Folklore Based Medicine?

Byoliveridley

Breast cancer theory supports African folklore – CNN.com

While they stressed that women should always get screening and quick treatment for breast cancer, they said their theory could also help explain the belief, widespread in parts of Africa and the United States, that removing a tumor can hasten death. “I must say that I am sure there is more to this than just a myth,” said Michael Retsky of Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. His latest hypothesis, which he admits is not supported by any new direct research, is published in the International Journal of Surgery. He stressed that any woman with breast cancer should get the tumor removed. And he noted that in the United States, the women who could be considered at risk of having their cancer spread now get chemotherapy anyway, which would stop cancer’s spread.

Note, no direct evidence, no double blind trial, just a story? C’mon, you’re a Doctor. Surely, you know that CNN and the other media will take your qualifications, reservations and cautions  and shove them up your you know what to get a nice headline. Most people don’t read past the first two lines anyway, so nothing you say about your reservations will be transmitted to the public.

I hope you get the funding to prove/disprove your contention. Race based differences in treatment outcomes are not well studied, and are potentially very important. It is vital that more people look at this issue. But speculation based on modeling studies does not belong on CNN.

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    Brazil successfully hardballs Abbott on AIDs drug

    Byoliveridley

    I mentioned in May that Brazil had introduced compulsory licensing on a Merck AIDs drug Efavirenz, and heartily recommended that Brazil and other third world countries continue to play hardball with big pharma whenever they could. It looks like Merck decided to not bargain, but Abbott did on Kaletra. Note that Abbott got into a similar controversy with Thailand, and agreed to drop the price when Thailand rejected the Kaletra patent.

    Keep it coming, third world countries. Bargaining is perfectly acceptable in the marketplace!

    Brazil says Abbott to cut price of AIDS drug | Health | Reuters

    razil’s health ministry said Wednesday that Abbott Laboratories Inc. agreed to cut the price of its Kaletra AIDS drug by 29.5 percent.

    The lower price for the drug, also known as lopinavir and ritonavir, will help Brazil supply free drugs for its AIDS treatment program.

    In May, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva authorized Brazil for the first time to break the patent on an AIDS drug, one made by Merck & Co.. It then started importing a generic version of the drug Efavirenz from India.

    Under WTO rules, countries can issue a “compulsory license” to manufacture or buy generic versions of patented drugs deemed critical to public health.

    Drug makers often reduce prices to keep countries as clients and avoid compulsory licenses.

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    Melamine Adulteration investigation gets cracking

    Byoliveridley

    FDA agents raid pet food plant, offices – Yahoo! News

    WASHINGTON – Federal agents searched facilities of a dog and cat food manufacturer and one of its suppliers as part of an investigation into the widening recall of pet products, the companies disclosed Friday. Food and Drug Administration officials searched an Emporia, Kan., pet food plant operated by Menu Foods and the Las Vegas offices of ChemNutra Inc., according to the companies. Menu Foods made many of the more than 100 brands of pet food recalled since March 16 because of contamination by the chemical melamine. ChemNutra supplied the manufacturer with wheat gluten, one of the two ingredients tainted by melamine used in recalled pet products. Both companies said they were cooperating with the investigation.

    The initial “let’s blame China for everything” drumbeat is subsiding a little as the FDA finally begins its inspections, and we find the tangled web of the food import business unraveling just a little bit. At this point in time, the charges are flying like crazy.

    The origin within China of the wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate remains murky. For example, ChemNutra’s source for the twovegetable proteins, Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co., told The AP that food ingredients aren’t part of its business — but that employees often take on side deals. Stern said ChemNutra dealt with the company’s president.

    Side deals? How quaint? The solution is simple: Quarantine every food item from China until it has been tested for melamine. You do not know the extent of the problem yet. It only seems to get worse everyday. Make the manufacturers pay for the testing.  Tighten up the paperwork, exercise tighter control over where the ingredients come from, get everything in writing.

    Meanwhile, the manufacturers are getting their press releases out. From Blue Buffalo foods…

    We at the Blue Buffalo Company have just learned that American Nutrition Inc. (ANI), the manufacturer of all our cans and biscuits, has been adding rice protein concentrate to our can formulas without our knowledge and without our approval. This is product tampering, and it apparently has been going on for some time. The can formulas that we developed, and trusted them to produce, never contained any rice protein concentrate. It appears that only an FDA investigation of ANI’s rice protein concentrate supplies forced them to reveal this product tampering to us.

    While this activity by ANI is in itself unlawful, the situation is further clouded by the fact that ANI has been receiving rice protein concentrate from Wilber-Ellis, some of which the FDA has determined to be contaminated with melamine.

    If this is true (and we don’t know that for a fact), it’s plain ol’ cheating and food adulteration. What does American Nutrition have to say?

    The FDA has urged American Nutrition to issue a voluntary recall of pet foods manufactured using Wilbur-Ellis rice protein. None of these products is sold under an American Nutrition brand, but are sold through other independent companies. No American Nutrition brands or other products they manufacture for other businesses are affected by this recall.

    Why would I trust the word of anyone who’s accused of adding ingredients off the label? This story gets curiouser and curiouser, and it is pretty clear that between the “side dealers” in China and some greedy middlemen suppliers here, we have plenty of blame to go around.

    Stay tuned for more…

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    Hog Factories are Evil Part 1232

    Byoliveridley

    This rather interesting study tracks the movement and evolution of antibiotic resistance from hog cesspools (lagoons) caused by factory production (hog farming) of pig meat. You see, in order to pack that many hogs together and not cause them to keel over and die from disease, they have to be pumped full of antibiotics. Guess where the antibiotics end up? In their “refuse”.

    As always, I leave you with The Meatrix if you want to know more about factory farming.

    Antibiotic Resistance Tracked From Hog Farms to Groundwater

    The routine use of antibiotics in swine production can have unintended consequences, with antibiotic resistance genes sometimes leaking from waste lagoons into groundwater, according to new research from the University of Illinois.

    Researchers report that some genes found in hog waste lagoons are transferred, “like batons,” from one bacterial species to another. This migration across species and into new environments sometimes dilutes, and sometimes amplifies, genes conferring antibiotic resistance, they say.

    The new report, in the August issue of “Applied and Environmental Microbiology,” tracks the passage of tetracycline resistance genes from hog waste lagoons into groundwater wells at two Illinois swine facilities.

    Tetracycline is widely used in swine production. It is injected into the animals to treat or prevent disease, and is often used as an additive in hog feed to boost the animals’ growth.

    Its near-continuous use in some hog farms promotes the evolution of tetracycline-resistant strains in the animals’ digestive tracts and manure.

    This is the first study to take a broad sample of tetracycline resistance genes in a landscape dominated by hog farming, said principal investigator R.I. Mackie, a professor in the University of Illinois-Champaign department of animal sciences and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology.

  • Melamine – Very Routine in Animal Feed

    Byoliveridley

    Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China – New York Times

    As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

    Wow, apparently, this has been going for a while now, and is extremely widespread.

    It is time to test everything protein supplement coming out of China for Melamine, not just wheat gluten as the FDA has been doing. More importantly, it is also time to investigate other possible “additives” that Chinese (or for that matter, any other country including the US) manufacturers may be using.

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    Lead from toys not the real problem

    Byoliveridley

    Here’s what happens when you make a long verbal rant to someone about how the risk of lead exposure from water and air probably exceeds the risk from toys with lead paint, and then don’t blog about it because that means doing an hour or two of research and you don’t find the time… Someone else has the same notion, and actually writes about it AND gets published in a mainstream website!

    The lingering danger to children from lead. – By Darshak Sanghavi – Slate Magazine

    While tainted toys are in the news now, kids historically have gotten lead from two sources: the atmosphere and house paint. Roughly a quarter-million tons of lead compounds entered the atmosphere annually beginning in 1922, after a General Motors scientist developed a lead-based gasoline additive that prevented auto knocking. Lead’s chemical durability, recognized centuries ago, also made it an attractive paint additive. Toddlers are particularly susceptible to eating lead paint because it has a sugary taste; ancient Romans used lead powder to sweeten wine. By 1980, more than half a million American children—4 percent of all toddlers—had quite toxic blood lead levels from these sources.

    Lead is a serious problem in the US, and the bulk of exposure is from crumbling infrastructure, the inability (or unwillingness) to fix and replace decaying lead pipes, and the still ubiquitous presence of lead paint layers in older houses.

    The article doesn’t still give you exposure comparisons or numbers, so I guess I still have to do the work.

  • American feed makers used melamine as well

    Byoliveridley

    Well, turns out all that China baiting was for naught, because right in America’s heartland, Ohio, some feed manufacturer was using melamine as a binding agent.

    Melamine From U.S. Put in Feed – New York Times

    Ever since pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical was traced to shipments of wheat flour from China, American officials have concentrated on cracking down on imports.

    It turns out the problem was closer to home, too.

    Yesterday, federal officials announced that a manufacturing plant in Ohio was using the same banned substance, melamine, to make binding agents that ended up in feed for farmed fish, shrimp and livestock.

    Apparently, it is Tembec, a Canadian company with a plant in Ohio. I am sure the effects to humans are not significant, but where’s the control? Where’s the list of things you can’t put in food. More importantly, where’s the list of things you’re allowed to put in? Food being a very easy mode of pollutant ingestion, the ingredients list must be exclusionary, that is, only approved ingredients are allowed. If something is not approved, it is not allowed…