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I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because BP poured

I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because BP poured nearly two million gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, creating unexpected toxins in the fish I ate. If the drug companies were to provide a pill to mitigate my hypothetical cancer, I would take it. As you wrote, cancer risk probably involves effects from many factors. However, I'm not sure how redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'" serves to reduce the incidence of cancers that are essentially environmental in origin. Healthy lifestyle only goes so far; I suspect the vast bulk of cancers are due to environmental factors or are intrinsic to the human aging process.

Ntrails 11y ago
>I suspect the vast bulk of cancers are due to environmental factors or are intrinsic to the human aging process Sure. Those generalisations are super easy but don't help a pharma company to design research. Which are which? What factors are meaningful? How do I isolate them and test against them? Is there even a vague chance this research leads to a drug that I can sell for $$$? (also is there any evidence that a protein and vegetable only diet reduces the risk of cancer in a meaningful fashion?)
tomhoward 11y ago
I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because... Maybe, or maybe not. When you actually have cause to investigate this stuff deeply, as I have, it's surprising to discover how little is known about these kinds of things. If you could take 100 people of similar age and health and had them all "run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha", and 50 developed cancer and 50 didn't, little is known about why any given person would stay healthy and another would get sick. As you wrote, cancer risk probably involves effects from many factors. However, I'm not sure how redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'" serves to reduce the incidence of cancers that are essentially environmental in origin. Having researched this topic in great depth, I'm now persuaded by the medical researchers like Bruce Lipton and Rudi Tanzi who assert, with solid scientific evidence, that psychology - particularly subconscious emotions - are a major factor in determining whether a person will develop or recover from serious illnesses like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, etc. Of course these ideas don't get much acceptance or affirmation from the majority of mainstream medical researchers, because, hey, everyone already knows that psychology and physiological health are totally independent, right? It turns out we don't actually need to be redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'". It would suffice to let go of some of the unexamined assumptions and prejudices that prevail in the current research landscape, and pay some attention to the more open-minded researchers who are already investigating these things and coming up with promising findings.
- 1stop 11y ago
  > Bruce Harold Lipton, is an American developmental biologist best known for promoting the idea that genes and DNA can be manipulated by a person's beliefs. He is a visiting fellow lecturer at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic. ... You've become convinced by this man. > Surgical oncologist David Gorski has described Lipton as a crank who misunderstands evolutionary biology. He notes that some of Lipton's ideas start out based on research from epigenetics but he twists them into a "woo-sphere". So could you cite some of the "solid scientific evidence" that you have referred to... because your appeal to authority seems to have failed you... :\
  - tomhoward 11y ago
    Hi, first of all, I understand the combative skepticism as I used to be that way myself. I used to scoff at chiropractic and slap my knees at all the hilarious takedowns of woo-merchants by Quackwatch and SBM and it was all great fun. But a chronic auto-immune illness that became debilitating about 5 years ago, and a long, exasperating, and ultimately futile attempt to find treatment via conventional medicine forced me to consider anything in order to get well, and the method that got me well came via chiropractors and Lipton's ideas. As of now I'm almost completely recovered, whilst others I know with similar conditions who have stuck with conventional medicine continue to be sick and frustrated. So, scoff if you will, but had I not learned what I learned from Lipton, I'd have no health and possibly no life. Now I understand the physiology behind my illness and my recovery, I believe those who say the same kind of approach could be effective for cancer - at least the ones that occur downstream of auto-immune illness (colorectal cancer for example). And I believe the anecdotes of people who've used these techniques to overcome cancer, because it aligns with my own experience. (Though let me be clear: I don't believe chiropractors can "cure cancer", and I don't have much time for chiropractic at all these days, now that I've found better and cheaper alternatives.) But of course it needs more research so it stops being mere anecdotes and starts becoming hard data. That's the whole point of this thread. As for "hard science" - all I can point you to are the books by Tanzi and Lipton, and Tanzi's research papers. Tanzi is Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He's been a leading researcher on Alheimer's for over 15 years, and much of his research and writing is focused on the role of emotions in genetic expression and the development of illness. But he's co-authored books with Deepak Chopra and has been criticized by Jerry Coyne - so he can therefore be disregarded, right? This is exactly my point. I profoundly wish there were more hard studies (indeed I put quite a lot of thought into whether I could help facilitate some research based on my own experience). I understand that Lipton's manner and Tanzi's link to Chopra make them easy to dismiss in the way that you have. But the dismissals all seem to succumb to the "begging the question" fallacy - dismissing them because "we already know they are wrong" rather than engaging with their arguments and evidence. I may only be a sample size of one, but significant numbers of people are recovering from illness by following the principles they espouse and significant numbers of qualified medical practitioners accept and endorse their ideas and research findings. If more attention was paid to this research and if it were then to inspire further research, maybe the world would start making real progress towards overcoming the illnesses that account for most of the ballooning costs of the health systems in western countries. Update: here's a link to a recent study linking emotion-focused therapies on telemere length in cancer patients. Telemere length is believed to be relevant in cancer risk and recovery potential: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full
Gatsky 11y ago
You are right. But you could take the cancer pill and then get a heart attack, or dementia, or become suicidally depressed etc. Will we make a pill for all those things as well? I'm not at all saying we should give up on cancer research (I'm doing a PhD in the field at the moment). My point in the last paragraph is this: prevention is applied to healthy people, but taking pills to prevent a disease is quite an odd notion of 'being healthy'. We should think carefully if the pills4prevention paradigm is going to deliver us the sort of outcomes and lifestyle we really want. I worry that the whole idea encourages an almost absurdly narrow and reductionist view of human health.
liveoneggs 11y ago
> or are intrinsic to the human aging process Exactly. You can still get your cancer without BP.

Ntrails 11y ago

>I suspect the vast bulk of cancers are due to environmental factors or are intrinsic to the human aging process Sure. Those generalisations are super easy but don't help a pharma company to design research. Which are which? What factors are meaningful? How do I isolate them and test against them? Is there even a vague chance this research leads to a drug that I can sell for $$$? (also is there any evidence that a protein and vegetable only diet reduces the risk of cancer in a meaningful fashion?)

tomhoward 11y ago

I could run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha--and yet still get cancer because... Maybe, or maybe not. When you actually have cause to investigate this stuff deeply, as I have, it's surprising to discover how little is known about these kinds of things. If you could take 100 people of similar age and health and had them all "run eight miles a day with full pack, eat only protein and vegetables, have the mental outlook of the Buddha", and 50 developed cancer and 50 didn't, little is known about why any given person would stay healthy and another would get sick. As you wrote, cancer risk probably involves effects from many factors. However, I'm not sure how redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'" serves to reduce the incidence of cancers that are essentially environmental in origin. Having researched this topic in great depth, I'm now persuaded by the medical researchers like Bruce Lipton and Rudi Tanzi who assert, with solid scientific evidence, that psychology - particularly subconscious emotions - are a major factor in determining whether a person will develop or recover from serious illnesses like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, etc. Of course these ideas don't get much acceptance or affirmation from the majority of mainstream medical researchers, because, hey, everyone already knows that psychology and physiological health are totally independent, right? It turns out we don't actually need to be redirecting "billions" to, e.g., "psychological 'sciences'". It would suffice to let go of some of the unexamined assumptions and prejudices that prevail in the current research landscape, and pay some attention to the more open-minded researchers who are already investigating these things and coming up with promising findings.

1stop 11y ago
> Bruce Harold Lipton, is an American developmental biologist best known for promoting the idea that genes and DNA can be manipulated by a person's beliefs. He is a visiting fellow lecturer at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic. ... You've become convinced by this man. > Surgical oncologist David Gorski has described Lipton as a crank who misunderstands evolutionary biology. He notes that some of Lipton's ideas start out based on research from epigenetics but he twists them into a "woo-sphere". So could you cite some of the "solid scientific evidence" that you have referred to... because your appeal to authority seems to have failed you... :\
- tomhoward 11y ago
  Hi, first of all, I understand the combative skepticism as I used to be that way myself. I used to scoff at chiropractic and slap my knees at all the hilarious takedowns of woo-merchants by Quackwatch and SBM and it was all great fun. But a chronic auto-immune illness that became debilitating about 5 years ago, and a long, exasperating, and ultimately futile attempt to find treatment via conventional medicine forced me to consider anything in order to get well, and the method that got me well came via chiropractors and Lipton's ideas. As of now I'm almost completely recovered, whilst others I know with similar conditions who have stuck with conventional medicine continue to be sick and frustrated. So, scoff if you will, but had I not learned what I learned from Lipton, I'd have no health and possibly no life. Now I understand the physiology behind my illness and my recovery, I believe those who say the same kind of approach could be effective for cancer - at least the ones that occur downstream of auto-immune illness (colorectal cancer for example). And I believe the anecdotes of people who've used these techniques to overcome cancer, because it aligns with my own experience. (Though let me be clear: I don't believe chiropractors can "cure cancer", and I don't have much time for chiropractic at all these days, now that I've found better and cheaper alternatives.) But of course it needs more research so it stops being mere anecdotes and starts becoming hard data. That's the whole point of this thread. As for "hard science" - all I can point you to are the books by Tanzi and Lipton, and Tanzi's research papers. Tanzi is Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He's been a leading researcher on Alheimer's for over 15 years, and much of his research and writing is focused on the role of emotions in genetic expression and the development of illness. But he's co-authored books with Deepak Chopra and has been criticized by Jerry Coyne - so he can therefore be disregarded, right? This is exactly my point. I profoundly wish there were more hard studies (indeed I put quite a lot of thought into whether I could help facilitate some research based on my own experience). I understand that Lipton's manner and Tanzi's link to Chopra make them easy to dismiss in the way that you have. But the dismissals all seem to succumb to the "begging the question" fallacy - dismissing them because "we already know they are wrong" rather than engaging with their arguments and evidence. I may only be a sample size of one, but significant numbers of people are recovering from illness by following the principles they espouse and significant numbers of qualified medical practitioners accept and endorse their ideas and research findings. If more attention was paid to this research and if it were then to inspire further research, maybe the world would start making real progress towards overcoming the illnesses that account for most of the ballooning costs of the health systems in western countries. Update: here's a link to a recent study linking emotion-focused therapies on telemere length in cancer patients. Telemere length is believed to be relevant in cancer risk and recovery potential: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full

Gatsky 11y ago

You are right. But you could take the cancer pill and then get a heart attack, or dementia, or become suicidally depressed etc. Will we make a pill for all those things as well? I'm not at all saying we should give up on cancer research (I'm doing a PhD in the field at the moment). My point in the last paragraph is this: prevention is applied to healthy people, but taking pills to prevent a disease is quite an odd notion of 'being healthy'. We should think carefully if the pills4prevention paradigm is going to deliver us the sort of outcomes and lifestyle we really want. I worry that the whole idea encourages an almost absurdly narrow and reductionist view of human health.

liveoneggs 11y ago

> or are intrinsic to the human aging process Exactly. You can still get your cancer without BP.