New life for vitamin C theory?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More governmment health dictatorship for Britain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source

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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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