Category Archives: Opinion

Multivitamin Use Causes an Increase in Prostate Cancer? Not!!!

In a paper published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Goran Bjelakovic (a noted anti-supplement warrior and well known harmaceutical shill) along with Dr. Christian Gluud insinuate that men taking multivitamins seven days a week have a much higher risk of dying of prostate cancer than those who take none. They further go on to dribble that their findings “underscore the possibility that antioxidant supplements could have unintended consequences for our health.” You know, if I were as bad of a scientist and published garbage like this, I wouldn’t be allowed to speak at any conferences ever again. There are so many flaws and misjudgements in this as to be embarrassing to the National Cancer Institute.

Here are a few problems off the top of my head.

Men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to take multivitamins than those with no health issues. This was not looked at.
The use of multivitamins was done using an intake questionnaire which is notorious for false numbers.
The authors had no idea how long any of the people in the study used the multi vitamins a truly serious flaw.
They claim that the population in question was “well nourished” despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Our food supply is notorious for poor nutrient levels (see my blog).
They used a cohort study which does not look at all of the variables possible. Statistics are easily manipulated (as they are here) to find something you want to find regardless of whether it really is there or not.
There is no way, using the data supplied that a causative relationship can be developed. The authors admit this yet make conclusions that suggest a causal relationship. This is scientific dishonesty at its worse.

There are more problems with this paper but my biggest issue is how it got out of peer-review unless it was done nefariously, with a pointed agenda attached, aka anti-supplement. As I mentioned earlier, these are well-known anti-nutrient shills and this should be made very well known before giving any credence to the paper.

Shame on the National Cancer Institute.

Drug Companies Are Buying Your Doctors

Articles published in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association are showing that drug companies are spending big bucks try to influence physicians to buy their brand of drugs over the competitors even though there are rarely any real clinical benefits to a new drug. Many of the companies deny this practice is really effective but it makes you wonder why they keep spending more each year on it if it doesn’t work. Doctors claim they aren’t influenced but all the research suggests otherwise.

If the doctors groups like the American Medical Association are unwilling to force their members to change this practice and deny entrance to their offices to big pharma reps then legislation is in order. We need our physicians to be impartial and objective, not beholden to the purveyors of gifts and free lunches. We need a change in the way our country goes about its health care and we need a change now. If not we will continue to slip down the rankings of countries when it comes to delivering health care to our citizens.

Science in the News

Here are some recent tidbits and factoids that might be of interest.

Women who live in polluted areas with poor air quality have babies with lower birthweights. This finding, according to researchers at Yale University should make it clear that air quality improvements are critical in protecting new born babies. Low birthweight equals poor health so it would behove us to work to make our cities healthier.
According to a study done in the U.K., researchers found that women who had an early start to puberty were more likely to have obese children. While it is obvious to some of us that hormone disrupting chemicals in the environment are partly to blame, we also have to ensure that these high risk women are educated in the field of proper nutrition so that their children don’t become obese,
When it comes to air quality, ethanol and gasoline are pretty much the same. To this date, I can’t seem to wrap my brain around the whole ethanol is good for America mantra. It isn’t that efficient, takes a lot of fuel to make, and will cause food prices to go up as ethanol producing corn gets planted over a greater area. Bad politics following bad science is a sure fire way to a big mistake.
In 2005, industrial and federal facilities in the United States released 4 billion pounds of chemicals into the environment, up 3 percent from the previous year or 117 million pounds more. This number explains why the present administration is so hell bent on not making some companies report their toxic releases. Not for business sake, but to hide the frightening numbers. Lead, a known neurotoxin, was added to our environment to the tune of 469 million pounds. Mercury, one of the deadliest poisons known, had 4.4 million pounds injected into our world by industry. Just think that only a few milligrams can spell disaster for a person and we are talking in the millions of pounds.
Polyphenols found in green tea, may have negative side effects when taken in large quantities. Taking 10 cups or the equivalent as a supplement form of green tea is the limit. Too much of a good thing can be bad for you in this case.
Every mother knows them and dreads them, the infamous baby growth chart. Ub a review published by the New Scientist, those charts may have been flawed, causing mothers to overfeed their children thereby leading to an increased risk of obesity. Oops. According to Laurence Grummer-Strawn of the Center for Disease Control, “rapid growth in infancy has been shown to be associated with increased obesity.” My tip to mothers, dump the charts and watch your baby, if they look healthy and not emaciated, they are probably fine. To pediatricians, do the same.

For the Environments Sake – Stop Buying Bottled Water

When it comes to wasting reseources, there are few things that can highlight human folly than bottled water. As I mentioned in a previous post, buying bottled water, especially Fiji water, is a terrible drain on the environment. What is sad is many of the people who drink bottled water are the same people who want to protect the environment. Time to change folks. Here is an article from a Tasmanian on-line newspaper (I go to the ends of the internet world for my readers) that spells out how bad bottled water is for our world. Hopefully it will make you stop buying it. I did.

Anti Global Warming Activists Stop Pointing Your Finger at China and India

The rallying cry by American anti-global warming activists has been the growing concern that China and India’s burgeoning economies will quickly surpass the United States as the largest polluters in the world. Only problem is, that those two countries and many other third world nations are doing far more to curtail pollution than we are. The fact is, they have more regulations demanding better gas mileage from auto manufacturers than we do, are doing more to curb greenhouse gases and doing more to better the environment than we are. Of course, they have a lot of work to do because there are segments of their society that think dumping toxins on the poor is ok because they don’t have a strong voice in the government but do we?

It really saddens me when I see people complain about mercury in the environment and how it negatively affects human health, yet they see no problem whining about the cost to business if we demand they be better environmental citizens. The Bush Administration continues to put roadblocks in our way by proposing to cutback industry reporting of pollution to “remove the burden on small business”. Yeah, small business. That is if you define small as making of half a billion dollars a year. What price our health? Apparently not much. Sad but true.

Breast Cancer and Hormone Replacement Therapy – A Major Indictment

In the April 19th, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a special report was issued showing a significant drop in the incidence of breast cancer starting in mid-2002 through 2003 due in large part, according to the authors, to the drop in the use of hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) due to the release of the Women’s Health Initiative report. The decrease was largest in women over the age of 50, those most likely to use HRT.

An observation I have is that this study shows the effects of artificial hormones that are prescribed to women but what about the multitude of toxins in our environment that have estrogenic effects like bisphenol A? How about phthalates? What about all those other chemicals that are known to disrupt the endocrine system? Our bodies, male or female, are awash with these carcinogenic chemicals. This is why it is critical to do what you can to avoid exposure and to get your body efficient at detoxifying itself.

Another issue I have here is how the pharmaceutical industry has responded to this travesty. Instead of a mia culpa, it is attacking natural hormone replacement therapy produced by compounding pharmacies. These are far safer than the horse urine derived toxins the harmaceutical industry foisted on unsuspecting women. Senator Ted Kennedy is helping his harma buddies by introducing a bill to ban compounding pharmacy’s from making this and other healthy compounds. Shame on Mr. Kennedy for being so blatantly purchased by an industry that continues to put out one dangerous drug (Vioxx, et al) after another.

Antidepressants and Pregnancy – Are they safe?

In a recent article Published in Journal Watch Women’s Health April 26, 2007, Dr. Claudio N. Soares, MD, PhDputs forth a pretty good argument that antidepressants are not teratogenic so therefor are perfectly safe for use by women during pregnancy. Furthermore, he rightfully shows that women who are not treated posed a greater risk to healthy fetus development. Lest you think I am writing a pro-pharmaceutical article, read on.

According to Wikipedia, Teratogenesis is a medical term, literally meaning monster-birth, which derives from teratology, the study of the frequency, causation, and development of congenital malformations—misleadingly called birth defects. The problem with Dr. Soares’s article, which I have attached in a word file, is that they fail to realize how many other safer and alternative methods are available. In my work with physicians around the world, I find simple things like amino acid therapy, building up nutrient levels, electrolytes and other safe alternatives help women fight depression and give the developing baby a better start in life than have to be bathed in SSRIs and other antidepressant drugs.

My other issue is, how do we know whether an epigenetic effect isn’t happening? The answer is we don’t. We might not see any blatant effects on children borne of mothers on antidepressants (maybe we are but the researchers are chosing to ignore them), but a child of a person whose mother took antidepressants while they were in fetal development may show up with teratogenic effects. Better yet, it would be prudent for a women wanting children to get into a CAM doctor (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine) who can help wean them off antidepressants and on a healthy regime. Your baby and their progeny will thank you.

Antidepressants During Pregnancy Article

Last NFL Mock Draft

Ok, here is my third and final mock draft. With any real draft, you always get curves balls thrown at you like the Buffalo Bills choosing Donte Willner way earlier than anyone expected. Then you have the Detroit Lions and Matt Millen who somehow hasn’t gotten the idea of how to build a team through the draft. Hint Matt, you build it from the inside out (defensive and offensive lineman first, wide receivers second). Still, I can’t see him not selecting Calvin Johnson with the second pick. At that point he could trade him to either the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Atlanta Falcons who have two 2^nd round draft choices and the 8^th pick in the first round. Needless to say, it will be an interesting day on Saturday, if you are an NFL fan like me.

Pick #	Team	Selection	Pos	College	Comments
1	Oakland Raiders	JaMarcus Russell	QB	LSU	Not the best player, but a definite need pick.
2	Detroit Lions	Calvin Johnson	WR	Georgia Tech	May be the best WR selected since Jerry Rice. Has it all. Will very likely be traded after pick.
3	Cleveland Browns	Brady Quinn	QB	Notre Dame	I think he will be better than Russell over time.
4	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Gaines Adams	DE	Clemson	A definite need for Tampa Bay. They may also trade this pick to the Lions for Johnson.
5	Arizona Cardinals	Joe Thomas	OT	Wisconsin	Safe pick and a desperate need pick.
6	Washington Redskins	Amobi Okoye	DE	Louisville	They will trade down. Guaranteed. If Quinn is available, bet the house on that scenario.
7	Minnesota Vikings	Leon Hall	CB	Michigan	Trade rumors abound.
8	Atlanta Falcons	LeRon Landry	S	LSU	This is the team that will consummate a trade with either the Lions or the Redskins.
9	Miami Dolphins	Levi Brown	OT	Penn State	They would love Quinn or better yet, trade up in the second round for Trent Edwards of Stanford.
10	Houston Texans	Adrian Peterson	RB	Oklahoma	Even though I don’t really like him in the NFL, they desperately need to take a running back here.
11	San Francisco 49ers	Patrick Willis	ILB	Mississippi	One of the best people in the draft.
12	Buffalo Bills	Marshawn Lynch	RB	Cal	If the 49ers take Willis, then the Bills reach for Lynch.
13	St. Louis Rams	Jamaal Anderson	DE	Arkansas	They need help on the D-line and he is the real deal.
14	Carolina Panthers	Greg Olsen	TE	Miami	Poor Jets, no TE in the first round this year.
15	Pittsburgh Steelers	Lawrence Timmons	OLB	Florida St.	Joey Porter gone, Lawrence Timmons in.
16	Green Bay Packers	Ted Ginn Jr.	WR	Ohio State	Farve needs more weapons and this guy can flat out fly.
17	Jacksonville Jaguars	Alan Branch	DT	Michigan	Questions about his attitude abound but no doubting his physical talent.
18	Cincinnati Bengals	Darrelle Revis	CB	Arkansas	Lockdown CB would immensely help the Bengals.
19	Tennessee Titans	Robert Meecham	WR	Tennessee	A marketing bonanza and a definite need pick.
20	New York Giants	Paul Posluszny	LB	Penn State	They’d rather have Timmons but Posluszny will do.
21	Denver Broncos	Adam Carricker	DE	Nebraska	The Broncos would do back flips if Carricker lands to them at 21. Branch may be the pick here if the Jaguars pass on him.
22	Dallas Cowboys	Aaron Ross	CB	Texas	A perfect fit for the Cowboys.
23	Kansas City Chiefs	Dwayne Bowe	WR	LSU	Could be a great #2 wide receiver in the NFL.
24	New England Patriots	Brandon Merriweather	S	Miami	Versatility is the Patriots motto and this guy has it. A trade though is highly likely
25	New York Jets	Jon Beason	LB	Miami	Got the instincts and aggression that Mangini loves.
26	Philadelphia Eagles	Michael Griffin	S	Texas	A good pickup this late in the round
27	New Orleans Saints	Anthony Spencer	DE	Purdue	Not the biggest need but this is a good value pick
28	New England Patriots	Joe Staley	OT	Central Michigan	I think they will trade out of this spot but if not, another great pick by the Pats.
29	Baltimore Ravens	Trent Edwards	QB	Stanford	Another probable trade, possibly with Miami, but the Ravens sure could use a good young QB
30	San Diego Chargers	Steve Smith	WR	USC	I think this guy will have a better NFL career than teammate Dwayne Jarrett
31	Chicago Bears	Dwayne Jarrett	WR	USC	Boy do they need another WR in their offense
32	Indianapolis Colts	Justin Harrell	DT	Tennessee	The Colts would absolutely flip if this guy lands here. Alan Branch may also fall all the way here.

Mock Draft #2

Here is my second Mock Draft. I do have a major change and that is the Detroit Lions will trade their second pick to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I am now pretty convinced that the Raiders will not select Johnson and will go with a potential franchise QB in JaMarcus Russell.

Pick #	Team	Selection	Position	College
1	Oakland Raiders	JaMarcus Russell	QB	LSU
2	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Calvin Johnson	WR	Georgia Tech
3	Cleveland Browns	Brady Quinn	QB	Notre Dame
4	Detroit Lions	Gaines Adams	DE	Clemson
5	Arizona Cardinals	Joe Thomas	OT	Wisconsin
6	Washington Redskins	Amobi Okoye	DT	Louisville
7	Minnesota Vikings	Leon Hall	CB	Michigan
8	Atlanta Falcons	LeRon Landry	S	LSU
9	Miami Dolphins	Levi Brown	OT	Penn State
10	Houston Texans	Adrian Peterson	RB	Oklahoma
11	San Francisco 49ers	Robert Meachem	WR	Tennessee
12	Buffalo Bills	Patrick Willis	ILB	Mississippi
13	St. Louis Rams	Alan Branch	DT	Michigan
14	Carolina Panthers	Greg Olsen	TE	Miami
15	Pittsburgh Steelers	Lawrence Timmons	OLB	Florida State
16	Green Bay Packers	Marshawn Lynch	RB	Cal
17	Jacksonville Jaguars	Jamaal Anderson	DE	Arkansas
18	Cincinnati Bengals	Darrelle Revis	CB	Pittsburgh
19	Tennessee Titans	Dwayne Bowe	WR	LSU
20	New York Giants	Paul Posluszny	LB	Penn State
21	Denver Broncos	Adam Carricker	DE	Nebraska
22	Dallas Cowboys	Aaron Ross	CB	Texas
23	Kansas City Chiefs	Ted Ginn Jr.	WR	Ohio State
24	New England Patriots	Michael Griffin	S	Texas
25	New York Jets	Jarvis Moss	DE/OLB	Florida
26	Philadelphia Eagles	Chris Houston	CB	Arkansas
27	New Orleans Saints	Justin Harrell	DT	Tennessee
28	New England Patriots	Jon Beason	OLB	Miami
29	Baltimore Ravens	Joe Staley	OT	Central Michigan
30	San Diego Chargers	Reggie Nelson	S	Florida
31	Chicago Bears	Dwayne Jarrett	WR	USC
32	Indianapolis Colts	LaMarr Woodley	DE/OLB	Michigan

The Airing of the Video by the Virginia Tech Murderer is Morally Reprehensible – Shame on NBC

The continued airing of the video by the mass murderer Seung-hui Cho is morally reprehensible and shows a lack of judgement by NBC news. It was also aired repeatedly by CBSs The Morning Show which unfortunately was on in my home this morning and it highly disturbed my children. Yes, we have the need to know what happened but why do we have to give the murderer the very soap box he wanted. This will only encourage future monsters to do the same, if not worse.

Here is an article written by a psychiatrist that mirrors my feelings. Also, please send e-mails to NBC telling them to not only stop showing the videos, but to make a public apology to the families and friends of the victims. Here are the addresses of the head of NBC Steve Capus and anchorman Brian Williams. steve.capus@nbc.com brian.williams@nbc.com

Tell them you will boycott NBC until they make a public apology for showing the videos. Maybe they will realize how wrong they were. They need to know.

Mark Schauss: Russian Rulers Podcast Blogsite

Russia, the vast nation, with an even bigger history.