Replacing the Fatropolis with Fit Towns

New `healthy towns' that encourage people to walk more, eat the right kind of food and stay forever fit take repression to a new level. Comment from Britain

`Salt `could fuel childhood obesity"' whispered one headline this week; `World is in obesity crisis' roared another. It seems barely a day passes without some report or policy announcement reminding us that the deep-fried fruits of modernity are dragging us to our gluttonous, sedentry doom. Change your ways, they exhort. However, if recent plans to redesign our towns as `fit towns' are anything to go by, instruction and guilt-tripping are giving way to something far more repressive.

The possibility of replanning and redesigning our towns in order to encourage healthy lifestyles was originally raised last November by UK health secretary, Alan Johnson. Citing `international evidence and research' that shows we `need a large-scale approach across the whole community to help tackle obesity' he suggested proposed eco-towns should also be made `healthy towns. through their layout, facilities and construction'. He concluded that our `built environment [must] do more to help people make physical activity a normal part of everyday life' (1).

In Boston last Sunday, the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science saw a similarly depressing nod to lifestyle management. Professor Philip James of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and, more importantly, chairman of the Brave-New-World-sounding International Obesity Taskforce, declared: `The environment in which we live is the overwhelming factor amplifying the obesity epidemic'. He continued, arguing that it was na‹ve to place `the onus on individuals making "healthier choices" while the environment in which we live is the overwhelming factor amplifying the epidemic' (2). Rena Wing of Brown University echoed the pessimistic view of individuals' capacity to make what the holier-than-thou alliance of policy makers and experts deem the right choices: `We live in an obesogenic environment that relies heavily on fast food, automobiles and remote controls - all of which can be labelled as "toxic" to maintaining a healthy weight.' (3)

The overarching aim of remaking our fatropolises as fit-towns is all too clear: as we can't be trusted to make the correct decisions, we, the public, shall be forcibly diverted from the dual-carriage way of temptation on to the fully pedestrianised area of righteousness.

Admittedly, some of the measures suggested seem innocuous enough. Stairwells, for instance, should be made to look less like badly lit fire escapes and made a bit more glamorous, spiral perhaps. And parks should be better maintained, with better lighting. Other proposals, however, are all too restrictive. For instance, some of the proposed towns should give priority to pedestrians and cyclists over the car, perhaps providing office premises with bike-only parking. And the bane of the obesity warrior's crusade, the fast food outlet, must never be erected near parks or schools. (4)

Of course there is nothing especially novel about urban planning, nor its political underpinnings. Take Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris between 1852 and 1870. With memories of the revolutionary commune of 1848 still fresh, Haussmann, under Napoleon III's instructions, demolished vast swathes of the city and built long, sweeping boulevards in their place. In doing so he both inhibited the erection of barricades and made it easy for the army to gain access. In other words the attempt to maintain social order was embodied in Parisians' lived environment.

Indeed, on a more general scale, our environment has long reflected the ruling needs of the moment. Richard Sennet in his 1997 book, The Fall of Public Man, saw in the bustling thoroughfares and concourses of the modern city the predominance of the private individual of bourgeois myth. Public space was made a mere function of private motion, of getting from a to b as quickly as possible. Strolling, meandering, and leisurely interacting with our fellows were incompatible with the manic industriousness demanded of the bourgeois individual.

Accepting that urban planning - the regulation of public space - or indeed, its absence, has always provided a mirror of society, then what does the notion of the fit town reflect? Whilst it is not concerned, as Napoleon III was, with the threat posed by social disorder, it is still dealing with a threat. This time however, the threat is not embodied in, say, the communards - it is not external at all. It is, rather, internal to each and every one of us. Fit towns combat our tendency to consume and to seek convenience - we are our own worst enemies. While fast food, remote controls or electric tooth brushes save labour, they're killing us.

Fit towns embody more than the war on obesity. They wage war on our consuming passions per se, be it a desire to light-up, to booze, or to go large on a Big Mac and fries. Above all they fight our tendency to err.

To borrow, then, from the increasingly martial lexicon of government policy, fit towns are located on the frontier of the war on error. The result, from the jarring positivity of phrases like the International Obesity Taskforce, or, indeed, the `fit town' itself is an environment every bit as deeply repressive as that evoked in their different ways by George Orwell or Aldous Huxley.

Source





Heart disease: we need medicine not moralism

Fear of rising heart deaths is unfounded. And if we're serious about lowering the death rate even further, we need better treatment not lifestyle lectures

This week, a number of news headlines have highlighted the deadly threat of heart disease in Britain: `Bank crises "increase rate of heart attacks"`, warned the UK Guardian on Tuesday. The day before, The Times (London) cautioned that `Young adults' inactivity puts them at risk of heart attack'.

The Guardian report is based on research from the University of Cambridge. Data from the World Bank and World Health Organisation over a 40-year period was analysed at Cambridge, where the researchers concluded that between 1,280 and 5,130 Brits `could die from heart attacks if there was a widespread repeat of the Northern Rock banking crisis' (1). Lead researcher David Stuckler said: `To put this effect in perspective, this is more than 10 times the number of British troops who have died in Iraq.' The researchers found that `cardiac deaths surge briefly and regularly every time there is a systemic bank failure' and it is the elderly that are at greatest risk.

But those of us aged 35 to 54 had better not be too complacent, we're told, because our lives may be cut short by our `live-now' lifestyles. Simon Capewell, professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Liverpool, said: `The flattening trends in mortality rates among young adults suggest that the cardiovascular disease epidemic is not being controlled.' He warned: `The party is over and complacency runs a high risk.'

Having recently lost both my mother and my uncle to heart disease, I am not about to advocate complacency. It is estimated that in the European Union, cardiovascular disease kills over two million people every year. Still, a little perspective would not go amiss. The fact is that despite the impression given by various newspaper headlines, heart disease is not on the rise. Instead, the concern voiced by some experts, and blown out of all proportion by others, is that the dramatic decrease in deaths from heart disease over the last few decades has started to flatten out.

In my view, the experts should be concerned. They should be continually trying to reduce deaths from heart disease. Clearly, a hell of lot more can be done to improve medical intervention: my mother died from a massive heart attack several months after being put on a waiting list for heart surgery. If she had been given the treatment she needed earlier she may still have been alive today. If the medical establishment could spend a little more time putting its own house in order and a little less time lecturing us about our `live-now' lifestyles, we may all be better off.

The warning that up to 5,000 people could lose their lives if we faced a massive banking crisis may be shocking. But these figures were arrived at using not-entirely-reliable computer models comparing associations between banking crises and cardiovascular disease deaths. Also, when we consider the Cambridge study's figures alongside the fact that there were 68,230 fewer deaths from heart disease in 2000 than there were in 1981 in England and Wales, the potential effect of a financial crisis no longer seems so shocking.

There was a 62 per cent reduction in deaths from heart disease among men and a 45 per cent reduction among women over two decades from 1981. Various factors have contributed to this dramatic decrease. A large-scale study in 2004 by Capewell indicates that 58 per cent of this decrease is due to a reduction in certain risk factors, such as smoking, and 42 per cent is due to the availability of more advanced medical and surgical treatments - although this study, too, was the product of a computer model (2). Today's heart scare is the result of scaremongers twisting what is actually a good news story: the dramatic decline in deaths from heart disease over the past 20 years. That this decline seems to be levelling off should be investigated, of course, but it should also be seen in the context of an overall successful war against death from heart disease.

We all know smoking is bad for us and don't need to be lectured any more about that. The effect of obesity and diet on our health and our hearts is much more uncertain and, to the extent that there is a problem, there is as yet no simple solution like there is with smoking - we can't exactly quit food. So, rather than telling us how to live, physicians should now concentrate on reducing mortality rates further by improving the availability and efficacy of medical intervention.

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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Taking to drink could cut heart disease risk (Maybe)

A new offering to the cholesterol religion

Middle-aged people who have never drunk alcohol can cut their risk of heart disease sharply by taking to the bottle - especially if it contains wine. US doctors have found that the new drinkers rarely overdid it, stuck to safe limits and cut their risk of heart disease by 38 per cent in four years.

Although drinking moderately has been shown to have benefits in many studies, doctors have until now always been unwilling to recommend non-drinkers to take it up. The new results may embolden them. A team from the Medical University of South Carolina looked at heart disease in 7,697 men and women aged 45 to 64, all of whom started out as non-drinkers. Of these, 6 per cent became moderate drinkers during the ten-year study. Typically this amounted to two drinks a day for men and one for women.

After an average of four years the new drinkers were found to have a 38 per cent lower chance of developing heart or artery disease than those who continued to spurn alcohol. New drinkers who consumed only wine appeared to benefit most, according to the findings published in The American Journal of Medicine. Their risk of a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke was 68 per cent lower than non-drinkers. People who preferred other drinks, such as beer or spirits, had an advantage over teetotallers, but not to a significant degree. There was no overall effect on death rates, probably because the study was too short to detect any decline through heart disease, or any increase because of cancer.

Dana King, who led the team, wrote in the paper: "A substantial cardiovascular benefit from adopting moderate alcohol drinking in middle age appears supported by the study. "The findings suggest that, for carefully selected individuals, a `heart-healthy diet' may include limited alcohol consumption even among individuals who have not included alcohol previously."

Researchers saw differences in cholesterol level and blood pressure between the drinkers and non-drinkers. Levels of "bad" low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were significantly lower among new drinkers, and levels of "good" high-density lipoprotein cholesterol higher.

Source





Aspirin could help to reduce risk of breast cancer by 20%

But aspirin routinely causes stomach bleeding! Surely we can't have that? Ban aspirin!

Drugs such as aspirin may help to reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 20 per cent, according to a review of past studies. Experts analysed 21 studies involving more than 37,000 women and found an overall decreased risk for those taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). They could also play a role in treating women who have breast cancer.

The researchers said that more studies were needed on the ideal type of drug, dose and duration, and that they had not considered the side-effects. High doses can increase the risk of heart attacks and other health problems. The researchers concluded: "There may be a role for NSAIDs in combination with endocrine therapies as either an adjuvant or palliative treatment for women with established breast cancer."

Ian Fentiman, Professor of Oncology at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, carried out the study, published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

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!

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

Short people could live longer

And pigs might fly. Tall people are always shown as healthier in research

Evidence of a link between height and longevity has been found by scientists, suggesting that some short people will live longer than their taller peers. Normal variation in human height is due to a blend of environmental factors, notably diet, and genetic factors. Now one such inherited factor that could extend the human lifespan by as much as one third in theory has been uncovered, though it may come at the cost of a few inches in height.

The work also suggests that the [inappropriate] use of growth hormone as an anti-ageing medicine may actually be shortening lifespan. And it confirms the emerging view among scientists that rather than being a passive, haphazard process of wear and tear, some people may be blessed with genes that make them more likely to live to a ripe old age. [So that is new??]

Earlier work by a French team showed that mice lacking one copy of the gene IGF-1 live on average 26 per cent longer than normal, with females enjoying a bigger advantage (33 per cent increase in lifespan) than males (16 per cent increase). Damping down the same pathway of the metabolism also resulted in extension of lifespan in yeasts, worms, and flies too. And the same pathway is affected by diets low in calories, the only proven way to extend lifespan.

Now a study by Prof Nir Barzilai, Director, Institute for Aging Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, reveals that the same gene is involved in the "oldest old" of people, revealing in the long run how to postpone the physiological ageing process.

Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) levels have previously been linked with both ageing and body size, with evidence showing that decreased levels of IGF-1 predispose the animals for short stature, but increased longevity. To determine if IGF-1 plays a role in human longevity, Prof Barzilai, Dr Yousin Suh and colleagues looked for variations in the gene within a group of Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians and their children.

The researchers used Ashkenazi individuals with no history of familial longevity, matched for age and sex as controls. Comparing the two groups, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that centenarians and their offspring were more likely to have a variety of mutations in the IGF-1 receptor which reduced the effects of the factor. As had been shown by the mouse work, the less active IGF-1 pathway had bigger effects on women than men and led to shorter stature.

The work shows that this pathway plays a role in human longevity, which provides new clues as to how to boost lifespan by damping down the action of IGF-1, and other molecules that play a part in this piece of metabolic machinery. "Practically, this discovery supports the notion that growth hormone, which is injected as anti-ageing medicine in the US (and other countries) maybe dangerous, because it is the people who have low growth hormone levels that are living longer," Prof Barzilai tells The Daily Telegraph. "So avoiding growth hormone may increase ones longevity."

The team does not yet know if longevity is assured by having low growth hormone action throughout life, or whether it is enough to have it decreased at a certain age. "The fact is that growth hormone levels and actions are decreased in old age," he adds.

His team has found other longevity genes - notably CETP and APOC3 - that are also under study to see if there is potential to make anti ageing drugs, though it is too early to speculate on when people will benefit from this understanding.

Source






New 'thin pill' could replace surgery

A new generation of diet pills that could achieve the same dramatic weight loss as surgery could be available within a decade. A team at University College London is working towards developing a weight loss pill that makes people feel they are full after eating a small amount of food. The stomach has to expand to digest food, the basic process by which the body harvests calories from meals, but scientists have found a way of stopping this from happening.

The pill could offer an alternative to stomach stapling - gastroplasty - in which a band or surgery is used to reduce the size of the stomach. This can result in weight loss of up to 7st in a year. However, surgery can be risky with one in every 100 patients dying within 12 months. The potential new drug is described in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics by Dr Brian King and Dr Andrea Townsend-Nicholson. "It is chemical gastric banding," said Dr Townsend-Nicholson, adding that the pill could be available for use within five to 10 years.

The team found two proteins - P2Y1 and P2Y11 - which are receptors that pick up signals from nerves to control the size of the gut. These were identified in the guinea pig, but are also present in humans. Dr King said: "This would be a brand new approach to weight control." Dr Brian King says: "The mechanisms we have identified are important to the normal workings of the stomach - a hollow organ which actively relaxes to help accommodate the size of your meal.

The human stomach has a 'resting' internal volume of 75 millilitres (one tenth of a pint) but, by relaxing its muscular wall, can expand to an internal volume of two litres (3.5 pints) or more - a 25-fold increase in the volume it can accept. "This expansion is controlled by nerves inside the stomach wall and these release molecules that stimulate the P2Y1 and P2Y11 receptor proteins embedded in muscle cells in the gut wall. The mechanism of this slow relaxation of the stomach might represent a future drug target in the fight to control weight gain and reverse obesity. "We are looking to identify drugs that would block the P2Y11 receptor and, therefore, prevent slow relaxation of the stomach. As a result of blocking the P2Y11-based mechanism, meal size would be smaller, offering the person a better chance of regulating their food intake.

"This would be a brand new approach to weight control. At present, the most successful way to help obese patients lose weight is gastric banding or stomach stapling, both of which reduce the maximum volume of the stomach. "But these are also tricky surgical procedures, not without attendant risks. A pill that could replace this surgery, yet have the same effect, might be a useful alternative."

If the gastric bypass is anything to go by, there may be side effects. In the wake of stomach stapling, high fibre foods and foods with a more dense, natural consistency can become very difficult to eat relative to highly refined foods. There can be vomiting and severe discomfort if food is not properly chewed or if food is eaten too quickly. However, the UCL team believes that any possible side effects of chemical gastric banding are likely to outweigh the adverse health consequences of obesity.

Figures released in January showed that more than one million prescriptions for obesity drugs are now given to patients by GPs.

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!

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

Some Experts Doubt Obesity Epidemic

Go on, have another doughnut. According to some experts whose views are public health heresy, the jury is still out on how dangerous it is to be fat. "The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated," said Dr. Vincent Marks, emeritus professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey. Marks is among a minority of skeptics who doubt the severity of the obesity problem. They claim that the data about the dangers of obesity are mixed and there is little proof that being fat causes problems including high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. Such views contradict nearly everything doctors have been saying for years.

Being fat has long been blamed for conditions like diabetes, which can lead to heart, kidney and nerve diseases. There is also increasing evidence that certain cancers may be linked to weight gain. "The evidence linking obesity to diabetes and cardiovascular disease is very strong," said Dr. James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado. "Type two diabetes rarely happens in people who aren't obese."

But obesity contrarians say that there's no data proving why being fat - in itself - would be dangerous. "There's no good causal connection," said Eric Oliver, author of Fat Politics and a political science professor at the University of Chicago. Blaming obesity for diabetes and heart attacks, Oliver says, is like blaming lung cancer on bad breath rather than on smoking. Excess weight may actually be a red herring, Oliver says, since other factors like exercise, diet or genetic predispositions towards diseases are harder to measure than weight.

In addition to questioning the dangers of being fat, researchers like Marks also criticize oft-repeated alarmist projections about the rise in obesity - like the British government's warning that nearly half of Britain will be obese by 2050. Those simply aren't based on good evidence, they say. According to national health statistics released last month, from 1993 to 2006, "relatively little change" was noted in weight gain, with men and women gaining an average of about 4 kilograms (9 pounds). In children, no significant gains were recorded.

The main problem, obesity skeptics say, is that too many people are considered fat, with the obese and overweight often lumped together. "Being moderately plump is not a health disadvantage," Marks said. "Some overweight people may not look svelte, but they may be perfectly healthy." As defined by the World Health Organization, anyone with a body mass index above 25 is overweight, and anyone above 30 is obese. Most experts agree the distinctions are imperfect and somewhat arbitrary.

Moreover, Marks and others point to research showing the benefits of a few extra kilos (pounds). In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finding that overweight people typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen other studies have come to the same conclusion.

Outrage ensued. Prominent health experts called the research flawed and worried that people would gleefully supersize their meals. "I think some experts found it disturbing that we actually said that overweight people have a lower death risk," Flegal said. In other research, Flegal and colleagues found there to be almost no link between death rates and weight. "The relationship between weight and disease and survival is very complex and we don't have a good handle on why some of these things are related and others are not," Flegal said. She suggested that being fat may help you survive some conditions, but not others.

Doctors have long struggled to explain the obesity paradox - the mystery that in certain conditions like heart attacks, fat patients often have better odds of surviving than thin people. Some experts hypothesize that fat peoples' hearts already work harder than those of thin people, thus giving them a natural edge when their bodies are stressed. "We don't want people to think it's ok to be heavier," said Hill. "But not everybody who gains weight is going to get heart disease or diabetes," he said.

Some obesity skeptics question the motives of experts who make dire predictions about obesity. With millions of dollars for obesity researchers, an industry of anti-fat drugs, and a boom in the number of doctors offering surgeries like stomach-stapling, the more fat people there are, the more profits there will be in selling them solutions.

Experts on both sides of the obesity debate have often criticized WHO's overweight and obesity measures, saying they are too low. When WHO defined the body mass index scores constituting normal, overweight and obese, they appeared to be the result of an independent expert committee convened by WHO. Yet the 1997 Geneva consultation was held jointly with the International Obesity Task Force, an advocacy group whose self-described mission is "to inform the world about the urgency of the (obesity) problem."

According to the task force's most recent available annual report, more than 70 percent of their funding came from Abbott Laboratories and F. Hoffman La-Roche, companies which make top-selling anti-fat pills. The task force remains one of Europe's most influential obesity advocacy groups and continues to work closely with WHO.

The blurred lines between pharmaceutical money and obesity groups have also caused concern in Britain. In 2006, one of the country's top obesity doctors quit the organization he founded to combat obesity, the National Obesity Forum, complaining that its goals had been skewed by drug money. "There's not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a huge amount in making sure it stays a big problem," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health care policy at Johns Hopkins University.

Still, while skeptics insist that obesity warnings must be taken with a grain of salt, nearly all agree that while a little bit of extra padding may not be too deadly, too much almost certainly is. "The vast majority of people who get labeled under the obesity epidemic are well under 300 pounds and probably are not facing big health consequences," Oliver said. "It's the morbidly obese people who should be worried."

Source





Snow eating now endangered kid pleasure



To the list of simple childhood pleasures whose safety has been questioned, add this: eating snow. A recent study found that snow - even in relatively pristine spots like Montana and the Yukon - contains large amounts of bacteria. Parents who warn their kids not to eat dirty snow (especially the yellow variety) are left wondering whether to stop them from tasting the new-fallen stuff, too, because of Pseudomonas syringae, bacteria that can cause diseases in bean and tomato plants.

But experts say there's no need to banish snow-eating along with dodgeball, unchaperoned trick-or-treating and riding a bike without a helmet. "It's a very ubiquitous bacteria that's everywhere," says Dr. Penelope Dennehy, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on infectious diseases. "Basically, none of the food we eat is sterile. We eat bacteria all the time." Children practically bathe in bacteria when they go to the playground, and Dennehy says they won't get anything from snow that they wouldn't get from dirt. "We eat stuff that's covered with bacteria all the time, and for the most part it's killed in the stomach," says Dr. Joel Forman, a member of the pediatric academy's committee on environmental health. "Your stomach is a fantastic barrier against invasive bacteria because it's a very acidic environment."

There are exceptions. "Tiny kids on formula a lot of times don't have the acid in their stomachs," making them more vulnerable to bacteria in general, says Dr. Lynnette Mazur, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical School. Also, Forman and Mazur say that Pseudomonas can be a threat to people with cystic fibrosis.

The study, published last week in the journal Science, didn't examine the effects on people. And experts say without further information, it is impossible to say what the bacteria could do to a child who eats extraordinary amounts. "I can say that I'm not aware of any clinical reports of children becoming ill from eating snow. And I looked," Forman says.

In any case, because of ordinary air pollution in snow, it's probably wise not to eat a lot of the stuff, pediatricians say. For parents in search of guidance, Mazur offers this: Licking a little snow off a glove is probably OK. "A meal of snow" is not.

Some parents say they are not going to worry about their kids eating snow that looks clean. "My snow-eating concerns are generally more of the dirt-urine variety," says Kristin Lang, 37, of Maplewood, N.J., whose 2-year-old son Charlie has swallowed his share of snow. "When I heard bacteria, at first I went 'eew,'" says Tricia Sweeney, a mother of three in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. But as long as the kids eat snow as it's falling, "I think it's OK. I tell them not to eat it if it's on the ground."

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!

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

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OLDER WOMEN STOP TAKING HRT?

The headline on the article below is misleading. What it refers to is the controversial WHI study -- in which a clinical trial was stopped after old ladies on HRT pills seemed to be getting more cancer. Subsequent analyses, however concluded that the panic was unwarranted. So the claim that cancer risk "continues" is ill-informed. Any cancer risk shown in the original study was vanishingly small. See here and here for instance.

The panic reaction did however set the scene for another interesting study -- of what happens when women go off HRT. Are women who once took HRT more at risk than those on placebo? It was found that such women were at NO greater risk of heart events but did get more breast cancer (3.5% of the HRT group got cancer versus 2.7% for the non-HRT group). Clearly, however, the degree of risk was small in any case and the elevation of risk would be unlikely to be of much concern to most women. Taking ANY drug entails some risk of side effects and it is the balance between benefit and harm that rational users have to consider.

Of greater interest was the study of what happens when you consider ALL the illnesses that the old ladies concerned got. HRT therapy has some apparent favourable impacts on disease as well as adverse impacts. It was reported that the difference in disease incidence overall was quite minute (2.9% versus 2.4%). Once again, then, we see quite unjustified panic. Popular article followed by journal abstract below

Cancer risk continues even after women stop hormone treatment

Hormone replacement therapy continues to increase the risk of cancer even after a woman stops taking it, a study has shown. Three years after treatment ceased, the risk of breast cancer remained 27 per cent higher while risks of any type of cancer were 24 per cent higher. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, imply that cancer risks persist, while other health risks such as blood clots and strokes - which are elevated while the women were taking the pills - returned to normal.

The results come from a follow-up to the Women's Health Initiative study, which gave warning in 2002 of cancer risks while taking HRT. After those findings were published and backed by results from the Million Women Study in 2003, about half the two million British women who had been taking HRT stopped. More recently, the health initiative study has been criticised for failing to break down the results by age. Among women in their fifties, defenders of HRT said, the risks were much smaller.

The new study, led by Gerardo Heiss, of the University of North Carolina, follows 15,730 women originally included in the trial, with an average age of 63. All had been randomised to take either the combined HRT pill (oestrogen plus progestagen, called progestin in the US) or a placebo.

In 2002, when researchers discovered an increased risk of breast cancer and heart and artery disease in women assigned to HRT, the trial was terminated. All the women were advised to stop taking the pills. The study looks at what happened in the following three years, up to 2005. At the end of that time the numbers of heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in women from both the active and placebo treatment groups were similar, showing that the risk of cardio-vascular disease had fallen substantially for former HRT users. While taking the treatment, the women had experienced a 29 per cent increased risk of heart attacks, a 41 per cent increased risk of strokes and nearly twice the normal risk of serious blood clots. These returned to normal after stopping.

But the increased risk of breast cancer remained at about the same level. During the follow-up study there were 63 more diagnoses of cancer among former HRT users than among women who did not have the treatment, or three per 1,000 participants per year. Marcia Stefanick, one of the study authors, from Stanford University, California, said: "The continued increased risk of breast cancer clearly plays a role in the increased overall risk of cancer, years after stopping long-term oestrogen plus progestin therapy, and it is important that we continue to follow these women." Leslie Ford, from the US National Institutes of Health, which funded the Women's Health Initiative, said: "The hormones' effects on breast cancer appear to linger. These findings reinforce the importance of women getting regular breast exams and mammograms even after they stop hormone therapy."

A summary of risks and benefits, called the "global index", was included in the results and covered outcomes for heart disease, invasive breast cancer, stroke, lung blood clots, cancer of the womb lining, bowel cancer, hip fracture and death. This overall measure showed an increased risk of 12 per cent for women taking HRT, which did not change after treatment stopped.

Michael Lauer, director of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the US National Institutes of Health, said: "This study provides further evidence that five years of combination hormone therapy is harmful. All the accumulated risks do not simply disappear."

The advice from drug regulators in Britain is that HRT should be used for the control of symptoms of the menopause at the minimum effective dose and for the shortest possible time. That maximises the benefit and reduces the risks, since the evidence is that most of the damaging effects of HRT occur after the age of 60. In particular, HRT in younger women appears to cut heart attacks rather than increase them.

The new study does not attempt to break down the results by age so it is impossible to tell whether the persistent cancer risk is age-related. In the US, some researchers have linked a rapid fall in breast-cancer rates of 6.3 per cent in 2003 to the abandonment of HRT by so many women. The new trial fails to corroborate this claim because it contained too few women to detect a change of this order. Further follow-up was needed, the authors said.

Source

Health Risks and Benefits 3 Years After Stopping Randomized Treatment With Estrogen and Progestin

By Gerardo Heiss et al.

Context: The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial of estrogen plus progestin vs placebo was stopped early, after a mean 5.6 years of follow-up, because the overall health risks of hormone therapy exceeded its benefits.

Objective: To report health outcomes at 3 years (mean 2.4 years of follow-up) after the intervention was stopped.

Design, Setting, and Participants: The intervention phase was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) 0.625 mg daily plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) 2.5 mg daily, in 16 608 women aged 50 through 79 years, recruited by 40 centers from 1993 to 1998. The postintervention phase commenced July 8, 2002, and included 15,730 women.

Main Outcome Measures: Semi-annual monitoring and outcomes ascertainment continued per trial protocol. The primary end points were coronary heart disease and invasive breast cancer. A global index summarizing the balance of risks and benefits included the 2 primary end points plus stroke, pulmonary embolism, endometrial cancer, colorectal cancer, hip fracture, and death due to other causes.

Results: The risk of cardiovascular events after the intervention was comparable by initial randomized assignments, 1.97% (annualized rate) in the CEE plus MPA (343 events) and 1.91% in the placebo group (323 events). A greater risk of malignancies occurred in the CEE plus MPA than in the placebo group (1.56% [n = 281] vs 1.26% [n = 218]; hazard ratio [HR], 1.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.48). More breast cancers were diagnosed in women who had been randomly assigned to receive CEE plus MPA vs placebo (0.42% [n = 79] vs 0.33% [n = 60]; HR, 1.27; 95% CI, 0.91-1.78) with a modest trend toward a lower HR during the follow-up after the intervention. All-cause mortality was somewhat higher in the CEE plus MPA than in the placebo group (1.20% [n = 233] vs 1.06% [n = 196]; HR, 1.15; 95% CI, 0.95-1.39). The global index of risks and benefits was unchanged from randomization through March 31, 2005 (HR, 1.12; 95% CI, 1.03-1.21), indicating that the risks of CEE plus MPA exceed the benefits for chronic disease prevention.

Conclusions: The increased cardiovascular risks in the women assigned to CEE plus MPA during the intervention period were not observed after the intervention. A greater risk of fatal and nonfatal malignancies occurred after the intervention in the CEE plus MPA group and the global risk index was 12% higher in women randomly assigned to receive CEE plus MPA compared with placebo.

JAMA. 2008;299(9):1036-1045





DOES PSYCHOLOGY ALONE BENEFIT DEPRESSED PEOPLE?

I commented recently on the inconclusive study of Prozac and similar drugs which showed that in some groups the drugs helped a lot but in others the drugs seemed to help not at all. I concluded that the real challenge of the finding lay in sorting out which patients would be in the benefited group.

The study below gets an opportunistic boost off that finding. "If the pills don't work, what does?" is their question. It is however a most incompetent study with no placebo group so should be disregarded. One might remark in fact that the apparent benefits reported for psychological therapy were rather what one would expect from a placebo effect. Popular article followed by journal abstract below

Depressed teenagers whose medication is not working should switch medications and start cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a specific type of psychotherapy, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study involved 334 patients with major depressive disorder, aged 12 to 18 years. All of the participants had taken an antidepressant called an SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) for two months, with no improvement in symptoms. For the next 12 weeks, they were divided into four groups. The first group switched to a different SSRI (paroxetine, citalopram or fluoxetine); the second group switched to a different SSRI and were given CBT, while the third group switched to venlafaxine -- a different type of antidepressant called an SNRI (serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor) -- and the fourth group switched to venlafaxine and were also given CBT. Of those who switched to a combination of medication and CBT, 55 per cent showed improvement, regardless of the drug type. Only 41 per cent of those who simply switched medication showed an improvement in symptoms after 12 weeks.

Source

Switching to Another SSRI or to Venlafaxine With or Without Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents With SSRI-Resistant Depression

By David Brent et al.

Context: Only about 60% of adolescents with depression will show an adequate clinical response to an initial treatment trial with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). There are no data to guide clinicians on subsequent treatment strategy.

Objective: To evaluate the relative efficacy of 4 treatment strategies in adolescents who continued to have depression despite adequate initial treatment with an SSRI.

Design, Setting, and Participants: Randomized controlled trial of a clinical sample of 334 patients aged 12 to 18 years with a primary diagnosis of major depressive disorder that had not responded to a 2-month initial treatment with an SSRI, conducted at 6 US academic and community clinics from 2000-2006.

Interventions Twelve weeks of: (1) switch to a second, different SSRI (paroxetine, citalopram, or fluoxetine, 20-40 mg); (2) switch to a different SSRI plus cognitive behavioral therapy; (3) switch to venlafaxine (150-225 mg); or (4) switch to venlafaxine plus cognitive behavioral therapy.

Main Outcome Measures: Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement score of 2 or less (much or very much improved) and a decrease of at least 50% in the Children's Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R); and change in CDRS-R over time.

Results: Cognitive behavioral therapy plus a switch to either medication regimen showed a higher response rate (54.8%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 47%-62%) than a medication switch alone (40.5%; 95% CI, 33%-48%; P = .009), but there was no difference in response rate between venlafaxine and a second SSRI (48.2%; 95% CI, 41%-56% vs 47.0%; 95% CI, 40%-55%; P = .83). There were no differential treatment effects on change in the CDRS-R, self-rated depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, or on the rate of harm-related or any other adverse events. There was a greater increase in diastolic blood pressure and pulse and more frequent occurrence of skin problems during venlafaxine than SSRI treatment.

Conclusions: For adolescents with depression not responding to an adequate initial treatment with an SSRI, the combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and a switch to another antidepressant resulted in a higher rate of clinical response than did a medication switch alone. However, a switch to another SSRI was just as efficacious as a switch to venlafaxine and resulted in fewer adverse effects.

JAMA. 2008;299(8):901-913.

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

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!

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

Study links heavy cell phone use to cancer

Another stupid epidemiological study relying on self-reports. If they had asked enough questions, they would probably have found several correlates of tumor incidence -- all by chance

Scientists claim to have found a link between heavy cell phone usage and cancer of the salivary gland. The researchers suggest people use handsfree cell phones to avoid a risk.

The findings by Siegal Sadetzki, an epidemiologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and colleagues appear in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The group found that heavy cell phone users faced a higher risk of both benign and malignant tumors in the gland.

People who used a cell phone heavily on the side of the head where the tumor developed were found to have an about 50 percent higher risk for developing a tumor of the main salivary gland, or parotid, compared to noncell phone users, the researchers wrote.

The study was done on Israelis, which is a key because Israelis adopted cell phone technology early and use it heavily, Sadetzki said. Thus the exposure to phone radiation found in this study was higher than in previous studies."This unique population has given us an indication that cell phone use is associated with cancer," added Sadetzki.

The study investigated nearly 500 people diagnosed with salivary gland tumors, and compared them to 1,300 healthy subjects. Participants were asked to detail how often and how long they typically talked on cell phones. The study also found an increased risk of cancer for heavy users who lived in rural areas. Because there are fewer antennas, cell phones in rural areas need to emit more radiation to communicate effectively.

Sadetzki predicts that, over time, the greatest effects will be found in heavy users and children. Risks from cell phones have been hard to prove, mainly due to the long time it takes cancer to develop, she said. "This technology is here to stay," Sadetzki said. "I believe precautions should be taken in order to diminish the exposure." She recommends people use handsfree devices, and hold the phone away from one's body. Less frequent and shorter calls are also preferable, she added.

Children may be more susceptible, so parents should limit youngsters' cell phone use and insist they use speakers or handsfree devices, she added. "Some technology that we use today carries a risk. The question is not if we use it, but how we use it."

Precisely how cell phones could affect the body is unclear, but a recent Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority study found their radiation might subtly change the biochemical makeup of skin. That research appeared in the Feb. 11 online issue of the journal BMC Genomics.

Source






Insurers cash in on "obesity" hysteria

It's actually people of middling weight who live longest so this is just a scam

A "Fat tax" is being imposed on the obese, with life insurance firms charging at least 50 per cent more on their premiums. The increased charge can be as much as 300 per cent if obese applicants fall into other high-risk health categories, such as being a smoker or having previous medical conditions. All major insurance companies have introduced the policy, according to brokers.

Lifebroker Financial Assurance, Australia's leading online life insurance broker, told The Sunday Telegraph that overweight people should expect to pay higher premiums. Chantelle Pain, insurance consultant with the firm, said: "Some insurers are more lenient than others, but the premium which obese people pay ranges from 50 per cent extra. "Being significantly overweight means you are at greater risk of contracting certain diseases. It is the same as increasing a smoker's premium or someone who has previous medical conditions."

A body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more is attracting the price hike. This is assessed when you fill out an application form that requires you to provide your personal details including height and weight. A BMI of 20 to 25 for adults is considered healthy, but some doctors believe a BMI figure may not always be an accurate measure of health, as athletes often have a high weight-to-height due to the muscles built up for their sport.

For a healthy, non-smoking 55-year-old man with no weight problems, life insurance should cost about $1700 a year for $500,000 of cover. If he were obese, the annual premium could cost an extra $850.

While agreeing "there has to be consequences for lifestyle choices", Dr Steve Hambleton, a spokesman for the Australian Medical Association in Queensland, said companies were simply cashing in on the country's obesity crisis. "It seems rather opportunistic of insurers to be adding as much as 50 per cent on simply because someone is obese," he said.

Source

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

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does obesity cause diabetes?

That obesity causes diabetes is almost a mantra. I think I see it claimed or implied at least once a day. See the article immediately below this one, for instance. So I decided to look at the evidence behind the claim. I looked at what appear to be the two most cited articles on the question -- by Seidell and by Mokdad et al..

Neither article goes any where near proving the claim. Seidell, in fact, notes the differing relationship between weight and diabetes in Asia versus the West and makes the entirely sensible observation that the two things are "common consequences of changing lifestyles" -- NOT directly linked, in other words. Both, for instance, could be a consequence of (say) reduced exercise.

And the Mokdad article is quite naive. It shows that fatties are more likely to have diabetes but again enables no causal inferences. Additionally, it does not allow for the curvilearity that is known to feature in relationships with obesity. In other words, it combines moderately overweight people with grossly overweight people -- which fies in the face of the fact that it is people of middling weight who live longest. It could be just the real fatties who tend to get diabetes at an accelerated rate.

And genetic effects are, of course, not mentioned anywhere, despite all we know (and have known for a long time) about the genetic influence on body weight. It could be that a genetic difference causes both diabetes AND a larger fat mass. So even severe dieting would not chase that pesky diabetes-causing gene away.

The fact that prevalence of diabetes has been increasing would seem at first to discount a genetic influence but it does not, of course. Many genetic influences need environmental "triggers" to become dominant and we just don't know what environmental triggers might have come to the fore in recent years. How about increased crime causing both stress and overeating as a response to stress? Who knows?

As far as I can see, then, the alleged effect of fat on diabetes is just a guess. Ho hum! Just another instance of crap medical "wisdom".

I wonder do pigs get diabetes? Fat pigs are a byword. And pigs are a pretty good animal model for human beings. Pig tissue is even used for direct implantation into human hearts! Rodent models always have dubious generalizability but I think I would believe a double-blind study with pigs.

So, you see, I am not like those (such as the Global Warmists) for whom no evidence will count. I have just specified precisely what evidence would convince me. And nor would the evidence concerned be hard to gather. You might even get some good bacon at the end of it! Yum!





Jungle frog’s anti-infection agent may help millions of diabetics

A nocturnal frog that dwells in the ponds and lagoons of the Amazon could prove to be an unlikely lifesaver for millions of people suffering from diabetes, researchers say. The South American “paradoxical frog” (Pseudis paradoxa) owes its name to an uncanny ability to shrink as it grows older. Scientists studying the properties of its slimy skin have found a substance that can stimulate the release of insulin, the vital hormone that is deficient in sufferers from diabetes.

Scientists have made an artificial copy of the peptide, a protein-building block that protects the frog from infection, and have suggested that it could be used to boost insulin production in people with Type 2 diabetes. In laboratory tests, researchers found that the paradoxical frog’s peptide, known as pseudin-2, increased release of insulin in cultured cells by 50 per cent. However, more work must be carried out before the therapy is ready to be tested on human patients.

Currently there are 2.3 million diagnosed sufferers from diabetes in the UK, most of whom have the Type 2 form of the disease. Usually occurring in middle age, Type 2 diabetes is strongly associated with lifestyle factors such as obesity and develops because the body does not produce enough insulin or becomes resistant to the concentrations available.

The joint team from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and United Arab Emirates University believe that a synthetic version of pseudin-2 could join a new class of medicines, called incretin mimetics, that help diabetics to control their condition when dietary changes or other medicines have failed.

The skin secretions of frogs and other amphibians are being investigated as a rich source of biological agents that may lead to new drugs. Byetta, a diabetes drug based on the saliva of an endangered lizard, the Gila monster of North America, is already available in the UK. But scientists believe that the frog’s secretions could be even more effective. Paradoxical frogs are one of the few animals whose young are bigger than their parents, with tadpoles growing up to 27cm (11in) in length while the mature frogs are only about 4cm long.

Yasser Abdel-Wahab, senior lecturer in biomedical sciences at the University of Ulster, said that the chemistry of amphibian peptides was very similar to that of some mammalian counterparts that help to regulate blood sugar. He studied samples from several different species of frog before finding the desired effect, he said. “We are at an exciting stage with this research,” he said. “We have tested a more potent synthetic version of the pseudin-2 peptide and have found that it has the potential for development into a compound for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. Now we need to take this a step further and put our work into practice to try and help people with Type 2 diabetes. “More research is needed, but there is a growing body of work around natural anti-diabetic drug discovery that is already yielding fascinating results.” Further details of the research will be presented today at the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference in Glasgow.

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!

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

Spanking may lead to sexual problems later (?)

Out of the zillions of studies on corporal punishment, the guy apparently found only FOUR that supported his prejudices! And three of those are unpublished! What about all the other studies? The guy is just a missionary, not a scientist

Children whose parents spank them or otherwise inflict physical punishment may be more likely to have sexual problems later, according to research to be presented Thursday to the American Psychological Association. The analysis of four studies by Murray Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire-Durham, suggests that children whose parents spanked, slapped, hit or threw objects at them may have a greater chance of physically or verbally coercing a sexual partner, engaging in risky sexual behavior or engaging in masochistic sex, including sexual arousal by spanking. "It increases the chances of sexual problems," though "it's not a one-to-one causation," Straus says.

Elizabeth Gershoff, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, who reviewed 80 years of spanking research in 2002 in the APA's Psychological Bulletin, says Straus' work appears to be the first to link spanking with sexual problems. Gershoff says that though many children have been spanked (85% in one 2007 survey), problems may depend on how they process the spanking. "They may internalize that to mean that in loving relationships sometimes there's pain or physical aggression," she says. Another possible lesson is that "whoever is stronger and has more power can overpower the other person and use physical aggression to control the other person's behavior."

But linking sexual problems with spanking is a "big leap," says human-sexuality researcher John DeLamater of the University of Wisconsin. "It's probably one of many elements that might contribute to sex problems or risky sex, but it's a long leap."

Most children who are spanked escape from long-term harm, says Straus, 81, a sociology professor who says he occasionally spanked his own children but later became a staunch critic of spanking. His work on violence in families is regarded as landmark research. He is scheduled to present the studies today at the psychological association's Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships in Bethesda, Md. Three are yet unpublished; one has been submitted to a journal. He plans to include two in a book this year. The fourth was included in a 1994 book.

The two most recent studies examine sexual coercion and risky practices among 14,252 college students between 2001 and 2006. The third study, of 440 high school students from New Hampshire, examined risky sex, such as premarital sex without a condom. The fourth study, of 207 students from the Northeast, focused on masochistic sex. In each case, Straus found that those who had experienced corporal punishment had increased probability of coercing sex, risky sex or masochistic sex.

The literature on effectiveness of spanking to correct behavior is still "very mixed," says Robert Larzelere of Oklahoma State University, who has studied parents' disciplinary methods. "Like any discipline tactic, it depends on how it's used," he says.

Source





If you think British food is bad, wait until you see British army food

Prince Harry returned yesterday from Afghanistan clearly unbowed by the threat of serious injury, kidnapping or death from a Taliban attack. But he admitted that sinking, defeated feeling when faced with some of the dismal army food. Harry said: "Rations are miserable. I've been on rations now for, I can't remember how long. The guys here [in Afghanistan] have been on rations even longer than I have. They're fed-up with it."

Responding to the suggestion that Jamie Oliver could be drafted in to help boost morale with some ration recipes, he said: "Yeah, Jamie, please. Bangers and mash with gravy, in a bag, would be brilliant. I don't think you can screw that up. I'm sure someone would manage to, but bangers and mash with gravy in a bag would be awesome." Harry, who typically prefers Big Macs, spent weeks living on rations while operating around Musa Qala, the former Taliban stronghold. "There are people out in the villages who have got less stuff than us, so I suppose we should be happy with a corned beef hash," he said.

The prince has, however, broadened his culinary experiences in Afghanistan - eating goat curry with a unit of Gurkhas. "Everyone is well looked after here by the Gurkhas, the food is fantastic - goat curries, chicken curries . . . it's good fun." The Gurkhas praised Harry for his good manners, noting how he would visit the camp kitchen after every meal to thank the cook. "We are very lucky to have a prince on our team working with us," said Captain Yambahadur Rana. "He's getting on very well with our boys. He has even started learning a few Gurkha words."

The prince's culinary experiences were broadened further when he join Fijian troops on manoeuvres in the Afghan desert. Their rudimentary breakfast entailed blending butter and jam in a tub and then spreading it on a wholemeal biscuit.

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!

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

Now vitamin E is bad for you

But hey! Isn't it one of those marvellous "antioxidants"? Pesky! Note that Vitamin D has also recently been shown to be bad for you. Note also here, where antioxidants generally were found to be BAD for you. So sad for all the credulous pill-poppers!

People who take daily supplements of vitamin E have a higher risk of developing lung cancer, according to one of the largest studies into vitamins and health ever attempted. Doctors monitored the wellbeing of more than 77,000 men and women over a four-year period and found that a range of vitamins failed to protect against lung cancer, while vitamin E slightly increased the risk of developing the disease. The study suggested that taking 400mg of vitamin E for 10 years increases the risk of lung cancer by 28%. Taking 100mg of the vitamin each day raised the risk of disease by 7%.

According to Cancer Research UK, the lifetime risk of developing lung cancer is roughly 8% for men and 4% for women. An increase of 28% in that background risk would raise a man's risk to 10% and a woman's to 5%.

A team led by Christopher Slatore at the University of Washington in Seattle looked at 77,126 people aged between 50 and 76 years old who were taking part in a vitamins and lifestyle study called Vital. By following the patients over several years, they were able to link their risk of lung cancer with previous and ongoing vitamin usage.

Unsurprisingly, the doctors found that lung cancer was strongly correlated with smoking, a family history of the disease and increasing age, but were surprised to find a slight but significant rise in lung cancer linked to vitamin E. The effect was most prominent in current smokers.

People who took multivitamins, vitamin C or folate supplements had a risk of lung cancer similar to those who did not take supplements, according to the study, which appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "Our results should prompt clinicians to counsel patients that these supplements are unlikely to reduce the risk of lung cancer and may be detrimental," Slatore said.

In an accompanying editorial, Tim Byers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine says that many people use vitamins pills as a substitute for a healthy diet, but he said other compounds in fresh fruit and vegetables are also important. "Fruits contain not only vitamins but also many hundreds of other phytochemical compounds whose functions are not well understood," he writes.

Henry Scowcroft, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "The jury's still very much out on whether vitamin and mineral supplements can affect cancer risk. Some studies suggest a benefit, but many others show no effect and some, like this one, suggest they may even increase risk. "Research repeatedly shows that a healthy, balanced diet [And how do we define "balanced"?] can reduce your risk of some cancers while giving you all the vitamins you need. And quitting smoking remains the most effective way to avoid many cancers. There's no diet or vitamin supplement that could ever counter the toxic effects of cigarette smoke."

The charity added: "Supplements do not substitute for a healthy diet, although some people may be advised to take them at certain times in their lives. For example, doctors may advise women who are planning to have a baby to take a daily 400-microgram supplement of folic acid. And dark-skinned or elderly people may need to take vitamin D supplements since they need more sun exposure than other people to make enough vitamin D."

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!

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