Vol. 22, No. 5 - Access to Energy Newsletter

The ongoing computer revolution and concomitant increase in the availability of information will soon provide virtual oceans of words and numbers to each individual at very little cost of time or money.

This is not just a spatial phenomenon as computer networks link tens of millions of computer terminals world-wide, providing instant access to contemporary words and numbers generated at the present time. It is also an historical phenomenon. As the world's great libraries and other depositories of information are scanned into electronic form, virtually all surviving recorded human knowledge will soon be easily available to anyone, anywhere on earth.

The great libraries will probably just be scanned and sealed - their entire contents available in low-cost boxes in discount stores and also on computer networks. The text files from 10,000 books can already be stored on a consumer computer tape priced at less than $20 (that is a million books for $2,000), and this capability is increasing so rapidly that computer magazines are obsolete as they are printed. Economical scanners for converting printed documents to electronic form currently operate at 100 pages per minute and are steadily improving.

Microcomputer processing speed has increased logarithmically with time for 15 years (see figure on page 3), while cost per computer operation has decreased at the same rate. (We were recently delighted to buy a 66MHz 486DX2 Intel CPU and motherboard for $380 when the published price was $500. Two weeks later, I tried to buy another one at the same price, but failed. The price had dropped to $295.) As human nature interacts with this cornucopia of information and processing capability, it is not surprising that some strange myths have arisen. One of these is that of the "information economy.'' This myth envisions the United States as an information megalith that no longer needs to dirty its hands with productive industry. We just lounge warmly by solar-powered computers and dominate the world by virtue of our superior access to information. As a result of this superiority, the rest of the world clamors to satisfy our material needs.

It is a wonder that this myth lives on when the rest of the world is obtaining the same computer capabilities so fast that our computer-producing industry itself has difficulty staying ahead - and, if anyone wishes to correct illusions about alleged superiority of American abilities to utilize information technology, he need only turn on a TV set and tune to a random channel of his choice.

The ocean of words and numbers will be available everywhere. In America, we have only the advantage of the first peek. Our wealth has allowed us to have this technology while it is still relatively expensive; our proximity to the early computer industry has let us use it first; and our language is an advantage because a large part of human knowledge is available in English. All of these advantages are time-dependent and will be gone forever in a relatively few years.

During the transition to this new situation in which virtually everyone has easy access to the information ocean, it is natural that most people focus on the means of obtaining access. Each new network or hardware innovation has its brief days of notoriety, and staying in high-tech fashion seems to require an up-to-date knowledge of new developments and possession of the latest machinery. During the 30 years that we have been using mini and, later, micro computers for research and word processing, we have usually purchased computer equipment that was a couple of years out-of-date. This saved lots of money, while the rapid advance of technology assured that our computer capabilities were sufficient for our needs. This is, however, becoming a socially demeaning practice, as I find many friends feeling sorry for me as though I wear too shabby a set of clothes.

The real problem, however, is how to use unlimited access to information. How does one extract quality from this ocean? Many of the words and numbers in this ocean are incorrect, and most of the available correct information is not of great enough value to a given individual to be worth his time. This is not a new problem. Even 30 years ago, the scientific literature was already so large that scientists in many fields could not read all of the papers relevant to their work. Now this problem is becoming worse by many orders of magnitude.

One solution has been to read primarily the works of the few best people in a given field. (Reading the best journals has been helpful, too, but that opportunity may disappear.) A small tape or disk can contain all of the writings, audio records, and (soon) video records of any individual for his entire life. Publication may eventually be primarily by individuals using electronic media rather than by journals, magazines, book publishers, and newspapers.

As a scientist gains in reputation, he may find an increasing demand for regularly updated complete copies of his writings, research data, and other publications. Video and audio of his experiments and presentations and can easily be put with these records, too. Regularly updated subscriptions for the growing complete record of his work may provide his principal source of income and research funds as the dinosaur of tax-financed research gradually becomes extinct.

For the CD-ROM of 21 years of Access to Energy described on page 4, we are using scanning and disk recording hardware and software for ordinary personal computers. For those too busy to produce their own, I expect that businesses will offer these services - providing living, frequently updated biographies of productive people.

An individual interested, for example, in environmental hazards would want to be informed of work by Bruce Ames and his colleagues. It is easy to make a CD-ROM of everything Professor Ames has ever published along with data and other valuable items that have not been published. Periodically this disk could be updated with his new material (available by network during interim periods). The time-tested way to filter information has been through the best minds available. We read one Shakespearean play or Mark Twain novel, and then read everything they wrote.

Computers may soon give everyone immediate, low-cost access to the continually updated works of living people as well as the complete works of those now dead. Censorship by publishing institutions and limitations by publishing economics will disappear.

No one, no economy, and no society can hold an advantage in information technology. The life's work of productive individual people will, however, provide paths to quality in the information ocean. This will greatly benefit the ascendancy of individual free enterprise.

While there are doubtless universal truths and phenomena that are appropriately discussed under the heading of "good and evil,'' there is a widespread tendency among people (an evil, if you wish) to categorize scientifically observed realities inappropriately as "good'' or "evil.'' This tendency has provided much benefit to propagandists. Visions of mushroom clouds and mountains of expensive propaganda have, for example, placed "nuclear'' in the evil category for many Americans and thereby deprived our nation of sufficient amounts of safe, clean, inexpensive nuclear-electric energy.

This tendency has also been an impediment to obtaining sensible and reliable information about nutrition and human health. The myth that there is a single "good'' diet for everybody is alive and well in the halls of medical schools as well as among legions in the alternative diet counter-culture.

When we completed our first experiments on raw fruit and vegetable diets and cancer in mice in 1976 with the finding that these diets suppressed cancer just as their advocates in the health food culture had reported, we were immediately surrounded by people who advocated this very low protein diet for pregnant and nursing mothers, infants, small children and virtually everybody including cancer victims. If it seemed good for one group of people it was "good,'' and therefore good for everybody.

I have a friend who was a world-class miler in the 1960s when the general belief was that a very high protein diet was good for everybody and that athletes all needed even more of the same. He blames this fad for his failure to be among the few men of his generation to break the four-minute mile. After spending his running years loading up on high protein, he later learned that high carbohydrate was better for runners and that too much protein inhibited performance.

A recent publication about nutrition and cancer is illustrative. "Suppression of squamous cell carcinoma in hairless mice by dietary nutrient variation'' by A. B. Robinson, A. Hunsberger, and F. C. Westall, Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 76 pp 201-214 (1994) reports the effects of 38 different diets on cancer development in a total of 1,846 mice. The rate of onset and development of tumors in these mice varied over a 20-fold range as a function of diet alone. This result illustrates the importance of diet in the control of cancer.

The specific nature of the diets comprising this 20-fold range is, however, not in accordance with the "good'' diet myth. Figure 1 illustrates this with respect to one of the nutrients. (Figure 1 is taken from the MAD 1994 paper but was first published in Barron's September 3, p. 7 (1979 ) because of the self-destructive explosion that these experimental results initiated in Linus Pauling. The 1994 paper itself was published from abbreviated research summaries because the Linus Pauling Institute claims to have lost the 300 computer data tapes and 50 file drawers of research data that comprised the records of all research conducted at that Institute during the five-year period that included this work. As a result, completed and remarkable experiments on over 2,000 human subjects have never been published.) In experiments conducted over a four-year period, each of these 1,846 hairless mice was subjected to repeated quantitative exposure to ultraviolet light such that it developed skin cancer (squamous cell carcinoma). The development of this cancer was carefully recorded for each mouse. Included in the 38 diets were those comprising dose re-

sponse curves for vitamin C, vitamin E, and total protein along with 12 other diets of interest in human nutrition.

The gram/kilogram food values in Figure 1 are roughly equivalent to grams per day oral dose for a human adult. Notice that this cancer grew faster in the mice receiving human equivalent doses corresponding to 3 to 6 grams per day of vitamin C. The mean lethal dose of vitamin C for these mice is between 200 and 300 g/kg. As doses approached this lethal dose, the growth of cancer was suppressed. Figure 1 also illustrates two of the raw fruit and vegetable experiments in which cancer growth was suppressed. This raw fruit and vegetable diet is very low in protein. When vegetable protein is added, the cancer suppressive effect disappears. The authors summarize as follows:

"Cancer growth was most rapid at the human equivalent doses of 1-3 g of vitamin C, 150-300 mg (about 150-300 International Units) of vitamin E, and 80-170 g of protein. Cancer growth was accelerated by a multinutrient mixture typical of human 'megavitamin' supplements and by a rich mixture of seeds and nuts.

"Conversely, cancer growth was suppressed by near lethal doses of 100-200 g of vitamin C, by 200 g of sucrose [20% by weight of ordinary table sugar], by protein deprivation and protein overdoses, by a raw plant food diet so restrictive that [it] will not support long-term human life, and by large doses of butylated hydroxytoluene and glu-tathione.

"Thus a daily intake of ordinary supplements of vitamin C, vitamin E, and multivitamins, a 'well balanced' amount of fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts, and minimal amounts of candy and other sweets - a diet considered healthy for most Americans - would appear to be a harmful diet for a cancer victim; whereas insufficient protein and fat, high 'empty' calories from sucrose, and near lethal amounts of vitamin C would appear good for a cancer victim. In addition, it has long been known that rat lifespan is maximized by a nutrient-rich diet early in life followed by nutrient restriction later in life.

"Perhaps nutrition during cancer therapy should be viewed as the provision of fuel for a race between rapidly growing young tissues and mature older tissues where nutrient restriction or malnutrition may favor the older tissues. The prevailing attitude that 'good' nutrition is the same for everyone may be especially dangerous for cancer victims.'' Before anyone hurries to dispose of his vitamin pills, however, he should realize that these experiments were carried out in mice which make their own vitamin C. The oral doses may have suppressed the ordinarily produced amounts in the mice. Moreover, vitamin C oxidation products are very destructive of macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids and may, therefore, participate in a sort of biochemical hormesis effect.

Most importantly, it is possible that diets like those which enhanced growth of cancer in these mice may also lower the probability of contracting cancer by strengthening biochemical defense mechanisms.

It may be that the overall death of humans from cancer would be minimized by rich dietary supplementation with nutrients currently considered "good'' until cancer is initiated and then by sharp restriction of these nutrients during cancer therapy. In this case, markedly better techniques for cancer detection before symptoms are evident would be of even greater importance.

The squamous cell carcinoma in these mice was pathologically the same as human squamous cell carcinoma and was induced in the same way that humans usually acquire it - overexposure to UV light. That its rate of growth could be varied over a 20-fold range by diet alone using diets that are common in human nutrition and easily adopted by any cancer victim is remarkable. Mice are not the same as men, but, in the absence of similar data on men, they provide our best guess.

I am reminded of a surgeon who told me of a patient he examined who had inoperable cancer in his throat and about two months to live. After leaving the surgeon's office, this patient adopted a raw plant food diet so restrictive of nutrients that it will not support human life. Six months later the patient was back to see the surgeon. Three things were remarkable. He was not dead; he had no trace of cancer; and he looked as if he had been in Auschwitz - almost dead of malnutrition. With ordinary food, he recovered his weight, and the cancer never recurred.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC, claims to have done a six-year evaluation of combined cancer incidence data on over 95,000 workers in the nuclear industry and to have verified that IARC risk estimates are correct. See Nuclear News 37, p 48, Decem-ber (1994) and E. Cardis, et al, The Lancet 344 , pp 1039-1043 (1994).

Several studies have found that nuclear workers have a lower incidence of cancer than the average elsewhere. This is cited as an example of hormesis (health benefit from low-level radiation) or as a "healthy worker effect,'' depending upon the writer's bias regarding the no-threshold linear hypothesis. This hypothesis has been badly damaged by Cohen's finding that radon radiation exposure reduces lung cancer incidence (see Access to Energy 21-4, December 1993, p 4), but the IARC study is potentially valuable, especially for external radiation.

By using only nuclear workers, the IARC risks a bias against hor-mesis. Their study, however, includes 10,000 nuclear workers classified as having received zero dose, so we were eager to read their paper.

Alas, the Lancet publication contains no figures or data whatever from which the reader can evaluate this work. In a five-page scientific publication with three tables and one figure, this is unacceptable. They promise to publish a better account elsewhere.

We are left to "believe'' their final result, which does little to support their conclusion that current warnings about the dangers of low level radiation are acceptable. For leukemia, they report an excess relative risk of cancer of 2.2 per Sv (the International Commission on Radiological Protection proposes a dose limit of 0.001 Sv per year for the public) and, for all other cancers, they report an excess relative risk of cancer of - 0.07 per Sv (less cancer with higher radiation exposure).

IARC reports a 90% confidence range (the range within which there is a 90% chance that the actual values fall) of their results for leukemia of 0.1 to 5.7 excess relative risk per Sv and for all other cancer of - 0.39 to 0.30 excess relative risk per Sv.

In the absence of data, the best we can do is to consider their statistical result. With 119 leukemia deaths and 3830 deaths from other cancers and averages of 2.2 and - 0.07 excess relative risk respectively, we calculate (119)(2.2)+(3830)(- 0.07) = - 6.3. Therefore, the IARC study actually reports a slight decrease in total cancer deaths with increased low-level radiation exposure (with a confidence range that makes this result statistically insignificant).< /FONT >

We wonder how the IARC study group and writing committee of 18 coauthors managed to rationalize the publication of a six-year study of 96,000 people purporting to measure a correlation between low-level radiation and cancer deaths without even a simple graph of radiation exposure versus deaths from cancer.

For more than a decade, there was continual argument between apologists - who contended that the lovable rulers of the Soviet Union would never do anything so dastardly as to violate the ban on biological weapons or provide chemical weapons to their surrogates in places like Southeast Asia (yellow rain) and Angola - versus Western observers who noticed that the Soviets were, in fact, doing these things.

This argument was epitomized by numerous articles in the Wall Street Journal in opposition to the pro-Soviet positions of one Mat-thew Meselson at Harvard who saw only bee pollen instead of chemical weapons and agreed with the KGB that only contaminated meat had caused anthrax deaths in Sverdlovsk. There, under chief Communist Party official of the Sverdlovsk region, Boris Yeltsin, citizens died of anthrax apparently released from a nonexistent Soviet biological weapons facility. (It couldn't exist because it was proscribed by treaty.) When political conditions permitted, the Wall Street Journal sent investigators to Sverdlovsk, verified that the deaths were due to inhalation of anthrax spores, and published a series of articles about this.

In Science 266 pp 1202-1208 (1994) is published an excellent research article by M. Meselson, J. Guillemin, M. Hugh-Jones, A. Lang-muir, I. Popova, A. Shelokov, and O. Yampolskaya reporting on the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak. Based on information on each anthrax victim as gathered by its Russian authors, this article definitively proves that human and animal deaths from anthrax up to 2.5 miles and 30 miles respectively downwind from a Soviet military compound were caused by anthrax spores released from that compound. The paper concludes, "In sum, the narrow zone of human and animal anthrax cases extending downwind from [military] Compound 19 shows that the [anthrax] outbreak resulted from an aerosol that originated there.'' Aerosols of anthrax spores have been used in biological weapons for about 50 years. They are so common that American troops were inoculated with anthrax vaccine and huge quantities of appropriate antibiotics were shipped to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.

Remarkably, Matthew Meselson, who used his position at Harvard as a major smoke screen to hide such Soviet actions, is the unapologetic first author of this publication. The many people whose deaths in the Cold War were facilitated by Professor Meselson and other Soviet apologists would undoubtedly be delighted to be alive and able to read his paper in Science.

We have been calling the paper recycling mania "interactive propaganda'' because its primary purpose seems to be to involve everyone in hands-on enviro action rather than in saving resources. The article "Suddenly, Paper is on a Burn'' by D. J. Yang and T. Smart in Business Week, p 126, November 21 (1994) illustrates this point.

Paper prices have increased from $460 per ton to $550 per ton - a 20% increase. Yang and Smart report that the paper industry has spent $7.5 billion for equipment needed to recycle paper. This expenditure, which must be added to paper prices, is not the only cost.

In response to a letter from an Access to Energy reader, Fletcher Challenge, one of Canada's largest forest products companies, replied: "You asked 'How much more costly is it to produce recycled papers over virgin stock? What are the economics?' " The quick answer is that, depending upon the percentage of recycled fibre used (which ranges up to 40%), it costs us 15% to 20% more to make recycled paper versus virgin paper. That translates to an added cost of roughly $75 to $100 per metric ton of paper produced........

"In general, recycled fibre costs more than virgin fibre because producing it uses more energy. Part of that extra energy is consumed in collecting the old paper - think of all the trucks hauling bundles of newspapers from communities all over the region.......

"The requirement to produce recycled paper is driven more by legislation than consumer demand. Our biggest paper market, California, has a law requiring newspaper publishers to use so much recycled paper within a set timetable. If all our markets adopted similar laws, we would have real problems getting enough used paper to comply.'' This letter also discusses the cost of deinking equipment.

Access to Energy is proudly printed on 100% unrecycled paper. In order to assure this, we recently purchased about a three year supply. Our paper company says that excessive costs of recycling and federal and state regulations requiring recycled paper are reducing the supply of unrecycled paper (since factories now maintain virgin paper production as a separate capability), so that it may eventually be unavailable.

"But do they take requests? B.C. Greens recognize the 'spiritual' value of 'singing trees'' by Rick Hiebert in Alberta Report, p 24, No-vember 7, 1994, describes a situation in south-eastern British Colum-bia, where logging has been stopped by enviros who claim that trees actually sing. One G. McIntyre of the Applied Ecological Stewardship Coalition claims to have heard the trees singing "a hymn of joy of creation.'' A local Anglican cleric joined McIntyre in calling for preservation of the trees because of their "spiritual force.'' In response, the British Columbia Commission on Resources and Environment has recommended and agreed "to identify and conserve physical conditions necessary to the super-physical life-force renewal function.''
Since there are politically incorrect racial differences in the experimental results, it has been out of fashion in recent decades to speak of genetic influences on intelligence. There are, in fact, significant differences in the mean intelligences of different races, yet these differences are entirely irrelevant with respect to specific individuals because the distribution functions overlap so greatly between races. (There are also sexual differences in distribution shape which lead to the differences in SAT math averages for girls and boys that educrats are so desperately trying to remove from SAT scores.)

C. Murray recently coauthored a book with R. J. Hernnstein entitled "The Bell Curve'' and then felt compelled to write a Wall Street Journal editorial (December 2, 1994, p A12) trying to mitigate the political controversy that their efforts to discuss this matter had caused. This was followed by a long Wall Street Journal editorial (December 13, 1994 p A18) in which 52 academic experts on intelligence attempted to summarize the known facts about heredity and intelligence. Their points include that heredity is between 40% and 80% responsible for IQ differences and that the IQ curves center around 100 for whites and 85 for American blacks with Hispanics roughly midway between.

Ralph Nader, Ernest Sternglass, Carl Sagan, and even Jane Fonda probably have high IQs, illustrating the great difference between good equipment and worthwhile skill, while the works of many brilliant black Americans testify about the distribution function overlap even before we see the data. Racist efforts to make all groups equal rather than giving equal opportunity to all individuals are, of course, inconsistent with science in this case.

I can think of no better reason to teach all Americans about statistical distributions than to enable them to understand this important subject (not only with respect to IQ but also other measures of innate ability). In the absence of this knowledge, demagogues have manipulated Americans into public policies harmful to those with least ability.

These Wall Street Journal articles belong in "Good Reading,'' but we'll leave them in "Stark Raving Mad'' since madness is where deliberate ignorance about human similarities and differences will lead.

"A scientific agenda for climate policy?'' by Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen, Nature 372 pp 400-402, 1 December 1994. The author states that "For others, including the chairman of the IPCC, global warming has become the justification for a crusade against materialism.....'' and "The creation of knowledge at increasing rates by a few individuals engaged in a political game, one of whose primary goals is to obtain funding for their own work, must influence the way that environmental problems are defined and prioritized.'' The appearance of this article (with which we do not agree in its entirety) in Nature is a further indication that pseudoenviro scientists are losing their grip on credibility in the scientific community.

"Shock Journalism. The junk reporting behind the power line-cancer connection.'' by Michael Fumento in Reason, p 23, January (1995). The control of fire (which produces carbon dioxide) and electricity (which produces electromagnetic fields) have generally been considered positive human achievements. The antitechnologists are now conducting unrestrained attacks on both with bogus arguments. In this article, Michael Fumento answers on behalf of electricity.

"Hypoglycemia and Diabetes'' by William Campbell Douglass in Second Opinion 4, 11, pp 1-5, November (1994). The general message is to avoid a high sugar diet (unless you happen to be a mouse with squamous cell carcinoma. The mice with diets having 20% sucrose had about 20% slower cancer growth in the experiments discussed on page two of this issue of Access to Energy).

"Adequate Supplies of Fruits and Vegetables'' by P. H. Abelson, Science 266 p 1303 (1994) warns that the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, is participating in a Consent Decree that would ban many important fungicides. Close to becoming administrative law, this decree would ultimately sharply decrease the production of fruits and vegetables and thereby raise the incidence of degenerative diseases that are moderated by good supplies of these foods. Why not just add EPA to the list of banned evils and really improve the environment?
"Behind the atomic curtain'' by Hans A. Bethe, Nature 372 , No.6503, pp 281-283 (1994) in review of the book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 by David Holloway.
"Climate claims wither under luminous lights of science'' by S. Fred Singer in the Washington Times of November 29, 1994. Global warming is dying as an issue with each passing year of actual temperature measurements. Direct measurement of actual UV light levels may kill the ozone scare, too. We should always measure the final result when considering hypothetical claims and intermediates.