I smoke and I've researched this issue into the ground. Its pretty accurate.
No you haven't! This is a classic case of data dredging and selective presentation of data. For starters, amongst smokers with small primary lung cancers, smoking cessation is associated with an almost 3-fold reduction in cancer recurrence. (annals of internal medicine http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/5/383)
Not only that, but sustained quitters (14.5 years in this study... data in the pdf and you'll need a subscription to access it... http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/4/233) had a 2.2 fold reduced incidence of lung cancer if they stayed cigarette free for that duration. Granted, that the risk never came back to baseline but its a far cry from declaring that smoking cessation doesn't reduce cancer mortality.
Also, smoking cessation dramatically reduces heart disease and stroke mortality. The number one killer of smokers (surprise, surprise!) is not cancer but in fact heart disease. Heart disease is also the leading cause of death in the US with 1 in 3 people dying of heart trouble. Hence, even if the benefits in terms of cancer reduction are modest, smoking cessation considerably reduces the number of people dying.
With all due respect I think the so called rise in price is total BS. It's funny how cellular phone companies in the US have actually managed to convince people to pay to receive SMS messages. This service is pretty much free in large chunks of the world. Frankly, most cell-phone policies in the US are anti-trust worthy. (like paying to receive calls for instance.. another free service in most parts of the developed and developing parts of the world)
Except there weren't any real examples of scientific zealotry on display in the movie. For ex. Richard Sternberg wasn't fired because he published the paper(although he received some serious flak for it). He was just an unpaid research associate at the end of his term and they decided not to renew his contract.
What Ben Stein and co. are engaging in here is basically selective data dredging where all they show is the bits and bobs that are in their favour. Objectivity? Bah! We don't need no steenkin' objectivity.
Secondly, I also don't get why the "believers" want their point of view to be handled with kid gloves. If you are going to present it as evidence to a bunch of scientists, it's subject to the same rules of peer review as any other paper. (which means if it's bullshit they will call it what it is)
In any case, there's tons more information about the movie on Scientific American
Actually the lag can vary. In another one of Benjamin Libet's experiments (not mentioned in the article) he stimulated different areas of the human brain (he had a neursurgeon friend that he worked with during surgeries) and asked the subject to press a button when he perceived the stimulus.
It turned out that no one pressed the button until 500 milliseconds after the stimulus. So, there appeared to be at least a 500ms lag between stimulation and conscious acknowledgement of the stimulus.
Here's the funny bit: a 500ms lag time to perception is incompatible with a whole bunch of human activities. Take tennis for example; if there's a 500ms lag between watching the ball getting hit and actually perceiving it as getting hit the ball has already flown past you. (assuming a ball hit at 200km/h=55 meters/sec)
Cancer typically kills older people. In large swathes of the developing world, as life expectancy increases, cancer starts to become a major issue. But that doesn't in itself mean that the diet caused it. Just that people are now living long enough to get the disease. Correlation does NOT equal causation.
If Taubes was right and carboydrates were all that they were cracked up to be then most of the South Asian world would be in deep trouble since the major macronutrient in their diet is carbohydrate. (their cancer rates incidentally are much lower than most of the world) It doesn't matter if his bibliography is 60 pages long.. all you have to do is search on Pubmed or Medline for yourself and you'll see that a majority of the studies would state otherwise.
That being said, there is an interesting relationship between sugar and cancer cells and it appears that certain kinds of tumours (Ex. an astrocytoma - a type of brain tumour) appear to be sensitive to a ketogenic diet; but you have to keep in mind though that brain tissue is almost totally reliant on carbohydrates for it's energy needs. There were some interesting results when ketogenic diets were used on 2 kids with astrocytomas but that sort of evidence is anecdotal at best and needs careful scrutiny followed by a double blind trial to confirm the benefits.
Good question and in fact it appears that diabetics have a lower incidence of prostate cancers in epidemiological studies. A note about carbohydrate and fat metabolism.
Carb metabolism = glycolysis >> TCA cycle / Krebs cycle >> Electron transport chain Lipid (Fat) metabolism = beta oxidation >> Krebs cycle >> Electron transport chain
Since the lipid molecules have longer carbon chains, the by-products of beta-oxidation can enter the Krebs cycle several times over which gives fat the ATP advantage.
And he would be wrong. The link between a high carbohydrate diet and cancer is tenuous at best. Not only that but high-fat diets have been implicated in raising the risk of some cancers. (Specifically prostate cancer) You could try reading these research studies. Long story short, cancer is a bunch of incredibly heterogenuous disorders and tumour growth is driven by totally different set of chemicals and enzymes depending on the type of cancer a patient has.
E. Giovannucci, E.B. Rimm and G.A. Colditz et al., A prospective study of dietary fat and risk of prostate cancer, J Natl Cancer Inst 85 (1993), pp. 1571-1579.
P.H. Gann, C.H. Hennekens and F.M. Sacks et al., Prospective study of plasma fatty acids and risk of prostate cancer, J Natl Cancer Inst 86 (1994), pp. 281-286
D.A. Snowdon, R.L. Phillips and W. Choi, Diet, obesity, and risk of fatal prostate cancer, Am J Epidemiol 120 (1984), pp. 244-250
A.W. Hsing, L. Tsao and S.S. Devesa, International trends and patterns of prostate cancer incidence and mortality, Int J Cancer 85 (2000), pp. 60-67
This is a tad off-topic but I think you are confusing the TCA cycle with anerobic glycolysis which results in the release of small amounts of ATP. The TCA cycle results in major production of NADH and FADH which enter the electron transport chain where oxidative phosporylation occcurs. "Oxidative phosphorylation" wouldn't occur if the TCA cycle stalled for any reason. (No NADH & FADH production)
Not a chance. Fatty acids in the body are broken down by a process called beta-oxidation. The short carbon chains then enter the Krebs cycle (the same cycle used for ATP generation from glucose) and ATP (adenosine triphosphate - the energy currency of the cell) is released.
Slashdot Mirror
I smoke and I've researched this issue into the ground. Its pretty accurate.
No you haven't! This is a classic case of data dredging and selective presentation of data. For starters, amongst smokers with small primary lung cancers, smoking cessation is associated with an almost 3-fold reduction in cancer recurrence.
(annals of internal medicine http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/5/383)
Not only that, but sustained quitters (14.5 years in this study ... data in the pdf and you'll need a subscription to access it... http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/4/233) had a 2.2 fold reduced incidence of lung cancer if they stayed cigarette free for that duration. Granted, that the risk never came back to baseline but its a far cry from declaring that smoking cessation doesn't reduce cancer mortality.
Also, smoking cessation dramatically reduces heart disease and stroke mortality. The number one killer of smokers (surprise, surprise!) is not cancer but in fact heart disease. Heart disease is also the leading cause of death in the US with 1 in 3 people dying of heart trouble. Hence, even if the benefits in terms of cancer reduction are modest, smoking cessation considerably reduces the number of people dying.
Get your facts right!
With all due respect I think the so called rise in price is total BS.
It's funny how cellular phone companies in the US have actually managed to convince people to pay to receive SMS messages. This service is pretty much free in large chunks of the world. Frankly, most cell-phone policies in the US are anti-trust worthy. (like paying to receive calls for instance.. another free service in most parts of the developed and developing parts of the world)
Surely you mean the B-ark don't you?
Except there weren't any real examples of scientific zealotry on display in the movie. For ex. Richard Sternberg wasn't fired because he published the paper(although he received some serious flak for it). He was just an unpaid research associate at the end of his term and they decided not to renew his contract.
What Ben Stein and co. are engaging in here is basically selective data dredging where all they show is the bits and bobs that are in their favour. Objectivity? Bah! We don't need no steenkin' objectivity.
Secondly, I also don't get why the "believers" want their point of view to be handled with kid gloves. If you are going to present it as evidence to a bunch of scientists, it's subject to the same rules of peer review as any other paper. (which means if it's bullshit they will call it what it is)
In any case, there's tons more information about the movie on Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie
Actually the lag can vary. In another one of Benjamin Libet's experiments (not mentioned in the article) he stimulated different areas of the human brain (he had a neursurgeon friend that he worked with during surgeries) and asked the subject to press a button when he perceived the stimulus.
It turned out that no one pressed the button until 500 milliseconds after the stimulus. So, there appeared to be at least a 500ms lag between stimulation and conscious acknowledgement of the stimulus.
Here's the funny bit: a 500ms lag time to perception is incompatible with a whole bunch of human activities. Take tennis for example; if there's a 500ms lag between watching the ball getting hit and actually perceiving it as getting hit the ball has already flown past you. (assuming a ball hit at 200km/h=55 meters/sec)
Yet we play tennis.... Intriguing eh?
Or is this an April Fool's joke??
And that correlation doesn't equal causation.. sweet jeebus! Yet another example of an egregious take on statistics that got hyped by the press.
Cancer typically kills older people. In large swathes of the developing world, as life expectancy increases, cancer starts to become a major issue. But that doesn't in itself mean that the diet caused it. Just that people are now living long enough to get the disease. Correlation does NOT equal causation.
If Taubes was right and carboydrates were all that they were cracked up to be then most of the South Asian world would be in deep trouble since the major macronutrient in their diet is carbohydrate. (their cancer rates incidentally are much lower than most of the world) It doesn't matter if his bibliography is 60 pages long.. all you have to do is search on Pubmed or Medline for yourself and you'll see that a majority of the studies would state otherwise.
That being said, there is an interesting relationship between sugar and cancer cells and it appears that certain kinds of tumours (Ex. an astrocytoma - a type of brain tumour) appear to be sensitive to a ketogenic diet; but you have to keep in mind though that brain tissue is almost totally reliant on carbohydrates for it's energy needs. There were some interesting results when ketogenic diets were used on 2 kids with astrocytomas but that sort of evidence is anecdotal at best and needs careful scrutiny followed by a double blind trial to confirm the benefits.
Good question and in fact it appears that diabetics have a lower incidence of prostate cancers in epidemiological studies. A note about carbohydrate and fat metabolism.
Carb metabolism = glycolysis >> TCA cycle / Krebs cycle >> Electron transport chain
Lipid (Fat) metabolism = beta oxidation >> Krebs cycle >> Electron transport chain
Since the lipid molecules have longer carbon chains, the by-products of beta-oxidation can enter the Krebs cycle several times over which gives fat the ATP advantage.
And he would be wrong. The link between a high carbohydrate diet and cancer is tenuous at best. Not only that but high-fat diets have been implicated in raising the risk of some cancers. (Specifically prostate cancer) You could try reading these research studies. Long story short, cancer is a bunch of incredibly heterogenuous disorders and tumour growth is driven by totally different set of chemicals and enzymes depending on the type of cancer a patient has.
E. Giovannucci, E.B. Rimm and G.A. Colditz et al., A prospective study of dietary fat and risk of prostate cancer, J Natl Cancer Inst 85 (1993), pp. 1571-1579.
P.H. Gann, C.H. Hennekens and F.M. Sacks et al., Prospective study of plasma fatty acids and risk of prostate cancer, J Natl Cancer Inst 86 (1994), pp. 281-286
D.A. Snowdon, R.L. Phillips and W. Choi, Diet, obesity, and risk of fatal prostate cancer, Am J Epidemiol 120 (1984), pp. 244-250
A.W. Hsing, L. Tsao and S.S. Devesa, International trends and patterns of prostate cancer incidence and mortality, Int J Cancer 85 (2000), pp. 60-67
This is a tad off-topic but I think you are confusing the TCA cycle with anerobic glycolysis which results in the release of small amounts of ATP. The TCA cycle results in major production of NADH and FADH which enter the electron transport chain where oxidative phosporylation occcurs. "Oxidative phosphorylation" wouldn't occur if the TCA cycle stalled for any reason. (No NADH & FADH production)
Not a chance. Fatty acids in the body are broken down by a process called beta-oxidation. The short carbon chains then enter the Krebs cycle (the same cycle used for ATP generation from glucose) and ATP (adenosine triphosphate - the energy currency of the cell) is released.