My Malignant Melanoma

Over on CRUK's cancer chat site, there's a muppet who is plugging the Budwig Diet to cancer patients. Here's what I had to say to him:

"A quick glance round the internet shows that people are using this diet instead of radio-and chemo-therapy on the advice of morons like you.

Thinking that the papers you linked to in some way supports the Budwig diet only confirms your scientific ignorance. None of the papers are about the Budwig diet at all.

As I said, science deals with evidence, and there is no evidence whatever for the Budwig diet. There's nothing more to say from a scientific point of view. I have an open mind-show me some evidence. Believing the unsupported word of an internet time-waster like yourself isn't open-mindedness, it's stupidity.

Linus Pauling's ideas on dietary Vitamin C and cancer were tested and are nonsense (We might note in passing that he actually died of cancer)

The research you refer to is about intravenous vitamin C rather than dietary Vitamin C, in mice rather than people, and is far from conclusive. Linus Pauling won the Nobel prize for work on the nature of the chemical bond. He had neither training nor any research background in Medicine, or any biological science.

Your logical error is called the appeal to authority. Linus Pauling also had strong political opinions. Should we remake society in line with them because he won a Nobel Peace Prize? It does not logically follow that being right about chemical bonds makes you right about cancer, politics, or indeed even reliably right about some other aspect of chemistry. (Even Budwig's supporters claim that she was nominated for the peace prize rather than the prize for medicine, incidentally)

Bring some real evidence to back your assertions, or shut up. Since you clearly wouldn't know evidence if it was tattooed on your forehead, it's going to be a long wait. That's evidence that the Budwig diet is helpful for the outcome of all cancers which I'm talking about, as this is the claim that is being made.

The most impressive of the papers you linked to concludes that one component of the Budwig diet MIGHT be worthy of further investigation for some prostate cancer patients.

1. It does not study the Budwig diet at all, but a simple low-fat diet with flax seed oil. Budwig made strong claims that organic flaxseed oil must be mixed with organic cottage cheese to be effective, and that either component taken separately would have the opposite of the desired effect. The study you quote does however pertain to this claim. It tends to disprove it, as no excess deaths were recorded in the patients as would be expected from Budwig's claims.

The Budwig Protocol is actually a complete lifestyle, which besides flaxseed oil/cottage cheese includes a number of elements. It includes a vegetarian diet, flaxseeds, fruit juices, vegetable juices, sauerkraut, sunshine, "emotional and spiritual peace" "stress control", "avoiding negative energy" from a variety of sources in synthetic clothing, bedding, etc. in your immediate environment. and so on...

2. It only studies one sort of cancer. Things which help with one sort of cancer can harm in the case of another. For example testosterone is required to allow prostate cancers to grow, but it may inhibit breast cancers.

3. It does not study the post-treatment period when people seem most likely to be conned into the Budwig diet.

4. It does not conclude that the diet helps in any way, but that it MIGHT be worth looking into. Since the paper dates from 2008, it seems that they have not cured cancer in the meantime, or I would surely have heard about it.

5. The study does not actually look at survival or any real-world end-point at all, but biochemical changes which they believe might be associated with a better outcome.

Advising anyone to even consider the Budwig diet on the strength of this research is highly irresponsible. But of course your ideas on the Budwig diet come from internet quack sites, not scientific or medical research. These are the only places where this diet is promoted. You are just parroting quack propaganda.

Might I suggest that you, and anyone else like you, who want to play scientist/doctor based on tripe they read on the internet, who think that any study of a field implies scientific endorsement, and doesn't understand what the resulting papers mean refrain from giving unqualified medical advice to cancer patients?"

Obviously it would be better if people like this were split, salted and nailed to a fence, but we do what we can.

Labels: Budwig, Diet, nonsense, quack

Thought I'd crosspost this from a discussion we have been having on the cancerbacup forum:

"Essiac and Laetrile are useless against cancer. Laetrile gives those who take it cyanide poisoning, though whether they notice the symptoms or not might depend on the dose, and personal susceptibility.

This view is supported by the following reputable organisations, who in turn have these opinions because scientists have tested the agents and found them not to work:

Cancer Research UK

US National Cancer Institute

Cochrane Collaboration

Note that these references should not be believed simply because the organisations publishing them are mainstream. That would be to fall for the same logical fallacy as quack medicine promoters, the "argument from authority". Someone is not right because they have an impressive title, or were nominated for, or even won the Nobel prize. Check out the research backing the claims.

Linus Pauling, (double Nobel Prize winner) for example was a genius in his field, but dead wrong about the effectiveness of Vitamin C against cancer.

Here is a summary of all scientific evidence to date on Laetrile as of June last year.

An interesting article on Laetrile by a doctor, and fully backed by scientific research appears here

To summarise the research listed above, Laetrile is ineffective aginst cancer, and basically has an identical effect to cyanide. Any replies to this post which do not back claims to the contrary with research from peer reviewed scientific literature as I have will be ignored.

As the very first post in the thread says: if I am taking both chemo and Mrs Caisse's tea, who cares which cured me? And indeed who can really tell if it was one, the other, or neither?

That I took essiac or whatever and my cancer got better no more shows that it cures cancer than day causes night. Sometimes cancer just gets better. Our bodies mount a successful last-ditch defence. Just because something follows something else, does not show the first thing caused the second. Only by trying a single agent many times under controlled conditions can we see whether it works or not.

Whilst we are in education mode, we can have a look at the claims made by other posters on this thread which are contradicted by the references I have given above. You can ignore this bit if you like, point by point rebuttals are tiresome to many people:

1. "It may be that B17 is a good one to go for, as the US have banned it." Laetrile is not a vitamin. It is a poison with no effect on cancer progression. It has been banned in the US because of this. This makes it a bad "one to go for".

2. "ordinary processed sugar will kill you long before the cyanide in apricot seeds will." The cyanide produced by laetrile is the same cyanide which is in Zyklon B. There isn't some sort of natural cyanide which is good for you.

3. "The "cyanide content" of almonds, is only released on contact with the cancer cell with which it reacts, and it is not activated in any other situation." In fact the cyanide is released on contact with all parts of the body, especially the digestive system, which is why oral administration is so much more acutely harmful. There is no scientific evidence of any specificity to cancer cells as claimed.

4. "In 1950 after many years of research, a dedicated biochemist by the name of Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., isolated a new vitamin that he numbered B17 and called 'Laetrile'." Laetrile has been known since 1830. Mr Krebs was not a doctor or a biochemist at all. His father was a doctor, but he was a simple snake-oil merchant. His father the doctor was a quack too. Harold Shipman was a doctor too. Being a doctor isn't an automatic guarantee of probity. Claiming to be a doctor when you are not is however pretty much a guarantee of quackery.

Some other fallacies:

1. "How can an apricot seed, provided by nature, be called a drug" The same way as opium provided by nature might, but I'm not calling it a drug, I'm calling it a poison. The most potent poison in the world, Botulinum toxin is a natural substances.

2. "Dr Budwig was nominated for a Nobel Prize SEVEN times" I could say the same thing of myself and no-one could argue. The committee does not publicise the names of nominees.

I will ignore the meaningless waffle, paranoid hysteria (international criminal conspiracies, please spare us!) and rudeness of the posters promoting quackery. I understand that some people's beliefs are not going to be changed by any amount of rational evidence, and they then resort to bullying tactics.

My opinions are not however beliefs of this nature. Show me a valid clinical trial of these agents which shows that they work, and I will change them. They are opinions backed by solid evidence. The other posters promote irrational beliefs which are flatly contradicted by the same evidence.

So it isn't a question of respecting others, or their beliefs. It a question of not allowing others to promote their dangerous and irrational beliefs with outright lies.

I don't know the other posters from Adam or Eve. I have nothing against them. Their ideas are however dangerous nonsense, founded only on the lies of commercially interested quacks and need to be countered with facts.

I will do this as many times as it takes, but I cannot see how they can come back with anything other than more irrational nonsense. Their claims have no basis in fact, as this post now demonstrates in detail (but only of course to anyone unwilling to believe in a global conspiracy to deny us effective anti-cancer agents by subverting the whole activity of science and medicine)"

Anyone hoping that I will publish comments on this post which amount to testimonials in favour of quackery are going to be disappointed, I'm afraid. We are not in the business of publishing unproven claims which could mislead vulnerable people here. Testimonials are vastly inferior evidence to the scientific studies I have linked to above. Publishing them might make it seem to the vulnerable that there are two sides to this argument, when there are not.

Labels: Alternative, Budwig, Clinical, Diet, Essiac, Forum, Laetrile, Malignant, Medicine, Melanoma, Resources, Trial, UK, Vitamins