree that it's the last line of defence, but it's a matter of changing the message without changing the slogan that accompanies it."

The new study by Swiss dermatologists tested all types of sun protection and awarded tightly woven, thick clothing the top prize. Items made from denim, wool and polyester offered the best protection, while cotton, linen and acetate were far less effective. Clothes that had shrunk after washing were also better than materials which were wet or had been stretched or bleached, according to dermatologist Stephan Lautenschlager, from Triemli Hospital in Zurich.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



4 May, 2007

Vitamin D prevents cancer?

I hate to prick bubbles here as I am sure vitamin D does some good but the effect of high and low levels of it on cancer seems to be tiny. We see here that even people with extreme low and high levels of vitamin D in them differ in cancer incidence only by about one tenth of one percent. The group high in D got cancer at the rate of .6 of one percent and the low group got it at the rate of .7 of one percent (.758 versus .674 to be precise). And relying on extreme groups is always potentially misleading. It seems doubtful that there is any relationship at all in the overall population. Anyway, below is the latest expression of faith from Canada:

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries - and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry. But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are "looking for a bogeyman that doesn't exist," argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world's top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor "is more likely a lack of vitamin D." What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Not everyone is willing to jump on the vitamin D bandwagon just yet. Smoking and some pollutants, such as benzene and asbestos, irrefutably cause many cancers. But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D's effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.

A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large - twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking - it almost looks like a typographical error. And in an era of pricey medical advances, the reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day.

One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says vitamin D deficiency is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated. "We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population," he said, "until we normalize vitamin D status."

Sunshine vitamin

For decades, vitamin D has been the Rodney Dangerfield of the supplement world. It's the vitamin most Canadians never give a second thought to because it was assumed the only thing it did was prevent childhood rickets, a debilitating bone disease. But the days of no respect could be numbered. If vitamin D deficiency becomes accepted as the major cause of cancer and other serious illnesses, it will ignite the medical equivalent of a five-alarm blaze on the Canadian health front.

For many reasons, Canadians are among the people most at risk of not having enough vitamin D. This is due to a quirk of geography, to modern lifestyles and to the country's health authorities, who have unwittingly, if with the best of intentions, played a role in creating the vitamin deficiency. Authorities are implicated because the main way humans achieve healthy levels of vitamin D isn't through diet but through sun exposure. People make vitamin D whenever naked skin is exposed to bright sunshine. By an unfortunate coincidence, the strong sunshine able to produce vitamin D is the same ultraviolet B light that can also causes sunburns and, eventually, skin cancer. Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine - of 10 or 15 minutes a day - are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin. But most authorities, including Health Canada, have urged a total avoidance of strong sunlight or, alternatively, heavy use of sunscreen. Both recommendations will block almost all vitamin D synthesis.

Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer - which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal - for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages. The sun advice has been misguided information "of just breathtaking proportions," said John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit, California-based organization. "Fifteen hundred Americans die every year from [skin cancers]. Fifteen hundred Americans die every day from the serious cancers."

Health Canada denies its advice might be dangerous. In an e-mailed statement, it said that most people don't apply sunscreen thoroughly, leaving some skin exposed, and that people spend enough time outside without skin protection to make adequate amounts of vitamin D. However, the Canadian Cancer Society last year quietly tweaked its recommendation to recognize that limited amounts of sun exposure are essential for vitamin D levels.

Avoiding most bright sunlight wouldn't be so serious if it weren't for a second factor: The main determinant of whether sunshine is strong enough to make vitamin D is latitude. Living in the north is bad, the south is better, and near the equator is best of all. Canadians have drawn the short straw on the world's latitude lottery: From October to March, sunlight is too feeble for vitamin D production. During this time, our bodies draw down stores built by summer sunshine, and whatever is acquired from supplements or diet. Government regulations require foods such as milk and margarine to have small amounts of added vitamin D to prevent rickets.

Other foods, such as salmon, naturally contain some, as does the cod liver oil once commonly given to children in the days before milk fortification. But the amounts from food are minuscule compared to what is needed for cancer prevention and what humans naturally can make in their skin. Vitamin D levels in Canada are also being compromised by a lifestyle change. Unlike previous generations that farmed or otherwise worked outside, most people now spend little time outdoors. One survey published in 2001 estimated office- and homebound Canadians and Americans spend 93 per cent of waking time in buildings or cars, both of which block ultraviolet light. Consequently, by mid-winter most Canadians have depleted vitamin D status. "We're all a bit abnormal in terms of our vitamin D," said Dr. Vieth, who has tested scores of Canadians, something done with a simple blood test.

How much is enough?

Just how much vitamin D is required for optimum health is the subject of intense scientific inquiry. Dr. Vieth has approached the matter by asking: What vitamin D level would humans have if they were still living outside, in the wild, near the equator, with its attendant year-round bright sunshine? "Picture the natural human as a nudist in environments south of Florida," he says. He estimates humans in a state of nature probably had about 125 to 150 nanomoles/litre of vitamin D in their blood all year long - levels now achieved for only a few months a year by the minority of adult Canadians who spend a lot of time in the sun, such as lifeguards or farmers. For the rest of the population, vitamin D levels tend to be lower, and crash in winter. In testing office workers in Toronto in winter, Dr. Vieth found the average was only about 40 nanomoles/L, or about one-quarter to one-third of what humans would have in the wild.

The avalanche of surprising research on the beneficial effects of vitamin D could affect dietary recommendations as well. Health Canada says that, in light of the findings, it intends to study whether recommended dietary levels need to be revised, although the review is likely to be years away. A joint Canadian-U.S. health panel last studied vitamin D levels in 1997, concluding the relatively low amounts in people's blood were normal. At the time, there was speculation vitamin D had an anti-cancer effect, but more conclusive evidence has only emerged since. "There needs to be a comprehensive review undertaken and that is planned," says Mary Bush, director general of Health Canada's office of nutrition policy and promotion.

But Ms. Bush said the government doesn't want to move hastily, out of concern that there may be unknown risks associated with taking more of the vitamin. Those who worry about low vitamin D, however, say this stand is too conservative - that the government's caution may itself be a health hazard. To achieve the vitamin D doses used for cancer prevention through foods, people would need to drink about three litres of milk a day, which is unrealistic. If health authorities accept the new research, they would have to order a substantial increase in food fortification or supplement-taking to affect disease trends. As it is, the 400 IU dosage included in most multivitamins is too low to be an effective cancer fighter.

Dr. Vieth said any new recommendations will also have to reflect the racial and cultural factors connected to vitamin D. Blacks, South Asians and women who wear veils are at far higher risks of vitamin D deficiencies than are whites. Although humans carry a lot of cultural baggage on the subject of skin hue, colour is the way nature dealt with the vagaries of high or low vitamin D production by latitude. Those with very dark skins, whose ancestors originated in tropical, light-rich environments, have pigmentation that filters out more of the sunshine responsible for vitamin D; in northern latitudes, they need more sun exposure - often 10 times as much - to produce the same amount of the vitamin as whites.

Dr. Vieth says it is urgent to provide information about the need for extra vitamin D in Canada's growing non-white population to avoid a future of high illness rates in this group. Researchers suspect vitamin D plays such a crucial role in diseases as unrelated as cancer and osteoporosis because the chemical originated in the early days of animal evolution as a way for cells to signal that they were being exposed to daylight. Even though living things have evolved since then, almost all cells, even those deep in our bodies, have kept this primitive light-signalling system. In the body, vitamin D is converted into a steroid hormone, and genes responding to it play a crucial role in fixing damaged cells and maintaining good cell health. "There is no better anti-cancer agent than activated vitamin D. I mean, it does everything you'd want," said Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council.

Some may view the sunshine-vitamin story as too good to be true, particularly given that the number of previous claims of vitamin cure-alls that subsequently flopped. "The floor of modern medicine is littered with the claims of vitamins that didn't turn out," Dr. Cannell allowed. But the big difference is that vitamin D, unlike other vitamins, is turned into a hormone, making it far more biologically active. As well, it is "operating independently in hundreds of tissues in your body," Dr. Cannell said. Referring to Linus Pauling, the famous U.S. advocate of vitamin C use as a cure for many illnesses, he said: "Basically, Linus Pauling was right, but he was off by one letter."

Source

The following excerpt from an academic article that is in fact enthusiastic about vitamin D provides an almost amusing caution about interpretation of the early results:

Although the cohort findings are likely to increase enthusiasm for the cancer prevention potential of vitamin D, inherent limitations of observational epidemiologic studies combined with a history of prior disappointments with other potential chemopreventive agents suggest caution in their interpretation. Two decades ago there was intense interest and hope that supplementation with beta-carotene as well as with elevated blood levels experienced lower risks of respiratory, gastrointestinal, and other cancers. The zeal was crushed, however, when randomized trials in the United States and Finland showed increased rather than decreased risks of lung cancer among adults receiving beta-carotene supplements. Vitamin E was similarly touted as an inhibitor of cancer, as well as of cardiovascular disease, but again the "gold standard" of randomized trials failed to confirm the preventive correlations noted in cohort and case-control studies. Epidemiologic studies also strongly indicated that hormone replacement therapy might not only relieve menopausal symptoms but also lower the risk of heart disease and breast and other cancers, but again, when clinical trials were conducted, no benefit with respect to these conditions accrued to women administered the therapy. In each of these examples, the agents may have demonstrated benefit with modification of the dose, formulation, or timing of the intervention or with longer follow-up, but the sobering lesson is that trends observed in nonexperimental settings, including cohort studies, are not always confirmed experimentally when tested in randomized clinical trials.




Ill-effects of the "obesity" campaign

The number of Australians with eating disorders has doubled in the past decade and specialists think obesity hysteria could be to blame. New statistics released today indicate almost five per cent - one in 20 people - suffer from either binge-eating disorder or other extreme fasting and purging behaviours. This was a leap from the two per cent recorded ten years earlier.

The survey of more than 3000 Australians captured a massive jump in the so-called "minor" eating disorders, but suggested rates of the most severe conditions, anorexia and bulimia, were stable. The results were collated from two South Australian studies from 1995 and 2005, but study leader Phillipa Hay, head of psychiatry at James Cook University, said they reflected a nationwide trend. "We're surprised and obviously concerned too," said Prof Hay, who will present the unpublished data at a national psychiatry conference on the Gold Coast today. "This is an alarming trend which shows these problems are being felt more widely than first thought."

The study showed the number of people with regular eating disordered behaviour - those who binged or displayed other extreme weight control problems at least weekly - had ballooned from 4.7 per cent to 11 per cent. And the people considered to have a full-blown eating disorder grew from two per cent to 4.6 per cent over the decade. These people had the behaviour accompanied by severe weight, shape, body image concerns and psychological disturbances.

Of particular concern, said Prof Hay, was growth in the so-called unspecified eating disorders, which include fasting, purging and the use of laxatives to control weight. "These conditions still affect people's lives significantly, meaning they do not function properly, miss work and cannot perform their usual roles," she said.

Women were five times more likely to have a disorder than men, but the study found a sharp rise in males with the problems, particularly bingeing. "It's a clear problem when it's spreading into groups that weren't typically affected by weight issues," Prof Hay said. A large proportion of sufferers were overweight or obese, but one in ten people in the normal weight range were "extremely concerned" about body shape.

Psychiatrists speculate the results reflect increased community and media hype about obesity, dieting and body shape. "People are getting heavier and there are a lot of messages and warnings out there are reflecting that," Prof Hay said. "But the obesity epidemic has to be managed very carefully because there is this whole other problem it could be creating." She said the answer lay in promoting healthy eating and exercise, and not extreme behaviour, to help people manage their weight positively.

Source




Magnetic pulses cure depression?

A new technique of firing magnetic pulses into the brains of severely depressed people has produced startling successes, researchers say. Melbourne scientists have tested a new therapy on depressed patients who do not respond to standard drug treatment and found half improved markedly. The technique is a variation of so-called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which magnetic pulses are fired rapidly into the "overactive" parts of a depressed brain.

This therapy has a 30 per cent success rate, but researchers at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital realised they could lift this to 50 per cent by prepping the brain with a series of weak, high frequency pulses. "Doing this in some way prepares the brain to respond better to the standard TMS therapy, which is quite remarkable," Professor Paul Fitzgerald told a national psychiatry conference on the Gold Coast. The researchers tested their combination technique on a group of 60 hard-to-treat patients, giving half of them 10 minutes of weak pulses before their standard 15-minute session on a daily basis for four weeks. An electrical current was passed through a coil above the skull, creating a magnetic pulse which fires into the brain, changing the activity of nerve cells.

"A lot of people in this trial achieved clinical remission, and this is what matters," Prof Fitzgerald said. "They were able to resume their normal lives, and often return to work." Magnetic stimulation therapy has been around for about a decade and is used widely in Canada, but it is still regarded as experimental in Australia. Prof Fitzgerald said the impressive results of combination therapy make TMS a much more viable form of treatment. "It has the potential for being an early intervention treatment for the most depressed people who don't show signs of improvement on drugs," 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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



3 May, 2007

Chemotherapy fog a real problem

On an Internet chat room popular with breast cancer survivors, one thread - called "Where's My Remote?" - turns the mental fog known as chemo brain into a stand-up comedy act. One woman reported finding five unopened gallons of milk in her refrigerator and having no memory of buying the first four. A second had to ask her husband which toothbrush belonged to her. At a family celebration, one woman filled the water glasses with turkey gravy. Another could not remember how to carry over numbers when balancing the checkbook.

Once, women complaining of a constellation of symptoms after undergoing chemotherapy - including short-term memory loss, an inability to concentrate, difficulty retrieving words, trouble with multitasking and an overarching sense that they had lost their mental edge - were often sent home with a patronizing "There, there". But attitudes are changing as a result of a flurry of research and new attention to the after-effects of life-saving treatment. There is now widespread acknowledgment that patients with cognitive symptoms are not imagining things, and a growing number of oncologists are rushing to offer remedies, including stimulants commonly used for attention-deficit disorder and acupuncture.

"Until recently, oncologists would discount it, trivialize it, make patients feel it was all in their heads," said Dr. Daniel Silverman, a cancer researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the cognitive side effects of chemotherapy. "Now there's enough literature, even if it's controversial, that not mentioning it as a possibility is either ignorant or an evasion of professional duty."

That shift matters to patients. "Chemo brain is part of the language now, and just to have it acknowledged makes a difference," said Anne Grant, 57, who owns a picture-framing business in New York City. Ms. Grant, who had high-dose chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant in 1995, said she could not concentrate well enough to read, garbled her sentences and struggled with simple decisions like which socks to wear.

Virtually all cancer survivors who have had toxic treatments like chemotherapy experience short-term memory loss and difficulty concentrating during and shortly afterward, experts say. But a vast majority improve. About 15 percent, or roughly 360,000 of the nation's 2.4 million female breast cancer survivors, the group that has dominated research on cognitive side effects, remain distracted years later, according to some experts. And nobody knows what distinguishes this 15 percent.

Most oncologists agree that the culprits include very high doses of chemotherapy, like those in anticipation of a bone marrow transplant; the combination of chemotherapy and supplementary hormonal treatments, like tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors that lower the amount of estrogen in women who have cancers fueled by female hormones; and early-onset cancer that catapults women in their 30s and 40s into menopause. Other clues come from studies too small to be considered definitive. One such study found a gene linked to Alzheimer's disease in cancer survivors with cognitive deficits. Another, using PET scans, found unusual activity in the part of the brain that controls short-term recall.

The central puzzle of chemo brain is that many of the symptoms can occur for reasons other than chemotherapy. Abrupt menopause, which often follows treatment, also leaves many women fuzzy-headed in a more extreme way than natural menopause, which unfolds slowly. Those cognitive issues are also features of depression and anxiety, which often accompany a cancer diagnosis. Similar effects are also caused by medications for nausea and pain.

Dr. Tim Ahles, one of the first American scientists to study cognitive side effects, acknowledges that studies have been too small and lacked adequate baseline data to isolate a cause. "So many factors affect cognitive function, and the kinds of cognitive problems associated with cancer treatment can be caused by many other things than chemotherapy," said Dr. Ahles, the director of neurocognitive research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The new interest in chemo brain is, in effect, a testimony to enormous strides in the field. Patients who once would have died now live long enough to have cognitive side effects, just as survivors of childhood leukemia did many years ago, forcing new treatment protocols to avoid learning disabilities.

"A large number of people are living long and normal lives," said Dr. Patricia Ganz, an oncologist at U.C.L.A. who is one of the nation's first specialists in the late side effects of treatment. "It's no longer enough to cure them. We have to acknowledge the potential consequences and address them early on."

As researchers look for a cause, cancer survivors are trying to figure out how to get through the day by sharing their experiences, and by tapping expertise increasingly being offered online by Web sites like www.breastcancer.org and www.cancercare.org. There are "ask the experts" teleconferences, both live and archived, and fact sheets to download and show to a skeptical doctor. Message boards suggest sharpening the mind with Japanese sudoku puzzles or compensatory techniques devised to help victims of brain injury. There are even sweatshirts for sale saying "I Have Chemo Brain. What's Your Excuse?"

Studies of cognitive effects have overwhelmingly been conducted among breast cancer patients because they represent, by far, the largest group of cancer survivors and because they tend to be sophisticated advocates, challenging doctors and volunteering for research

Source




Top-level alarm over Ritalin in Australia

THE Iemma Government will launch an unprecedented statewide investigation into attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), amid warnings that doctors are creating a Ritalin generation. Health Minister Reba Meagher has also called for a national inquiry into the issue, citing concerns among medical experts about the use of the controversial drug to treat ADHD. The move follows accusations by Judge Paul Conlon, revealed by The Daily Telegraph, that doctors had created a generation of Ritalin children now committing violent crimes and coming before the courts.

Last year there were more than 264,000 Ritalin prescriptions issued in Australia compared with 11,114 in 1992. Australia's diagnosis rate of ADHD is among the highest in the world and 32,000 NSW school children are now on medication for it. "Community concern is escalating around prescriptions and use of these types of drugs to treat conduct disorders of children," Ms Meagher said. In a speech to be delivered to the ALP Business Dialogue Health Policy Forum this morning, Ms Meagher will reveal that talks with health professionals had raised "significant debate" about the use of the drug. "But it was clear in my discussions with stakeholders that significant debate in the clinical community exists about treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder," she said. "I have therefore established a review committee to carefully consider current practice in NSW public health services."

Spearheaded by the Clinical Excellence Commission, the committee will:

* COLLATE evidence and practice in the treatment of ADHD;

* ADVISE on the current development of clinical guidelines for treatment of ADHD and on treatment with the prescription of dexamphetamine, methylphenidate and atomoxetine; and

* ENSURE current practice considers appropriate clinical guidelines.

The review committee will comprise some of the state's top clinicians, including Clinical Excellence Commission chief Professor Clifford Hughes. It has been instructed to report to the minister within three months. Ms Meagher also backed federal Labor health spokeswoman Nicola Roxon's call for a national inquiry. "The availability and prescription of these drugs is largely a matter for the commonwealth so we believe this is best looked at at a national level," she 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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



2 May, 2007

Reversing Alzheimer's?

The memories destroyed by Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia could be restored by therapy, research has suggested. Experiments on mice have indicated that long-term memories that appeared to have been lost to degenerative brain diseases can be recovered when the animals are given a promising form of treatment. The research raises the prospect that treatments for Alzheimer's and similar conditions might eventually not only stop patients' mental decline, but reverse damage that has already taken place. It had generally been thought that memory loss caused by dementia was permanent, and that the best that could be hoped for would be drugs and therapies that prevented any further deterioration.

The study, led by Li-Huei Tsai of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows that these memories may not have been erased completely. Instead, damage to the brain may be interfering with Alzheimer's patients' ability to retrieve and use them. "The memories are still there, but they are rendered inaccessible by neural degeneration," Dr Tsai said. "This recovery of long-term memory was really the most remarkable finding. It suggests that memories are not really erased in such disorders as Alzheimer's, but that they are rendered inaccessible and can be recovered."

The research, using mice genetically engineered to suffer a neurodegenerative disease similar to Alzheimer's, also raises hope that two approaches to treatment might be effective. Dr Tsai's team found that enriching the environment of the mice, with treadmills for exercise and colourful toys of many different textures, significantly improved learning and memory, and appeared to build new connections between nerve cells in the brain. This accords with evidence from humans that exercise and mental stimulation, such as learning languages or doing crosswords or Su Doku puzzles, appear to have a protective effect.

Similar results were also achieved by giving the mice a drug known as an HDAC inhibitor, which promotes nerve cell growth. Much more work is needed before this can be tested in people, but scientists said that it was a promising lead. The researchers determined that both treatments can revive lost memories by comparing mice before and after a gene was activated to cause neurological decline. The mice were first conditioned to fear entering a chamber, by giving them a mild electric shock whenever they did so. The animals also learned to find a submerged platform in murky water.

When a gene called p25 was activated, the mice developed symptoms like those of Alzheimer's disease, and forgot both that they were afraid of the electric-shock chamber and the ability to find the platform. After receiving the environmental enrichment or the drug therapy, the mice recovered these lost memories.

Source




Booze is good for your brain too

We have long known that alcohol is good for your heart but it can also prevent dementia! Is alcohol the long awaited cure for Alzheimer's? Not really but it seems to be at least as good as anything else. There is a literature review on the topic below. A J-shaped relationship means that you need to get the dose right to get a good result. Moderation is the key! In addition to the review below, see here for one of the key research papers in the field

Introduction

There is a clear J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease which has been extended to a reduced risk of certain cancers (Boffetta and Garfinkel 1990, Marmot and Brunner 1991, Thun et al. 1997). Over the last five years, evidence has accumulated which suggests that this J-shaped relationship could also be extended to a reduced risk of cognitive dysfunction. Cognitive function is defined as the intellectual or mental processes by which knowledge is acquired, including perception, reasoning, acts of creativity, problem-solving and possible intuition.

Cognitive dysfunction or impairment is associated with increased disability and an increased need for institutionalised care, especially in an ageing population. While cardiovascular disease accounted for 40% of all Australian deaths in 2000 and cancer accounted for 25-30%, 6% of the Australian population aged 65 years and over were diagnosed with dementia. Dementia is a form of cognitive dysfunction whereby an individual loses the ability to think, remember and reason due to physical changes in the brain. Given the anticipated ageing of the Australian population over the next 50 years, for example, the median age of Australia's population is projected to increase from 35.4 years in 2000 to 46.5 years in 2050 (ABS 2003), research on risk factors for these diseases is a national priority.

Relationship between alcohol and cognitive function

Prior to a study by Zuccala et al. (2001), there was conflicting evidence on the relationship between alcohol consumption and cognitive function (Cervilla et al., 2000; Dent et al., 1997; Dufouil et al., 1997; Elias et al., 1999; Harwood et al., 1999; Hendrie et al., 1996; Leibovici et al., 1999; Teri et al., 1990). Zuccala et al. (2001) analyzed the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive impairment in 15,807 hospitalized older patients who were enrolled in an Italian multicentre pharmacoepidemiology survey. The probability of cognitive impairment was reduced among male patients who reported an average daily alcohol consumption of 1 L or less of wine, as compared with abstainers, but the probability increased among heavier drinkers. Among women, only the lightest-drinking category (<0.5 L) showed a decreased probability of cognitive dysfunction when compared with abstainers, whereas heavier drinking was associated with an increased probability of cognitive impairment. The prevalence of alcohol abuse was similar among participants with cognitive impairment (0.9%) and those with normal cognitive functioning (1%). The results of this study indicated that moderate alcohol consumption, that is, <40 g per day for women and <80 g for men, is associated with reduced probability of cognitive impairment as compared with abstinence, after adjusting for potential confounders. This nonlinear association persisted when cerebrovascular and Alzheimer's disease were considered separately. Such a nonlinear association might explain the conflicting results of previous studies regarding the relationship between alcohol consumption and cognitive functioning.

The observed gender difference in amount of alcohol consumption necessary for improved cognitive function, confirms that observed by Elias et al. in 1999 who showed that `superior' cognitive performance was found with in the range of four to eight drinks per day for men but only two to four drinks per day for women, compared to abstainers.

Subsequent studies have also independently assessed the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive function and have affirmed the observations of Zuccala et al. (2001) but have also provided more detailed data (Ganguli, et al. 2005, Stampfer et al. 2005, McDougall et al. 2006, Reid et al. 2006, Wright et al. 2006). For example, Reid et al. (2006) in a study of 760 US men aged 65 years or older showed that current light to moderate alcohol consumption considered as up to seven drinks per week, compared to abstinence, had better cognitive function. In particular, processing speed, which is the ability to perform tasks requiring rapid visual scanning and mental processing of information, was better even after adjusting for potential confounders such as education and occupation. In addition, the study assessed the effects of cumulative lifetime alcohol consumption on cognitive function and showed that the number of years of light to moderate alcohol consumption was strongly associated with better cognitive function. Results from a small survey study by McDougall et al. (2006) also suggested that men aged 65 years or older who drank moderately had significantly less depression, higher self-reported general health and higher cognitive function, flexibility and verbal memory.

Several studies had shown that the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive function is stronger for women than for men, which may simply reflect a gender difference in cognitive function or perhaps a misclassification of moderate alcohol consumers. Such a gender difference was not, however, observed by in a longitudinal study of 1624 Japanese American men and women aged over 65 years (Bond et al. 2005). Other studies which assessed women specifically, such as the US Nurses' Health Study, suggested that for women aged 71 to 80 years, up to 15g alcohol per day did not impair cognitive function and actually improved it compared to abstinence (Stampfer et al. 2005); the women also had a decreased risk of cognitive impairment of approximately 20%. No significant differences were observed in cognitive performance or risk between beer and wine consumers. Furthermore, a study of women aged 65-80 years, showed that women consuming any alcohol performed better on tests of verbal knowledge, fluency and memory, and figural memory, attention and working memory and motor speed compared to abstainers (P<0.05) (Espeland et al. 2006). After covariate adjustment, mean scores were higher among women reporting ?1 drink/day by 5.7% for verbal knowledge (p<0.001) and by 5.7% for phonemic fluency (p=0.004), compared to abstainers.

Potential mechanisms of action

The beneficial effects of alcohol on the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, have been partly attributed to changes in lipid and haemostatic or blood flow factors (Rimm et al., 1999). These changes include alcohol-induced increases in the concentration of high density lipoprotein-cholesterol and the thrombolyic proteins tissue type plasminogen activator activity and tissue type plasminogen activator antigen, and alcohol-induced reductions in fibrinogen, and clotting cofactors factor VII and von Willebrand factor. These changes are also associated with atherosclerosis which is the accumulation of atheromatous plaques containing cholesterol and lipids on the innermost layer of the walls of large and medium-sized arteries. As atherosclerosis has been associated with both Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia, it had been suggested that any beneficial effect of alcohol on atherosclerosis could be expected to benefit these major subtypes of dementia by preserving brain vasculature, consequently resulting in better cognitive function. Wright et al. (2006), however, showed that the appearance of plaque on the carotid artery which carries blood to the brain was not associated with alcohol consumption and alcohol-associated improvements in cognitive function. This suggests then that alcohol may impact cognition through a separate vascular or degenerative pathway. Among older persons without cerebrovascular disease, those who moderately consume alcohol have been shown to have fewer white-matter abnormalities and infarcts on magnetic resonance imaging than abstainers (Mukamal et al. 2001), where pronounced reductions in the risk of both vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease have been shown among persons consuming one to six standard drinks per week (Mukamal et al. 2003).

Indeed, there is also evidence which suggests that a light to moderate amount of alcohol may stimulate the release of acetylcholine in the hippocampus leading to improved cognitive function such that a light amount of alcohol in normal subjects appears to improve memory for events experienced before consumption where the impairment of memory performance by chronic and heavy alcohol consumption parallels the reduction of acetylcholine neurotransmission (Fadda and Rossetti 1998).

Conclusions

The protective effect of light to moderate alcohol consumption against cognitive dysfunction, including dementia (Simons et al. 2006), has been consistently observed over the past five years. Thus, while excessive alcohol consumption should be avoided, it would appear safe and reasonable to recommend the continuation of light to moderate alcohol consumption in those already imbibing.

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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



1 May, 2007

Arginmax: Herbal Viagra for women?

I don't usually look at "alternative" medical claims. There is so much nonsense in academic medical research that I simply cannot get interested in claims that are even less well-researched. There is however a huge industry centred around supplying people with arginmax (Google it!). A typical report is below. The claims are unusual for the "herbal" industry in that they DO have the backing of double blind trials reported in academic journals. All the research however seems to come from one Japanese guy (and his collaborators) located at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu -- Dr Ito. Salon says that one of the early studies "was coordinated by Mary Lake Polan, chairwoman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford" but Ito was still given as the first author on the article concerned. Expertise in obstetrics and gynecology is in any case not a strong indicator for expertise in drug research.

I cannot find any independent researchers who have picked up on it at all -- which is very strange for such a huge industry as the impotence industry. One has to conclude that most scientifically-trained people who have looked at it have smelt a rat. The U.S. government has just announced a trial, however, so we may get something definite on it eventually. Independent replication is the acid test of any new scientific finding so the lack of it does leave a large question mark. Medical fraud is not at all unknown, sadly

Men have their Viagra and finally, a trial conducted at Stanford University is giving some women back their libido. And the good news is, it's not a drug, it's a nutritional supplement - a vitamin.

The university trial was based upon a herbal preparation called ArginMax. The participants were women who were not totally satisfied with their sex lives, and were given either placebo - which doesn't contain the drug - or the ArginMax compound.

The results of the four-week trial were exceptional. Seventy percent of the women taking ArginMax reported increased sexual desire, frequency and satisfaction. While only 35 percent of the women taking the placebo had a positive response.

ArginMax contains an amino acid called Larginine. It boosts the levels of nitric oxide in the body, which increase blood flow to the genital area. The belief is if the vaginal area is stimulated, the brain is sure to follow.

While early results have established that ArginMax is great news for women, believe it or not - as is often the case - it's even better news for men. Seventy-six percent reported a better sex life after taking ArginMax compared with 21 percent on the placebo.

Source




New pill may offer the obese an easy route to health

The next iatrogenic disaster coming up?

SCIENTISTS have created an exercise pill that tricks cells into thinking they are undergoing serious exertion and so helps the body burn extra fat. The drug hints at radical new potential treatments for obesity whereby fat people would be able to use drugs to slim down rather than dieting or exercising. The drug, a synthetic form of fat, has only been tested on animals. It appears to work by flicking a master switch within cells that regulates the laying down or burning of fat.

Ronald Evans, the researcher who created the drug, told the Experimental Biology conference in Washington DC over the weekend that such drugs could lead to new treatments for human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndromeX, this consists of obesity and its consequences, such as high blood pressure, elevated levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, diabetes and resistance to insulin.

Dr Evans, of the Salk Institute, in San Diego, California, found the drug activated the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise, increasing the amount of calories burnt with no apparent effort. This made the mice resistant to weight gain even on a high-fat diet. He used genetic engineering to create a strain of mice that had an innate resistance to weight gain and had twice the physical endurance of normal mice. Their ability to run an hour longer than a normal mouse led to them being dubbed the "marathon mice".

Such discoveries did not lead to potential new treatments because the genetic engineering that created the mice had to be carried out before birth and would be unacceptable for humans. "That is why the potential of chemical metabolic engineering - possibly a one-a-day pill as opposed to permanent genetic metabolic engineering - is so exciting," Dr Evans said. "In today's society too few people get an ideal amount of exercise." Such a drug could, he suggests, reduce fatty tissue, lower amounts of fat circulating in the blood, cut blood glucose levels and reduce resistance to insulin, limiting the risks of heart disease and diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity, and experts believe up to half of all cases could be prevented through changes to diet and exercise.

There are already a range of anti-fat drugs on the market, but they are criticised by nutrition researchers, who point out that people who take such drugs may lose weight at first but then pile it back on soon after. "These drugs ... always fail in the real world," said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and author of the diet book What to Eat. "If people want to get thin they have to control the calories they consume and exercise more."

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].

Trans fats:

For one summary of the weak science behind the "trans-fat" hysteria, see here. Trans fats have only a temporary effect on blood chemistry and the evidence of lasting harm from them is dubious. By taking extreme groups in trans fats intake, some weak association with coronary heart disease has at times been shown in some sub-populations but extreme group studies are inherently at risk of confounding with other factors and are intrinsically of little interest to the average person.

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant -- thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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