Shorties less healthy

I get a bit tired of singing the same old song but once again we see that the role of social class is neglected. I can't be bothered to look up the studies but it has often been found by psychologists that taller people are more successful in life -- so shorties are more likely to be working class and working class peoiple are less healthy anyway. So what we observe below could well be a class effect rather than a shortness effect. That the effect is noticeable among women only may mean that tall women are particularly desired by high-status men. Note that models are always tall

Women with shorter legs may have an increased risk of liver disease, an extensive UK study suggests. Researchers looked at 4,300 women between the ages of 60 and 79. They found the shorter-legged women had higher levels of four liver enzymes which indicate how well the organ is working and if it has been damaged.

There is a growing body of evidence to link leg length and health, the Bristol University team wrote in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The reserachers randomly selected participants from the British Women's Health and Heart Study. They were drawn from 43 British towns.

Both leg and full height were measured, and blood samples taken to measure four liver enzymes: ALT, GGT, ALP and AST. The longer the leg length, the lower the levels of three of these enzymes. The team, led by Dr Abigail Fraser, speculated that their findings were linked to upbringing.

"Our interpretation of the results is that childhood exposures, such as good nutrition that influence growth patterns also influence liver development and therefore levels of liver enzymes in adulthood and/or the propensity for liver damage," they wrote. At the same time, they added, "greater height may boost the size of the liver, which may decrease enzyme levels so ensuring that the liver is able to withstand chemical onslaught more effectively." "This is a very interesting study and we would be keen to see any further research relating to these initial findings," said a spokesperson from the British Liver Trust.

"The study clearly asserts the importance of a healthy lifestyle [Rubbish!] particularly from a young age. We would like to encourage everyone to maintain a healthy diet in order to prevent themselves from fatty liver disease - something which is not alcohol related - which affects an estimated one in five people in the UK."

Source





Lung cancer 'link to lack of sun'

Groan! This time it is possible genetic and environmental differences that are overlooked. That the people of tropical and non-tropical climates ARE genetically different can be seen from skin-colour alone -- but I guess we are not allowed to mention that

Lack of sunlight may increase the risk of lung cancer, a study suggests. Researchers found lung cancer rates were highest in countries furthest from the equator, where exposure to sunlight is lowest. It is thought vitamin D - generated by exposure to sunlight - can halt tumour growth by promoting the factors responsible for cell death in the body. The University of California, San Diego study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Experts warn that exposure to sunlight is still the major cause of skin cancer - a disease which is on the increase around the world. Lung cancer kills more than one million people every year around the globe. The researchers examined data from 111 countries across several continents. They found smoking was most strongly associated with lung cancer rates - accounting for up to 85% of all cases. But exposure to sunlight, especially UVB light, the principal source of vitamin D for the body, also seemed to have an impact.

The amount of UVB light increases with proximity to the equator. The analysis showed lung cancer rates were highest in those countries furthest away from the equator and lowest in those nearest. Higher cloud cover and airborne aerosol levels were also associated with higher rates of the disease.

Lead researcher Dr Cedric Garland said lung cancer, in common with many other forms of the disease, usually began in the epithelial cells that line the surface of the tissues in the organ. Cancer results when cells start to divide in an uncontrolled fashion. He said vitamin D stimulated the release of chemicals which, in combination with calcium, formed a glue-like substance which bind these cells tightly together, and put a brake on their division. There was also evidence that vitamin D may also slow the progress of cancer once it develops.

Dr Garland also stressed that moderate exposure to sunlight did not significantly raise the risk of the most serious form of skin cancer, melanoma. He said the only form of skin cancer that was related to ordinary, moderate exposure to sunlight was squamous cell carcinoma, which killed far fewer people than lung cancer, and other forms of the disease which might also be prevented by moderate exposure to the sun. Moderate exposure would be five to 15 minutes per day within two hours of midday, on mainly clear days, when season and temperature allow, with 40% of skin area exposed. A hat with a wide brim should be worn when in the sun for more than a few minutes, but sunscreen should be skipped during this period, as it prevents vitamin D synthesis.

Dr Kat Arney, of the charity Cancer Research UK, stressed that smoking was by far the biggest cause of lung cancer. She said: "There is growing evidence that vitamin D could help to reduce the risk of some cancers, such as bowel cancer, but the link between vitamin D and lung cancer is still unclear. "In this case, the researchers have not actually measured people's vitamin D levels, and there may be several other factors that need to be taken into account. "These include differences in sun protection behaviour in various countries, as well as differences in the way that cancer cases are registered. "We know that vitamin D is essential for good health, but the time in the sun needed to get enough vitamin D is much less than the time it takes to tan or burn."

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.

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

Class war over cancer

The article below says that poor people have worse disease outcomes -- with cancer particularly. But one of the most consistent findings we see when anyone looks at the social class basis of disease is that middle class people have better health -- even in countries with socialized medicine. So blaming the bad outcomes described below solely on lack of health insurance -- as is done below -- is disingenuous. There is no doubt that the quality of the health care accessed does make some difference but much of what is described below simply reflects the fact that middle-class people are healthier anyway -- for a variety of reasons.

People diagnosed with cancer who don't have health insurance are more likely to die because they are less likely to get screening tests and so are typically diagnosed with advanced disease, a new study from the American Cancer Society finds.

The finding proffers strong evidence that differences in cancer survival are directly related to lack of access to health care. "If you are uninsured, and you are diagnosed with cancer, you have a 60 percent greater chance of dying from cancer than if you were insured and diagnosed with cancer," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the cancer society. "There is not a cohort of insured and a cohort of uninsured cancer patients that have the same five-year survival," Brawley added. "It's always the uninsured who do worse."

Part of the problem is that uninsured people don't have access to screenings, Brawley said. "But part of it is that uninsured people don't have access to the best doctors or have access to good doctors who are overwhelmed. The end result is the quality of care the poor folks get is not as good as the quality of care of the wealthier or the insured," he said. There are also people who are underinsured, Brawley said. While these people have access to care, high co-pays and deductibles make the care unaffordable, particularly high-priced chemotherapy drugs, he noted.

"Where it becomes frightening and morally reprehensible is people who have significant pain and can't get narcotics and other pain medications they need, because they can't afford them," Brawley said. People don't realize they are underinsured until after they have gotten sick, Brawley said. "There are a substantial number of Americans who don't realize they are a cancer diagnosis away from economic disaster," he noted.

The study, in the January/February issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, used data from the National Cancer Database, which is the only national registry that collects data on patient insurance. The report is an overview of systems of health insurance in the United States. It has data on the association between health insurance, screening, stage at diagnosis, and survival for breast and colorectal cancer.

The link between access to care and cancer outcomes is particularly striking for cancers that can be prevented or found early by screening and for which there are effective treatments, including breast and colorectal cancer. Only about 38.1 percent of uninsured women aged 40 to 64 have had a mammogram in the past two years, compared with 74.5 percent of insured women. In addition, 20 percent to 30 percent of uninsured women are diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, compared with 10 percent to 15 percent of women with private insurance, according to the study.

Uninsured women are less likely to be diagnosed with early breast cancer than women who are privately insured. This disparity was greatest among white women, where almost 50 percent of those with private insurance were diagnosed with early-stage cancer, compared with fewer than 35 percent of uninsured white women. Moreover, 89 percent of insured white women were living five years after breast cancer diagnosis compared with 76 percent of uninsured white women. For black women, five-year survival rates are 81 percent for those with private insurance and 65 percent for uninsured women.

For men and women aged 50 to 64 who have private insurance, 48.3 percent were screened for colorectal cancer in the past 10 years compared with fewer than 18.8 percent of the uninsured. In addition, uninsured patients are more likely than those with private insurance to be diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer and less likely to be diagnosed with stage I colorectal cancer, the researchers found.

For whites, 66 percent of insured patients survive colorectal cancer for five years, compared with 50 percent of those without insurance. For blacks, five-year survival rates are 41 percent among the uninsured compared with 60 percent among privately insured patients.

Additional findings in the study include:

Uninsured women were less likely to have a Pap test in the past three years than insured women (68 percent vs. 87.9 percent). Among insured men, 37.1 percent had a prostate specific antigen test, compared with 14 percent of uninsured men. People aged 18 to 24 have the highest probability of being uninsured.

Lower-income people are more likely to be uninsured. Blacks, Hispanics, Asian American/Pacific Islanders, and American Indian/Alaska Natives are more likely to be uninsured than whites. Of those without insurance, 53.6 percent have no usual source of health care.

The uninsured are more likely to delay care, not receive care, and not obtain prescription drugs because of costs. Among people who saw a health-care provider, those without insurance were less likely to be advised to quit smoking or lose weight.

Brawley noted that while some of the uninsured qualify for Medicaid, coverage doesn't begin until the cancer has been diagnosed. "You have someone who is uninsured and poor -- gets none of the screenings, gets none of the early detection opportunities -- when they finally go to the doctor, it's because they are so sick, they can no longer go to work, or their family is forcing them to go to the emergency room," Brawley said. "What you have is someone who a year ago we could, relatively cheaply, fix, maybe even cure, but now that they have ignored their symptoms, it's no longer fixable, we are going to treat them, but the treatment is going to be very expensive."

The remedy to the problem is "making sure that everyone who wants health insurance can get affordable health insurance," Brawley said. "In this country, we need to have an open conversation about this issue." One expert thinks this study highlights the need for a health insurance program that covers everyone. "Sadly, many Americans must face the challenges of cancer with no insurance coverage, or with Medicaid, which is often grossly inadequate as coverage," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. [Woolly Steffie would say that. She has even claimed repeatedly that socialized medicine would REDUCE bureaucracy! It might do so initially but over the years bureaucracy is like an ever-growing cancer] For these cancer patients, diagnosis is delayed and survival is shortened, Woolhandler said. "We need nonprofit national health insurance to be sure that everyone gets the health care they need, particularly people with cancer."

Source





Cannabis smoke 'has more toxins'

It has always seemed likely that if tobacco smoke is bad for you, cannabis smoke would be too -- depending in part on what it had in it. The report below details just what that is

Inhaled cannabis smoke has more harmful toxins than tobacco, scientists have discovered. The Canadian government research found 20 times as much ammonia, a chemical linked to cancer, New Scientist said. The Health Canada team also found five times as much hydrogen cyanide and nitrogen oxides, which are linked to heart and lung damage respectively. But tobacco smoke contained more of a toxin linked to infertility. Experts said users must be aware of the risks.

About a quarter of the population in the UK smokes tobacco products, while a sixth of 15 to 34-year-olds have tried cannabis in the past year, making it the most commonly used drug.

Previous research has shown cannabis smoke is more harmful to lungs than tobacco as it is inhaled more deeply and held in the lungs for a longer period. However, it has also been acknowledged that the average tobacco user smokes more than a cannabis user.

Researchers from Health Canada, the government's health research department, used a smoking machine to analyse the composition of the inhaled smoke for nearly 20 harmful chemicals. They also looked at the sidestream smoke, given off from the burning tip of the product and responsible for 85% of the smoked inhaled through passive smoking.

In most cases, the comparison on sidestream smoke broadly mirrored that of inhaled smoke. However, in the case of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the toxin linked to infertility, the researchers found concentrations were actually higher in cigarette smoke. The study also showed little difference in the concentrations of a range of chemicals, including chromium, nickel, arsenic and selenium.

Lead researcher David Moir said: "The consumption of marijuana through smoking remains a reality and among the young seems to be increasing. "The confirmation of the presence of known carcinogens and other chemical is important information for public health."

Dr Richard Russell, a specialist at the Windsor Chest Clinic, said: "The health impact of cannabis is often over-looked amid the legal debate. "Evidence shows it is multiplied when it is cannabis compared to tobacco. "Tobacco from manufacturers has been enhanced and cleaned whereas cannabis is relatively unprocessed and therefore is a much dirtier product. "These findings do not surprise me. The toxins from cannabis smoke cause lung inflammation, lung damage and cancer."

Stephen Spiro, of the British Lung Foundation, added the findings were "a great worry".

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.

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

Evidence-Based Medicine

There is a rather confused article below. It starts out saying "Proponents of EBM assume it will improve the quality of health care by basing medical decisions primarily on statistically valid clinical trials" and then says "EBM, by contrast, relies primarily on epidemiological data". Which is it? Both cannot be true. I would deplore the latter and support the former. The article is really just another example of the old cry by clinicians that they "just know".

A new buzzword entered the medical lexicon in 1992 when the Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group published one of the first articles on the phenomenon in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In the years since, the role that evidence-based medicine (EBM) plays in medical care has increased exponentially. Some now question whether it should play such a prominent role.

"[EBM is not] medicine based on evidence, but the equivalent in the field of medicine of a cult with its unique dogma, high priest ... and fervent disciples," says Dr. John Service, editor-in-chief of Endocrine Practice. Indeed, if a doctor questions EBM today, it seems he or she runs the risk of being branded an infidel or heretic, or worse.

Proponents of EBM assume it will improve the quality of health care by basing medical decisions primarily on statistically valid clinical trials; therefore, information gained from randomized clinical trials (RCT) preempts information from all other sources. Yet, isn't it ironic that a review of the literature by this author and others turns up no evidence as defined by EBM to validate this assumption?

"The failure to conduct a randomized controlled trial, the recognized best form of evidence according to EBM, and reliance on expert opinion, namely theirs (the worst form of evidence according to them), hoist EBM by its own petard," notes Service. EBM purports to provide "statistical proof" when in fact what it provides is "statistical data." Data does not necessarily equate to proof. Data is open to interpretation, which can change over time or vary depending upon one's perspective.

Dr. George Spaeth makes this point in evaluating the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study, which involved more than 1,000 people who had increased intraocular pressure but no optic nerve damage or visual field loss. Only 5 percent of those treated went on to develop visual field loss, whereas 10 percent of those not treated did.

This data can be used to argue either for or against treatment, Spaeth notes, depending on one's interpretation and incentives. The treating physician could argue that instituting early treatment would reduce visual field loss from glaucoma by 50 percent. Yet, a third-party payer with financial incentive could just as easily argue against treatment, noting that the overwhelming majority of patients with elevated intraocular pressure do not get worse, even when not treated. Consider the evidence. Who is right? They both are.

Is there, indeed, a best practice regarding the approach to elevated intraocular pressure? If so, how should the algorithm be constructed? Who should have the ultimate discretion in making that decision? Should it be the treating physician, with the best interest of the individual patient in mind? Or a third party with the best interest of the bottom line in mind? Clinicians now fear medical malpractice suits if they do not follow EBM guidelines in treating patients. But as one resident recently asked me, which guidelines do you follow? Even guidelines about the same disease can vary substantially, depending upon which professional organization promulgated them. What's more, by following them, don't we freeze medical practice in time? How is progress to be made in health care if we are forced to walk in lockstep with algorithms promulgated last year or the year before?

It is not the epidemiological data of EBM that I question, but rather the manner in which it is used to displace clinical judgment. The physician has taken the history, performed the physical, reviewed the labs, and discussed the illness with the patient and family. He knows the patient's wishes, desires, and values. All this critical information must be considered when treating patients.

EBM, by contrast, relies primarily on epidemiological data, which it uses in a way that preempts all other information collected by the treating physician. In fact, non-quantifiable information such as the patient's values and the physician's clinical experience are not even taken into account in EBM.

It is absurd to think that a third party, operating at a distance in time and space from the patient being treated, is able to make a better medical decision than the treating physician and therefore should be allowed to preempt the treating physician's decisions. Entire medical conferences are devoted to EBM, focusing on the statistical purity of the studies. Statisticians are hired to participate in such conferences. Meanwhile, the clinical question for which evidence was being sought takes a back seat. "The result is form taking precedence over substance," says Service. In the process, it is often forgotten that a group's responses, as an aggregate, can be quite different from an individual's response to a specific therapy. Patients are individuals, not groups. When one treatment is shown to be better than another on a population basis, this does not necessarily mean that it is the best treatment for the patient.

The decisions whether and how to treat a disease ultimately lie with patients, who makes these decisions with their doctors' help. It's a value judgment, and there is no way to measure value. It is not quantifiable in inches, pounds, or miles per hour. The ultimate discretion regarding how information from multiple sources (including EBM, prior clinical experience, and the patient's unique circumstances, wishes, and desires) are integrated for treating individuals should be in the physician's hands. Since he has the ultimate responsibility for the patient's care, he should have the ultimate discretion

Source





When fatness becomes madness

THE world has officially gone mad. I thought we had reached that stage when Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson, but last week we went a step beyond. Someone in a position of authority recommended that children as young as four be weighed on arrival at kindergarten to curb the obesity "crisis". Call me old-fashioned, but further marginalising fat kids at an age when their peers display an apparently innate cruelty is not a good idea. What will we do with those who do not meet the arbitrary body mass index? Send them to kiddie fat camps?

A relative used to tell my curvaceous cousins that the doors would have to be widened if they did not stop putting on weight - and this to prepubescent girls. We live in a PC world now that recoils from such offensive language, but I'd rather that kind of jaw-dropping candour to the subterfuge people resort to these days. My relative's brand of mean-spirited taunts now hides behind "concern" for our "health", but this is not about health - it's about appearance. If the issue is health, why are we not concerned about those skinny people who eat dreadfully? Everyone knows this person - rake thin, a McDonald's bag always in hand, able to inhale a pack of Tim-Tams at one sitting. These lucky folk have their freak metabolisms to thank, which brings me to my next point.

The word hereditary rarely crops up in the obesity debate, despite overwhelming evidence that any health condition and body type is 95 per cent hereditary. As a society we want to assign blame. If you are fat it is your fault: you are slovenly, lazy, undisciplined. A dietitian will dispute this assertion, but society isn't having it. It has gone so far that a television show recently polled viewers on whether Santa was too fat.

A few years ago I had a gig as an in-store Santa at a shopping mall. For 14 days I sat for four hours a day in my chair, facing a US fast food chain outlet that sells ice-cream and mystery-meat hot dogs. I got to see who, if anybody, typified the average customer there. Nine out of 10 were thin. Where were all the "undisciplined" fatties one would expect? As they have been hounded since birth about their weight, they made rare, sheepish appearances.

Did I crack and have an ice-cream after watching others eat for 14 days in a row? Of course not. I was watching my weight.

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.

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

MORE MEDITERRANEAN DIET NONSENSE

Just another proof that middle class people are healthier. They are far more likely to have got the religion of the Mediterranean diet than others. And the effects were as weak as one would expect in those circumstances.

The Mediterranean diet has been a fetish among epidemiologists ever since low levels of heart disease were observed in Greece and Italy. To acknowledge that Greeks and Italians might be GENETICALLY different from Northern Europeans would be politically incorrect, of course. Diet had to be the cause of why Greeks and Italians did better. Greeks and Italians don't live especially long however. For instance, Australians have a diet that is as far away from the Mediterranean in composition as Australia is geographically, yet they live longer than Greeks and Italians. And the long-lived Japanese have a quite different diet too. But we must not let facts upset a medical consensus, must we? Popular summary followed by Abstract below.

Eating the Mediterranean way could help you live longer, according to the first study to look at how the dietary pattern relates to mortality in a U.S. population. Men whose diets were closest to the Mediterranean ideal were 21 percent less likely to die over five years than men whose diets were least Mediterranean-like. Similar results were seen in women. "These results provide strong evidence for a beneficial effect of higher conformity with the Mediterranean dietary pattern on risk of death from all causes, including deaths due to cardiovascular disease and cancer, in a US population," Dr. Panagiota N. Mitrou of the University of Cambridge in the UK and colleagues conclude.

A number of studies have linked the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fish, fruits and vegetables and nuts and low in dairy foods and red meat, to health benefits, the researchers note in the Archives of Internal Medicine. They looked at diet and mortality in 380,296 men and women, 50 to 71 years old, who were participating in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. For both men and women, the researchers found, the risk of death from any cause over the five-year follow-up period was lower for those with the most Mediterranean-like diets. Deaths from cancer or cardiovascular disease were also significantly lower in this group.

The benefit was especially strong in smokers who were not overweight, who nearly halved their risk of death if they closely followed the Mediterranean diet pattern. Smokers may have had the most to gain from the antioxidant and blood fat-lowering effects of Mediterranean-style eating, Mitrou and colleagues suggest.

Source

Mediterranean Dietary Pattern and Prediction of All-Cause Mortality in a US Population

By Panagiota N. Mitrou et al

Background: The Mediterranean diet has been suggested to play a beneficial role for health and longevity. However, to our knowledge, no prospective US study has investigated the Mediterranean dietary pattern in relation to mortality.

Methods: Study participants included 214,284 men and 166,012 women in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) Diet and Health Study. During follow-up for all-cause mortality (1995-2005), 27,799 deaths were documented. In the first 5 years of follow-up, 5,985 cancer deaths and 3,451 cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths were reported. We used a 9-point score to assess conformity with the Mediterranean dietary pattern (components included vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, whole grains, fish, monounsaturated fat-saturated fat ratio, alcohol, and meat). We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using age- and multivariate-adjusted Cox models.

Results:The Mediterranean diet was associated with reduced all-cause and cause-specific mortality. In men, the multivariate HRs comparing high to low conformity for all-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality were 0.79 (95% CI, 0.76-0.83), 0.78 (95% CI, 0.69-0.87), and 0.83 (95% CI, 0.76-0.91), respectively. In women, an inverse association was seen with high conformity with this pattern: decreased risks that ranged from 12% for cancer mortality to 20% for all-cause mortality (P = .04 and P < .001, respectively, for the trend). When we restricted our analyses to never smokers, associations were virtually unchanged.

Conclusion: These results provide strong evidence for a beneficial effect of higher conformity with the Mediterranean dietary pattern on risk of death from all causes, including deaths due to CVD and cancer, in a US population.

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(22):2461-2468






Australia: Leftist broadcasters vent their predictable hatred of drug companies -- to dangerous effect

DOCTORS have condemned ABC television's The 7.30 Report over a story about bone drugs, which they claim was alarmist and inaccurate. According to professional group the Australian and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society, the story, broadcast last Wednesday, may cause worried cancer and osteoporosis patients to stop treatment. "We want to set the record straight," said the society's president, Philip Sambrook, a rheumatologist with the University of Sydney and Royal North Shore Hospital.

The contentious story - presented by Nick Grimm - stated that so-called bisphosphonate drugs can cause the jaw bone to dissolve, a disfiguring condition called osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ.

But the society said the claims were misleading, and warned that if cancer patients stayed off bisphosophonate medications such as Zometa and Aredia for prolonged periods, their disease could more easily spread. Further, if people with osteoporosis stopped drugs such as Aldomet and Fosamax, they could suffer serious fractures of the spine and hip. "Patients have been contacting practitioners and I've had emails from people around the country I haven't seen," Professor Sambrook said. "They were scared, having heard thereport."

He said the story incorrectly implied that all patients were at risk and that they were not warned by doctors or advised of simple alternatives such as calcium supplements. "Not uncommonly in cancer sufferers, but in rare cases with osteoporosis, bisphosphonates can interfere with the normal bone healing of the jaw, resulting in ONJ, or death of the bone," Professor Sambrook said. "However, the risk of this rare side effect can be significantly reduced by good dental care."

He added that calcium and vitamin D supplements might be sufficient to treat mild cases of osteoporosis, but they were ineffective against severe osteoporosis. Professor Sambrook was also critical of the claim that "bisphosphonates are a booming business for drug companies", which downplay side effects and exaggerate benefits. And he said it was factually incorrect to claim, as the report did, that the drugs had been listed on the Public Benefits Scheme only last December. "They were listed 10 years ago," Professor Sambrook said.

In a letter seen by The Australian, Professor Sambrook wrote to The 7.30 Report's executive producer, Ben Hawke, outlining these and other problems. In response, the full interview with Professor Sambrook has been posted on the program's website, along with others used in the story. However, he has not had a formal reply from Hawke. The Australian was unable to obtain comment from Hawke or ABC staff.

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 correla-tion 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 condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis 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.

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

Anorexia `cannot be picked up by looking at photographs of super-thin models'

I have long said that anorexia is just another obsessive compulsive disorder -- an inherited brain dysfunction or "psychosis". In layman's language, anorexics are "mad". The study below, however, is too small to be conclusive.

Anorexia may be caused by inherited differences in the way a sufferer's brain operates, leading to obsessive behaviour, according to research. Rather than being triggered by images of super-thin models and celebrities, the eating disorder could be brought on by the in-built way in which the brain responds to pleasure and reward. It has been argued that images of unhealthily thin stars in the media have encouraged anorexic behaviour in impressionable young women. But a study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that the brains of anorexia sufferers behave differently to those of the rest of the population and that certain people are born with a susceptibility to develop the condition.

A team of psychiatrists, led by Walter Kaye, of the University of Pittsburgh, tested the emotional responses of 13 former anorexics compared with those of 13 nonsufferers. The women were asked to play a computer game where correct guesses were rewarded financially. During the test, the team used functional MRI scans to monitor the participants' brain activity by measuring blood levels in certain areas.

Among the nonsufferers, the brain region connected to emotional responses - the anterior ventral striatum - showed strong differences between winning and losing the game. Among the women with a history of anorexia, however, there was little difference in activity between winning and losing. Professor Kaye said: "In anorexia, this might impact on food enjoyment. For anorexics, then, perhaps it is difficult to appreciate immediate pleasure if it does not feel much different from a negative experience."

Another brain area, the caudate, involved in linking actions to outcome and planning, was far more active in the recovering anorexics than in the control group. The former tended to have exaggerated worries about the consequences of their behaviours, looked for rules where there were none and were overly concerned about making mistakes.

"There are some positive aspects to this kind of temperament. Paying attention to detail and making sure things are done as correctly as possible are constructive traits in careers such as medicine or engineering," Professor Kaye said. "But carried to extremes, such obsessive thinking can be harmful, which is what happens in anorexia. This piece of research points to the fact that the brains of people with anorexia are wired differently. "This means they react and think in different ways to the ordinary person and that they are more likely to go on to develop anorexia regardless of whether they have been exposed to images of super-thin models."

Professor Kaye said that his study showed that even former anorexics still had difficulty enjoying simple pleasures. "What this points to is that anorexics have something different going on in their brains, which marks them out as having either different structures in the brain or different pathways for processing thought that stay with them for life. We may be able, with a lot of hard work, to get them back to eating, but deep down in their brain there appear to be biological differences that don't go away."

Ian Frampton, a psychologist at Exeter University, has been working with anorexics using the same MRI technology. He said: "Professor Kaye's research supports a growing feeling that anorexia is a biological condition caused by the brains of some people being structured in a different way. We are still conducting our research, but we are seeing similar things. "We are not totally sure what is happening in these youngsters but we think that some of this might be inherited or some might be due to a fault in the developing brain either in the womb or during early childhood."

Dr Frampton said that while all adolescent girls have issues about body image, for most it is a passing phase: "We need to move away from this idea that supermodels are to blame. It is probably not good for them to look as they do. But for anorexics, the desire not to eat and to be thin seems to be already in them and not something they can pick up by looking at a magazine. "There were, after all, anorexics before super-thin models."

Source





Cholesterol mysteries

More proof that nobody really understands what goes on with cholesterol or the drugs used to treat it. See here for a summary of the "mysteries" concerned

Pfizer stunned heart doctors a year ago when it announced that its experimental good-cholesterol boosting drug had killed patients in final-stage trials. Now Merck says it plans to begin final-stage trials of a similar good-cholesterol boosting drug next year. Both the Merck compound and the ill-fated Pfizer compound raise HDL, or so-called good cholesterol, by blocking a key protein called CETP. The hope is that this, when combined with existing cholesterol drugs, will prevent more heart attacks. Pfizer's compound, torectrapib, was touted as the next big thing in cardiology--until large-scale human trials found a much higher death rate in patients that took it vs. Lipitor.

The terrible results from torcetrapib have thrown the field of boosting good cholesterol into turmoil. One theory is that the increased deaths were due to torcetrapib's tendency to raise blood pressure and boost aldosterone. But another theory is the entire mechanism is flawed, and the blocking CETP produces dysfunctional HDL that just worsens the problem. Confusing matters further, the big torcetrapib trial found not only more heart deaths but also more deaths from infection and cancer in those who took Lipitor alone.

Merck's drug anacetrapib doesn't raise blood pressure or aldosterone like the Pfizer compound. No increased heart side effects have been seen in trials so far. But whether it produces the right kind of HDL particles is unknown. "The simple answer is that it still is a puzzle" about what went wrong with torcetrapib, Merck research chief Peter Kim said at an analyst meeting Dec 11. The quality of HDL produced by CETP blockers "is a key question in the scientific community" currently. "We have to run clinical studies and evaluate whether this is a good mechanism."

Kim said Merck plans to move step-by-step into large-scale trails of its CETP drug next year by first doing more extensive trials next year to evaluate blood parameters over longer periods of time. In 2009, if these show no signs of problems, it plans to begin a a large-scale "outcomes" study to determine whether the drug prevents heart attacks. Exactly what form this trial would take has yet to be determined, Kim says, as "there are many things that are being argued about . we are still doing a lot of work in the labs."

Merck takes some confidence that blocking CETP can work from the fact that most animal studies show that CETP-blockers reduce artery gunk. Also, the HDL produced by anacetrapib appears to be functional in test tube experiments.

In another risky gambit, Merck says that it plans to file for regulatory approval for its obesity drug taranabant next year. The drug is the same class as Sanofi-Aventis' rimonabant (Acomplia), which was once heralded as a miracle pill but was roundly rejected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel last summer because of concerns over psychiatric side effects.

Kim says the company observed "dose-dependent psychiatric adverse events" in its trials of taranabant. He said that he thought the psychiatric effects were directly related to the drug's mechanism.

To minimize problems, the company is only studying the lower two of four doses used in the second-stage tests. It is also including people with controlled depression in its final-stage studies. It hasn't made a final decision as to what indications it will file for, although it will likely include obesity.

Merck says it has seven drugs in final-stage trials, including an osteoporosis drug that works by a new mechanism, a new cancer drug for treating sarcoma in collaboration with Ariad Pharmaceuticals, and a new hepatitis B vaccine.

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 correla-tion 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 condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis 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.

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

ANOTHER BORING OBEISANCE TO THE CHOLESTEROL RELIGION

The usual epidemiological crap. We read that people with lots of "good" cholesterol heal better after stroke. Why? The authors below appear just to assume that the relationship is a cause-effect one. It might not be. I will use my usual example of why not but that is only one possibility:

That middle class people for a variety of reasons might be more virtuous in the cholesterol department does not seem to be considered. And middle class people have better health for various reasons too. So are we just looking at a class effect? Who knows? Epidemiological correlations are basically uninformative by themselves. They are only useful for hypothesis formation. The fact that blacks did less well may however reinforce the social class explanation

Association of diabetes, homocysteine, and HDL with cognition and disability after stroke

By George C. Newman et al.

Objective: To delineate factors associated with cognitive function following stroke and test the hypothesis that vascular risk factors associated with oxidative stress impair recovery.

Method: We performed a post hoc analysis of the extensive longitudinal database from the 3,680 subjects (over 35 years old) entered between 1996 and 2003 into the Vitamin Intervention for Stroke Prevention trial using a linear mixed effects model. The primary outcome variables were scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and modified Rankin Scale (mRS).

Results: MMSE and mRS gradually improved during the 2-year follow-up period. Increased age and nonwhite race, recurrent stroke, diabetes mellitus, left hemisphere cortical lesions, and values of high-density lipoprotein and homocysteine were independent predictors of less successful cognitive recovery. A strong interaction between homocysteine and age indicated a threshold effect beginning in the late 50s. No vitamin treatment effects were identified. Similar factors were identified for recovery of disability as assessed by the mRS, although there were qualitative and quantitative differences.

Conclusions: The finding that diabetes, high-density lipoprotein, and homocysteine predict poorer cognitive function and greater disability after stroke is consistent with the hypothesis that metabolic stress plays a significant role in the poststroke period.

NEUROLOGY 2007;69:2054-2062




Prawns offer hayfever hope

VOLUNTEERS are wanted to trial a world-first treatment for hayfever made from prawn shells which researchers say is showing promising signs of success. Sydney-based company Novotech is seeking hayfever sufferers aged 15 to 60 who are otherwise healthy to be volunteers to trial a nasal spray made from natural ingredients derived from prawn shells. The trial involves the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research along with six other centres in Queensland, NSW and Victoria, with trials are being conducted in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

More than three million Australians are affected by hayfever. Melbourne doctor Stephen Hall said the spray encouraged the body's immune system to have a less exaggerated response to allergens such as grass and pollen. He said the potential for side effects was low because the treatment was inhaled. Dr Hall said early signs were promising and if this continued, a decision on the treatment's public availability may be known mid-next year. "We're hopeful if all goes well that we have good data and quick recruitment, we'll be in a position to know by June or July," Dr Hall said.

Among the volunteers is Carol Jenkins, 52, of Glen Iris in Melbourne, who has suffered hayfever since she was a teenager. She spends each November to February nursing hayfever symptoms that cause her tiredness and sleepless nights and is hopeful of a cure. "I've had my medication over the years. But nothing cures it," she said. "It's constant sneezing and thinking twice before going outdoors. "It's debilitating."

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 correla-tion 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 condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis 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.

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

'Holy Grail' of cancer treatments expected within two years

QUEENSLAND scientists expect to start clinical trials within two years on what has been described as the "Holy Grail" of cancer treatments. Dr Ming Wei from the University of Queensland Department of Medicine says he is "very confident" of success in developing the treatment, which uses bacteria from kangaroos to attack tumours. The world-first therapy could save millions of lives each year.

Professor Ian Frazer, who developed a cervical cancer vaccine, has hailed the work of his Queensland colleagues. "The Holy Grail of cancer treatments is to come up with treatments which can deal with the tumours without harming the patient," he said.

Starting next month, Dr Wei will lead a team of 10 scientists genetically modifying a common bacterium from kangaroos to develop a product that is expected to be effective in combating up to 90 per cent of cancers. "It will work on any solid tumours anywhere in the body," said Dr Wei, who is based at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane.

The bacterium will be injected into tumours, releasing special enzymes which liquefy the cancer mass, shrinking it, and stimulating the body's natural immune forces. "Most people with cancer die from the spread of the tumour, not the primary tumour mass itself," Dr Wei said. One in four Australians dies from cancer.

The bug being developed by Dr Wei's team also occurs in humans, cattle and soil but the form found in the stomachs of eastern-grey kangaroos contains more protein-digesting enzymes. "It's an anaerobic bacterium, which means it doesn't need oxygen to multiply. It can multiply much faster than the tumour cells, effectively starving the tumour of the 'food' it needs to grow," Dr Wei said. The scientists will genetically engineer the bacterium to boost its cancer-busting power even further.

The potential of the bacterium in curing cancer was first identified by doctors in Germany nearly 100 years ago when they noticed that some patients spontaneously recovered after suffering a bacterial infection and fever. The UQ team has been experimenting on human tumours in rats, with a 60 to 65 per cent success rate and Dr Wei said it would be "no more than two years before we can bring this into clinical trials". A product could be ready to market within five years.

Source





Warning: Congress May Be Hazardous to Your Health

It has given the FDA an impossible and destructive burden

Since 1906 we've entrusted Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure the safety of our vital food and drugs. Foolishly, we've also entrusted Congress and successive administrations to provide appropriate oversight and management of the agency. Now, after a century of Washington-style bureaucracy-building, America is stuck with an FDA that's unequivocally incapable of safeguarding either our food or our drugs.

This isn't just some uninformed opinion. The past year's flood of news stories about fatal food contamination - including spinach and peanut butter - are there for all to see. But it's also the official finding of the FDA's own blue-ribbon advisory group, the Science Board, which recently issued a damning report titled "FDA Science & Mission At Risk." The report notes that "the Agency suffers from serious scientific deficiencies and is not positioned to meet current or emerging regulatory responsibilities." Gail Cassel, a co-author of the report, said, "The wheels are coming off. In fact, I would say they're off. They're already off."

In 1990, the report says, Congress added pre-market approval for disease prevention and nutrient descriptor claims for food products. And in 1994 it added pre-market review for newly marketed dietary supplements. This sort of mission creep "has made it increasingly impossible for FDA to maintain its historic public health mission."

Indeed, the litany of FDA deficiencies is breathtaking in scope: Inadequate inspection of manufacturers, a "badly broken" food import system, a food supply "that grows riskier each year", a "dearth" of scientists trained in emerging technologies, an "obsolete" information-technology system and more. Warnings of the potential collapse of the FDA have been around for years and the FDA's own Science Board says the crises predicted earlier "are now realities, and American lives are at risk."

When a $2 billion-a-year federal agency crashes and burns, it's fair to ask, "Who's at fault?" Beyond the bureaucrats themselves, responsibility lies with Congress and the many administrations who have failed to hold legislators in check. The new FDA Science Board report underscores the damage done by decades of expanding regulatory mandates by Congress with very little oversight - just the sort of irresponsible headline-making legislative action which plays well among constituents but fatally undermines the agency's ability to fulfill its core mission.

The critical question today is: Will this startling analysis have any affect on Congress? We'll know soon enough. The House Energy & Commerce Committee will soon vote on H.R. 1108, a bill which could well put the final nail in the FDA's coffin. The bill would saddle the agency with new regulatory responsibility for the entire tobacco industry - a task which is beyond the FDA's charter, beyond its expertise, and beyond all reason. It is unnecessary, untimely and unworthy of congressional action. All this bill does is pander to a bunch of vocal anti-tobacco zealots.

This is a moment when the Energy & Commerce Committee should step back and reconsider the wisdom of piling yet another regulatory burden onto FDA's already full plate. Instead, it should focus on paring the agency's agenda back to an affordable, rational and narrowly focused food and drug safety program. Either that or slap a huge warning label across the Capitol dome: "Warning: Congress May Be Hazardous to Your Health."

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 correla-tion 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 condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis 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.

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

New breast cancer drug offers long protection with fewer side-effects

Get it while you can. Good drugs often get taken off the market because of very rare apparent adverse side-effects. A drug with no side-effects will have no main effects

A new drug for breast cancer is better than the treatments that are already widely available and can prevent the disease returning for up to eight years, researchers say. Anastrozole, marketed as Arimidex, is thought to have set a new bench-mark for treating early stage breast cancer in postmenopausal women whose disease is fuelled by oestrogen.

The latest study confirms that the drug produces better results than tamoxifen, which has been a preferred treatment for more than 20 years. The study, published in The Lancet Oncology medical journal, suggests that the drug continues to work even after a patient stops taking it, with a greater chance that tumours will not return or spread.

Although tamoxifen is credited with saving the lives of 20,000 women since the 1980s, it is estimated that 23,000 new breast cancer patients a year could benefit from anastrozole and related drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

Anastrozole was approved for use on the NHS in August and has been prescribed to patients with breast cancer since November. Continuing trials are also investigating whether the treatment should be offered as a preventive therapy to women whose genes put them at particular risk of developing the disease. About four in five of the 41,000 women found to have breast cancer each year have passed the menopause and 70 per cent of these have cancers that are exacerbated by oestrogen.

Anastrozole acts by cutting the level of oestrogen circulating in the blood-stream, reducing the cancer risk in so-called receptor-positive cancers. The study looked at the safety and effectiveness of anastrozole compared with tamoxifen, which is sold as Nolvadex, Istubal and Valodex. Researchers followed the progress over five years of postmenopausal women with hormone-sensitive early breast cancer who were randomly assigned to either treatment or a combination of the two.

In a previous study, the chances of surviving for more than 68 months (5½ years) were 15 per cent greater for those on anastrozole than for those taking tamoxifen. In addition, the amount of time that passed before the breast cancer recurred rose by 25 per cent, and there was less cancer spread.

In the latest update on the trial after 100 months (just over eight years), researchers noted that the benefits of anastrozole were maintained even after the treatment was completed. Furthermore, the differences between the two groups in the time it took for the cancer to recur, if it did, increased. The study also suggested that there was no significant difference in the threat of heart disease between the treatment groups – an area of previous concern. Although anastrozole can cause loss of bone density and increase the risk of fractures in women taking the drug, a common osteoporosis drug can help to prevent this side-effect, experts say.

The authors concluded: “The findings of this report extend the previously reported superior efficacy of anastrozole over tamoxifen at 68 months of follow-up to 100 months. We also show a carry-over benefit for recurrence in the hormone-receptor-positive population which is larger than that shown for tamoxifen.”

Margaret Coulton, 61, a retired office worker from Hesketh Bank, near Preston, had surgery to remove a tumour in September 2003 and has been taking anastrozole for nearly four years as part of a clinical trial after initially taking tamoxifen. Switching to anastrozole banished the symptoms she was getting, such as hot flushes, tiredness and nausea, and allowed her to stop taking drugs for depression, another side-effect of tamoxifen, she said.

Cancer charities welcomed the latest results. Emma Pennery, a nurse consultant at Breast Cancer Care, said: “From our contact with hundreds of people living with breast cancer we know that many will be delighted to see this latest evidence of success.”

Source






Official "obesity" deception

'One in four Australian children and one in two adults are already overweight or obese," the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, told a conference of obesity experts this week. Where are they, minister? In the past fortnight, I've been in the centres of Sydney and Melbourne, in Newcastle and Katoomba, and in Sydney suburbs including Maroubra, Gladesville and Parramatta. I've seen plenty of fat adults but nothing like one in two. I've seen thousands of children, but were a quarter of them fat? No way. So we have to ask again, where are they? Either Australia's fat people are hiding, too scared to come out and incur the wrath of the Health Minister, or else something fishy is going on. As fishy as Roxon's other claim, that obesity is costing the economy $21 billion a year.

The claims were made this week to justify the Government's absurd plan to have every four-year-old weighed before they go to school, starting next year. This will add a quarter of a million extra tasks to the workload of our general practitioners and health clinics. This is ridiculous.

"It's totally inappropriate," says Professor Jan Wright from the University of Wollongong's faculty of education. Wright, a co-author with Michael Gard of the book Obesity Epidemic: Science, Ideology And Morality, says there are "many pieces of work in research literature regarding the horrendous experiences" of children who have gone through this sort of thing. "The fact the child is weighed and assessed and there's a report to the parents, it's a kind of surveillance expected of parents that is horrendous."

We have to fight back. If this is the first step in the introduction of a Rudd Labor nanny state, it is necessary to make a stand now. The obesity epidemic is a myth created by the pharmaceutical and health industries, and we don't have to accept their nonsense. There are three main points to be made about fat. First, it is not nearly as extensive as claimed. Second, being a bit overweight is not as bad as most people believe. And third, there's not much you can do about it anyway.

The first step in this is to separate the terms "overweight" and "obese", which are hugely different but are always lumped together to increase the size of the alleged problem. When we do this we will find that the weight of the general population has not increased dramatically in recent decades.

Patrick Basham is a co-author, with John Luik, of Diet Nation, a sceptical look at weight issues around the First World. He says: "The average person is not getting significantly fatter. Where there has been significant weight gain, it is not amongst most people but among people who were already obese."

A study of 8500 Australian children was reported by Adele Horin in the Herald in October. Jenny O'Dea, an associate professor of nutrition and health education at the University of Sydney, said the study found obesity in children was concentrated in poor families and certain ethnic groups. She said the suggestion that all children were at risk of obesity had "been blown out of the water by this research". O'Dea said: "We want to avoid stigmatising already socially marginalised groups", so Labor's plan to weigh every child starting school, which had already been declared, would be a "disaster".

Basham says 1 or 2 per cent of the population of a country such as Australia has a real obesity problem and needs to be helped. But pretending everyone is at risk of obesity and should be monitored and even assisted is a misuse of resources.

Even if one believes the general population is fatter than it once was, we should be cautious about assuming this is a bad thing. A recent major study published in The Journal Of The American Medical Association found that overweight people have a lower death rate than people who are normal weight, underweight or obese. The study was carried out by Katherine Flegal and other federal government researchers at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Being up to nearly 14 kilograms overweight reduces by 40 per cent your chance of dying from a range of common diseases and risks, not least because it improves your chances of recovering from surgery, injury and infections.

The findings have outraged many health experts, and in response they have made some good points. These include the fact that being overweight does increase the chance of death from some illnesses, even if it reduces the chance of death from many others. It has also been pointed out that health is about more than whether you die.

But it is important to note that worrying about being overweight is rarely useful. Dale Atrens, a reader emeritus in psychobiology at the University of Sydney, has made an extensive study of scientific literature in this area. He says, "The injunction to lose a little weight is probably the most common medical prescription. It is given to untold millions each day through both official and unofficial channels. Globally, the weight loss industry is approaching a trillion-dollar turnover. This is astonishing in light of the fact that there is no systematic evidence that any of the weight loss schemes (except surgery) have any more than transient effects." The next time someone, even a health minister, tries to make you feel guilty about carrying a few extra kilos, just say no.

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 correla-tion 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 condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis 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.

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