An Epidemiologist Whispered In My E-mail
Check out this short PDF, about mercury in high-fructose corn syrup. Very disturbing. From my friend's e-mail:
Note the part about the FDA -- true and worse...PDF link here.
Here's the WaPo link (a non-bylined piece out of an outfit called HealthDay News), with the industry howls, and the rebuttal to their rebuttal:
In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.And in the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was found most commonly in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.
But an organization representing the refiners is disputing the results published in Environmental Health.
"This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance," said Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, in a statement. "Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years. These mercury-free re-agents perform important functions, including adjusting pH balances."
However, the IATP told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that four plants in Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia still use "mercury-cell" technology that can lead to contamination.
IATP's Ben Lilliston also told HealthDay that the Environmental Health findings were based on information gathered by the FDA in 2005.
And the group's own study, while not peer-reviewed, was based on products "bought off the shelf in the autumn of 2008," Lilliston added.
The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.
"The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury. The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients," Wallinga said in his prepared statement.
And if you aren't limiting your consumption of high fructose corn syrup, you haven't read Gary Taubes.
So let me get this straight - we need to destroy every book published before 1985 to protect children from the possibility of lead poisioning - eben though I cant recall one case linking lead poisioning to books in the last 25yrs
But no one is testing the billions of snack cakes or millions of gallons of artifically flavored drinks that kids consume each year?
Where the fuck are all the food nazi's that got the laws passed against trans fats and trying to get them passed on eating red meat or salt?
lujlp at February 20, 2009 5:13 AM
Something smells funny here. If it is from contaminated caustic soda, wouldn't there also be contaminated pretzels and other baked goods that are soaked in the stuff to make them brown up all nice?
I think this is more of the "let's use everyone's fear of mercury to make them afraid of something else we don't like".
Not that I approve of HFCS in the first place, but wouldn't it be simpler to get rid of HFCS by eliminating corn subsidies and sugar tariffs, thereby making HFCS more expensive than the alternative?
brian at February 20, 2009 5:14 AM
I understand the concern, but beware of studies that are "not peer reviewed." I believe many of the studies that promoted the anti-vaccine hysteria were not peer reviewed, either. Neither is a lot of the Creation Science "research".
Do the homework, then prescribe solutions. That's all I'm saying.
Lynne at February 20, 2009 5:30 AM
Yeah, I'd want independent confirmation first. There are a lot of warning signs here: a newspaper article which is a verbatim copy of an advocacy group's press release; non-peer-reivewed study, no data provided (what's a "detectable level" of mercury? They have tests that can detect parts per trillion these days), and a flimsy causality chain. I'm also curious about why they cited those particular states; maybe I'm reading a bit into it, but it looks like an attempt to imply, "well, you know it isn't safe, because those Georgia and Tennessee rednecks don't know how to make anything without contaminating it".
Cousin Dave at February 20, 2009 6:57 AM
I take the article with a grain of salt. I don't eat lots of HFCS, because we don't eat processed snackfoods here, and other items like bread and juice that tend to have it don't need it, so I buy without. I don't buy into the "it makes you fat" BS, but it's not good for you, has no nutrition, so I avoid it when possible, like most additives.
momof3 at February 20, 2009 7:20 AM
Well, here's Mercury in Wikipedia; note that power plants burning coal can't avoid releasing it.
Be careful of the isomers. Dimethyl mercury killed professor Karen Wetterhahn horribly, a single drop having got to her skin through a latex glove. Fortunately, this is not the most abundant form of mercury compound.
Radwaste at February 20, 2009 7:21 AM
"They have tests that can detect parts per trillion these days" My first though too. In the PPT range pretty much everything has mercury.
HFCS worries but not cause Taubes thinks it should, I will not take scientific information from an reporters, because they are all so honest. HFCS worries me cause it does not give you the satiated feeling sugar does and will allow you to eat a hell of a lot more food. At least for me I can pretty much eat till bursting ad Burger King if I have the normal soda with the meal.
My main problem with Taubes is that he's circuitously arguing that we are carnivores. That's bull shit since we have none of the physical markings. I'll agree to the validity of the argument against processed grains but we are sure as shit not biologically carnivorous or herbivores (thus PETA is also full of shit but to a much greater degree). You want health lets try a balanced diet with portion control and lots of excessive. The poor much maligned Mike Phelps ate like a horse using a balanced diet (a very large one though) and he's someone I'd call healthy. Research for years shows balance though less processed grains seam best and even Dr. Atkins (the one who invented low carb.) says that permanent ultra low carb is bad.
vlad at February 20, 2009 7:22 AM
I agree, Cousin Dave. IF it were really a level to be concerned with, they would have almost certainly have published the PPM numbers. Instead, they say it was, "detectable". That's like saying that there is detectable levels of ultraviolet light coming from stars in the night sky, and somehow implying that they will give you skin cancer.
WayneB at February 20, 2009 7:24 AM
but we are sure as shit not biologically carnivorous or herbivores
Of couse not were omnivorus scavangers
lujlp at February 20, 2009 7:33 AM
Don't put so much faith in "peer review." Here's Taubes on that, from his excellent reply to an attempted takedown of him by Michael Fumento:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28721.html
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 7:42 AM
Research does not show that Vlad, and furthermore, the Inuit, which Taubes mentions in his book, are a perfect case arguing against that. They had no cancer, diabetes, etc. until they stopped eating a diet that was almost entirely whale blubber and began eating carbohydrates.
Taubes is probably the finest investigative science journalist out there. I have interviews to do today for my column, and other stuff for my deadline, so I can't be around to debunk stuff. I hope other people will do it.
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 7:45 AM
Note this:
Those of you who are pooh-poohing this, call them up, find out about their research, do homework. Don't just throw this out because it makes you feel good to be on the other side.
ONE in THREE of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury.
MORE: "However, the IATP told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that four plants in Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia still use "mercury-cell" technology that can lead to contamination.
IATP's Ben Lilliston also told HealthDay that the Environmental Health findings were based on information gathered by the FDA in 2005."
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 7:48 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635136">comment from Amy AlkonFYI, I'm not saying this MUST be believed, but I sure want to know more. Are they lying that one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury? Is there something wrong with their testing? Or might there be something wrong with some of our food supply? Something damaging to us?
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 7:57 AM
Amy -
There's a BIG difference between "detectable", "trace", and "unacceptable".
"detectable" means we can detect a mercury atom in a drop of liquid.
"trace" is some amount more than that, but far below any concern levels.
"unacceptable" is a level in excess of whatever has been determined to be safe.
here's a PDF from the EPA about "mercury cell technology".
When I googled "mercury-cell technology", other than articles about batteries, and the EPA links, the other stuff on the first page of results were all dated recently, and all related to food.
No numbers.
Just "detectable".
This is almost certainly what I suspect it to be - the food nazis using fear of mercury to force action against HFCS.
I wonder if these wonderful people at IATP are telling people to avoid all seafood products. Because there's more mercury in yellowfin tuna than there is in HFCS. I'd bet real money on that.
brian at February 20, 2009 8:21 AM
They aren't lying, per se. What they are doing is hyperbolizing. Which is worse than lying so far as I am concerned.
"We have found a witch, may we burn her?"
brian at February 20, 2009 8:24 AM
Amy, I find that some people are less than honest when they use particular terms. Others are simply not careful, or knowledgeable enough to see when they are being manipulated.
"Peer-reviewed": not an endorsement, but a critique of the support and conclusions of a thesis. This is misunderstood by people who see two doctors or scientists saying the same thing and think this criterion has been met.
"Theory": not a guess, but a detailed explanation of the behavior of an observed phenomenon.
"Scientific support": not a collection of people who say the same thing, but the collection of factors offered as indicating the cause of a phenomenon.
Now, you have to figure out what was said.
Radwaste at February 20, 2009 8:39 AM
ONE in THREE of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury.
Again, why did they not publish the numbers? The MOST LIKELY answer is because they are meaninglessly small. Otherwise, there would have been numbers comparing it to regulatory limits and danger levels.
WayneB at February 20, 2009 9:20 AM
"the Inuit, which Taubes mentions in his book, are a perfect case arguing against that." They were also not sedentary. They had to work very very hard to survive. AMA holds that both diabetes and certain types of cancer stem from lack of excersise(sp). There is also jack shit for medical records of the Inuit prior to interactions with eurpeans. My other problem with the Inuit argument is that it's the same type of crap used by Autism activist with the Amish. There are few know studies to show cancer and diabetes among Inuits and the ones I found were vague at best.
vlad at February 20, 2009 10:03 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635177">comment from vladVlad, read Taubes' book , which is supported to the nth degree by solid research. Exercise is overvalued in weight loss, it seems. I'm a case in point. If I eat almost no carbs, I don't get fat, even if I don't exercise or exercise very little.
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 10:31 AM
People hate hfcs for all sorts of righteous reasons... But in the world of persuasion, those are never enough. They want you to hate it for bad reasons, too.
Paeans to the life of the Inuit call to mind this cartoon from Dutton's blog. Did the Inuit live long enough to get diabetes? Do you wanna live like they live? Can you really imagine that a diet as unvaried as theirs can be good for your health?
Peer review is the quintessence of modern science, unlinking faith from discovery. ("Oh, yeah? How come it doesn't work in my lab?")
You shouldn't let lay fantasies of renegade paperback truth-telling diminish your appreciation for this scheme.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 20, 2009 10:40 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635184">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]The Inuit got cancer and other diseases when they did not previously.
"Can you really imagine that a diet as unvaried as theirs can be good for your health?"
Why would you assume it wouldn't be?
Taubes, when I interviewed him a few years back, told me meat has every vitamin but Vitamin C.
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2009 11:12 AM
Amy, here's a mercury-in-HFCS study with some hard numbers:
http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=105026
If you scroll down through this 24 page pdf, you'll see that they tested 55 products containing HFCS, and found mercury above detectable levels in 17 of them. The worst offenders were Jack Daniels BBQ Sauce (300 ppt mercury vs detection limit of 100 ppt) and Quaker Oatmeal to Go (350 ppt vs 80 ppt). The FDA limit for inorganic mercury in drinking water is 2 ppb, or 2000 ppt.
To put this in better perspective, the EPA Reference Dose (an exposure level with no recognizable adverse health effects) is 0.1 micrograms/kg of body weight per day. So a 30 kg (66 pound) child would need to gobble up 19 pounds of Quaker Oatmeal a day to exceed safe levels of mercury.
I don't think these results are cause for panic.
Martin at February 20, 2009 11:26 AM
The EPA mercury exposure and reference dose for methylmercury (the most commonly encountered toxic form) is here:
http://wwww.epa.gov/mercury/exposure.htm
Martin at February 20, 2009 11:35 AM
Sorry,
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/exposure.htm
Martin at February 20, 2009 11:39 AM
"Exercise is overvalued in weight loss, it seems. I'm a case in point. If I eat almost no carbs, I don't get fat, even if I don't exercise or exercise very little." Well first you practice portion control for one. Also I was never saying that high fat high protein diets cause people to be fat. The don't and Atkins proves it quite nicely. However zero cards for the log run is bad according to Atkins.
"told me meat has every vitamin but Vitamin C." That would be correct, so. Enriched wheat flower can do that to, which is something you would never touch.
"The Inuit got cancer and other diseases when they did not previously. " I checked it and it appears true (checked form 1880 to 1920) but, they were not checked for diabetes nor the more insidious forms of cancer. Also they lived in a very clean environment and got shit load of excersise. They had no preservatives in any of the food, no artificial anything, no tobacco etc.. Tuabes can not isolate their lack of certain cancers prevalent in modern world to diet alone. They lived in a world free of any currently know carcinogens.
vlad at February 20, 2009 11:55 AM
Brian: is she heavier than a duck?
Jim at February 20, 2009 1:22 PM
Interesting thing.
FISH naturally have higher mercury than the FDA standards.
Its been commonly postulated that fish post industrial revolution have a higher mercury concentration due to our own pollution, but examination of preindustrial remenants tells us otherwise.
In short, bottom line is you almost certainly have nothing to worry about.
Remember:
EVERYTHING can kill you if you have to much of it.
Just don't drink the contents of any thermometers alright.
Robert at February 20, 2009 2:02 PM
> The Inuit got cancer and other
> diseases when they did not
> previously.
I don't believe it. Don't believe it, don't believe it, don't believe it.
Medical sciences would be FLOODING the Arctic circle with brilliant young grad students if this were true. It's far more likely that in the populations studied lived lives of such wretchedness that advanced epidemiology was immoral... If you (as a doctor) had such a person in your care, you were probably too busy fixing their other maladies to do advanced statistical analyses.
And there are probably other cultural considerations. Do you like the Washington Post? Enjoy the fabulous Weingarten article on the village of Savoonga; pay close attention to the passage that follows the phrase "Savoonga gives no quarter."
> Why would you assume
> it wouldn't be?
Because almost no one eats a diet of whale blubber, and absolutely no one wants to, including people who are scared shitless by cancer.
Nobody likes mercury poisoning either, but the threat just isn't that dire. "Detectable levels"? If that were your standard of safety, you'd never get out of bed in the morning, and the dog would have to write the column.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 12:09 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635246">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]Taubes' book is filled with stuff like this -- stunning examples of doctors and "scientists" ignoring the evidence that runs contrary to what they'd like to believe. I saw it myself, firsthand, at a conference at USC. He presented evidence to childhood obesity "experts" who should have left that conference determined to change the way they approach these poor kids. They did not. They looked at the evidence and walked away. Read the book. It should change the way you eat. And I have to say, Taubes is a doubter's doubter and skeptic's skeptic.
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 12:30 AM
Idon'tbelieveIdon'tbelieveIdon't
believeIdon'tbelieveIdon'tbelieve...
It smells like Laetrile. (Does anyone remember Laetrile?) "The man doesn't want you to know about this... He can't wrap his brain around it... He can't turn a profit on it, so...."
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 1:18 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635254">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]You can laugh, but I think there's a need for more testing. Don't trust the FDA or any government institution to be acting in the public interest.
Wait - maybe you were talking about Taubes? Read the book. I saw it -- he presented very clear and solid evidence -- and it was ignored as soon as the lights came up.
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 1:37 AM
Why?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 2:53 AM
Sometimes inertia causes the medical community to ignore things. Sometimes politics.
I've found that the "diet industry" and its associated doctors and scientists and shills are far more political than they are scientific.
When Atkins came out with his diet, he was attacked mercilessly. When he lay dying of a head injury suffered in a fall, they attacked him. He apparently gained weight as he lie unconscious - they said that proved his diet didn't work.
Which is why I tend to dismiss such alarmism. It's more often than not politically driven. I want to see the science, the results.
brian at February 21, 2009 4:39 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635301">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]Also, researchers don't want to admit what they're doing is a crock -- especially since they may be working off grants toward a certain goal. It's deciding what the science is and filling in the blanks rather than seeking the truth. Taubes' research -- six years straight of it -- is the last thing they want. It says they've been wasting their time and selling people a bill of goods. Seeing it there at USC, seeing this extremely solid evidence he presented and then seeing them walk away with their minds unchanged, was one of the more disturbing experiences I've had with research and "researchers."
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 7:51 AM
Silliness.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 9:58 AM
On the "part per trillion":
One gram of water is one milliliter. A quart is about 946mL.
A trillion mL is a billion liters. In water, that's a billion kilograms - more than 1.1 million tons. Over 264 million gallons.
Let's say that we're going to find something that is one part per trillion in your body. If we take your entire body mass, what are we looking for?
If you weigh 200 pounds - just under 91 kg - then very simply you're looking for something that weighs, if it was average, about 9.1e-7 grams.
I've been looking for a way to show how little that is. It's actually just a few red blood cells, which are heavy for cells.
Is it reasonable to say that a ppt is detectable? Yes. That low number would correspond to a little over 221 million atoms of elemental Hg - in our 200-pound example. It would be half that for a 100-pound person.
So, ppt is easy to say and easy to hype.
You have about 3000 parts per million of formaldehyde naturally present in your body in cellular activity.
People forget that where something is in the body counts, not just what.
Also, please note that when properly expressed, studies include the elements of uncertainty in measurement or include these in the explanation of the methods used to produce a result.
Fun fact: in searching for a way to describe how small a trillionth of "you" might be, above, I discovered that the average human has about ten times as many bacterial cells as human cells. Amy, your assessment that some people are merely a walking biohazard was perfect!
Radwaste at February 21, 2009 11:28 AM
Props to Raddy.
> So, ppt is easy to say
> and easy to hype.
Yes. This whole "detectable levels" thing is just insane. "[N]early one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury" is transparent fear-mongering. These are abstract numbers, completely without context. Amy oughta know better, and I think she does. And she oughta know this 'cancer-free inuits' thing is bullshit, too.
I went to the library near my house to look up the Taubes book. It's a small branch, about the size of grade-school classroom... But nonetheless, it's got several shelves full of books about weight loss. People are apparently obsessed with the topic whether they're overweight or not. (This may be a clue.)
I didn't wanna read the whole book. (I'm a few pounds overweight, but have never been inclined to worry.) So I just went to the index and looked for "inuit". As suspected, the implications are all vague and unsubstantiated.
The distortion isn't even clever... These are people living in some of the harshest, least-cared-for corners of civilization. Taubes quotes doctors as saying things like "It is commonly stated that cancer does not occur in the Eskimos, and to our knowledge no case has so far been reported." But there's no baseline of data; we have no idea what mortality was like for this population. For all we know, Eskimos in these citations were dropping like flies in their middle thirties, with relatives reporting their deaths as "tummy aches" or "bad humors"... But only when there was a medical authority worth reporting to anyway. Which there wasn't.
Most despicable is this passage, page 322: "If the Inuit thrived in the harshest of environments without eating carbohydrates and whatever nutrients exist in fruits and vegetables, they, by definition, were consuming a balanced, healthy diet."
These populations have always been about subsistence. They've never been about comfort, or safety, or agriculture or anything but living until the weekend. The one thing they do not do is "thrive." Describing their lives as a cancer-free paradise mocks the richness of our own lives...
... And the sturdiness of our science. That copy of Taubes was sitting gently on the shelf, waiting for me. If any of the Bright Young Things at nearby UCLA medical school were looking for a cure for cancer --and some of them most assuredly are-- it's surprising that they weren't there to read the book on a quiet Saturday lunchtime.
There are many, many reasons why you don't make a diet out of "no fruit, no vegetables; morning and night nothing but seal meat washed down with ice-cold water or hot broth" for a "three-month stretch".
Taubes may have much to offer. The American diet needs a few corrections. But we should never pretend the cure for cancer, or the solutions to any of these grand problems, is being suppressed by an egocentric 'man' who's afraid to think unconventionally.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 2:21 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635392">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]Working on my column -- here's more on this:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-among-inuit.html
See table on cancer deaths at the link.
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 2:36 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635394">comment from Amy AlkonAnother from the same guy:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-lifespan-of-inuit.html
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 2:40 PM
Exactly.
Who side of this are you arguing?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 3:12 PM
That's funny. A Google Search for Dr. Leavitt comes up with this instead.
And apparently, this "doctor and staff" examined the entire Inuit population every year. This is fantastic, considering they are a nomadic people scattered across a wilderness the size of the USA in an environment shown to be lethal weeks at a time.
There was a die-off in the 14th century, and the Canadian census of 1996 says there are only 41,000 today. Other sources claim that these people are better off than they have been at any time since that 14th century.
I've only spent 30 minutes or so looking. If you find more, such as some huge number of Inuits or a way for a sailing ship's captain to spend meaningful time being a doctor, let me know!
Radwaste at February 21, 2009 8:03 PM
The Inuit started getting cancer and other diseases AFTER they started eating carbohydrates. This is true of other populations as well. I wouldn't use Wikipedia as anything other than a starting point or a rough reference.
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2009 9:54 PM
Amy, c'mon. Most of the things we've come to describe as neoplasms have been categorized in the last century. If they started get cancer and these other diseases after eating a modern diet, it's because their health was extended long enough for it to happen (and their social bonds were tightened to where medical science could take an interest.) C'mon.
So why do you want to live like an an illiterate primitive on the edge of survival?
You don't.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 21, 2009 10:35 PM
"...until they stopped eating a diet that was almost entirely whale blubber..." Amy 7:45 AM Feb 20
The foundation of the Inuit diet was raw meat, not just blubber. Slices of whale skin with blubber attached (muktuk) were a delicacy, but blubber itself was often more valuable as fuel. It burns very nicely, and keep in mind that in the High Arctic in winter, the sun didn't rise for 3 months or more, it was fucking cold, and the nearest firewood was hundreds of miles away.
Martin at February 22, 2009 12:14 AM
(Why am I being such a peckerhead about this?)
Because it's bad when people are given the idea that there are magical solutions to problems if only some guy in an office somewhere (the AMA, the FDA, the CDC or someplace like that) could just be a little more humble about the nobility of simple living....
The rest of the Taubes book is probably great. And high fructose corn syrup is really wretched stuff, as are a lot of carbs.
But these are all competing interests, even when considered within an individual life. There was an article awhile back (I didn't save it) that said that in general, mildly undernourished people (underweight) live longer than those of us who have enough to eat. They have other problems, and their their minds may never be as sharp for the missing nutrients, but they get more years... But so what?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 22, 2009 2:14 AM
The AMA also knew everything about ulcers. If you want to pick at this and insist Taubes is wrong, just off the seat of your pants, go right ahead. I suggest you read his book. If you do, I'm guessing it'll change your life. The idea that I'm arguing for primitivity is just silly and childish. Taubes is writing about the research of people who have discovered some amazing stuff that runs contrary to most of what the medical establishment is telling people -- because what the medical establishment is telling people is not based on science...just like the idea that ulcers are caused by stress, when it's h. pylori.
from page 113: "...the same diseases appeared after Westernization in cultures that lived almost exclusively on animal products -- the Inuit, the Masai, and Samburu nomads, Australian Aborigines, or Native Americans of the Great Plains..."
Another passage I just happened upon: "When Hilde Bruch reported in 1957 that a fine-boned girl in her teens, 'literally disappearing in mountains of fat,' lost nearly fifty pounds over a single suummer eating 'three large poritions of meat' a day, it was easier for he experts to ignore the testimony as a freakish phenomenon than to contemplate how such a thing was possible."
Okay, Crid: I have a challenge for you. For a week, eat no flour or sugar. Eat enough fat in your food that you won't be hungry, and eat eggs, bacon, steak, spinach drenched in olive oil, etc. And don't bother exercising much. And see what you weigh at the end of the week, compared to what you weigh before. I eat like this, with very little carbohydrate consumption, all the time. And I could basically go without exercising and not gain weight.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 7:45 AM
Crid,
Leavitt spent over two decades stationed in the arctic examining Inuit. The numbers Stefansson mentioned in "Cancer, Disease of Civilization" are not the number of individuals, they're the number of examinations. So the actual number of individuals he examined was certainly lower than that, by some unknown factor. I think it's worth noting that Stefansson and Leavitt were friends, so Stefansson knew what he was talking about when he described Leavitt's career.
The critical thing to keep in mind is that Leavitt was diagnosing cancers regularly in Westerners and modernized Inuit, but not in traditional Inuit, despite the fact that they all had similar lifespans at the time. To this day, I don't believe there's a single report in the literature of a totally traditional Inuit developing cancer, despite the half-century concerted search by American and European physicians.
Stephan at February 22, 2009 1:28 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635524">comment from StephanThanks so much for posting that, Stephan. P.S. Stephan is the blogger I linked to in some of my comments just above.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 1:48 PM
> The critical thing to keep in mind
> is that Leavitt was diagnosing
> cancers regularly in Westerners
> and modernized Inuit
No, the critical thing to keep in mind was that you're crediting a 19th-century non-medical figure for probative epidemiology regarding conditions that often weren't identified until later decades... Sometimes much later decades. And furthermore, you're implying that the brutal lives of primitive people in punishing settings are directly instructive to our modernity. I don't know why you'd want to do this.
> To this day, I don't believe
> there's a single report in
> the literature of a totally
> traditional Inuit developing
> cancer, despite the half-century
> concerted search by American
> and European physicians.
Who cares, except for bullshit artists? "Totally traditional" isn't a sound medical description. It feels like you're preparing to say, when I present an Inuit with breast cancer, that she's just not "traditional" enough. And in which "half-century" did this "concerted search" take place? What's the writeup called?
And again, again, again... How come nobody cares, not even you? How come the CDC didn't, as in some Spielberg scenario, demand that the US Army fly up and capture some of these fuckers as specimens for lab study, human rights be damned? No cancer? Are you fucking kidding me?
I have no idea what your blog is like, Stephan, and don't care enough to follow your URL. Perhaps you make a hobby of astrology-tinged medical tales, which are very entertaining for the masses, resentful as they are of expensive care and complicated science. Best of luck to you out there.
But I think that Amy, despite a penchant for posturing sociobiology and knowitall pop lit, can be redeemed. Just need to clean up this little mess here....
> If you want to pick at this
> and insist Taubes is wrong,
> just off the seat of your
> pants, go right ahead.
I've read enough to know that he's capable of posturing for dramatic effect. And I get the sense from reading your blog over the years that this is an effect to which you respond readily. It's not a sin to be dramatic and it's not a sin to respond to drama, as long as everyone know's what's going on.
> I'm guessing it'll change
> your life.
I'm not in need of having my "life changed", though a good book about food can be a pleasant afternoon. As noted, that small library had a lot of diet books. This is something that many (other) people have a lot of energy about. I like my food: I like what's done for me. Sometimes I feel bad about being 20+ pounds overweight; that bad feeling passes quickly, because there are better things to worry over. (Even within my own character, certainly.)
But this isn't just about your own fabulous diet, or sharing the magnificence of your own God-given metabolism, or a scientific community that's too arrogant to see the truth, or modern culture that's too far removed from a life of simple toil on a beneficent tundra...
But when all those things line up at once, even as partial truths, it's showtime! And it's good fun for everyone.
But I draw a boundary at implications that our cowardly, rote medical community happens to have forsaken this one promising avenue for relief from the scourge, even though heroic paperback writers have so courageously given warning....
PS- Again, I'll readily concede that hfcs sucks.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 22, 2009 2:45 PM
He's a doctoral candidate in neurobiology. I pasted in links to his stuff above.
Here's his blog:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/
Read. Taubes. Book.
Or, don't.
But, the Inuit are just mentioned in this book. And because you insist this sounds too good to be true, what Taubes discovered in, I think, six years of research for the book (on top of all his previous research), doesn't mean it is. Because the medical establishment has largely ignored the evidence that flour and sugar seem to be the cause of many diseases doesn't mean they are not. Because it seems that what we hold to be true about cardiovascular disease seems to be untrue doesn't mean the contrary. And on and on. Read the book and then comment on it.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 2:53 PM
> Or, don't.
That will be my choice. Ten minutes with it will never be returned to me....
> Because the medical establishment
> has largely ignored the evidence
Why would they? Why would they? Why would they?
It's a conspiracy! The Man is corrupt!
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 22, 2009 3:12 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635537">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]I believe they did the same with the cause of ulcers. Again, because you don't think it's plausible doesn't mean you're right. Taubes details it in the book, and I saw it myself when he spoke to the childhood obesity researchers at USC. They have grants they'd have to give up if they admitted the evidence shows they're on the wrong track. They'd have to start over. It's easier and more profitable to just keep going with the party line. Again, Taubes lays all this out in the book.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 3:48 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635538">comment from Amy AlkonHere, from Taubes, about his NYT article "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?"
http://web.mit.edu/knight-science/fellows/interviews/taubes.html
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 3:53 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635539">comment from Amy AlkonMore from Taubes in that interview:
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 3:55 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635540">comment from Amy AlkonAnd a bit more from Taubes -- from before he wrote the book:
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 3:57 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635545">comment from Amy AlkonIf you truly want to understand how bad data can triumph, read Taubes award-winning Science piece, "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat."
http://www.nasw.org/awards/2001/01Taubesarticle1.htm
He is one of two people to ever win this award for his work three times. He and the other guy are disqualified from entering again after winning so many times.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 4:28 PM
"I wouldn't use Wikipedia as anything other than a starting point or a rough reference."
Ahem. I know that, and did that, and the only Google hit on Leavitt was a ship's captain. Without, say, wondering how it is that the Wiki people missed this man's huge contributions to medical science, I must ask again: How did this guy visit more Inuits than were alive, every year, for 15 years? Transporter beam? Time machine?
This is the Great White North, you know. The entire Great White North, not the Cleaver neighborhood. Look up the populations yourself.
Fifty thousand a year.
Show me!
Radwaste at February 22, 2009 5:57 PM
Amy, I suggest you try to get your hands on these 2 articles:
Friborg & Melbye "Cancer Patterns In Inuit Populations" The Lancet Oncology, Volume 9 Issue 9 September 2008 pp 892 - 900
Bierregaard Young Dewailly Ebbesson "Indigenous Health In The Arctic: An Overview of the Circumpolar Inuit Population" Scandinavian Journal of Public Health Volume 32 # 5 2004 pp 390 - 395
From the Friborg abstract: "Although malignant diseases were believed to be almost non-existent in Inuit populations at the beginning of the 20th century, the increasing life expectancies...revealed a distinct pattern, characterized by a high risk of Epstein-Barr virus-associated carcinomas of the nasopharynx and salivary glands, and a low risk of tumours common in white populations. During the 2nd half of the 20th century, Inuit societies underwent major changes in lifestyle...and the risk of lifestyle-associated tumours, especially of the lung, cancer, and breast, increased considerably."
From the Bierregaard abstract: "The health of the Inuit has undergone substantial changes over the past 5 centuries, as a result of social, cultural & economic changes brought about by interactions with Europeans...This process has accelerated considerably in the 2nd half of the 20th century."
Both papers are only available online through journal subscription or pay-per-view, and I'm not paying $ 31.50 for you. If you head over to the UCLA medical library, you should be able to read them for free.
From my research, the pattern is clear. One the one hand, the adoption of a Western high carbohydrate & saturated fat / low unsaturated fat diet helped to greatly increase the rate of "typical white person" cancers among the Inuit. But on the other hand, Inuit eating a 100 % traditional diet a hundred years ago had significant risks of various exotic cancers that are very rare in 21st century Westerners, and the only reason these cancers did not kill more of them was because they had very low life expectancies due to living a primitive existence in one of the most savage environments on earth. And I've been browsing the books on Arctic exploration in my personal library, and they all concur that while the explorers encountered plenty of very fit Inuit, their average life expectancy was very low indeed (35 - 40 years). On balance, I'll take modern times.
The bald statement that Inuit eating a 100 % Arctic hunter diet at the start of the 20th century never developed cancer is WRONG.
Martin at February 22, 2009 10:40 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635587">comment from MartinThanks for the UCLA library suggestion, but with papers in such trouble, I'm spending my time on figuring out how to earn a living like I used to. I'll send your comment to Stephan. And I don't believe I used the word "never" -- I wouldn't know that it's "never" or what the frequency would have been.
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2009 10:51 PM
> On balance, I'll take modern times.
Fucker not only stole my thesis, he presented it with clarity and concision.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 22, 2009 10:52 PM
Thanks, asshole :)
Martin at February 22, 2009 10:58 PM
Yer welcome, sumbitch. Don't let it happen again.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 22, 2009 10:58 PM
Martin,
The idea that increasing lifespan revealed cancers that the Inuit were already susceptible to is a hypothesis, not a fact. I've read the papers you mentioned and here's the problem with them: they refer to modern Inuit populations, not traditional ones. Modern Inuit eat a partially Westernized diet, including white flour, sugar and all the same crap that kills us in the West. There haven't been any traditionally living Inuit since the early 20th century.
The paper you quoted summed it up nicely: "Although malignant diseases were believed to be almost non-existent in Inuit populations at the beginning of the 20th century..." So why do you then say "The bald statement that Inuit eating a 100 % Arctic hunter diet at the start of the 20th century never developed cancer is WRONG"? It's not wrong, it's totally consistent with the medical and anthropological literature. No one who is familiar with the literature contests the fact that cancer was exceptionally rare among traditionally living Inuit, even on an age-adjusted basis.
I have no doubt that increasing lifespan is a risk factor for cancer. But you have to keep in mind that traditionally living Inuit communities contained significant numbers of elderly people, 60+ years old. Here are some lifespan data from the literature that I graphed out if you care to have a look:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-lifespan-of-inuit.html
Of course they didn't live as long as we do today on average. But the question is not whether it's better to live in the modern world or as a traditional Inuit, the question is, can we take the best aspects of their lives and use them to improve ours?
It's also worth mentioning that the Inuit were not the only cancer-free culture. Similar searches for cancer were conducted in traditionally living cultures in Gabon, South America and elsewhere, without finding any. As soon as Western food arrived, the same cultures developed cancer regularly. I'm most familiar with the Inuit lit though.
Stephan at February 23, 2009 12:04 AM
> they refer to modern Inuit
> populations, not traditional
> ones.
Did I see that coming? Yes. Props to me.
> including white flour, sugar and
> all the same crap that kills us
> in the West.
This isn't science with you, it's religion.
> As soon as Western food arrived,
> the same cultures developed cancer
It's not that cancer arrived then; it's that science sufficient to identify (and care about) cancer arrived at that moment as well.
> the question is, can we take
> the best aspects of
> their lives
You dare not the present the questions sincerely; those moments were to meager to extrapolate.
Why don't you and Amy eat seal blubber for three months and get back to us on this? (We'll spot you a ½ cup of broth on weekends.) Also, we're going to need you tor turn in your clean clothes, your drinking water, your literacy, your access to medical care...
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 23, 2009 12:25 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635621">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]This isn't science with you, it's religion
On the contrary. And if you'd read Gary Taubes' work -- and you might also read Stephan's blog, which is quite good -- you'd see that he is a meticulous researcher and is the skeptic's skeptic, as I've called him before. If ever he and I discuss a study, he'll lead off with all the flaws in it. The science writing award he's won -- it isn't for being a cheerleader.
If anything, Crid and Martin, your stance is that of a religion. Your refusal to even consider that this meticulously researched work has value, and without reading a word of it, and simply because you think it sounds too good to be true. Or too wild to be true, that the medical establishment would cover up the truth. Are you really that naive? Again, h. pylori, anyone?
Furthemore, since reading Taubes' work, starting with "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat," I have modified my diet. I eat as little flour and sugar as possible, although I don't seem to have to cut them out totally. I feel at my best when I eat a diet that is only meat, vegetables, olive oil, and butter. Also, I barely need to exercise -- I could get by without it, even sitting at a computer to write much of the day -- but I like the feeling I get from exercising.
Oh, and about six months ago, when I was eating cookies and ice cream for a few weeks, and thought I'd better cut that out, I went on a diet -- for four days -- and got back to the weight I was in high school. I ate only meat and vegetables. Period.
In general, I make sure I get enough protein and fat in my diet that I'm not hungry. I can eat small portions and be satisfied, and not be hungry again like I am if I eat carbohydrates -- especially the stupidest kind to eat: those "low-fat" or "fat-free" things that replace fat with extra sugar.
And Crid, you keep pretending we're suggesting that we turn back the clock when Stephan puts it exactly right: "the question is not whether it's better to live in the modern world or as a traditional inuit, the question is, can we take the best aspects of their lives and use them to improve ours."
Stephan, thanks so much for what you posted.
Amy Alkon at February 23, 2009 1:11 AM
"Your refusal to even consider that this meticulously researched work has value, and without reading a word of it, and simply because you think it sounds too good to be true."
"Meticulously researched work"? Whose? Crid's totally correct to point out the obvious problem with changes in reporting, and I'm still waiting for somebody to notice that 50 thousand visits a year for 15 years is fiction.
How does bad data persist? One way is for people take the first statements for granted if they sound good. Another is to ignore questions about the validity of basic statements.
Radwaste at February 23, 2009 2:17 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635649">comment from Radwaste"Your refusal to even consider that this meticulously researched work has value, and without reading a word of it, and simply because you think it sounds too good to be true." "Meticulously researched work"? Whose?
Gary Taubes will be the first to tell you why something is bad data. He knows what it is better than most and is one of the finest (if not the finest) science journalists in the country. Ron Bailey at reason is another I respect. Stefan has pointed out the holes in the arguments. I don't understand what you're saying about 50 thousand visits a year for 15 years. Furthermore, as Stefan and I pointed out (quoting Taubes' work in my case) this has been true of various populations, not just the Inuit, about lack of cancer and other diseases. And Martin's chortling, as Stephan pointed out, was wrong, because the papers referred to modern Inuit populations, not traditional ones.
Again, don't read Taubes book if you don't want. But, don't tear his work apart based on supposition or the fact that you once opened a page of it at the library.
Amy Alkon at February 23, 2009 7:04 AM
Crid-- you're flailing, other people here are presenting evidence and all you have are ad hominem attacks. You're mighty self-assured for someone with so little information.
Stan at February 23, 2009 12:26 PM
(Well, meeee-yow!)
Their evidence doesn't convince. But thanks so much for your perspective.
Crid at February 23, 2009 3:37 PM
Amy, Stephan, Crid:
Sorry it's taken me so long to come back to you & weigh in on this again. I had other business to attend to, like trying to earn a living.
I've purchased & read the Friborg & Bjerregaard papers. I also found & read a number of other relevant papers. In parcticular, I found an absolutely fascinating Canadian study, Hildes & Schaefer "The changing picture of neoplastic disease in the western and central Canadian Arctic (1950-1980" Canadian Medical Association Journal Volume 130(1) January 1984 pp 25-32. This last-mentioned paper is available to the public for free. Please go to pubmedcentral.com, type "Hildes Schaefer 1980" into the search box, and read this pdf, if you haven't already done so. The information from these papers fully supports my conclusions, and I stand by them.
"they refer to modern Inuit populations, not traditional ones" Not quite. The bulk of the information refers to modern studies, but the historical record for traditional Inuit populations is discussed, at least briefly.
"There haven't been any traditionally living Inuit since the early 20th century"
From Friborg: "During the second half of the 20th century, Inuit populations underwent major changes concerning a wide range of exposures. These changes included...a transition from fishing and hunting subsistence to a society where most people are employed...On an individual level, the Inuit have undergone noticeable dietary changes from a diet mainly based on fish and sea mammals towards a diet more dependent on imported food." Please note: "during the second half of the 20th century". This transition in diet is still underway now. From "A Dream Called Nunavut", Parfit & Pinneo, National Geographic September 1997:
"Then, in the middle of the 20th century, the white presence grew with missionaries and the military, and starvation, always a danger in the north, combined with tuberculosis to hit the Inuit hard. Milton Freeman, a noted biologist and anthropologist who was worked with the Inuit since the 1950s, remembers feeling anguish for his Inuit friends. "I'd go back in the spring", he told me, "and I'd meet an old guy who'd looked hale in the fall, who now looked like something out of Auschwitz. Babies would die because the mother's milk had dried up, and that was all they had. I thought, people shouldn't be living like that in Canada."
As late as the 1950s and into the early 1960s, there were still Inuit in the Canadian Arctic who were virtually totally dependent on a traditional Arctic hunter diet, so much so that they sometimes died of starvation when hunting was bad during winter.
This transition towards a modern diet is still taking place today. From Parfit & Pinneo: "For Inuit (in Nunavut Territory), meat from wild animals - called "country food" - makes up 40 to 70 % of their diet."
"It's not that cancer arrived then; it's that science sufficient to identify (and care about) cancer arrived at that moment as well" You're absolutely right, Crid. For proof, please refer to the Hildes & Schaefer paper:
"Early reports by both medical and nonmedical observers suggested that the Inuit did not suffer from malignant disease. However, we and two colleagues were able to document 180 histologically proven cases of cancer diagnosed in Canadian Inuit in the western and central Arctic from 1950 to early 1974." Yes, explorers & doctors who visited the Arctic in the 19th and early 20th centuries noticed that the Inuit seemed to be totally cancer-free. Bur as soon as trained cancer specialists armed with the tools of modern medicine conducted thorough surveys of Inuit across a wide section of the Arctic to look for cancer, they found it. And they found it in elderly Inuit in the remotest corners of the Canadian Arctic in 1950. These Inuit elders would have eaten nothing but traditional food for their entire lives.
If you read Hildes & Schaefer, you'll see that they attribute many of these cancers to changes in diet and lifestyle, but not all of them. Cancer among early traditional Inuit was certainly rare, but the available evidence very strongly suggests it was not non-existent. I have no doubt that if modern scientists could hope into a time machine and look for cancer in Inuit hunters in 1899, they would have found a few cases here and there.
And they would have found types of cancer that were unique (or nearly unique) to the Inuit. Cancers that were caused by the Inuits genetics, diet, lifestyle, and environment. An entire section of the Friborg paper is titled "Traditional Inuit cancers". And Hildes & Schaefer describe salivary gland tumours that were so characteristic of Inuit populations, and so rarely found elsewhere, that the term "eskimomas" was coined to describe them in the medical literature.
From Friborg: "Traditional Inuit cancers: Nasopharyngeal and salivary gland tumours: The worldwide distribution of nasopharyngeal carcinoma shows remarkable geographical and ethnic variations, with very low incidence rates in most populations, but high rates in areas of southeast China, southeast Asia...and in the Inuit population...Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is 25-40 times more frequent in Inuit populations than in white populations, and represents 4-7% of malignancies in Inuit compared with less than 0.1% in white people...At least some of the factors involved in the aetiology of this cancer are believed to be shared in the different high-risk populations. Thus, certain environmental factors have a role; in particular, infection with EBV affecting people who are genetically susceptible to nasopharyngeal carcinoma...The involvement of a hereditary component in the development of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is supported by reports of familial clustering, and an eight-times increased risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in first-degree relatives of Inuit with nasopharyngeal carcinoma has been reported...Studies in other high-risk populations...have identified preserved foods, especially those ingested in childhood, as a risk factor...The food most commonly associated with this cancer has been salt-preserved fish, the carcinogenic potential of which has been supported by animal experiments...Whether similar high-risk foods are associated with nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Inuit populations is unclear, but salted fish in the childhood diet has been found more frequently in Alaskan prople with nasopharyngeal carcinoma than in controls, and a high content of nitrosamines has been identified in traditional dried fish."
Please note: salt-dried fish has been a vital part of the Inuit (& Alaskan Indian) diet for thousands of years, and it still is. It wasn't introduced to them by white folks.
Stephan, to me this data is quite clear. Inuit are, and always have been, susceptible to this form of cancer, because of their genetics, environment, and traditional diet. This form of cancer has been overshadowed in the late 20th century by more conventional cancers, but it's still persistent, and it cannot be due to modernity & Westernization. If you can explain to me why my interpretation is clearly wrong, please do so.
Continued in next comment...
Martin at February 23, 2009 4:32 PM
From Hildes & Schaefer: "One quarter (15 of 61) of all the malignant neoplasms found in the Inuit of the western and central Arctic between 1950 and 1966 originated in the parotid or other salivary glands. In other Canadians these tumours are so uncommon that they are counted as "other" sites in the head or neck...The unparalleled predominance of this type of cancer in the Inuit led those dealing with it to coin the term "eskimoma"...Nasopharyngeal cancer shares certain features with salivary tumours in the Inuit...There are, however, notable differences between them. First, salivary gland tumours showed a slight predilection for Inuit women...Nasopharyngeal cancer, on the other hand, was identified in 18 Inuit men and only 2 women...The 9:1 ratio of men to women in cases of nasopharyngeal cancer in Canadian & Akaskan Inuit may point to an environmental factor affecting men more than women. Having lived and travelled extensively with Canadian Inuit in the winter, one of us was impressed by the almost constant nasal dripping and other signs of irritation of the nose, nasal passages, paranasal sinuses, nasopharynx and upper airways, all of which were much more evident in hunters than in their wives, who spent most of the winter indoors. Women, on the other hand (who had a higher incidence of salivary gland tumours), traditionally softened skins by chewing. This involved intense activity and possibly irritation of the salivary glands, It is a practice that...declined in frequency in the central Arctic 15 to 20 years ago [this paper was written in 1984]"
There's a clear & indisputable link between 2 forms of cancer characteristic to the Inuit, and their environment & traditional way of life. Challenge it if you can, Stephan.
"Between 1950 and 1966 in the western and central Arctic lung cancer in the Inuit was restricted to elderly women...The use of cigarettes increased sharply after 1955 across the Canadian Arctic, but earlier in the western areas...We attribute the previous occurrence of lung cancer in elderly women to inhalation of fumes and smudge from the open-flame lamps that burned seal or fish oil, which they tended at frequent intervals day and night"
Another clear link between cancer & Inuit tradition.
"Among the Inuit we found 9 cases of cancer of the esophagus, which accounted for 6% of the cancers in males and 3% of the cancers in females, exceeding the rates observed in Alberta 6 & 10 times, respectively...There are other high-risk areas in the world, such as in central Asia and parts of southern Africa. The consumption of food preserved by smoking or pickling has been implicated in these areas...Hurst suggested that the chewing of seal skins sprinkled with wood ashes could have contributed to the extraordinary risk of Alaskan Eskimo women for cancer of the esophagus. We suggest that other potential carcinogens are related to nutritional habits: Inuit of the eastern Arctic used to ferment Arctic char & lake trout by sewing them into seal skins that still had the blubber attached and letting them sit in the sun fir a week until they had the consistency of soft butter. In the central and western Arctic the practice is to bury the fish under 30 cm of gravel for 2 or 3 weeks in the summer...nitrosamines form during the fermentation. Another traditional food habit that may have irritated the esophageal mucosa of the Inuit was the eating of the highly acidic and partly fermented stomach contents of caribou, Arctic hare and ptarmigan"
Yet another crystal-clear link between a cancer characteristic to the Inuit, and some unappetizing but vital components of the traditional Inuit diet.
In short, Stephan, I believe that I was right, and that the science is on my side. Your assertion that it's reasonable to assume that cancer was essentially nonexistent among early traditional Inuit is wrong. Your assertion that there haven't been any traditionally living Inuit since the early 20th century is wrong. Your assertion that the data & conclusions in Friborg & Melbye and other papers is not relevant to early traditional Inuit is wrong.
As Crid pointed out and as I have made a very strong case for, the reason that cancer seemed to be nonexistent in early traditional Inuit was because modern medical science wasn't looking hard for it. As soon as modern cancer specialists really started looking (in 1950, when many Canadian Inuit had eaten practically nothing but traditional food for their entire lives), they found cancer. And they found cancers that were characteristic to the Inuit, and indisputably linked to their diet, way of life, environment, and genetics. As Inuit lifespans gradually increased thanks to their first contact with Western medicine, more of them lived long enough to suffer from these traditional cancers. As the Inuit began to adopt a Western diet & way of life (a process which began with the explorers, really accelerated on a massive scale in the second half of the 20th century, and is still underway today), their rates of cancer rose much higher, and they began to suffer from conventional cancers which they never got before. But even now, traditional cancers are still a very significant part of Inuit cancer epidemiology.
"The question is, shouldn't we take the best aspects of their lives and use them to improve ours?" That's something we can all agree on.
Please don't take any of this as a personal attack on you, Stephan. The search for the truth is bigger than all of us. I invite you to challenge my work.
Amy, I believe I'm being very fair to Stephan, and that I'm perfectly justified in challenging him. You're being very unfair to me, by implying that I'm on some sort of crusade to prove that Stephan & Gary Taubes are crackpots, that I'm trying to deny that a low carb/saturated fat higher unsaturated fat diet wouldn't be healthier for all of us and reduce the risk of cancer, and most of all, by implying that I haven't done my homework and made my case. Please read what I've written, and if you find stupidity or error in it, let me know.
Crid, thank you for your erudition and moral support.
Martin at February 23, 2009 6:18 PM
That's gay! Don't be gay!
One last swing at it:
If all the elements of this were decoupled and posted as individual blog items, there'd be nothing worth criticizing, whatever the faults. And viewed in the correct light, many of these things are just indisputably true.
• HFCS sucks! It's mangled our ag policy, our landscape, and American health.
• Mercury is bad to eat! We should try to keep it out of our food!
• Our blogger is admirably-shaped! Much of this probably comes from genetic blessings, but she no doubt maintains a range of disciplined behaviors that could improve the lives of others, too.
• The medical establishment doesn't know everything! The march of science continues; It's literally within my lifetime that plate tectonics have been accepted as the best explanation for large motions of the surface of the planet. Amy's right about the ulcers: Learning that these were (now) attributed to bacteria was a neck-snapping adjustment to popular understanding.
• A simple diet with less-processed foods in an environment demanding exercise probably reduces the incidence of much illness!
But there are weaknesses in each of these points, and when you slam them all together, you get a self-aggrandizing, unsubstantiated, fear-inducing mess... Delivered with smirking sensibilities like this, from Stephan:
> Modern Inuit eat a partially
> Westernized diet, including
> white flour, sugar and all
> the same crap that kills
> us in the West.
Now, even if you construct a thoughtful argument that flour and sugar are "crap that kills", which would be more trouble than it's worth, the rhetoric is misleading.
Flour and sugar do a lot for our diet. They make meals pleasant. They can inexpensively dress otherwise uninteresting nutrients into forms that we can anticipate with pleasure every day. Our diet is the envy of animal life through the eons.
If you keep your shit together and enjoy a little luck, a western diet can carry you into vigorous, curious old age like nothing in history. Same with our financial lives, sex lives, drinking lives, etc... You gotta approach all these things with a clear head and hope the odds are with you. It's Planet Earth.... There are no guarantees.
And because it's Planet Earth, in the end, you're dead anyway. And get this: Your death is probably going to be horrible! You may have years of suffering and/or senility before the end! And that doesn't mean anything's wrong.
What makes the "crap that kills" comment so loathsome is the implication that we'd never die if only.... If only we ate whale blubber, or if only the AMA wasn't bunch of stuffy assholes, or if only some precious author could get his paperbacks taken seriously, or... or.... Let's say the western diet means that everybody gets cancer in their 90's. So what? Do you know anyone in their 90's? How many of them are having a good time of it?
Aside from the interpersonally offensive gamesmanship of savvy and suspicion that comes with comments about "crap that kills", such a posture strongly diminishes the feelings of gratitude that people can have for their food, and for all the other blessings of modern life (safe living arrangements, supportive medicine, etc.).
Without gratitude, happiness isn't possible. And there is much to be grateful for.
Don't kid a kidder.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 2:25 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635824">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]. Flour and sugar do a lot for our diet. They make meals pleasant. They can inexpensively dress otherwise uninteresting nutrients into forms that we can anticipate with pleasure every day.
I would be much healthier if I ate a diet that was ONLY meat and vegetables. I choose to eat some carbohydrates -- some flour-and-sugar-based products. But, if I need to lose weight or appear on TV, I'm not going to eat them, because I know what they do to me. Life is a deadly process, but just like I don't smoke cigars, I don't eat many carbs. The fewer, the better.
Nobody is arguing for primitivism here, or that it's better non-modern. Stefan made that clear. The question is, what have we done that we think is good for us that actually is detrimental? Your insistence that it's anything other than this is silly and childish.
Amy Alkon at February 24, 2009 6:48 AM
You keep insisting that the truth is all-important to you, and that if any readers see any bullshit in your writing, they should call you on it right away. If Gary is stating that Inuit didn't get cancer before they started eating a high-carb diet, he's bullshitting. And you're calling me childish for pointing out this out, and taking the trouble to show some hard science to back it up?
For the last time, I want the same thing you do - for more people to eat a healthy diet. Gary & Stephan are promoting a healthy diet, I'm behind them 100%. But if I see someone making unsupported assertions, I'll call them on it, and I don't give a fuck if they're the best science journalist alive. And that's not an attack on them. Why is something so simple so hard for you to understand?
Martin at February 24, 2009 10:33 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635882">comment from MartinMartin, where you go wrong is trying to assert what Gary did or didn't say without reading the book. Since this is a point of contention and interest for you, why not at least get it out of the library and see what it says, and if you have issues with it, instead of debating what it MIGHT say. This is all quite ridiculous.
Amy Alkon at February 24, 2009 12:57 PM
Point taken. For the record, I finally got around to ordering a copy of "Good Calories, Bad Calories" from Amazon.ca yesterday. In my defense, I'll point out that I didn't need to read a 640 page book to know that you got that crazy idea about cancer-free Inuit from Taubes, because you said so yourself. Check out your comment at 7:45 AM Feb 20, near the start of this thread.
And check out Crid's comment at 2:21 PM, Feb 21. He quotes from Taubes directly, page 322: "If the Inuit thrived in the harshest of environments without eating carbohydrates and whatever nutrients exist in fruits and vegetables, they, by definition, were consuming a balanced, healthy diet." I don't need to read any of the book myself to know that that claim is absolute rubbish. In my first long comment above, I quote an eye-witness report from a Canadian anthropologist who spent many years with Inuit hunters, starting in the 1950s. These Inuit weren't thriving, they were STARVING. And vegetable matter was always a vital part of the traditional Inuit diet. So vital, in fact, that they were willing to devour the acidic, rotting stomach contents of caribou, arctic hare, & ptarmigan to get it, as Hildes & Schaefer mentioned in their paper.
I'm eager to read Taubes book from cover to cover with an open mind. You've called him a skeptic's skeptic. Don't be shocked that that one sentence alone scores a 10/10 on my skeptic meter.
And BTW, Stephan just got back to me by email, and said that he'd be glad to respond to my argument. Watch this space.
Thanks.
Martin at February 24, 2009 4:09 PM
"I don't understand what you're saying about 50 thousand visits a year for 15 years."
1) The 1996 census says there are only about 41K Inuits.
2) Other sources say that the current population represents a "high", at least since the mid-1300's.
3) The cited number regards the examination of a nomadic people, traveling on foot, sled and by canoe, for only part of the year, across millions of square miles.
So who, now, was he examining?
And - let's not forget that the medical expertise of this Captain Leavitt is obscure. Where is it?
The local clinic, one of several, routinely takes 3 hours to examine a patient, in a modern small-town office to which people can be delivered by car, bus or ambulance. It has two full-time doctors, 4 PAs and I don't know how many nurses. I was there yesterday.
How many people a year did this guy see, 110 years ago, in the Arctic?
Radwaste at February 24, 2009 5:58 PM
(And how good would he have been at recognizing conditions that had yet to appear in professional literature that he'd never read under any circumstances?)
(Also, how long did the people live as a baseline?)
(Also, biggest point of all, how well did they live? Did they, as Taubes backhandedly [but pivotally] infers, "thrive"? Did their diets do everything possible to nourish their minds and spirits?)
{See the last minutes of this video; iron alone can be worth fifteen IQ points.}
(Also, were they happy? Would you want to live that way? So why don't you?)
(I know I promised the earlier comment would be the last, but no Taube and Leavitt enthusiasts have yet explained why they won't switch their own diets to seal blubber for three months at a time.)
(And so I'm compelled to offer this in entirely parenthetical rhetoric.... Carry on.)
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 6:21 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1635923">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]no Taube and Leavitt enthusiasts have yet explained why they won't switch their own diets to seal blubber for three months at a time.)
No one has the slightest idea where to get seal blubber. Is it good? If not, I see no reason to eat it. I do eat a diet that is very close to what people likely ate in the Pleistocene, and the less flour and sugar I eat, the better and more alert I feel. Taubes illustrates in his book how we came to eat the "food pyramid" -- if I remember correctly, some aide to George McGovern, untrained in science, wrote it. Too tired to look it up now. Long deadline day, since 5 a.m. Must sleep.
Amy Alkon at February 24, 2009 7:22 PM
I know, but... You wouldn't get cancer! We promise.....
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 7:41 PM
Hi Martin,
Let me be clear that I'm not claiming the Inuit cancer rate was 0.0000% for all time, in all traditionally-living Inuit. What I'm saying is that the cancer rate was exceptionally low, so low that it was undetectable by trained physicians routinely diagnosing cancer in whites and partially modernized Inuit. First, I'm going to articulate the question at hand. Then I'm going to summarize what I understand to be your arguments. Then I'll respond point by point, and make a few concluding statements.
Here's the question: Did traditionally-living Inuit have an exceptionally low (undetectable at the time) incidence of cancer, when compared to whites and partially modernized Inuit of similar lifespans?
Here are the main points I heard you make:
1) Several studies from the 1950s onward reported cancer in Inuit. These studies were done on Inuit who were living traditionally, therefore traditionally-living Inuit did get cancer.
2) Docotors couldn't detect cancer in the Inuit because the Inuit weren't living long enough to develop it.
3) The same studies from the 1950s onward report characteristic patterns of cancer incidence (nasopharyngeal, salivary). The authors speculate that these are due to traditional dietary and lifestyle factors (due to associations in other parts of the world), therefore the Inuit most have always suffered from those cancers.
4) Cancer always existed amoung the Inuit, but field physicians in the arctic were not qualified to diagnose cancer adequately and therefore they overlooked the cancers that were there.
Here are my responses:
1) In 1908, the anthropologist Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson set out on an expedition to find one of the rare remaining Inuit groups that had not been contacted by whites. He found them in Coronation gulf and lived among them for a year. In 1910, they tasted sugar for the first time. By 1910, they had converted to Christianity. By 1918, they were regularly eating Western foods and smoking tobacco, which they considered essential commodities.
The Hudson's Bay company had trading posts throughout the Canadian arctic in the 1800s, which the Inuit would travel long distances to trade with. The Inuit would trade pelts for food commodities, tobacco and ammunition. On the coast, Inuit would trade with the whaling vessels that became ubiquitous around the turn of the century.
The last remaining isolated Inuit groups were contaced in the early 1920s by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen. These groups almost certainly began trading for Western foods within a few years, as all the other groups did. Inuit generally saw Western food as affluent, and would go to great lengths to get it to avoid appearing poor. They would travel long distances once or a few times per year and sled home with large quantities of Western food, tobacco and ammunition.
The Inuit in the papers you cited from the 1950s onward were partially modernized, thus they are perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that cancer only occurred in modernized Inuit. Unless you can convincingly demonstrate that the Inuit in those papers didn't eat any Western food at all (which is exceptionally unlikely), they don't support your hypothesis. I'll say it again, because it's an important point: papers from after the 1930s, when 100% traditional Inuit no longer existed, are not evidence that traditional Inuit got cancer.
2) Age of course plays a very prominent role in cancer. All things being equal, a population that lives longer will get more cancer than one that lives shorter. But here's the key point to remember: physicians in the Alaskan and Canadian arctic were regularly diagnosing cancer in whites and modernized Inuit at the time. Modernized Inuit, if anything, had a shorter life expectancy than traditional ones, due to increased incidence of infectious disease, and rampant tooth decay and diabetes. The whites also probably didn't live much longer because they were whalers working in very harsh conditions. Scurvy and other deficiencies were rampant. Life expectancy of traditional Inuit was 30-45 years (excluding infant mortality), depending on the group. Elderly people past 60 were fairly common, and some individials made it to 90. This is pretty typical (maybe a little on the high side) for a hunter-gatherer population.
So the three groups examined had similar life expectancies, but malignancy was only observed in the modernized Inuit and whites.
3) Cancer is multi-factorial. Maybe smoked fish does increase cancer risk, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll get cancer if you eat it. It depends on many other factors. For example, if you expose rats to carcinogens, some of them will develop cancer. But the extent to which they develop cancer depends on the linoleic acid (omega-6) content of the diet, among other things. Rats on a very LA-restricted diet have a much lower rate of several types of cancers when exposed to the same amount of carcinogen. So the fact that smoked fish associates with cancer in some populations does not support the idea that traditionally-living Inuit got cancer. That is nothing more than speculation on the part of Hildes and Schaefer; don't mistake it for factual information.
4) Here is a partial list of physicians who searched for cancer among the Inuit and concluded that it did not exist: Dr. Josef Romig, Dr. Samuel K. Hutton (published the book "Health Conditions and Disease Incidence among the Eskimos of Labrador"), Dr. George B. Leavitt (began searching in 1884), Dr. Ray Edward Smith, Dr L. A. White, and Dr. George P. Howe (Harvard medical school). Between all of them, they examined the majority of the Inuit population for malignant disease. The search began in 1884 and ended in the 1930s, when traditionally-living Inuit could no longer be found. More than half a dozen well-respected field physicians searched for nearly 50 years among tens of thousands of Inuit and never found a single case of cancer among those that lived 100% traditionally. During the same period, they were regularly diagnosing cancer in partially modernized Inuit and whites.
There are many cancers that are easily diagnosed without modern medical techniques. Any external cancer, any cancer of the mouth or nose, large internal tumors, breast cancer, and anything that has metastasized to the exterior of the body can be easily detected by simple examination. Any field physician can tell you that. Advanced nasopharyngeal cancer and salivary gland cancer, which are now so common in Inuit, are easily diagnosed. The proof that certain cancers are easily diagnosed is that these physicians were finding cancer all the time in partially modernized Inuit and whites. Why weren't they finding them in traditionally-living Inuit if they were present?
There are two facts about Inuit culture that are relevant to this discussion. First, they held Western physicians in very high regard. They would come to them for every little ache, so there was plenty of opportunity for examination. The other fact is that Inuit generally didn't wear tops indoors (men and women) because their traditionally dwellings were actually quite warm inside (thickly insulated with earth, sod and snow, heated with seal oil lamps). So for field physicians, external cancers and breast cancers would have been easily spotted.
-------
To my knowledge, the medical literature does not contain a single report of a 100% traditionally-living Inuit developing cancer. This is despite a concerted 50-year search by more than half a dozen respected physicians, which examined tens of thousands of Inuit, many of them repeatedly. Field physicians in the Arctic were in universal agreement that metastatic disease was exceptionally rare among traditionally-living Inuit, but not among partially modernized Inuit or whites.
Studies after the 1930s showing that Inuit develop cancer only reinforce the idea that it's the partial modernization that's the problem.
If you want to claim that all these physicians were lying for self-aggrandizement or something, that's probably your best defense. You won't find any support for your arguments in the medical literature. I read the Hildes and Schaefer paper you mentioned, and it states (brackets are my addition) "Eskimos were probably at no time free from neoplastic disease, although this has been suggested by some earlier Canadian medican and nonmedical observers [and Americans and Europeans]." Why do you think he said "probably"? Because no one has ever found a cancer in a traditionally living Inuit, that's why. If they had, he would have referenced it. Half a century of searching failed to turn up a single case.
People have a hard time believing that the Inuit cancer rate was so low, but it's the most parsimonious explanation for the observations of a number of physicians over half a century. Similar observations were made among other traditionally-living populations before the introduction of Western commodity foods. It's an observation that challenges our notions of cancer risk factors, and that we must acknowledge if we want to move forward in understanding cancer's etiology.
Martin, I will read your reply if it's cordial, but I probably won't reply to it because this is time consuming and we all have other things to do.
Stephan at February 24, 2009 9:19 PM
> To my knowledge, the medical
> literature does not contain a
> single report of a 100%
> traditionally-living Inuit
> developing cancer
The literature of the period is similarly silent on red-shifted celestial bodies: They hadn't been identified yet, either.
> the most parsimonious explanation
Parsimonious? So your beliefs demand generosity? That's the crux of this, the part that smells like religion: You want to be loved for good intentions, for asserting that near-magic conditions of health could be available all if only modern medicine weren't so darned ______. (Whatever. Parsimonious? Stingy? Emotionally withholding?)
But reality is the part that persists whether we believe in it or not.
> the observations of a number of
> physicians over half a century.
A half-century in which germ theory was still novel in many corners. Leavitt's lengthy entry on Wikipedia mentions no medical training or education of any kind, though he certainly saw some ugly things happen to people. Are we even talking about the same George Leavitt? His descriptions of shipboard amputations echo those I've heard from trip leaders on dive boats. In these horrific tales, men return to the dock maimed but breathing. Certainly they regard their galley-blade surgeons as lifesavers; but is there any reason to call Leavitt a "doctor"? Is there any reason to believe that, as you put it, "Leavitt spent over two decades stationed in the arctic examining Inuit"? He certainly spent many seasons up there, but the health of the locals isn't described as his priority. He had a risky business to run. His venue appears to have been a boat, not a "station".
And again, again-- We're talking about illnesses that often weren't even given names until later in the 20th century. How would he have recognized them?
> It's an observation that
> challenges our notions of
> cancer risk factors
It's not an observation. At best, it's an absence of observation.
> and that we must acknowledge if
> we want to move forward in
> understanding cancer's
> etiology.
What we need here is a smoking gun. We get no sense that these casual "observations" (often by nonscientists) were clinical studies of reliable design. If they were, critical review would have taken good notice of them.
> I will read your reply if it's
> cordial, but I probably won't
> reply to it because this
> is time consuming
Right. This thread is not about science and good health; this is about other gratifications, ego strokes which will not be surrendered casually.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 10:46 PM
PS- I have fantasies about 18th century health care, too. I hope someday to be photographed sitting atop this red brick with a bottled water in my hand.
A lot of our best health care is of recent invention, and came to us from courageous men (contemporaries of Leavitt) who had to fight to make it happen. Let's give props to the correct ones.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 10:56 PM
Whoops, 19th century. But you knew when I meant....
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 24, 2009 10:58 PM
Thank you for replying, Stephan.
It was never in dispute that adoption of a Western diet & lifestyle greatly increased the rate of cancer among Inuit.
The 2006 census of Canada lists 50,480 Inuit. The first census that attempted to count all Canadian Inuit was the 1921 Census, which counted only 3269. There were undoubtedly more, but they were out of reach of census takers while leading a largely nomadic existence in the wildest country on earth outside Antarctica. The next time you look at a map of Canada, take a peek at Foxe Basin. That's the portion of the Arctic Ocean between the west coast of Baffin Island & the Melville Peninsula. The biggest island in the Foxe Basin is Prince Charles Island, 660 square miles, about 10 times the size of Washington DC. It turns out that it was well known to the local Netsilik Inuit as a hunting ground, but it wasn't discovered until 1948, along with several smaller islands, when all of Canada was finally mapped ftom the air. Look at any old map of Canada from 1900 or so and you'll see huge blanks in the Arctic. I'll leave you to conclude how unlikely it is that Leavitt or any of his contemporaries could have reached & examined all the Inuit in the remotest corners of the Canadian Arctic.
Modernization & the adoption of a western diet was a gradual process that is still underway. Even today, many Canadian Inuit rely on wild game for the majority of their diet. It's perfectly plausible that elderly Inuit in the 1950s would have grown up eating nothing but traditional food, and that Western food would never have been more than a very small part of their diet. If Western food was that carcinogenic in such small doses, none of us would be cancer-free today.
I provided you with an eye-witness account by a Canadian scientist who spent many years living with Inuit, starting in the 1950s, and reported that they were still so dependent on a hunting diet & way of life that they sometimes died of starvation when hunting was bad. His account should not be cavalierly dismissed.
Friborg & Melbye would not have titled a section of their paper "Traditional Inuit Cancers" if these cancers were not traditional to Inuit. Early researchers would not have coined the term "eskimomas" if the tumours they described were not almost exclusive to Inuit who were still leading a largely traditional life at the time. There's a mystery here. Cases of colon cancer are easy to attribute to Westernization. Cancers that are exceedingly rare in Westerners but fairly common in Inuit eating largely traditional diets are not.
Salivary gland tumours are so rare in modern Westerners that they're still considered medical oddities. In their thorough survey, Hildes & Schaefer found that these accounted for a large proportion of the cancers they observed in elderly Inuit in the 1950s. Would observers in 1900 have gone looking for these tumours? Is it really plausible that they arose out of nowhere between 1920 & 1950?
I'm well aware that many of Hildes & Schaefers conclusions are speculative. Nevertheless, they provided many clear & perfectly plausible links between traditional Inuit diet, habits, & environment, and the characteristic Inuit cancers they observed over many years of field study. Their explanations for their observations remain much more convincing to me than yours.
One final point. It's easy to make the case against the typical western diet. But you know that there is no free lunch on this earth. The adoption of a more Inuit-like diet could carry unknown risks for us that you don't seem to have thought about.
Martin at February 25, 2009 12:07 AM
"What we need is a smoking gun. We get no sense that these casual "observations" (often by nonscientists) were clinical studies of reliable design".
Hildes & Schaefer WAS the very first clinical study of reliable design. It's the closest thing to a smoking gun anyone will ever find.
Martin at February 25, 2009 12:18 AM
Yeah, but that's arguing other thing, in the other half-century, right? They're not saying Stephan's darling "traditionals" had or did not have typical (modern) cancers.
So this morning, I finally dropped "Dr. George B. Leavitt" into Google and got two links. One is a Stephan post from which much of the above seems cut-&-pasted, and the other is a similar theme from an authority called "Doghouse". Does anyone else in the world believe this guy was a medico with a "station" studying inuit health?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 25, 2009 6:38 AM
George B. Leavitt, friend of Vilhjalmur Steffanson, was indeed a Yankee whaling captain. Here's a link to an intersting arcticle from the archives of the New York Times, dated Sept. 4, 1904:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50813F8345E12738DDDAD0894D1405B848CF1D3
Click on the pdf. An actual doctor, a Dr.Call, tells how "he heard of some remarkable amputations performed by one or two of the captains of the fleet. He preserved this description of an amputation from the record of Captain George B Leavitt of the steam whaler Newport" Lots of gruesome details follow.
In his blog, Stephan claims that our Dr George B. Leavitt, along with his staff, saw 50,000 Inuit a year between 1885 and 1900. In 1921, the Canadian census counted only 3269 Inuit in the entire Canadian Arctic. I don't need to explain to you what that means for his credibility.
Hildes & Schaefer were, to the best of my knowledge, the first cancer specialists to ever do a thorough clinical survey of cancer among Inuit across the Canadian Arctic. Because earlier surveys of the same standard don't exist, one may, I suppose, conclude that earler cancers didn't exist either.
Martin at February 25, 2009 10:56 AM
Martin,
Come on, you're creating a straw-man attack here. Leavitt never claimed to have examined 50,000 individual Inuit all by himself. What he did was perform approximately 50,000 examinations, along with his medical team. The actual number of Inuit examined was obviously less than 50,000, by some unknown factor, because they examined the same individuals a number of times over the years. And Leavitt was not the only one doing the exams, he had help.
The 1921 Canadian census, first of all, is probably an underestimate of the true population at the time. Second of all, it didn't include the Alaskan Inuit population. Third, by 1921, the population had been so decimated by disease that it had shrunk considerably.
The other point to remember is that Leavitt wasn't the only one looking for cancer and not finding it. This was a big deal around the turn of the century, because people were just as surprised about the apparent lack of cancer back then as they are today. Here are a few others I mentioned above: Dr. Josef Romig, Dr. Samuel K. Hutton (published the book "Health Conditions and Disease Incidence among the Eskimos of Labrador"), Dr. Ray Edward Smith, Dr L. A. White, and Dr. George P. Howe (Harvard medical school). You can't discredit the story by discrediting Leavitt alone.
It sounds like we both agree that the cancer rate was unusually low in traditionally-living Inuit, which is good enough for me.
Stephan at February 25, 2009 1:23 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1636064">comment from StephanThanks so much, Stephan, for clearing that up.
"It sounds like we both agree that the cancer rate was unusually low in traditionally-living Inuit, which is good enough for me."
I think this is the point here -- also borne out in other populations not consuming sugar and flour-based products.
Nobody is suggesting we should live in the harsh circumstances of the Inuit, although I think there are a few men who'd go for the sauna-like interiors of traditional Inuit dwellings if women would go around topless (loved that fact from your comment above). The point is, and the point Taubes' book makes, we've been consuming a diet that seems to be quite unhealthy for us -- high in refined carbohydrates and low in protein and fat -- and based not on science but "science" put forward as science. Taubes' book exposes that, and he is quite honest about stuff that is not substantiated with much proof or adequate proof. I know Taubes, and if anything, he's tortured by making sure that what he's putting out is solid. He's the first one to look for limitations and flaws in any study, and we have a mutual friend who kicks my ass to do this as well.
Amy Alkon at February 25, 2009 1:57 PM
"It sounds like we both agree that the cancer rate was unusually low in traditionally-living Inuit" Yes. That's still a world away from your original bald claim that "hunter-gatherers and numerous non-industrial populations throughout the world did not get cancer."
You haven't provided proof that the Dr George B Leavitt you cite as an authority was not in fact Captain George B Leavitt, whose medical expertise was limited to hacking off the frost-bitten & gangrenous limbs of his crew members. At any rate, the claims you make about him are wildly implausible and damage your credibility. Don't get upset at me for pointing this out.
I believe that a sober look at the evidence & science still favors my viewpoint, and that's good enough for me.
Martin at February 25, 2009 2:13 PM
Amy, as soon as I finish soaking up all 640 pages, I'll let you know!
Martin at February 25, 2009 2:16 PM
> You can't discredit the story by
> discrediting Leavitt alone
We need only discredit you. "Stories" never sell in academe... As events seem to demonstrate.
> the cancer rate was unusually
> low in traditionally-living
> Inuit, which is good enough
> for me.
Not proven to anyone else's satisfaction. And more to the point, at what cost to their health more generally? Religion, we call this, and Amy usually takes the sensible approach when presented with people who are horny to believe things.
> Taubes' book exposes that, and he
> is quite honest about stuff that
> is not substantiated
Ahem:
| If the Inuit thrived...
?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 25, 2009 5:55 PM
All right, this will be my final comment on this!!
(tonight)
Between the continuing enthusiasm for Taubes, the Stephan cites, and this comment--
> Amy, as soon as I finish soaking
> up all 640 pages, I'll
> let you know!
--I'm reminded of childhood, when, after pitching a fit about the improbability of the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection on the Third Day, or the inexplicable suffering a universe authored by a Father omniscient and omnipotent, it was explained that the solution to my doubts was to double down on scripture.
Well, no!. If I'd been told the truth the first time, maybe.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at February 25, 2009 8:16 PM
And this is mine (for now).
I didn't need to read past the first verse of Genesis to know that the entire Bible was a fairy tale. I kept reading right through to Revelations anyway, because I wanted to know why this fairy tale had such a grip on people.
I could have instantly dismissed Taubes based on that one sentence. But I have to find out why he (and he alone) has slithered past Amy Alkon's defenses. Even if it takes 640 pages.
Martin at February 25, 2009 9:22 PM
For those of you who might still be interested in the original subject of the post, the presence of mercury in high fructose corn syrup, the original report can be found here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=111&action=archive. Look in volume 8, 2009. As suggested by some commenters, the detection level was quite low, .005 micrograms per gram of HFCS, or 5 parts per billion. The highest level found was .570 micrograms per gram or 570 parts per billion, a bit more than half the 1 part per million of methyl mercury the FDA allows in seafood. As the mercury found in HFCS is probably elemental mercury rather than the much more toxic organometallic methyl mercury found in seafood the risk seems rather small if you accept the FDA limits are reasonable. The Cenegenics Medical Institute the PDF link leads to is Dr Jeffry Life’s organization. Dr. Life is a proponent of using testosterone, other anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to enhance older men’s health and virility. Consider your health information sources carefully.
MikeM at February 26, 2009 7:56 AM
We're trying!
Crid at February 26, 2009 3:41 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/02/20/an_epidemiologi.html#comment-1636245">comment from CridYes, at times, you are, but I do my best to see that as part of your charm!
Amy Alkon at February 26, 2009 3:45 PM
We went from this:
"One of these physicians was Dr. George B. Leavitt. He actively searched for cancer among the traditionally-living Inuit from 1885 to 1907. Along with his staff, he saw 50,000 Inuit a year for the first 15 years, and 25,000 a year thereafter. He did not find a single case of cancer. At the same time, he was regularly diagnosing cancers among the crews of whaling ships and other Westernized populations."
To this:
"Come on, you're creating a straw-man attack here. Leavitt never claimed to have examined 50,000 individual Inuit all by himself. What he did was perform approximately 50,000 examinations, along with his medical team. The actual number of Inuit examined was obviously less than 50,000, by some unknown factor, because they examined the same individuals a number of times over the years. And Leavitt was not the only one doing the exams, he had help."
Captain Leavitt never claimed anything. Stephan did.
This isn't "clearing" anything up - it's covering an ass against simple fabrication, something simply made up so it would sound good.
Just not good enough to be anywhere near the truth, whatever else one might say about diet.
Radwaste at February 27, 2009 7:21 AM
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