"Diversity" is bad for your heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source




Breast Cancer Reprieve

The arrogant and narrowminded FDA eases up a little

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antidepressants don't work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source. Original journal article here

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Obesity "kills more people than terrorism"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diet and cancer: Now EVERYTHING is good for you!

The medical literature gets more amusing by the day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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




And now cholesterol is good for you too!

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

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

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

Source

See also International Journal of Cancer, February 15, 2008

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New drug 'curbs alcoholism'

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

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

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

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

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

Source





Weight loss means hard work

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dietician: No such thing as a healthy pizza

Given her stupid assumptions, she would be right

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

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

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

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

Source




That lovely "healthy" organic food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protein boosts early babies' brains

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

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

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

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

Source




Diabetes discovery

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

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

By Evert Kroon et al.

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

Nature Biotechnology, 20 February 2008

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fat Fascism building

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New life for vitamin C theory?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source





More governmment health dictatorship for Britain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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