Alt-Med Vampires

Feel the need to comment on this. If you want the full story, head on over to Respectful Insolence to hear from someone actually qualified to take this on. Much thanks to Orac for watching this trash so I don't have to.

Alt-med practitioners, at least the slimy ones, seem to have a habit of abusing dead celebrities to sell their woo and attack modern medicine. Why would Steve Jobs be any different?





Orac, you are a stronger man than I, because I can't get through 10 minutes of that before the nausea sets in.

Mercola:This is not routinely done for two primary reasons. The first is that it in no way, shape, or form addresses the original cancer, and it can easily spread to the new liver. But more importantly, he had to be placed on large doses of drugs to suppress his immune system so he would not reject his new liver. Tragically this is the very system your body uses to help control cancers. The liver has enormous regenerative capacity, and if they only removed the portion of his liver that contained the malignant cells, he would not have to take those dangerous anti-rejection drugs.

Orac? Insolence please.

I've discussed the issue of liver transplant for neuroendocrine tumors like insulinoma (which is what Jobs had) before. While it is arguable whether a liver transplant was the best decision for Jobs in 2009, it was certainly not outside the standard of care, nor was it unreasonable. Mercola also makes a very silly statement when he states that "if only" they had removed the portion of the liver containing the cancer, Jobs wouldn't have needed all those nasty immunosuppressants. Well, duh! Give that man a prize for stating the obvious as though it were some brilliant insight! Here's the issue: Transplant is not even considered for insulinoma metastatic to the liver unless the metastases are unresectable (i.e., they involve two or more lobes or are too close to major vascular structures). And what defines resectability? To boil it down to its essence, although there are certainly other considerations (the aforementioned vascular structures, for example) it's basically the ability to remove the liver tissue containing all of the metastase(s) and still leave enough liver tissue behind to survive on. Contrary to what Mercola thinks, the liver's regenerative capacity, although truly impressive, is not limitless, particularly if the liver is compromised by cirrhosis. Take too much liver, and the patient will die of liver failure because the liver can't regenerate fast enough (or just enough) to achieve function consistent with life. In addition to that basic equation, we just don't know whether Jobs' liver had been damaged or otherwise compromised by the insulinoma; it's possible that his liver wasn't in the best shape at the time, leaving less capacity to regenerate.

Thank you, back to the woo. From the interview transcript....

DM: There were some comments that he was leading up to his death, and people would post comments on Facebook and are asking why I couldn't get in touch with him and offer him some therapy. I'm not a cancer expert like you are, of course, but I believe someone like you could have really made a difference. My understanding is that your therapy was offered to him, but could you go to that process of why he chose not to undertake a natural or alternative approach to cancer?

DG: He wanted to see an alternative. In fact when he was first diagnosed, he got some dietary program - again, he was very secretive of that - So I don't exactly know what he did at that point. But through his acupuncturist, there was communication. He was getting acupuncture, and he was doing some alternative things as far as I know. This acupuncturist actually talked to me, discussing the situation. She was really anxious for him to come and see me. But he chose not to do that.

You know, I always respect the patients' right to choose the therapy they want to choose, so I would never dispute that. The patients have to make the decisions based on what they want to do. But she was very adamant; in fact, she knew about all my works in the alternative world. He had seen alternative-type practitioners. She really wanted for him to come and see me. He chose not to do that. From my perspective, it was unfortunate, because he was such a gift to the world in terms of his inventions and genius in the past 30 years.

I don't need a medical degree to deal with this one. This is simply two vampires pissing all over a deceased man to sell their "treatment." The "phantom acupuncturist" is a great touch. It lends the story a certain aura of verisimilitude. I'm sure the acupuncturist is unnamed due to privacy concerns, and not lack of existence.

Not that it matters one bit, since Steve Jobs is conveniently dead and unavailable to either confirm or deny any of this. Of course, if he just would have went to Dr. Gonzalez for treatment, he'd still be with us today. *insert eye roll here*

Orac, can you deal with this, because if I do it is going to be libelous.

Particularly vomit-inducing is the way Gonzalez turns around the argument based on a "patient's right to choose." Frequently, those of us who support science-based medicine, when confronted with the story of a patient who chooses quackery instead of medicine and suffers harm or dies as a result, will sadly say that a competent adult has the right to choose quackery if that's what he wants, mainly because he does. Self-determination is a basic human right. Here, we have Dr. Gonzalez turning that argument on its head, sadly shrugging his shoulders and expressing regret that Jobs had the right to choose his own course and chose SBM instead of quackery. After his flirtation with some sort of diet and unknown "alternative" therapies, Jobs appears to have turned to scientific medicine and never looked back, at least as far as we can tell based on the limited information available from press accounts. There's one thing that's for sure, though. If SBM couldn't save Jobs, Gonzalez sure as hell couldn't save him either, his claims otherwise notwithstanding. Now that Jobs is dead, Gonzalez's claims have the added bonus for him of being unfalsifiable, even though Gonzalez's methods have already been shown to be worse than useless for pancreatic cancer.

Thanks again, Orac.

Seriously. Dr. Mercola? Dr. Gonzalez? How about less pissing on the dead and more proving your treatments work, and no, I am not talking about anecdotal "evidence." Give me five bucks and ten minutes and I'll provide anecdotal "evidence" that I can cure cancer with a kick to the shin. Real evidence. Major journal articles. Double blind studies. Documented case histories. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

I'll wait.

Seriously, I'm in no hurry.

Got all the time in the world.

La la la la la.


Protip: Real evidence is not coming because their treatments do not cure cancer, or anything else for that matter, other than perhaps heavy wallet syndrome. Think I'm wrong? Then fucking prove it.

Prove your treatments work and I'll be right there in line to kiss your ass. Until then, can you please leave the dead to rest in peace?

Evidence? Who needs evidence to start a panic?

Oh what the fu....

I remember the good ole days, when a flawed study actually had to be released for the panic to hit the streets. You may remember it as well. Power lines. Childhood Leukemia. Well meaning social scientists. Lack of control groups. Lack of proper methodology. Logical fallacies. The end result being widespread panic as people began believing that the electromagnetic radiation from power lines was causing cancer in little kids. An entire industry sprung up to take advantage of it, and it took real scientists years of real science and proper studies to convince people of the truth. Living near power lines is not going to kill your child. There is no increased cancer risk from the power lines. Hell, even today, you will find people who still believe the lines are giving tons of innocent children a horrible disease and the scientists are covering up the truth. All from a couple poorly done studies.

Well, now you don't even need a study. You can just wake up in the morning and decide to freak half of the United States out.

Front page of my local fish wrap today, Ronald B. Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has issued a warning linking cell phone usage with brain cancer.

So I know what you must be thinking. The head of a major cancer research center issues a warning that using cell phones can cause/causes brain cancer, he must have some hard evidence to back it up. Surely he wouldn't freak out the country and start another cancer panic without knowing what he was talking about, right?

Right?

Nope. Dr. Herberman issued his warning based on "early unpublished data." And you know, if this "early unpublished data" was coming from the first study ever done on the possible link between cell phones and cancer, I may give him a pass and assume that the "early unpublished data" actually backs him up on his claims.

But this is a subject that has been studied before. And the results are always the same. There is no link between cell phones and brain cancer. The study that his "early unpublished data" comes from, a multinational research project known as Interphone has already released peer reviewed results. And guess what? No cancer link so far.

So why issue the warning? Well, the good doctor says that "it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children." JENNIFER C. YATES and SETH BORENSTEIN AP News

Let's let Dr. Herberman speak for himself.

"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later"

So rather than letting science work, and seeing if there is a risk involved, let's throw it all out and go with our gut feeling.

Pushing this man to yell, "fire!" in a crowded theater, apparently, was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology. She says:

"I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."

Isn't that precious? Well, let's warn people about breathing. I mean, I don't know that breathing is dangerous, but I don't know that it is safe either! 100% of all people who breathe end up dying, after all.

Seriously. Technology comes with a price, whether it's pollution, health risks, or just that it makes us a little bit lazier. We really don't know the looooooooong term effects of cell phone use. But we really don't know the long term effects of countless new inventions. Maybe my ipod is giving me herpes and my flat screen is turning my brain into lettuce. Right now, all available evidence shows no link between cell phones and cancer. The FDA states on their website that if there is a risk from using cell phones, while stressing that they have no evidence that there is a risk, the risk would be very small.

We can live in fear, or we can live. Each and everyone of us has so many real terrors to worry about. To issue an unsupported warning like this is irresponsible and a slap in the face to science. Dr. Herberman probably thinks he is saving lives, but all he is causing is this:

Susan Juffe, a 58-year-old Pittsburgh special education teacher, heard about Herberman's cell phone advice on the radio earlier in the day.

"Now, I'm worried. It's scary," she said.

She says she'll think twice about allowing her 10-year-old daughter Jayne to use the cell phone.

"I don't want to get it (brain cancer) and I certainly don't want you to get it," she explained to her daughter.

Thank you for giving millions of people something new to worry about, for no reason at all.