SUGAR CAUSES CANCER?

The post below is an excerpt from Sandy Szwarc. I myself made a derisive comment on the study that Sandy debunks on 11th. Sandy has however taken the trouble of looking at the study closely -- and finds that it is an even bigger fraud than I suspected. So this is yet another instance of the failure of peer-review in the madhouse that is the medical literature.

I see that Sandy has a critique coming up of the study about pot bellies that I dismissed on 28th. as "utter crap". Should be fun to see what she says! H/T to Ecomyths for drawing my attention to the article below. I should read Sandy regularly.

This new study was reported by the media as having found “conclusive evidence” that eating sugary cereals, white bread and other carbohydrates with high glycemic index increase risks of cancer and other modern “lifestyle diseases.”

This paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was a meta-analysis of 37 published observational (epidemiological) studies that had looked for correlations between glycemic index/load and diseases. No cohort or clinical intervention trials were included.

The studies that the Australian authors compiled had differing designs: different age subjects; different study durations; different techniques to identify diseases (self-reported, chart reviews and only 4 involved actual physical exams); and had adjusted for different confounding factors known to contribute to disease. “Most of the studies used basic models, controlling for age and sex only,” however, the authors admitted.The studies used a food frequency questionnaire at enrollment to calculate GI/GL, but all used different units to report levels, so the authors converted the results to a single scale.

The authors noted that a significant limitation of their meta-analysis was that none of the studies they included had “actually validated the assessment of GI or GL using another dietary method or against an objective standard. The assignment of GI values to foods in a nutrient database is to some extent subjective,” they wrote, “and may be unreliable when extrapolating from one country to another.” They then separated out ten different diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer, gastric cancer and gallbladder disease) and compiled the different risk ratios associated with GI/GL reported in each study.

This paper epitomized the weaknesses of meta-analyses, which lump together diverse and weak or null studies hoping to derive a significant effect. These problems make it imperative that any correlations that emerge from such analyses are tenable and clear; and beyond random chance, statistical modeling errors and confounding factors.

To cut to the chase, try as they might, they were unable to find a viable correlation between GI/GL and any disease. None of the 37 studies, separately or lumped together, could come up with a tenable link. The relative risks for all of the diseases hugged either side of null (relative risk 1/1 = 1):

The researchers, however, arrived at a different conclusion:

"This meta-analysis provides high-level evidence that diets with a high GI, high GL, or both, independently of known confounders, including fiber intake, increase the risk of chronic lifestyle-related diseases. The effect was modest overall... Overall, the GI had a more powerful effect than did the GL... The findings indicate that the judicious choice of low-GI foods offers a similar or higher level of protection as whole-grain foods or high fiber intake in the prevention of chronic lifestyle-related disease"

Are we being sold something? When a study’s conclusions contrast so dramatically with the actual data, it is helpful to ask why.Not mentioned by any news reporter was that, except for the statisticians, the researchers who conducted this study are authors of GI diet books. Not only that, but they are with a GI testing service and a GI-based licensing program in Australia. Through the GI Symbol Program run out of the University of Sydney, food companies purchase license agreements with Glycemic Index Ltd. to put its GI symbol on their products. It’s a marketing gimmick, a “seal of approval” to identify foods for shoppers that are the “healthier choices.” The study’s lead author, Alan Barclay, is the founding director of GI Ltd., the company behind Australia’s GI Symbol Program, which is under the direction of another of the study authors, Jennie Brand-Miller....

With so much money and careers at stake in finding evidence to support low-GI foods, and in worrying people that high-GI foods could cause diseases and health problems, it might help explain why this study’s null findings were interpreted positively. Even the confirmation bias of well-meaning professionals can lead them to see proof of what they believe when the evidence disproves it.It’s not science itself that we can’t trust, it’s the bad portrayals of science.

Seeing for ourselves the actual null and negative findings, as was evident in all 37 studies on nearly 2 million people used in this analysis, offers us the most valuable information. If a significant correlation had been found and had biological plausability, a possible cause might then be tested by conducting randomized, controlled intervention clinical trials. If an epidemiological study can find no significant correlation, no link, between a food or ingredient and a disease, then there is nothing to base a suggestion for a causal link. It's a nonissue.

Null findings testing an hypothesis are important, as they enable science, and us, to move on, rather than continue to beat a dead horse or needlessly worry. This is the source of Albert Einstein’s famous saying: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

Study #2: No support for sugar fears

The second study was of no interest to PR agencies, and hence, never made the news. This epidemiological study, was published in the International Journal of Cancer. Its data was from 120,852 people in the Netherlands Cohort Study, who’d also completed food frequency questionnaires in 1986. After 11.3 years of follow-up, the researchers found no genuine relative risk for colorectal cancers related to dietary glycemic index or glycemic load among the men or women. They also found no clear associations between any cancer subsite and dietary factors. Relative risks for cancers associated with sugary, high-glycemic foods ranged from 0.83 to 1.20. The relative risks all hugged either side of null (RR=1) with none tenable, like the other observational studies.

Unlike the previous study, however, these researchers reported their findings factually: “Overall, our findings do not support the hypothesis that a diet with a high glycemic load or index is associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer.” And conversely, low-glycemic foods aren’t associated with lower risks. There is no link. As hard as some have tried to prove that their believed way of eating is the only right way and can lead us all to optimum health and wellness, while preventing cancer and chronic diseases of aging; the facts continue to show that well-fed people around the world have hugely varied diets with no consistent correlations with health or longevity. More important, efforts to scare us about foods some don’t believe we should be eating and to prove that ‘bad’ foods can give us cancer or some other frightening disease have no credible evidence, either.

Happily Married Men and Women Have Lower Blood Pressure, Other Health Benefits

Happy people generally probably do

A report on research conducted at Brigham Young University reveals that men and women in happy marriages have substantially lower blood pressure than single individuals or couples in unhappy relationships.

Psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that men and women in happy marriages scored four points lower than single adults during the course of a 24-hour blood pressure monitoring procedure. 204 married and 99 single adults were asked to wear unobtrusive portable blood pressure monitors which recorded blood pressure at random intervals throughout the day, even while participants slept. Each participant's blood pressure level was recorded about 72 times.

"There seem to be some unique health benefits from marriage," said Holt-Lunstad in a Science Daily report. "It's not just being married that benefits health - what's really the most protective of health is having a happy marriage." Not unexpectedly, the study found that unhappily married adults have higher blood pressure than both happily married and single adults.

LifeSiteNews.com has published many reports on the benefits to health and well-being of faithful marriage between one man and one woman, and the shortcomings of other types of relationships.

Dr. John Gottman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is well known for his research in the field of marriage, said, "The benefits (of faithful marriage) are better physical health, more resistance to infection, fewer infections, and a reduced likelihood of dying from cancer, from heart disease, from all major killers. The other health benefit is longevity: People live longer if they are in marital relationships, particularly if they are in good, satisfying relationships."

"There are physical benefits and mental health benefits," said Dr. Gottman. "You have less depression, less anxiety disorders, less psychosis, less posttraumatic stress disorders, fewer phobias. You also have fewer injuries due to accidents." He further states that "married men and women have lower suicide rates than unmarried ones because married people have meaningful social networks of friends and relatives. Meaningful relationships give people a sense of personal value and a feeling of responsibility to others." "Married individuals also tend to have stronger immune systems, making them less likely to catch colds and develop other illnesses than unmarried ones and that married persons are more likely to report feeling hopeful, happy, and good about themselves."

An interesting addendum to the research into the benefits of happily married couples is the statistics which show that perseverance in an unhappy marriage has a very decided benefit. The latest data show that within five years, just 12 percent of very unhappily married couples who stick it out are still unhappy; 70 percent of the formerly unhappiest couples now describe their marriage as "very" or "quite" happy.

Maggie Gallagher of the Manhattan Institute said, "Because marriage is a partnership in the whole of life, backed up by family, community, and religious values, marriage can do what economic partnerships don't: give a greater sense of meaning and purpose to life (a reason to exercise or cut back on booze, work harder, and to keep plugging even in the middle of those times when the marriage may not feel gratifying at all).

Married people are both responsible for and responsible to another human being, and both halves of that dynamic lead the married to live more responsible, fruitful, and satisfying lives. Marriage is a transformative act, changing the way two people look at each other, at the future, and at their roles in society. And it changes the way significant others - from family to congregation to insurance companies and the IRS - look at and treat that same couple. Sexual fidelity, an economic union, a parenting alliance, the promise of care that transcends day-to-day emotions: all these are what give a few words mumbled before a clergyman or judge the power to change lives."

Source






Smell compatibility

What makes us fall in love? Is it lust, mutual interests, shared life goals, or something much more intangible? Recent research suggests the latter. Researchers have only recently discovered an olfactory nerve that they believe is the route through which pheromones are processed. Nerve "O," as it is called, slipped under the radar for many years because it is so tiny. However, when the nerve was discovered in a whale, scientists surmised that this little nerve might be found in humans as well. And it was!

So what is the role of Nerve "O"? Nerve "O" has endings in the nasal cavity, but the fibers go directly to the sexual regions of the brain. Indeed, these endings entirely bypass the olfactory cortex! Hence we know the role of Nerve "O" is not to consciously smell, but to identify sexual cues from our potential partners.

What sexual cues do our scents give off? For one thing, we are more likely to be attracted to people whose scent is dissimilar to our own. Family members often share similar chemicals, so our attraction to differing chemical makeup suggests that sexual cues evolved to protect close family members from procreating together. On the other hand, pregnant women have been shown to be more drawn to people with similar chemical makeup, which might be due to the fact that during this crucial time, women are more apt to seek out family members than potential mates.

Research has also shown that these unconscious cues processed in Nerve "O" can make or break a relationship. Couples who have high levels of chemicals in common are more likely to encounter fertility issues, miscarriage and infidelity. The more dissimilar your and your partner's chemical makeup, the better chance you will have at successfully procreating and staying together.

So how can you create the scent that will keep you and your partner in the land of happily ever after? Unfortunately, you can't. Perfumes and colognes can't fool Nerve "O" - the scents that humans and animals are attracted to are intangible and instinctive. Even the most expensive designer perfume can't fool Mother Nature. When it comes to sexual attraction, it seems you really have to leave things in the air!

However, if you are taking a hormonal contraceptive, you might be bucking an evolutionary tide. Women who are on the pill are more likely to be attracted to men with similar chemical makeup - most likely because their bodies are fooling them into believing they are pregnant, and so much like actual pregnant women, their Nerve "O" leads them to kin and not mates. So if you were on the pill when you met your mate, you might experience a diminishing attraction when you cease taking it. Only time will tell what role Nerve "O" plays in future sex research, but one thing is for sure: When it comes to true love, follow your nose!

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Coronary Calcification Predicts Future Heart Attacks and Coronary Death. Cholesterol Not Found To Be A Significant Risk Factor

A striking report just published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates the accumulation of calcium in coronary arteries, and not cholesterol, more accurately predicts a future heart attack or other heart trouble, far more than cholesterol or other standard risk factors.

This report gives evidence of a major misdirection by modern medicine - the creation of cholesterol phobia in the population at large. Prior studies show use of cholesterol-lowering drugs does not reduce mortality rates for coronary artery disease. This report follows a front-page report in Business Week Magazine declaring cholesterol-lowering drugs to be of marginal value.

The study involved 6722 men and women, ~age 60, who were studied for a period of 3.8 years (median). None had coronary artery disease at the beginning of the study. Subjects who experienced an adverse coronary event (heart attack, angina, placement of a stent, coronary death) were more likely to be taking cholesterol-lowering drugs (~28%) than those who did not experience such an event (~16%). Furthermore, subjects who experienced a heart attack or angina had about the same total cholesterol (~199) as subjects who did not (~194). Cholesterol barely met statistical significance whereas calcium was a highly predictive factor.

Traditionally-used risk factors, such as C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation), triglycerides, HDL cholesterol and greater body mass, were not predictive for a future coronary artery event.

Among subjects whose coronary artery calcium score was zero, their risk for any adverse coronary event was only about one-half of 1% (0.0044), or less than 1 in 200, whereas those with a coronary calcium score over 300, about 8.0% experienced an adverse event involving coronary arteries (0.0804), or about 8 in 100, an 18-fold difference (1800%!), over the 3.8 year period.

This study shows the risk for a future heart attack is nil for those with a calcium arterial score of zero. This data helps to explain why hundreds of thousands of Americans experience a sudden-death heart attack with low-to-normal cholesterol. Most heart attacks emanate in the four coronary arteries that supply the heart with oxygenated blood. About 50% of arterial plaque is calcium and only 3% is cholesterol.

Arterial calcium can be measured by use of a CT scan (called an Agatston score, for Dr. Arthur Agatston, South Beach Miami, Florida cardiologist). About 70% of white males, 52% of black males, 57% of Hispanic males and 59% of Chinese males, have coronary calcium scores greater than zero. The calcium arterial scores for women are about half that of males owing to the fact they donate calcium to their offspring during pregnancy and lactation and control calcium via estrogen throughout their fertile years.

Calcium begins to accumulate in coronary arteries in males as soon as full growth is achieved, around age 18. Women begin to accumulate calcium in their arteries with the onset of menopause or early hysterectomy. It was recently reported that postmenopausal women who take calcium supplements increase their risk for a heart attack by about 45%. [British Medical Journal 2008 Feb 2; 336 (7638): 262-6]

In the early 1990s British cardiologist Stephen Seely noted that countries which consume that highest amount of calcium (New Zealand, Ireland, North America, Scandinavian countries), mostly from dairy products, have the highest rates of cardiovascular disease. [International Journal Cardiology 1991 Nov; 33(2):191-8]

Sixty-four percent (64%) of subjects who experienced any coronary event were current or former smokers compared to about 50% of those who did not experience a heart attack or other adverse event.

Source

(See Coronary Calcium as a Predictor of Coronary Events in Four Racial or Ethnic Groups, New England Journal of Medicine 358: 1336-45, March 27, 2008)




Laboratory evidence shows red wine antioxidant kills cancer

Are we allowed to mention that antioxidants shorten your lifespan?

Rochester researchers showed for the first time that a natural antioxidant found in grape skins and red wine can help destroy pancreatic cancer cells by reaching to the cell's core energy source, or mitochondria, and crippling its function. The study is published in the March edition of the journal, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. The study also showed that when the pancreatic cancer cells were doubly assaulted -- pre-treated with the antioxidant, resveratrol, and irradiated -- the combination induced a type of cell death called apoptosis, an important goal of cancer therapy.

The research has many implications for patients, said lead author Paul Okunieff, M.D., chief of Radiation Oncology at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Although red wine consumption during chemotherapy or radiation treatment has not been well studied, it is not "contraindicated," Okunieff said. In other words, if a patient already drinks red wine moderately, most physicians would not tell the patient to give it up during treatment. Perhaps a better choice, Okunieff said, would be to drink as much red or purple grape juice as desired.

Yet despite widespread interest in antioxidants, some physicians are concerned antioxidants might end up protecting tumors. Okunieff's study showed there is little evidence to support that fear. In fact, the research suggests resveratrol not only reaches its intended target, injuring the nexus of malignant cells, but at the same time protects normal tissue from the harmful effects of radiation.

"Antioxidant research is very active and very seductive right now," Okunieff said. "The challenge lies in finding the right concentration and how it works inside the cell. In this case, we've discovered an important part of that equation. Resveratrol seems to have a therapeutic gain by making tumor cells more sensitive to radiation and making normal tissue less sensitive."

Resveratrol is known for its ability to protect plants from bacteria and fungi. Purified versions have been described in scientific journals as potential anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and anti-atherogenic agents, and for their ability to modulate cell growth. Other well-known antioxidants derived from natural sources include caffeine, melatonin, flavonoids, polyphenols, and vitamins C and E.

A flurry of antioxidant studies in recent years has not proven how and why they work at the cellular level. At the suggestion of a young scientist in his lab, Okunieff began studying resveratrol as a tumor sensitizer. That's when they discovered its link to the mitochondria. The discovery is critical because, like the cell nucleus, the mitochondria contains its own DNA and has the ability to continuously supply the cell with energy when functioning properly. Stopping the energy flow theoretically stops the cancer.

Researchers divided pancreatic cancer cells into two groups: cells treated without resveratrol, or with resveratrol, at a relatively high dose of 50 mg/ml, in combination with ionizing radiation. (The resveratrol concentration in red wine can be as high as 30 mg/ml, the study said, and higher doses are expected to be safe as long as a physician is monitoring.)

They evaluated the mitochondria function of the cells treated with resveratrol, and also measured apoptosis (cell death), the level of reactive oxygen species in the cells, and how the cell membranes responded to the antioxidant.

Laboratory experiments showed that resveratrol:

-- Reduced the function of proteins in the pancreatic cancer cell membranes that are responsible for pumping chemotherapy out of the cell, making the cells chemo-sensitive.

-- Triggered the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are substances circulating in the human body that have been implicated in a number of diseases: when ROS is increased, cells burn out and die.

-- Caused apoptosis, which is likely the result of increased ROS.

-- Depolarized the mitochondrial membranes, which indicates a decrease in the cell's potential to function. Radiation alone does not injure the mitochondrial membrane as much.

The team also wanted to investigate why pancreatic cancer cells seem to be particularly resistant to chemotherapy. The pancreas, a gland located deep in the abdomen, produces insulin and regulates sugar, and pumps or channels powerful digestive enzymes into the duodenum. This natural pumping process, however, ends up ridding the needed chemotherapy from cells in the pancreas. But just as reseveratrol interferes with the cancer cells' energy source, it also may decrease the power available to pump chemotherapy out of the cell.

"While additional studies are needed," Okunieff said, "this research indicates that resveratrol has a promising future as part of the treatment for cancer."

In the same journal, Okunieff and his group also reviewed why resveratrol protects normal tissue, and found that antioxidants can be designed to take advantage of certain biochemical properties or cellular targets, making them more effective.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pot bellies linked to dementia

This is utter crap. It is another outing for the fallacy, much-loved in medical medical research, that correlation is causation. It shows that there is a slight tendency for the small minority of people who get Alzheimer's to have bigger bellies in mid-life. But to say that the big bellies CAUSE Alzheimer's is pure speculation. Given the lack of any obvious connection between the two phenomena, it is much more likely that whatever it is that brings on Alzheimers also has the side effect of increasing abdominal fat. And note that the study was done in Northern California, where half the population seems to be stoned out of their brains for much of the time. Perhaps the bad stuff that they pump into themselves both makes them fat and blasts their brains

Having a large belly in middle age nearly triples the risk of developing dementia, a study released today found. Being overweight in midlife and beyond has long been linked to increased risk for disease such as stroke, diabetes and heart disease. But this is the first study to link excess fat to dementia and, the research found excess abdominal fat increased the risk even among those who were of normal weight overall.

"Considering that 50 per cent of adults in this country (US) have abdominal obesity, this is a disturbing finding," said study author Rachel Whitmer of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California.

Researchers measured the abdominal fat of 6583 people age 40 to 45 in northern California and some 36 years later 16 per cent had developed dementia, the study published in the journal Neurology found. Those who were overweight or obese but did not have a pot belly had an 80 per cent increase in the risk of dementia compared to people with a normal body weight and abdominal fat level. The risk increase jumped to 230 per cent among overweight people with a large belly and 360 per cent among the obese with large abdomens. "Where one carries the weight - especially in midlife - appears to be an important predictor for dementia risk," Ms Whitmer said.

While more research is needed to understand why this link exists, it is possible that the abdominal obesity is part of a complex set of health-related behaviours that increase the risk of dementia. "Autopsies have shown that changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease may start in young to middle adulthood, and another study showed that high abdominal fat in elderly adults was tied to greater brain atrophy," she said. "These findings imply that the dangerous effects of abdominal obesity on the brain may start long before the signs of dementia appear."

Source




"Bootcamp" for fat kids?

This is REALLY getting Fascist

Bootcamp in schools is not necessary and teachers should not cop the blame for unfit children, the State Government said yesterday. Education Minister David Bartlett said schools were already doing enough to ensure kids were fit and healthy and parents needed to play a larger role. He said bootcamp was "too extreme", school curriculums were already crowded, and schools needed to focus on literacy and numeracy over sport.

His comments come after high-profile TV fitness trainer Michelle Bridges, from the TV show The Biggest Loser, said Tasmanian students should undertake high-intensity bootcamp for at least 30 minutes at the start of each school day to reduce skyrocketing obesity rates. Bridges said she was shocked Tasmania had one of the nation's highest obesity rates and that doctors had been treating children as young as two for obesity-related health conditions. And she said Tasmanian schools could lead the nation with daily bootcamps which would have "massive results" on students' exercise, nutrition and learning.

But Mr Bartlett said he did not support bootcamps and was confident students already did enough exercise at school. "I don't like the term bootcamp because it's too extreme," Mr Bartlett said. "But in fact there are physical education programs happening in all our schools, and some of the best ones are those style of things where kids get out in the morning, do their exercise, get ready and come back in and start learning. "We have mandated two hours of physical education a week in every school in Tasmania, and in almost every school I've been into physical activity and education happens every day."

He said parents needed to stop blaming schools for unfit children, and do more at home to encourage exercise and good eating habits. "It's a crowded curriculum and people in Tasmania, I believe, as my number one priority, want me to lift literacy and numeracy rates and that's what we're working hard on," Mr Bartlett said. He said more emphasis needed to be put on what happened at home.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hairdressers face cancer risk?

This is really crazy. They admit that hairdressers smoke more so could that be the cause of the slightly higher rate of cancer? "Probably" not, we read. It's just speculation and it's not even good speculation. What chemicals do barbers get exposed to? A bit of antiseptic is all as far as I know. Female hairdressers on the other hand use LOTS of chemicals. So why is the risk high in men and low in women? If chemicals were the problem it would be the other way around. It's just amazing that this trash got published at all -- let alone in "Lancet". Lancet has gone far down hill from what it once was. In the context of its conversion to Green/Left thinking that is not surprising. Facts are a very low priority for the Left. Creating disruption is what they live for

Hairdressers may face an increased risk of cancer because of the dyes and other chemicals they work with, says the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). "Occupation as a hairdresser or barber entails exposures that are probably carcinogenic," says a report compiled by a working group for the agency, which is based in Lyon, southern France.

The study is a review of half a dozen large investigations into cancer risk. Among male hairdressers and barbers, the risk of cancer of the bladder was between 20 and 60 per cent higher compared with the general population, the study says. The risk is described as "small but consistent" and is less visible among women.

Among both men and women, some studies pointed to a heightened risk of 30 per cent for lung cancer, although this could be partly explained by higher incidence of smoking among hairdressers. Among women alone, some studies pointed to an increased risk for ovarian cancer and of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The journal The Lancet Oncology reports on the study in its latest issue, out today.

Source





Diabetes remedy?



Bitter melon, an ancient Chinese remedy, contains a powerful treatment for Type 2 diabetes, Sydney-based researchers have found. A team from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, along with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, found that fruit known in South-East Asia as pare contains four bioactive compounds.

They all appear to activate the enzyme AMPK, a protein that regulates the body's metabolism and affects glucose uptake, according to research published yesterday in Chemistry and Biology. One of the compounds increased fatty acid oxidation and glucose disposal in the body, potentially helping tackle diabetes and obesity. "We can now understand at a molecular level why bitter melon works as a treatment for diabetes," David James, director of the diabetes and obesity program at Garvan said. "By isolating the compounds we believe to be therapeutic, we can investigate how they work together in our cells," Professor James said.

The researchers said other diabetes drugs already available also activated AMPK but they could have side-effects. "The advantage of bitter melon is that there are no known side-effects," said Dr Jiming Ye. "Practitioners of Chinese medicine have used it for hundreds of years to good effect." The fruit was described in a 16th century compendium of Chinese medicine as "expelling evil heat, relieving fatigue and illuminating". But previous studies have warned that children and pregnant women should not use bitter melon because of its potential toxicity.

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!

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

ANOTHER FISHY STORY

The old "wonders of fish" story again! Popular summary followed by journal abstract below. There is a lot of scorn that I could pour on this study (control for education and income etc.?) but I will content myself with noting that IQ at age 3 cannot reliably be assessed

Pregnant women who regularly eat fish can give their children a head start in life by boosting their intelligence, a study has found. The children of mothers who ate fish more than twice a week during their second trimester were better in language and motor skill tests, research at Harvard University found

But it also showed the effects may depend on the type of fish eaten. The study, which monitored more than 300 children at three stages of development, counters advice that pregnant women should avoid fish because it can contain toxic chemicals.

"Dietary recommendations for pregnant women should incorporate the nutritional benefits as well as the risks of fish intake," the report, which will be published in the American Journal of Epidemiology this week, concluded.

Source

Maternal Fish Intake during Pregnancy, Blood Mercury Levels, and Child Cognition at Age 3 Years in a US Cohort

By Emily Oken et al

The balance of contaminant risk and nutritional benefit from maternal prenatal fish consumption for child cognitive development is not known. Using data from a prospective cohort study of 341 mother-child pairs in Massachusetts enrolled in 1999-2002, the authors studied associations of maternal second-trimester fish intake and erythrocyte mercury levels with children's scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities (WRAVMA) at age 3 years. Mean maternal total fish intake was 1.5 (standard deviation, 1.4) servings/month, and 40 (12%) mothers consumed >2 servings/week. Mean maternal mercury level was 3.8 (standard deviation, 3.8) ng/g. After adjustment using multivariable linear regression, higher fish intake was associated with better child cognitive test performance, and higher mercury levels with poorer test scores. Associations strengthened with inclusion of both fish and mercury: effect estimates for fish intake of >2 servings/week versus never were 2.2 (95% confidence interval (CI): -2.6, 7.0) for the PPVT and 6.4 (95% CI: 2.0, 10.8) for the WRAVMA; for mercury in the top decile, they were -4.5 (95% CI: -8.5, -0.4) for the PPVT and -4.6 (95% CI: -8.3, -0.9) for the WRAVMA. Fish consumption of ~2 servings/week was not associated with a benefit. Dietary recommendations for pregnant women should incorporate the nutritional benefits as well as the risks of fish intake.

Source





Breast cancer risk test on the way



GENETIC research is moving so fast that a Brisbane scientist believes a blood test may be available to calculate a woman's breast cancer risk within five years. Georgia Chenevix-Trench, of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, is part of a global team of scientists involved in searching for breast cancer susceptibility genes. "What you could do is give women a risk assessment at different ages," she said. "That might be a reality within a few years."

Dr Chenevix-Trench said no test was likely to be able to tell women categorically whether they would develop breast cancer. Lifestyle factors and environment are also believed to play a role. But a blood test should be able to tell women whether they were at high or low risk - or somewhere in-between - at varying stages of their lives based on their genetic profile. "Maybe women who are lining up for mammograms would have a blood test and they would be told: 'You're at a very high risk, you should have additional screening'," Dr Chenevix-Trench said. "If you're at very low risk, you possibly could reduce your frequency. It's a political hot potato to suggest that some people could have less screening but I think you could probably do that."

Australian women have a one-in-eight chance of developing breast cancer in their lifetime. Scientists have known for years that defects in two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, give women a much higher risk of breast cancer. Some women found with defects in those genes opt for mastectomies and ovary removal to dramatically cut their odds of cancer.

A paper published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics, co-written by Dr Chenevix-Trench, found variations in two genes, known as FGFR2 and TNRC9, amplified a woman's breast cancer risk if she also carried the BRCA2 defect. The research found BRCA2 defect carriers with the highest risk combination of FGFR2 and TNRC9 genes had a 70 per cent likelihood of developing breast cancer.

Source






Cod liver oil lubricates your bones! "A regular dose of cod liver oil reduces the quantity of painkilling drugs needed by people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a study in Scotland has found. The finding, published in Rheumatology magazine, is significant because cod liver oil is benign, whereas nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen or naproxen, which are commonly taken by RA patients, can have serious side-effects. The study was carried out over five years by researchers from rheumatology units in Dundee and Edinburgh.

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

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!

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

Damage to unborn baby from smoking 'negligible' in the first five months

This is a nice bit of iconoclasm. Rather in line with the passive smoking findings, too. The authors even managed to reject the "correlation is causation" belief that seems to pervade medical research. Will wonders never cease?

Smoking in pregnancy is far less damaging to the unborn baby than commonly supposed, detailed analysis suggests. If women give up smoking by the fifth month of pregnancy, the effect on the baby is negligible, the study found. And even if they do not, the effect on birthweight is surprisingly small. The study by Emma Tominey, a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, throws new light on government efforts to stop women smoking when they become pregnant. While it does not suggest that such efforts are pointless, it shows that directing advice towards the newly pregnant is worthwhile.

It also shows that the worst effects are suffered by women from the poorest backgrounds, because in their case smoking is often combined with other unhealthy activities, such as poor diet and consumption of alcohol. Middle-class women suffer almost no damaging effects, the analysis suggests, even if they continue to smoke throughout pregnancy.

The findings, published as a report by the centre, will not be welcomed by anti-smoking groups, whose message to young women is intended to make them feel guilty about damaging their babies. In Ms Tominey's view, the damage is real but relatively small, and even if all women gave up smoking, only about one in eight babies with a low birthweight would avoid being classified as such.

The report uses data from the UK National Child Development Study, which provides details of mothers and their children between 1973 and 2000 - a total of 3,368 women and 6,860 children. The information includes the mothers' smoking habits, information about their families, and the birthweight and gestation period of the children.

Analysis of the data shows that smoking throughout pregnancy reduces birthweight by 5.6 per cent, and the gestation period by just over a day. But when the results are corrected for other factors, such as diet, lifestyle and alcohol, the effect of smoking on birthweight drops to 1.8 per cent and the reduction in gestation becomes insignificant. The study also finds that, contrary to the normal belief that damage is done early in pregnancy, it is the final third that matters most, because this is when babies gain the most weight.

Another surprising finding is the strong class effect. The damage is greatest among mothers with the lowest levels of education. Those who leave school at 16 cause twice the harm to their babies with each cigarette smoked. Ms Tominey concludes: "Other behaviours of the mother play a large role . . . over and above her smoking habits." Policies intended to help babies should aim to educate mothers generally, not simply try to persuade them to stop smoking, she said.

However, she does not conclude that smoking is harmless. "We find that up to 13 per cent of children classified as low-birthweight born to smoking mothers could have been classified as healthy, had their mothers not smoked." The policy implications, however, are that stopping smoking alone is not enough to deal with inequalities in child health, she concludes. "Not only is it the low-socioeconomic-status mothers who choose to smoke, but they are also the mothers bearing the greatest burden from the smoking." She said: "Therefore, any potential solution must offer help to these mothers, to target those with the worst habits and poorest records of child health."

Source





Wow! Big risk from "old" blood

This rather amplifies my comments about transfusions in the side-column. People are finally doing research into transfusions -- and entrenched assumptions are falling like ninepins

Thousands of heart surgery patients may be at risk from transfusions of blood that has been stored for two weeks or more. A study of more than 9,000 patients in the US has shown that those given blood more than 14 days old are 65 per cent more likely to die before discharge, and 50 per cent more likely to die within a year. Recipients of older blood are also at much higher risk of blood poisoning and multi-organ failure, according to the survey at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Blood is usually more than ten days old before it even reaches British hospitals, so patients here are at least as likely as those in America to receive blood that is more than two weeks old. As there are at least 30,000 cardiac operations a year in Britain, half involving blood transfusions, many patients could be at risk. Professor Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said that the safety of blood transfusions given to heart surgery patients should urgently be reviewed. "This research suggests that the longer transfused blood has been stored, the greater the risk of complications following cardiac surgery. Further research is urgently needed to clarify the indications for transfusion and the effects of blood storage on outcome," he said.

He said that research carried out for his foundation in Bristol last year indicated that many transfusions given to heart patients did more harm than good. "Together, these studies suggest that only those whose lives are at serious risk without a transfusion should receive blood," he said.

The Cleveland Clinic researchers, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, say that changes are needed urgently to prevent unnecessary deaths among this large but vulnerable group of patients. According to Colleen Koch, the lead researcher, the results suggest "that blood should be classified as outdated earlier than current recommendations". On the basis of earlier laboratory studies, Dr Koch speculates that by the age of two weeks the structure of stored red blood cells has begun to break down. This, she says, may increase the risk that they will block blood vessels and reduce their capacity to carry oxygen.

Her team studied the records of patients who had major heart surgery at the hospital between June 1998 and January 2006. A total of 2,872 patients received blood that had been stored for 14 days or less, and 3,130 patients received blood that was more than 14 days old. The mean storage age was 11 days for the newer blood and 20 days for the older blood.

The number dying in hospital was significantly higher among those who were given older blood: 2.8 per cent compared with 1.7 per cent, while death rates a year on, at 11 per cent, were nearly half as high again as those who were given newer blood (7.4 per cent). There was no significant difference in the amount of blood received by the patients in the two groups.

Gavin Murphy, a senior lecturer in cardiac surgery at the University of Bristol who led last year's British Heart Foundation study, said that the routine use of transfusions for heart surgery patients put them in danger and was a huge drain on resources. Giving transfusions and treating transfusion-related illnesses increased the overall cost of staying in hospital by more than 40 per cent.

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!

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

Drinking while pregnant risks autism in babies

This report is OK as far as it goes. There is no doubt that heavy drinking during pregnancy is harmful to the fetal brain and that the damage could in part manifest as autistic symptoms is no surprise. Note however that autism sufferers are often high-functioning in some ways and that is not characteristic of fetal alcohol sufferers. These findings are not then relevant to autism research in general. All they do is add symptoms to fetal alcohol syndrome

Women who drink alcohol during pregnancy may be putting their babies at risk of developing autism, according to new research. The consultant psychiatrist who alerted the medical profession to the finding that drinking while pregnant can give babies a condition called foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) has now found that the consumption of alcohol by expecting mothers can also cause autism. The research is the first to suggest that autism may be triggered by the child's mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy. The findings will heighten concern about the increase in alcohol consumption among women of childbearing age.

More than half of all mothers drink alcohol while pregnant, according to the Department of Health. This week the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence will issue a new warning about the dangers. A recent survey showed 8% of women aged 18 to 24 had consumed at least 35 units of alcohol, the equivalent of about 15 glasses of wine, during the previous week. Binge drinking among young women has resulted in the number of alcohol-related deaths in women aged 35 to 54 doubling between 1991 and 2005. Earlier this year, the British Medical Association warned that the increase in alcohol consumption by young women will be reflected in a rise in drinking during pregnancy and, subsequently, will put more babies at risk of being damaged by alcohol while in the womb.

Raja Mukherjee, consultant psychiatrist at Surrey Borders Partnership NHS trust, has spent the past 18 months examining children who have been damaged by their mother's drinking during pregnancy and found that a high proportion of them have autism. The research has been presented at scientific meetings. Mukherjee, who has presented his findings to medical colleagues, declined to discuss them in detail before their publication in a medical journal but said: "Genetic conditions are by far the most common cause of autism but that is not to say that other things cannot cause it, and prenatal alcohol appears, possibly, to be [a cause]. "Unlike genetic conditions, this is 100% preventable."

Mukherjee has previously warned against any drinking during pregnancy and believes that even low levels of alcohol may endanger babies. Drinking during pregnancy can cause foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the umbrella term for a range of disorders - from minor anomalies such as low birth weight to severe FAS, the symptoms of which include mental retardation and facial abnormalities such as a short nose. The number of cases of FAS in Britain has increased in recent years. So far the government and medical bodies have given out conflicting messages about how much alcohol it is safe to drink during pregnancy.

Source





Hope for type 1 diabetes cure

RESEARCHERS are a step closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes after the successful transplantation of insulin-producing cells into eight patients. The breakthrough gives hope to the 140,000 Australians, who survive on daily insulin injections. Wayne Hawthorne, from the national pancreas and islet transplant unit at Westmead Hospital, said the experimental procedure might soon be a real option for everyone with type 1 diabetes, including children.

Scientists transplanted the insulin-producing islet cells from a donor pancreas into the patients' livers, where they began to produce insulin. In people who have type 1 diabetes, the body's immune system malfunctions, producing an auto-immune response that destroys these cells. After one treatment, the amount of insulin the patients needed to control blood glucose levels was dramatically reduced, in some cases to zero.

Mike Wilson, the chief executive of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in Australia, said the treatment effectively reversed diabetes. "This is an incredibly exciting step forward for both the type 1 diabetes community and for the world-class Australian researchers who are rapidly advancing in this area," he said.

Only patients with brittle (unstable) diabetes, where blood sugar drops dramatically without warning, have been treated so far, but Dr Hawthorne said the aim was to treat everyone with the disease. However, he said low organ donation rates meant islet transplants would remain out of reach unless another way to source the cells was found.

Fewer than 90 pancreases become available a year for this type of operation in Australia but more than 2000 people are newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Xenotransplantation, where animal cells are transplanted into humans, is an option being investigated. Last month scientists in the United States turned stem cells into insulin producers that responded to blood glucose levels. Islet cell transplants have been reliable and viable only in the past few years because there have been major scientific advances. About 200 patients worldwide have been treated, with 80 per cent of them not needing insulin injections 12 months later.

However, patients need potentially toxic immuno-suppressant drugs so their bodies do not reject the new cells, and the drugs have serious side effects that for some people are worse than the disease.

Last week collaborating researchers at St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne announced the successful transplantation of insulin-producing islet cells into a Victorian woman. Elaine Robinson, 54, no longer sufferers from life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks and needs to inject only a small fraction of the amount of insulin she was using previously. A planned second transplant could eliminate the need for insulin completely.

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!

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

Fertility Treatment is Hugely Successful but Largely Ignored by Medicine

I know nothing about the procedures promoted below but pass this on in case there are readers who want to look in to it. I tend to have a kneejerk reaction in favor of anything that has apparently been censored

NaProTECHNOLOGY (Natural Procreative Technology or NPT) is a dramatically successful, but not well known or practiced method of diagnosing and treating gynecological diseases and infertility in women. It is a morally acceptable and very cost effective method of restoring fertility, using a fertility-care based medical approach, rather than a fertility-control approach.

This new reproductive science works cooperatively with the natural fertility [menstrual] cycle. It has been developed as a series of medical applications based on a standardized assessment of the biomarkers of the fertility [menstrual] cycle, known as the Creighton Model FertilityCare System. It can be used to evaluate and treat infertility, miscarriage, irregular cycles, ovarian cysts, premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression and many other women's health conditions.

When used to treat infertility alone, NaProTechnology has a success rate of 76% in assisting couples to achieve pregnancy - remarkably superior to the 10-15% success rate of in vitro fertilization, and without the enormous financial cost and adverse emotional and other psychological effects of in vitro fertilization.

NPT was developed from thirty years of scientific research in the study of the normal and abnormal states of the menstrual and fertility cycles by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and the National Center for Women's Health in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Hilgers is currently a senior medical consultant in obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive medicine and surgery at the Pope Paul VI Institute and a clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Creighton University School of Medicine.

According to Dr. John B. Shea, medical consultant for LifeSiteNews.com, NPT has not been accepted by the majority of the medical profession because "in reference to female infertility, NPT competes against a well financed option, in vitro fertilization [IVF], that is already deeply entrenched in the marketplace and in political circles."

"Furthermore, physicians who might be interested in NPT experience a lot of peer pressure to view NPT as an oddball kind of medical care simply because they had not heard of it in medical school," Dr. Shea explained. "Also, since NPT originated in the Pope Paul VI Institute, there may also be an element of anti-Catholic bias and an element of 'go-along-to-get-along' pressure involved."

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), which maintains a fully staffed Office of Public Affairs in Washington D.C., and a web site that contains a vast amount of information on reproductive matters, does not have any information on NPT posted on its website. Chuck Weber has reported that a spokesperson for ASRM, when asked to comment on NPT, declined to comment, saying, "We tend to just ignore these people".

Source





Censorship built on junk arguments

The global campaign to ban junk food ads is based on junk science: there's little evidence children 'eat what they watch'. Patrick Basham and John Luik, co-authors of Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade, say it is folly to try to change people's diets and waistlines by banning ads for fatty foods.

A new global campaign to restrict junk food advertising to children is the public health equivalent of using a cricket bat to swat a fly. Such a ban would not just be an over-the-top, crude policy instrument - it is also deeply unscientific.

In the UK, there is currently a ban on such junk food adverts during television programmes that have a `particular appeal' to under-16s. The ban covers both programmes and channels aimed specifically at kids, and other programmes that have a relatively high audience of children. The aim of the new campaign, spearheaded by the London-based International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), is to go further than this: to ban television advertising between 6am and 9pm for foods high in fat, sugar and salt; to completely ban internet and new media advertising; and to prohibit the use of celebrities or cartoon characters, competitions and free gifts to promote `junk food'.

The IOTF's rationale rests upon a series of influential recent reports by the American Psychological Association, the US Institute of Medicine, the UK Food Standards Agency, and the UK television regulator, Ofcom. These reports claim that food advertising to children causes them to eat a diet that makes them overweight or obese. Consequently, it is alleged that restrictions on food advertising will reduce weight problems and obesity amongst young people.

If you peek behind the regulatory curtain, however, the claims about the causal influences of food advertising on children's diets and weight share a central and definitive flaw in their understanding of what counts as demonstrating causality. In order to establish an evidence-based case for food advertising as a cause of childhood overweight and obesity, one would have to demonstrate that such advertising had an independent effect on children's weight. This, in turn, would require a research study design that controlled for the multiple other risk factors (by some estimates dozens) connected with childhood obesity.

However, none of the studies purporting to demonstrate that food advertising causes childhood obesity control for more than a handful of these other risk factors. These studies therefore cannot establish an evidence-based case about the connection between food advertising and children's weight.

If food advertising caused children's weight gain and obesity, wouldn't you expect to find an increase in advertising that parallels the increase in obesity? This is not the case. UK food and drink ad spending has been falling in real terms since 1999 and is now roughly at 1982 levels, even while rates of overweight and obesity have been rising. Consider, too, that in 1982 food ads constituted 34 per cent of total television advertising, whereas in 2002 they made up only 18 per cent.

In the US, one finds a similar trend. According to the Federal Trade Commission, advertising during children's TV programming has declined by 34 per cent in recent years. Data from Nielsen surveys shows that food advertising on television has declined by 13 per cent since 1993.

If the level of advertising has not increased, perhaps the level of TV viewing has gone up? In fact, to the surprise of many, TV viewing has not increased during the period of the obesity `epidemic', and some observers suggest that it has not changed for children and adolescents for the past 40 years. There is some evidence that the time children spend watching TV has actually declined in recent years.

Furthermore, when children sit down to watch TV, they actually view a balanced presentation of foods. A unique British study looked at the food references and messages in regular programming, as opposed to those contained in food advertising. There were as many references to food within regular programming as during the adverts. Children's regular food programming contained references far more centred on so-called healthy foods. For example, fruit and vegetables were the most frequently portrayed foods in regular programming.

The IOTF will not tell you this, but there is also no proven connection between food advertising and food consumption patterns. There is a substantial econometric literature that disproves the alleged connection between advertising, diets and weight. Peter Kyle of the University of Lancaster examined the impact of food advertising on food consumption and found no evidence to support the popular myth that advertising will increase market size.

Martyn Duffy of the University of Manchester studied the impact of advertising on 11 food categories. Not only did advertising have no effect on food demand, but it also had virtually no effect on the demand for any individual food. Duffy's conclusions are hardly exceptional. Other studies into the effect of advertising of such items as breakfast cereals and biscuits, both frequently cited as bogeymen in the childhood obesity epidemic, have concluded that advertising did not affect market size in any general way or to any material extent.

Bob Eagle and Tim Ambler looked at the impact of advertising on chocolate consumption in five European countries in order to test the claim that a reduction in advertising would reduce consumption. They report no significant association between the amount of advertising and the size of the chocolate market. Eagle and Ambler's work is corroborated by evidence from the Canadian province of Quebec and from Sweden, both of which have had advertising bans on foods to children, Quebec since 1980. In both jurisdictions, however, there have not been significant reductions in childhood obesity or marked differences in obesity rates compared with other adjacent areas.

Brian Young of Exeter University studied the effects of food advertising on children's food choices for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Young found that children's food acceptance patterns and eating preferences develop in infancy. Therefore, they predate the influence of advertising. If children do prefer foods that are sweet, high in fat and salty, it is not because advertising created those preferences.

Despite the highly publicised claims to the contrary, the scientific evidence fails to provide a causal link between food advertising and children's eating patterns or weight. You cannot expect parents pushing their supermarket trolleys to be aware of this inconvenient truth. But the IOTF has no excuse for hauling obesity policy into this evidence-free zone.

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!

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