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These are all good points to think about. For this particular one, I agree: Even if he were examining that many people, he wouldn't expect to detect cancer at
by Evgeny 16y ago
These are all good points to think about. For this particular one, I agree:
Even if he were examining that many people, he wouldn't expect to detect cancer at nearly the rates that modern medicine would.
But at the same time, as the book claims:
At the same time, he was regularly diagnosing cancers among the crews of whaling ships and other Westernized populations.
So detectability, probably, was not that big of an issue itself.
- hugh3 16y agoSo detectability, probably, was not that big of an issue itself. Unless, of course, he got it into his head that Inuit didn't have cancers, and then started making false diagnoses based on that. Look, I don't know how much of this story is true and how much of it is made up. Certainly the part where he's a trained physician seems to have been made up. The part where he examined fifty thousand Inuit plus a significant of westerners per year in between his actual duties as a ship's captain appears to be completely implausible. If this random anecdote is the best evidence we have that living with a traditional Eskimo diet will signficantly lower your chance of cancer, I think it's safe to say that the evidence for the hypothesis is pretty darn pissweak.
- fnl 16y agoAverage inuit lifespan is about 45 years - however, that means they had a higher life expectancy than we did before we surpassed them. So the extremely cold environment does seem to help (although you just won't get me there :) http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-lifespan-of-inuit.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-...