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.

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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.

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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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