One flu over the cuckoo's nest

Flu fearmongers must be quite depressed these days. Seasonal flu is late. Bird flu - despite all the headlines - hasn't gained much traction among humans. And we haven't had pandemic flu in 36 years. The good news is so good (for the rest of us, that is) that the flu lobby seems to be resorting to manufacturing fantasy flu statistics.

A new study published this week in the medical journal The Lancet (Dec. 23/30) estimates that a global pandemic flu could result in 62 million deaths worldwide, mostly in poor nations. The researchers naturally conclude that "prudence" requires "focusing on practical and affordable strategies for low-income countries where the pandemic will have the biggest effect." But the study is yet another example of how out-of-touch with the real world some public health researchers can be.

First, the researchers' estimate of 62 million deaths has far more shock-value than credibility. It's guesswork derived from other (cherry-picked) guesswork. The 62 million-death sound-bite is the product of statistical modeling that uses worst-case death rate estimates from the 1918-1920 pandemic influenza - an epidemic that medical historians believe killed somewhere between 20 million to 100 million people. In addition to the obvious uncertainty surrounding the actual death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic, the researchers ignored several key (not to mention glaring) differences between 1918 and 2006.

First, while there's no sure-fire cure or preventative measure for the flu, modern medical care and public health practices have dramatically improved since 1918. So any flu epidemic is likely to be far less severe - a point we'll come back to in a moment. Next, a great proportion of the deaths in 1918 was probably due to secondary bacterial infections that followed the initial viral infections. Today, antibiotics would be used to treat bacterial infections. And let's not forget that during 1918-1920, much of the world was still recovering from the strains of World War I. Poverty, hunger, unsanitary living conditions and stress likely made much of the global population ripe for a killer flu pandemic. None of these considerations were factored into the researchers' estimate of 62 million deaths.

But perhaps the researchers' choice that most reveals their apparent desire to come up with a scary - rather than a realistic - death toll from pandemic flu is their decision to use the 1918 pandemic flu data in the first place. There were, after all, two other more recent and, in all likelihood, more relevant pandemic flu outbreaks in the 20th century. There was the 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic that killed somewhere between 1 million to 4 million people. The 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu killed an estimated 750,000 people.

Now if one wanted to estimate a death toll from a hypothetical pandemic flu in today's world, it seems as though data from the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics would be much better starting points than the far more uncertain data from a chaotic period almost 90 years ago. That presumes, of course, that one is interested in more realistic (albeit smaller) estimates that better reflect modern conditions as opposed to overblown numbers aimed at producing scary headlines.

What this sort of study reveals is how public health researchers can put more stock in frightening the public than informing it. It's as though they assume that we're too stupid to work with facts and must be terrified into action.

And then, what is the action that the researchers desire? In this case, they want more money allocated to pandemic flu preparedness. While this may sound reasonable at face value, let's consider several key realities. First, pandemic flu is quite rare and we ought to be cautious not to over-allocate scarce public resources to events that seldom happen and that seem to be getting less severe when they do occur. Next, millions of people in the developing world die every year from preventable diseases, such as mosquito-borne malaria and diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe food and water. Why not spend available resources on saving people from those deadly diseases that are taking lives right now rather than on over-preparation for a hypothetical epidemic that is highly uncertain. Moreover, by tackling these other ongoing diseases, populations will be made less vulnerable to pandemic flu should it occur.

Finally, pandemic flu frenzy is also a problem in the U.S. The federal government has already spent $600 million in local and state government preparedness planning for a pandemic flu that may or may not happen any time soon, according to a report this week in the Chicago Tribune. That "preparedness" includes stockpiling vaccines - a stockpile that could very well prove entirely useless since no one can be certain that the vaccines will be effective against a specific strain of flu virus from which pandemic flu might actually develop. Useless preparation may be worse than no preparation because it means that precious public health resources, efforts and time have been wasted.

If we can't expect truthfulness and clear-thinking from public health researchers and officials in a time of relative calm, how much confidence can we have in them should a public health emergency develop?

Source





Super vaccine for flu

SCIENTISTS are on the verge of producing a revolutionary flu vaccine that protects against all major strains of the disease. Described as the "holy grail" of flu protection, it would fight off all 24 types of influenza A, including the deadly bird flu and nasty winter outbreaks. Two injections could give long-lasting immunity, unlike current vaccines that must be administered every year.

After years of research, UK and Belgian researchers say the breakthrough vaccine is now one step closer to public release. Scientists from British biotech firm Acambis and Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology in Belgium will test the super vaccine on humans for the first time in the next few months.

Australian influenza experts welcomed news of the long-awaited super vaccine. CSIRO virologist Jenny McKimm-Breschkin said the one-size-fits-all vaccine could come in handy while the public waits for researchers to produce specific vaccines against each individual flu strain. "Essentially what it could do is provide a stop-gap vaccine until clearly matched vaccines are invented," Dr McKimm-Breschkin said. "It all depends on the results of the clinical trial." ...

Researchers around the world, including Australian scientists at Melbourne-based biotech company CSL, have been working on a universal flu vaccine for years. But constant mutations of the virus have made it impossible to create a single effective vaccine. Scientists must reformulate the vaccine every year to keep up with the changes in the virus. The new version would be grown in huge vats of bacterial mixture, with just one litre of liquid providing 10,000 doses of vaccine.

Flu vaccines have focused on two proteins on the surface of the virus, but these proteins continue to mutate. The advantage of the super vaccine is that it focuses on a protein called M2, which is found in the cell membrane of the virus. The M2 protein is found in all types of influenza A and it has barely changed over the past 100 years. Using the M2 protein, the vaccine triggers antibodies that attack the virus as it emerges from the cell. The vaccine does not stop people being infected with the flu, but aims to prevent it from spreading, and to reduce the severity of symptoms.

Although it is too early to say what the effect of the universal jab would be in humans, Acambis director of viral immunology Dr Ashley Birkett said an initial course of two or three shots could provide long-lasting immunity, topped up with booster shots every five to 10 years. "It wouldn't be that one shot protects for life but you would need fewer doses over your lifetime," he said.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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

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Bug counters to infest kitchens

British food frenzy

What do you look for in a restaurant to celebrate the new year? Good food, wine and atmosphere? No, the authorities are sure that what diners really want to know is how many bacteria are in the kitchen, and how much saturated fat is on the menu. Yummy.

The Times reported this week that the Food Standards Agency is to give every restaurant a cleanliness rating, with orders to post their “scores on the doors”. Eateries will then be graded on the “nutritional value” of their food. Perhaps we should also be told whether they kill vermin humanely, what their policy is on workplace bullying by chefs, and the immigration status of their washers-up.

Anybody would think we were in the middle of a food poisoning epidemic. In fact, Britain’s eateries are not only better but also cleaner and more inspected than ever before, and have mostly stopped putting strychnine or lead in food, like their Victorian forebears did.

It may make the grease police and droppings inspectors of the FSA choke on their low-fat diet, but most of us do not eat out in search of hygiene or “nutritional values”. If we did, we would never eat burgers or foie gras. If we wanted to dine in a clinical environment, we could eat straight from the fridge wearing latex gloves.

Even in these “transparent” times there are some things better done behind closed doors. As Fergus Henderson, chef at the immaculate St John restaurant in Smithfield, says “a scoring system on the doors suggests there is something tainted about eating out”, and risks bringing “magic” restaurants down to earth by “showing their dirty laundry on the door when it’s not dirty”.

It turns out that half of Britain’s remaining cases of food poisoning are not in restaurants at all, but in hospitals, schools and care homes where the food is often unsavoury in every sense. If the authorities want something for their prodnoses and peckstaffs to do, they might start by putting their own kitchens in order.

Source






Potential cure for alcoholics is hailed

Australian scientists say they have found a way of eliminating alcoholic cravings using a drug that blocks the euphoric "high" associated with getting drunk. The research focused on cells in the hypothalamus region of the brain that produce orexin, a chemical linked to drink or drug-induced euphoria. Scientists at Melbourne's Howard Florey Institute made a compound that blocked orexin's effects, and gave it to rats that had already been turned into alcoholics.

The head of the team, Dr Andrew Lawrence, said the results were remarkable. "In one experiment, rats that had alcohol freely available stopped drinking it after receiving the orexin blocker," he said. Dr Lawrence said alcoholics could also be prevented from relapsing. Rats that had gone through a detox programme and were then given the blocking drug did not resume their addiction when "reintroduced to an environment which they had been conditioned to associate with alcohol use". He said: "Orexin reinforces the euphoria felt when drinking alcohol so, if a drug can be developed to block the orexin system in humans, we should be able to stop an alcoholic's craving for alcohol."

The reseach could also be used to treat eating disorders, he said, since it appeared that alcoholic addiction and eating disorders set off common triggers in the brain. The scientists are now conducting further experiments to find out the precise circumstances that activate the orexin system, which will help them to develop a drug.

Source





ALCOHOL ABUSE: UNDERSTANDING, NOT BLAME, NEEDED



On Sunday night, 2006 will be farewelled with bells, whistles and more than a few drinks. It's what we do. The inclusion of a chosen tipple or two in our festive and year's end celebrations is the norm; to not down a few yourself or offer a drink to a guest on New Year's Eve is still considered unusual, even in this era of health concerns.

Alcohol has always been a part of our culture. We use it to celebrate achievements, mark milestones and when we are enjoying the company of friends. Our high-quality alcoholic products [wine, beer and rum] are world renowned. Alcohol adds to our economy and culture.

Why then are we so shocked when teenagers drink? For generations, sneaking and sipping has been the way of youth. For generations it was snickered about and older people shared a wink and a nod when a young one nicked a mouthful and got caught. But the red flag had been raised on teen drinking, as well it should.

Australian Secondary Students Alcohol and Drug Survey 2005 data released this month showed that while tobacco and cannabis usage were down on similar surveys on 2002 and 1999, anti-drinking ad campaigns had done nought. Teens' drinking behaviour in Australia has remained relatively unchanged since the 1990s. Almost all 16- and 17-year-olds have tried alcohol, with more than half of those surveyed describing themselves as current drinkers and revealing they had consumed alcohol in the week before the survey. Commonwealth Government statistics show one in 10 teens drink at harmful levels in Australia. About seven in 10 boys and girls aged 14 to 17 drink alcohol and a third engage in high-risk behaviour at least once a month after binge drinking. Oh, yes. Teenagers are certainly drinking.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, underage drinking accounts for 20 per cent of all alcohol consumption in the US. It's hard to imagine the consumption would be very different here in the land of beer and booze-ups.

How to address this issue is complex and thorny, but what is startling in recent times is the propensity to see it as linear: blame the parents and blame the teens. Alcohol consumption by 17-year-olds during the Schoolies celebrations this year was blamed squarely on parents for providing their children with booze. Forget about context, or that most parents realised their teens would obtain alcohol and wanted to have a say in what was consumed; forget that most parents agonise over the drinking dilemma; or that by-and-large this generation of mums and dads have swung away from the autocratic approach of their parents and try to listen and be fair: Critics are quick to judge the parents of teens as bad, bad, bad.

It is clear drinking excessively is unhealthy and dangerous. The National Health and Medical Research Council says male teenagers should have no more than six standard alcoholic drinks on any one occasion and teenage girls should have no more than four. Go beyond these limits and the chances of being involved in drink driving, unwanted sexual advances and physical and verbal abuse increase. Their bodies suffer, too.

The solution to teenagers binge drinking or drinking alcohol at an age that is dangerous to their development and safety will not be found in blaming parents, or the teens themselves. The solution can only lie in making the whole of society take an interest. It is our social behaviour that feeds the problem, our embracing of getting "sloshed", our rules governing the promotion and advertising of alcohol, our inclusion of alcohol in everything special and important. We all must bear the consequences of our choices and we must share the load of responsibility for this problem.

Most of those who bellow loudest about the culture of underage drinking must not have adolescents themselves, as this is a group like none that has gone before. They are savvy, aware, bold and stressed: the way in which alcohol is pitched and presented could be just for them. The fact is that most teens, even if they do drink, are heeding the warnings. Most consume moderately and deliberately. Still, urban myths grow and one-off tales of alcohol abuse and teenage misbehaviour are expanded on to create the impression of a damned and dark generation.

In June, the Government launched its National Alcohol Strategy for the next three years. It said it was developed as a response to the prevalent high-risk alcohol consumption in the nation. Each year, about 3000 people die as a result of binge drinking and about 65,000 people are admitted to hospital. The annual cost to the Australian community of alcohol-related social problems was estimated to be $7.6 billion. All this and more could be waiting for some of our teens unless we take collective responsibility and get real about expectations. We need to get serious about offering real help instead just extending real judgment and real criticism.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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DOES THE USA HAVE A LOW LIFE-EXPECTANCY

The article excerpted below says that it does. I will leave it to demographers to comment more fully on it as I could not with a quick search find the figures upon which it is supposedly based. The article says that it is based on this report and that report says in turn that it is based on this report but I cannot find national life expectancy tables in either. This table, however, may be the one referred to.

There are well-known flaws in studies of this kind, however. For instance, pre-term babies are often delivered live in the USA and some die subsequently. Those deaths feed into the figures and so lower overall life-expectancy. In many other countries, however, such babies would die very soon after birth and would not be recorded as live births -- thus removing the effect of preterm births on their figures. See here.

Other factors to bear in mind are that some countries (such as Communist Cuba) probably "massage" their figures to make themselves look good and that the U.S. population is not homogeneous. Blacks die younger, for instance. So overall figures again tell us little. And American mothers often delay childbearing into their 30s, which unfortunately is associated with higher risk to the babies born (more mongolism, for instance, and mongols die young).

Additionally, trust in United Nations figures is laughably gullible. Anybody who thinks that the U.N. does not have political agendas (almost invariably of a Leftist and anti-American kind) does not know much.

If you had a choice between two countries, one with a few thousand dollars more annual income and the other with a longer life expectancy, which would you go for? The most common way for countries to be ranked is by gross domestic product per person - a measure of economic output. On this gauge, the mighty US tops the list, apart from a few super-rich aberrations such as the tiny state of Luxembourg.

But the relative performance of countries according to life expectancy tells another story. Being born in the richest country doesn't mean you can expect to have the longest life. There are nine countries with a life expectancy at birth of more than 80, but the world's richest and most powerful nation, the US, is not one of them. Life expectancy there is 77.5 years, more than 4.5 years shorter than Japan, which tops the longevity list on 82.2 years (followed by Hong Kong, Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Italy and Israel).

In 1950 America ranked near the top 10 for life expectancy but figures published last month in the UN's Human Development Report 2006 show it has fallen to 30th. One outcome of this relative decline is that citizens in some countries much poorer than the US - such as Chile, Costa Rica and even Cuba - have longer life expectancy than the average American. On average, Chileans can expect to live longer than the average American, even though GDP per person is about a quarter of America's. A Cuban male has a better chance of surviving until 65 than an American male, even though GDP per capita in the US is about eight times Cuba's. The figures suggest Americans have, on average, traded longevity for higher incomes over the past 50 years.

Many factors contribute to a nation's life expectancy, including education, environmental conditions, working conditions and access to new medical treatments and technologies. Our lifestyles and social structures also affect our health. Research by an expatriate Australian professor, Michael Marmot, from University College, London, has shown greater control over life circumstances, especially at work, reduces chronic stress and has positive health effects.

What makes America's place in global longevity rankings all the more surprising is how much of its national resources are devoted to health. The US allocates about 15 per cent of GDP to health expenditure, far more than any other advanced country. By comparison, Australia spends about 9.5 per cent and Britain 8 per cent. One of the reasons for this is the very high cost of American health services. The ratio of doctors' incomes to the average employee is 5.5 in the US compared with 2.2 in Australia and 1.4 in in Britain. US health expenditure averages $US5711 ($7268) a person a year compared with Cuba's $US623 (adjusted for purchasing power) but Americans still have a lower life expectancy at birth. (Cuba has the world's highest proportion of doctors, with 449 per 100,000 people, but they put up with much lower wages than their US counterparts.)

More here





Indigestion remedies linked to fractures?

Taking potent drugs to combat indigestion can increase the risk of breaking hip and other bones, researchers say. Drugs that restrict the production of acid in the stomach are among the most effective and best-selling treatments in the world, with sales worth more than £7 billion a year. But a study of nearly 150,000 British patients by American researchers found that they increased the risk of hip fracture by as much as 44 per cent.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that taking proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) may decrease cal-cium absorption or bone dens- ity in certain patients, leading to increased risk of fractures.

Many of the one in twenty people who visit doctors in Britain each year complaining of heartburn are prescribed acid-suppressive drugs — or PPIs — to alleviate their problems. Prescriptions for PPIs such as omeprazole — sold under the brand names Losec, Prilosec and Zegerid — rose by more than 5,000 per cent during the 1990s.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, analysed data from the UK General Practice Research Database, which contains information on millions of British patients.

Limiting the study to people aged over 50, the researchers examined 13,556 hip fracture cases and 135,386 control patients. After screening for other factors that might lead to a fall or brittle bones, they found that more than one year of PPI therapy was associated with a 44 per cent increased risk of hip fracture.

They suggest that elderly patients taking high doses of PPIs for long periods should boost their calcium intake.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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

WHAT A RIDICULOUS "STUDY"!

It reproduces only a tiny part of the human experience of long-haul flight. And elderly humans DON'T die from jet-lag -- or we would all have heard of it years ago

A study that exposed elderly mice to the ravages of regular long-haul flights found most of them died. The University of Virginia study showed a majority of older mice died while being subjected to the equivalent of a Washington to Paris flight once a week for eight weeks, The Washington Post reported today. More intense forms of jet lag sped up the death rate in the elderly rodents, the study found.

Experts say the study is one of the first hard scientific looks into the health effects of jet lag. Younger mice seemed to rebound more quickly and were not immediately harmed by the jet lag. Simulated jet lag conditions were created by advancing and delaying the rodent's exposure to light. But researchers aren't sure what conclusions to draw from the results, the newspaper said.

Gene Block, the report's co-author, said older mice might be more susceptible to sudden light changes than younger mice. Or, he said, jet lag might be a health problem that builds up in younger subjects, causing future maladies. To further explore the issue, his researchers have launched another set of tests to determine whether jet lag causes long-term health consequences in younger and middle-age rodents, Mr Block said. Mr Block's study also hinted at what flyers have been saying for years - it's more difficult to adjust to time zone changes when flying east. The researchers found 53 per cent of elderly mice died when they were subjected to a simulated weekly flight from Washington to Paris over the eight-week study. The death rate dropped to 32 per cent of elderly mice on a simulated Paris to Washington route, according to the study, which was published last month in the journal Current Biology. Seventeen per cent of the mice in a control group died in the eight-week study.

Source




Benefits of brittle bone drug 'last five years'

Millions of people who suffer from osteoporosis may be able to stop taking their medication and still feel the benefits, a long-term study suggests. The effects of the drug alendronate may last up to five years after a patient stops taking it, significantly boosting its cost-effectiveness, researchers say. According to a study published today, most post-menopausal women who took alendronate for five years and then stopped had no increased risk for non-vertebral fractures during the next five years.

Alendronate is part of the class of drugs known as bisphosphonates, which stop further loss of bone mass. Treatment for osteoporosis often continues indefinitely, but few studies have examined the long-term effects of using bisphosphonates — at a cost of about 80p a day — or stopping treatment after a certain period. The Fracture Intervention Trial Long-term Extension (Flex) study examined alendronate’s effect on bone mineral density (BMD) and fracture risk in 1,099 post-menopausal women with low BMD.

Dennis Black, of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues found that, compared with continuing alendronate, switching to a placebo for five years appeared to result in slight declines in BMD at the hip (-2.4 per cent) and spine (-3.7 per cent), but average levels were the same or above those ten years earlier, before treatment.

After five years, there was no significant difference in the cumulative risk of non-spinal fractures between those continuing to take the drug and those who had stopped. However, among those who continued to take the drug, there was a 55 per cent lower risk of clinically recognised spinal fractures, the authors report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The BMD and bone marker changes suggest some residual effect from five years of alen- dronate treatment that is evident for at least five years after discontinuation,” the authors write. “We conclude that continuation of alendronate for ten years maintains bone mass and reduces bone remodelling [continuous turnover of bone mineral] compared with discontinuation after five years.

“The results confirm the safety of alendronate for up to ten years and suggest that, for many women, discontinuation of alendronate after five years for up to five more years does not significantly increase fracture risk, but women at high risk of clinical vertebral fractures, such as those with vertebral fracture or very low BMD, may benefit by continuing beyond five years.”

In an accompanying editorial, Cathleen Colon-Emeric, of Duke University Medical Centre, Durham, North Carolina, writes: “Women who have a good response to five years of bisphosphonate therapy and are not otherwise at increased risk of vertebral fracture can consider a ‘holiday’ of up to five years without therapy. This strategy would clearly improve the reported cost-effectiveness of bisphosphonates. Now . . . physicians may be able to begin telling women when they have had enough of a good thing.”

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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

THE ASBESTOS SCARE

I am repeating below an article that I ran some days ago on "Greenie Watch". I commented at the time that naturally-occurring asbestos has been around in the soil of large parts of Southern California ever since the area was settled in the 1780s -- so we should be seeing lots of asbestos-related disease in the area by now. But there has not been a single report of that! So we have in Southern California a most interesting natural experiment in showing how asbestos is not remotely the threat to health that has been proclaimed.

In response to that posting, I received a couple of emails from an anti-asbestos organization (significantly funded by trial lawyers, I would imagine) disputing what I had said. They implicitly admitted that SoCal did not have an unusually high incidence of asbestos-related disease but tried to explain that away. Their explanation, in my summary, is that there is both "good" and "bad" asbestos (I wonder why we don't usually hear THAT?) and that the bad asbestos has until recently obligingly confined itself to virgin territory undisturbed by man.

If you believe that, you would believe anything, it seems to me. For a start, virgin territory must be as rare in SoCal as are are other sorts of virginity. But I will leave it to unaffilated experts in California soil types to map those types against areas and dates of settlement.

The interest of the article below is to show that in at least some areas the naturally occurring asbestos is of a type that two arms of government consider dangerous and that quite minor human activity -- such as kids playing -- can kick up asbestos-containing dust which can then be breathed in. As much of SoCal is a desert climate made usable by irrigation only, there is a lot of dust there to be kicked up. So even if an area is not quite "virgin", almost any usage that has been made of it should have kicked up lots of asbestos. And all the farming in SoCal using those horrific PLOWS must be saturating the area in asbestos!

I am not of course disputing that heavy industrial and mining exposure to some types of asbestos can cause disease. Toxicologists however have a saying that "The toxicity is in the dose". In other words, scientific caution would dictate that we ask if sub-industrial levels (lower levels) of exposure to asbestos are also harmful. The California example would seem to show that such levels are NOT harmful and that the danger from asbestos has been vastly over-hyped

The U.S. Geological Survey on Tuesday confirmed a federal environmental agency's findings of a particularly dangerous kind of asbestos on playgrounds in El Dorado Hills. USGS experts in mineral identification reached the conclusion after closely examining the playgrounds' study samples of tiny particles that the mining industry asserted were not asbestos.

The investigation found that most of those particles did not conform to the traditional commercial definition of asbestos, as the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association had argued. The microscopic bits of minerals nonetheless were within scientists' widely accepted range of sizes, shapes and chemical compositions counted as "asbestos" for health studies, USGS scientists said. "We don't equate the commercial definition of asbestos with toxicity," said Gregory Meeker, a mineralogist with the USGS Denver office who led the investigation. "It has not been health based. It's been for the guy who wants to mine a deposit and make a profit at it."

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who conducted the October 2004 study of El Dorado Hills' Community Park and nearby schoolyards said the Geological Survey's findings affirmed its pioneering exposure studies of naturally occurring asbestos in El Dorado Hills and elsewhere in the country. "The survey's study refutes assertions made by the R.J. Lee report and supports our findings and conclusions," said Dan Meer, who supervised the playgrounds' sampling by the EPA's San Francisco regional office.

Spokesman for the industry lobby could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. But the consultant who conducted the review of the EPA sampling had maintained that the environmental agency did not follow proper standards for identifying asbestos particles in air samples. "It is too bad that they chose to ignore a very detailed analysis that we had provided to EPA and USGS," Rich Lee, president of R.J. Lee Group of Pittsburgh, said in July. The EPA study found that children and adults in El Dorado Hills can significantly raise their exposure to breathable asbestos particles simply from the dust kicked up riding a bicycle or playing basketball on outdoor courts.

The main public health concern related to such exposures is mesothelioma, an inoperable and almost always fatal cancer of the membranes lining the chest and other body cavities, asbestos health experts say. Short exposure -- months, not years -- can be enough to instigate the disease, though it typically takes 30 or more years to take hold.

The EPA strapped personal air monitors on agency technicians who mimicked children's activities at the park and on sports fields at Silva Valley Elementary, Jackson Elementary and Rolling Hills Middle schools.

About 1,000 of the El Dorado Hills' 31,000 residents packed the Community Park's gymnasium to learn more from federal scientists. Findings prompted the Community Services District to blacktop the New York Creek trail running through the park and increase irrigation on sports fields to cut dust. The schools also adopted dust controls. At the same, the superintendent of El Dorado County schools was widely circulating copies of the Stone, Sand & Gravel Association's critique discrediting the EPA study. Superintendent Vicki Barber stopped short of endorsing the industry view. But she said it reinforced doubts that she and other local officials harbored over the reliability of EPA asbestos testing. Barber declined to comment Tuesday, saying she had not yet read the full USGS report.

County Supervisor Helen Baumann, who represents El Dorado Hills, called the Geological Survey's study a "a fair analysis" and left her confident that the county is "doing everything we need to do to protect public health." The USGS, the scientific arm of the Interior Department, launched the $100,000 investigation at the request of the EPA, which wanted an independent examination of the industry critique. Last April, the USGS team collected dozens of samples of rock, soil and settled dust in the areas where the environmental agency had conducted its asbestos exposure assessment. USGS mineralogists also analyzed samples the EPA had collected using a number of sophisticated tests to determine the chemistry, mineral composition and form of the asbestos structures detected. The USGS investigators said asbestos health experts, not the mining industry or mineralogists, need to take the lead in redefining asbestos from a health perspective. "Ultimately, it is the health community that must determine what particle types are significant with respect to asbestos-related diseases," the report said

Source





How to live to a ripe old age without losing your marbles

A gene variant that is linked to long life also helps to preserve mental lucidity in old age, scientists have discovered. An Israeli study involving 158 people who lived to 95 or beyond has found that those who inherit a particular version of the gene CETP are twice as likely to have a sharp and alert brain when they are elderly. They are also five times less likely than people with a different version of CETP to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, according to the study by a team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University.

The insights into how ageing affects the brain could lead to ways of protecting cognitive function in old age. If drugs could be developed which mimic the protective function of the CETP VV variant they could transform the quality of life of the ageing population.

“Without good brain function, living to age 100 is not an attractive proposition,” said Nir Barzilai, director of the college’s Institute for Ageing Research. “We’ve shown that the same gene variant that helps people live to exceptional ages has the added benefit of helping them think clearly.

“It’s possible that CETP VV’s cognitive effect is to protect against Alzheimer’s disease. In studying these centenarians, we hope to learn why they’re able to resist diseases that affect the general population at a much younger age. This knowledge should greatly aid our efforts to prevent or delay the onset of age-related diseases.”

In the study, Dr Barzilai’s team tested people aged 95 or more to see which version of the CETP gene they had. Ashkenazi Jews, who are of Eastern European origin, are often used as the subjects for genetic research because their restrictive marriage practices mean that their genes vary less than other populations.

CETP is a gene that makes the cholesterol ester protein, which in turn influences the size of the particles in which both “good” (high-density lipoprotein) and “bad” (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol appear in the blood. Larger particles are thought to be beneficial because they are less likely to become wedged into the linings of the blood vessels, where they can clog the arteries causing coronary heart disease, stroke and some forms of dementia and cognitive decline. People who have the CETP VV variant have larger cholesterol particles in their blood, and previous research has shown that they are more likely to live longer than people with other versions of the gene.

About 8 per cent of people aged 70 have the CETP variant, but this rises to 25 per cent among centenarians. This is thought to play a key role in explaining why some people live to very old ages — in developed countries, about 1 in 10,000 people lives to 100.

The research, published in the journal Neurology, found that those with CETP VV were twice as likely as the others to have good brain function. A separate investigation of 124 Ashkenazi Jews aged between 75 and 85 found that CETP VV appeared to protect against dementia: those with the variant were five times less likely to suffer from it.

“It’s possible that this gene variant also protects against the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr Barzilai 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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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

Eat, drink and be merry

By Australian columnist Christopher Pearson

Health ministers, state and federal, are of one mind on the question of obesity. Lack of exercise and poor diet (known in the trade as the Big Two) are to blame. Recent articles in the International Journal of Obesity tell a different story.

Pathways, an obesity prevention program associated with the Johns Hopkins school of public health, ran a three-year study on Native American children. Improved diet and more exercise did not lead to any significant difference in body mass index between the youngsters who participated in the program and the control group. As well, there's a marked paucity of experimental evidence to support the proposition that lack of exercise and too much junk food cause obesity. Not for the first time, medical science has been artlessly assuming that which had to be proved.

The trailblazing IJO article (by S. W. Keith, D. T. Redden et al) concludes that: "Undue attention has been devoted to reduced physical activity and food marketing practices as postulated causes for increases in the prevalence of obesity, leading to neglect of other plausible mechanisms and well-intentioned, but potentially ill-founded, proposals for reducing obesity rates." They suggest no fewer than 10 other possible causes.

Given that being overweight is usually attributed to the sins of gluttony and sloth, these are tidings of comfort and joy just when we needed them, on the eve of a protracted period of feasting. If you've been feeling guilty in advance about all that succulent ham on the bone, roast pork with extra crackling and Christmas pudding with brandy butter, forget it and let your joy be unconfined. Thanks to the IJO, those of a fuller figure can confidently tell the Fat Police to mind their own business and eat to their heart's content. I've been doing so for years now, on the grounds that it's not what you eat or the exercise you miss out on for the festive season but year-round habits that make the difference. But this Christmas there'll be 10 more strings to my bow.

The first blameless cause of obesity is lack of sleep. The evidence from the First World is that since 1960 the average amount of sleep we get has declined by about 90 minutes The researchers say unhealthy sleeping habits potentially have as much effect on our body weight as junk food. There's solid evidence to demonstrate the connection between lack of sleep and BMI, not only in rats but in human beings. Levels of leptin, the hormone that tells the brain that the stomach is full, decrease in the sleep-deprived, and ghrelin, the hormone that prompts hunger, increases. If you want to lose weight, the trick might be not to engage in strenuous exercise but make sure you get a good eight hours of shut-eye.

Another blameless and well-established cause of obesity is man-made poisons that have found their way into the food chain. One indicator the research identifies is polybrominated diphenyl ether. Apparently it almost doubled every five years in Swedish mothers' breast milk between 1972 and 1998. DDT, which is known to increase the fatty tissue in laboratory rats, is also a contender, known to affect human hormone systems.

Natural hormonal changes are responsible for puppy fat in young children and for post-menopausal women's weight gains. There are also various medications that can drastically affect fluid retention and BMI. If you've put on weight recently, it may well have been because of new drugs for diabetes, blood pressure, depression, allergies or oral contraceptives. If, like a good many middle-aged people, you suffer from more than one of those afflictions, it's quite likely they compound the weight problem. Beta-blockers induce a mean weight gain of approximately 1.2kg. One study of oral contraception estimated a mean weight gain of 5kg after two years.

If taking medications is an example of blameless weight gain, then giving up smoking must surely count as conspicuous virtue. Yet there is no surer way to put on weight. Nicotine is a powerful appetite depressant. The best estimate on offer is that between 1978 and 1990, stopping smoking was responsible for about a quarter of the increase in the prevalence of overweight in men and about one-sixth of the increase in women.

Another factor contributing to obesity, in which none of us has any say, is the age at which our mothers bore us. A study of 10-year-old girls found that the odds of obesity increased by more than 14 per cent for every five-year increment in maternal age. Sociological factors such as the propensity to spoil late-arriving children may play a part but there's a biological correlation in sheep between maternal age and fat deposition related to uncoupling protein levels. The mean age of mothers at birth has been inexorably increasing globally since 1960. Another cause for increased obesity levels in the US lies in changes in the distribution of ethnicity and age. "Compared with young European Americans, middle-aged adults, African-Americans (when comparing women only) and Hispanic Americans have a markedly higher obesity prevalence." The increase of Hispanic American adults as a proportion of the population from 5 per cent in 1970 to about 13 per cent in 2000, and a 43 per cent increase in adults aged between 35 and 44 over the same period, argue for a small but statistically significant factor.

Air-conditioning is one explanation for the obesity epidemic, which is very much a late 20th-century First World phenomenon. Exposure to ambient temperatures either above or below the comfort zone "increases energy expenditure, which, all other things being equal, decreases energy stores that is, fat". If you've ever felt that extremes of hot or cold were enervating and left you hungry, that's why.

The most obvious of the blameless components to stoutness is heredity. The heritable component "is well supported by animal breeding studies and human twins, family and adoption studies with an estimated heritability of approximately 65 per cent". There is also a compounding factor over the generations. There's evidence that fatness is associated with greater reproductive fitness, which leads to natural selection of obesity-disposed genotypes.

Last but not least, Father Ephraem Chifley, sometime food reviewer at The Adelaide Review, has drawn my attention to another IJO article (S. D. Vangipuram, M. Yu et al). The human adenovirus Ad-36 causes obesity by reducing leptin expression and secretion and increasing glucose uptake by fat cells. As Chifley remarked: "The moral vanity of the authoritarian and lean is far from being the answer to obesity. It is gratifying for some to think that the fat problem can be solved by boot camps and by the stigmatisation of the overweight. The idea that you might be able to catch obesity as easily as you can the common cold should give us all pause for thought."

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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

New drugs 'could halve treatment'

A new generation of antibiotics could halve the length of time people need to take medication, scientists say. London researchers are developing what they hope will be the first of these - a compound to treat the hospital superbug MRSA in the nose. It tackles bacteria currently "left behind" because they are resistant to standard antibiotics. The anti-MRSA drug will be tested in humans next year and may be available in five years.

It is hoped similar compounds being examined by the team will also prove effective against Staphylococcus bacteria, which cause sore throats and tuberculosis. Developing a way of tackling antibiotic resistance is important because it could mean the antibiotics which already exist could be given a longer life. At the moment, years of work can be put into developing a conventional antibiotic but it may be possible to use it for around only 18 months before resistance develops.

HT61 is being developed as a cream to tackle persistent MRSA bacteria in the nose, the most important part of the body where it is carried. Many hospitals already test people before they come in for operations to see if they are carriers of MRSA. But, like all bacterial infections, it is made up of two forms of bacteria - the fast-dividing sort targeted by existing antibiotics - and non-multiplying, or persistent, bacteria. It is this latter form that lurks in the body and causes repeat infection, and can lead to resistance if it is exposed to medication. HT61, which has been tested in the lab and in "very successful" animal trials, is effective against persistent MRSA bacteria. It will be tested on around 60 people next year.

The team may later seek to tackle MRSA once it has got inside the body. Sir Anthony Coates, professor of medical microbiology at St George's Medical School, who is leading the research, said research so far showed it was "potent against MRSA". Clive Page, professor of pharmacology at King's College London, who is also working on the study, said the work opened up the possibility of a whole family of drugs which could treat persistent bacteria in a range of conditions. He said: "It may lead to us providing a combination of drugs - one to target the dividing bacteria and one to target the persistent form. "If you take something like penicillin, and put this with it, you might be able to get a treatment course which lasts one or two days, rather than the current five to seven."

Source




There’s more to childhood than counting calories

The obsession with expanding waistlines is narrowing horizons for children - and replacing adult guidance with health tips.

Last week, in Britain, Sainsbury’s announced that it was financing a £3million programme to help 5,000 obese children and their families. In addition, ‘nutrition nannies’ will be treading the aisles to advise families on healthy eating and staying active. This week, the Chicago mayor asked restaurants with over $10million in annual sales to post calorie counts on their menus, so that kids can moderate their intake. This comes a year after Democratic and Republican heavyweights joined forces to announce a 10-year programme combating childhood obesity.

Increasingly everything that children do is assessed with reference to body mass index (BMI). Indeed, the obesity issue seems to be one of the few areas where adults feel they can give some moral guidance. Adults today have a hard time telling kids what is right and wrong, how they should develop themselves, or why they should exercise self-control. Good now equals active, low fat, and smaller waistline; bad equals inactive, full-fat and bulging belly.

Childhood obesity has become the bottom line justification for children’s activity. A few weeks ago, the government proposed that kids should go on school trips to help combat childhood obesity (see Who killed the school trip?, by Josie Appleton). The same justification is given for why children should also play sport, play outside with their friends, and walk to school on their own. The need to combat obesity apparently also means that they should eat good food, and eat with their family at mealtimes.

Conversely, it is said that children shouldn’t play video games too much, sit at home not doing anything, or eat on their own whenever they like, because that will make them fat.

This signifies a profound narrowing of vision. Questions of self-development and self-restraint are posed in one-dimensional terms of weights and measures. Children’s activity is judged in terms of narrow goals and ends, the numbers of calories that it burns, rather than being seen as simply a normal party of everyday life, or as useful as an end in itself. So long as their arms and legs are moving, it seems, that is okay.

Increasingly children are encouraged to engage in ‘active lifestyle programmes’. The Department of Heath gave some children pedometers to measure the numbers of steps that they take in a day. Schoolchildren in Denver received similar pedometers back in 2002, and have been counting their steps ever since. Experts try to work out what is an acceptable pedometer reading: ‘How many steps per day do children need?’, asks one article, plumping for 12,000 steps for girls and 15,000 for boys.

In Minnesota, an obesity researcher designed a classroom that encouraged children to fidget. An article reports: ‘all of the desks have been replaced with adjustable podiums. Instead of chairs, children stand, kneel or sit on big exercise balls while they work and they are actively encouraged to move about the space.’ The children are adorned with sensors to measure their every movement. Another US company designed a toy known as ‘Fizzees’ (Physical Electronic Energisers), digital pets that children care for by moving around. Lots of jumping makes for a happy Fizzee.

Here, the authorities are trying to attach meaning to children’s everyday mundane activities; government targets are being pursued through activities such as children walking to school or running down to the park, or even just fidgeting. Video games are okay, apparently, so long as they involve activity. Groby Community College in Leicestershire introduced the game Dance Dance Revolution to encourage reluctant girls to exercise. The Nintendo game Wii received cheers from some quarters because it increased kids’ activity levels. Meanwhile, McDonald’s is considering replacing play areas in some of its US restaurants with kiddie gyms, to help them burn off the calories.

Even the question of obesity itself is seen in very flat moral terms. Gluttony was a sin because it meant gorging the self at the expense of higher spiritual goals, such as praying and doing good works. The problem was not so much the kind or quantity of food that sinners ingested, but their motivation for doing so. It was a question of character and inner life, not just of digestion.

Although obesity is now the number one sin with which to scare children, it’s seen in peculiarly pragmatic terms. There is an obsession with measurement. The UK Department of Health released cutting edge advice on how to measure child obesity levels, and called on headteachers to carry out these measurements in primary schools. The problem with obesity reduced to bald statistics: it causes X amount of damage to children’s health, and costs the NHS Y million pounds per year and the economy as a whole Z.

Researchers are busily working out all the various ‘factors’ that influence childhood obesity. One Bristol researcher found that it was influenced by lack of sleep, while another academic found that it was caused by watching more than eight hours of TV a week at the age of three. There are lots of complicated programmes to encourage families to create a new environment for children, with all the correct factors in place. The question is not just that Johnny is greedy and needs to eat less. Instead, there is expert advice on micromanaging families’ every lifestyle choice, from food to mealtimes to weekend routines.

MEND - the charity financed by Sainsbury’s - aims at ‘involving the entire family in healthy eating and an active lifestyle programme’, including everything from ‘changing family attitudes towards healthy eating and physical activity’, recommending ‘practical ways to remove unhealthy food triggers’, and ‘learning to be a healthy role model’. All this is apparently about ‘empowering them with the knowledge and skills to overcome obesity’. This interfering jargon almost makes you miss the Ten Commandments.

These policies are in danger of breeding a new nation of self-obsessed gym goers, who are forever counting their steps and calorie intake. Kids shouldn’t be thinking about their weight, even - or perhaps especially - if they are fat. They should be thinking about winning a game of football, improving their tennis serve, playing games with their friends. They should be having fun, chilling out.

There is more to childhood than not being fat. School trips broaden the mind, sport is fun, walking to school teaches you independence, eating good food with your family is more satisfying and sociable than eating alone. Adults need to work out how to give kids more substantial guidance - on what it means to be a good person, how to develop yourself and exercise self-control - beyond waving your arms and legs around to reduce your BMI.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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

Friendly microbes could make you fat

Outlaw them!

New science shows that there's a reason you can pack on a pound or two if you nibble a few holiday cookies while your skinny friend can snarf a whole plate and not gain an ounce. Part of the reason is friendly bacteria in your gut. Some of these bacteria are too friendly, acting like over-indulgent grandparents who show their love with food. "Forever people have wondered what it is that's different between people who have a proclivity toward obesity and those who don't," said Margaret McFall-Ngai, a professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon at Washington University has discovered that obese people may get more calories from food than lean people do because they have a different mix of those friendly bacteria. In two studies appearing today in the journal Nature, the researchers show that obesity is linked to the makeup of bacterial communities inside our intestines.

It's impossible to overstate how important this contribution is, McFall-Ngai said. The study of the relationship between people and their microbes is a breakthrough field of science that is opening up entirely new ways of looking at and treating obesity and other diseases. For example, genetic surveys of the bacteria from more than a dozen unrelated people show that more than 4,000 types of bacteria can live in the human intestine. Each person seems to have a signature mix of species that stays constant over time, Ruth E. Ley, a post-doctoral researcher in Gordon's lab found.

Those surveys are only a first estimate of the number and complexity of the organisms living within us, said Dr. Martin J. Blaser, chairman of medicine at New York University. "The diversity in the human colon is unfathomable," Blaser said. Our relationship with bacteria has evolved over a billion years, and it is no accident that we carry the organisms we do, he said. The new research reinforces one of Blaser's ideas, he said. He thinks that the obesity epidemic may be because of shifts in the types of microbes that live inside us. "I think they are changing as a result of modern life, especially antibiotics," Blaser said. [So it's not our fault after all!]

About 90 percent of the bacteria in the colon fall into two major groups, or divisions, called the Bacteroidetes and the Firmicutes. The Firmicutes extract more calories from food than the Bacteroidetes do. Gordon and his colleagues found that obese mice and people had 50 percent fewer of the inefficient Bacteroidetes group than their lean counterparts. The researchers tested the idea that bacteria are responsible for weight gain by taking bacteria from either lean or obese mice and transplanting them into mice raised to have no bacteria in their intestines. The so-called germ-free mice who got bacteria from obese mice gained twice as much fat as those who were recipients of bacteria from lean animals even though they ate the same amount of food.

Researcher Peter J. Turnbaugh had the unenviable job of examining the mice's droppings to find out how many calories each group had used from their food. He discovered that the mice with the obese mix of bacteria extracted about 2 percent more calories from their food than those who were colonized with the lean mixture. That may seem like a small difference, but the extra calories add up over time, Gordon said. Dieters typically consume 1,200 calories per day. If humans have a similar difference in calorie extraction, an obese person may get 24 more calories each day than a trim person who eats the same number of calories. Over the course of a year, 24 extra calories per day adds up to a pound of weight gained - the average for people over age 25, Gordon said. And most people in the United States consume far more calories than that.

The researchers also studied 12 obese people who went to a weight-loss clinic at Washington University. They measured the proportion of the two groups of bacteria in the people's guts as they followed either a low-fat or low-carb diet. As the people lost weight, the proportion of inefficient Bacteroidetes bacteria increased, suggesting that the amount of fat the host carries also influences which microbes prosper in the colon. "This could be a vicious cycle," Gordon said. As people get fatter, their intestinal bacteria change and pull more calories out of food causing further weight gain.

The "pioneering" and "cutting-edge" studies demonstrate that humans are ecosystems unto themselves, McFall-Ngai said. A delicate balance exists between humans and our microbes and helps determine how healthy we are, she said. "It's still early days to know what it all means," McFall-Ngai said. For instance, the scientists don't know yet whether people prone to obesity start out with a different mix of bacteria, what causes the shift in the balance between lean and obese, or how bacteria measure the amount of fat their host carries. And they don't know if giving more of the Bacteroidetes to people might act as a weight-loss treatment, or how to manipulate bacterial populations to control weight. "It's too premature to recommend any course of action yet," Gordon said. [Rare wisdom]

Source






THE LATEST "BEAUTY" CRAP

I guess desperate women WANT to believe that massaging yourself with grape residue makes you look younger. It mainly seems to be a pseudo-scientific racket for getting tourists into Italian hotels. I can find no research that even attempts to support it

ISHI VinoTherapy introduces an innovative, delicious way to enjoy the benefits of lush, organic Mediterranean grapes - the Tono di Vino Body Treatment. Grapes, rich in antioxidants, vitamins and essential fatty acids, fight free radicals to nourish tone and invigorate the skin. This new Italian salon and spa treatment is the ultimate way to feed the skin with fruits of the Mediterranean.

The 2 hour sensory massage therapy begins with a herbal tea infused with dried red grapevine leaves. The antioxidant-rich drink purifies and cleanses the body from within. After the relaxing, healing tea, the body is gently massaged with Grape Must and Lavender Honey Exfoliating Scrub. The Scrub, rich in natural fruit acids as well as alpha and beta hydroxyl-acids, delicately exfoliates and tones the skin.

Another more invigorating massage follows by massaging Nettare di Vino Tonic, a rich concentrate of red Salento grapes, virgin wood strawberry juice and edelweiss extract, to encourage lymphatic drainage. A sumptuous Thermal Peat and Moscato Grape Mud Mask then infuses the skin with antioxidants while intensely combating cellulite.

Distilled Aromatic Water is then used to immediately detoxify, stimulate and energise the body and mind. Yet another pampering massage follows the full body cleansing - Grapeseed Massage Oil with rosemary, rich in essential fatty acids, visibly firms the skin. For dessert, an invigorating body rub with Pinot Noir Body Toning Cream firms and moisturises skin while increasing natural drainage.

Treat your body and your senses to a gourmet Mediterranean delight with a firming ISHI Tono di Vino Body Treatment. An ISHI Tono di Vino Treatment Box Set contains all five products necessary for eight indulgent treatments.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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SOME NEWS IN BRIEF

Spray away obesity?: "Dieters may find some welcome assistance from a new nasal spray that could help resist the appetizing aromas of cinnamon bun stands, pizza parlors or tempting bakeries. Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Massachusetts said it will begin human trials next year of a nasal spray designed to fight obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste. It won a patent for the product this month. 'The pleasurable effect of eating is all stimulated by smell and taste,' Christopher Adams, the company's founder and chief executive, told Reuters Tuesday. 'The premise is that olfactory activity that controls both smell and taste is a trigger and a feedback mechanism to eat. If you have some kind of reduced sense of smell or taste, you tend to eat less,' he said. The product, known as CP404, is among the latest devices and treatments under development in the multibillion-dollar fight against obesity." [How absurd can the obesity war get?]


CT, MA may join NY in trans fat idiocy: "Artery-clogging artificial trans fats could soon be banned in Connecticut. Two weeks after the New York City Board of Health voted to make the Big Apple the first city in the nation to ban artificial trans fats in restaurant food, two Republican state senators in Connecticut proposed similar legislation Wednesday. ... Connecticut politicians are not the first to consider a trans fat ban in the wake of New York City's action. A Massachusetts lawmaker proposed a similar bill this week. Bans are being considered in Philadelphia and Cleveland as well."


Magic mushrooms appear to relieve OCD: "A preliminary study of the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms has found it is effective in relieving the symptoms of people suffering from severe obsessive compulsive disorder, a University of Arizona psychiatrist reports. Dr. Francisco A. Moreno led the first FDA-approved clinical study of psilocybin since it was outlawed in 1970. The results of the small-scale study are published in the latest edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Moreno said the study's intent was only to test the safety of administering psilocybin to patients, and its effectiveness is still in doubt until a larger controlled study can be conducted. But in each of the nine patients in the study, psilocybin completely removed symptoms of the disorder for a period of about four to 24 hours, with some remaining symptom-free for days."

THE WONDERS OF OLIVE OIL AGAIN



Long known as part of the "Mediterranean diet" mythology

People who use plenty of olive oil in their diets may be helping to prevent damage to body cells that can eventually lead to cancer, new research suggests. In a study of 182 European men, researchers found evidence that olive oil can reduce oxidative damage to cells' genetic material, a process that can initiate cancer development. They say the findings may help explain why rates of several cancers are higher in Northern Europe than in Southern Europe, where olive oil is a dietary staple.

They also support advice to replace saturated fats from foods like meat and butter with vegetable fats, particularly olive oil, said study co-author Dr. Henrik E. Poulsen, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. He and his colleagues report the findings in The FASEB Journal, a publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

The study included healthy men between the ages of 20 and 60 from five European countries. For two weeks [The wonders of long-term research!], the men consumed a quarter cup of olive oil throughout each day. At the end of the study, they showed an average 13 percent reduction in a substance called 8oxodG, which is a marker of oxidative damage to cells' DNA. Such damage occurs when byproducts of metabolism called reactive oxygen species overwhelm the body's antioxidant defenses. Olive oil contains a number of compounds, called phenols, believed to act as powerful antioxidants. However, those compounds didn't seem to account for the drop in DNA oxidative damage, according to Poulsen's team. The men in the study used three different olive oils with varying levels of antioxidant phenols, and oxidative damage declined regardless of the phenol content.

Instead, the researchers suspect that the monounsaturated fats in olive oil are behind the effect. The findings, they say, suggest that olive oil may be part of the reason that certain cancers, including breast, colon, ovarian and prostate cancers, are less common in Mediterranean countries than in Northern Europe. At the beginning of the study, men from Northern Europe had higher levels of 8oxodG than those from Southern Europe. This is consistent, according to Poulsen's team, with the expected effects of the olive-oil-rich "Mediterranean diet."

However, Poulsen told Reuters Health, the diet is more than just olive oil. Ideally, it's also rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish. Moreover, regardless of its benefits, he added, olive oil is no substitute for calorie control and regular exercise. [He got that right]

Source

The journal abstract is as under:

Effect of olive oils on biomarkers of oxidative DNA stress in Northern and Southern Europeans

Anja Machowetz, Henrik E. Poulsen et al.

High consumption of olive oil in the Mediterranean diet has been suggested to protect DNA against oxidative damage and to reduce cancer incidence. We investigated the impact of the phenolic compounds in olive oil, and the oil proper, on DNA and RNA oxidation in North, Central, and South European populations. In a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, controlled crossover intervention trial, the effect of olive oil phenolic content on urinary oxidation products of guanine (8-oxo-guanine, 8-oxo-guanosine and 8-oxo-deoxyguanosine) was investigated. Twenty-five mililiters of three olive oils with low, medium, and high phenolic content were administered to healthy males (n=182) daily for 2 wk. At study baseline the urinary excretion of 8-oxo-guanosine (RNA oxidation) and 8-oxo-deoxyguanosine (DNA oxidation) was higher in the Northern regions of Europe compared with Central and Southern European regions (P=0.035). Urinary excretion of the 8 hydroxylated forms of guanine, guanosine, deoxyguanosine and their nonoxidized forms were not different when comparing olive oils with low, medium, and high phenolic content given for 2 wk. Testing the effect of oil from urinary 8-oxo-deoxyguanosine changes from baseline to post-treatment showed a reduction of DNA oxidation by 13% (P=0.008). These findings support the idea that ingestion of olive oil is beneficial and can reduce the rate of oxidation of DNA. This effect is not due to the phenolic content in the olive oil. The higher DNA and RNA oxidation in Northern European regions compared with that in Central and Southern regions supports the contention that olive oil consumption may explain some of the North-South differences in cancer incidences in Europe.

Maybe I am missing something here but it seems to me that the different physiological response to olive oil observed in Northern and Southern Europeans indicates relevant genetic differences between the two populations and it may be the genetic differences that account for the different disease patterns in Northern and Southern Europe




TRACING THE SOURCES OF TEENAGE MOODINESS

They may be as much neurological as psychological

Scientists at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre studying the development of the teenage brain have learned that the frontal lobe gradually matures during adolescence until the age of 25, when it reaches maturity. Over those years, the frontal lobe is "pruned" of excess nerve cells to create more efficient information processing that is useful to adulthood. This "pruning" results in a temporary loss of grey matter. The findings help provide a scientific explanation for the difficult teenage years, when the combination of hormones and brain "pruning" causes adolescents to make reckless decisions and suffer emotional problems. And when parents scream at their teenagers to "start acting like an adult" they are asking for the impossible.

Steve Rankin, 16, of St Andrews in outer Sydney, "stupidly" dropped out of school three months ago. He is yet to find a job and has been fined for drinking on a train. His relationship with his parents is strained. The result of the study "totally makes sense to me", Steve said. "When I was younger I was the golden child and then when I was 15 I felt like a neglected child. Then, not long ago, I just started hating my parents and started getting kind of emo-ish," he says, using teen slang for emotional. "I was like a little kid and then I turned 15 and my parents expected me to be like Albert Einstein or something."

In the past five years, the teenage brain has become the focus of intense scientific study throughout the world. The current issue of the American Journal of Physiology carries a report by University of California psychiatrists who also found that the "pruning" removed useless "white noise" from the brain.

The University of Melbourne's Christos Pantelis began making neuropsychological assessments of teenagers in 2002. His team is brain-scanning 200 10-year-olds to get a closer look at how the brain works. Funding permitting, he will brain-scan the children routinely until they reach full maturity at 25. "The frontal lobes are responsible for the higher-level mental abilities," Professor Pantelis said. "These abilities include problem solving, planning, thinking flexibly. Working memory and the frontal lobes are also important in terms of behavioural and mental control - that is, the ability to stop yourself doing anything inappropriate." Professor Pantelis said the new information might provide useful insights for parents, teachers and legislators. "It is very helpful when you think of some of the problems adolescents are having, either in terms of their behaviour, control of their emotions and their interaction skills. "If we understand that their brains are still maturing in particular ways then it might lead us to teach them in different ways too. "There has also been interest in our studies from the legal world, because you have to ask whether it is OK to put an adolescent or young adult into the same prison as a hardened criminal," he said.

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? It is just about pure fat. Surely it 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 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

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