| Vol. 25, No. 9 |
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A Shortage of Adults
As the myth of a global warming scientific "consensus'' crumbles around the enviro industry (which is populated primarily by non-scientists), we are learning more about these people.
First, recall the United Nations "2,000 scientist'' IPCC meeting -the primary reference quoted in support of the "consensus'' and the primary authority upon which the Kyoto Treaty rests. It turns out that only 1,093 scientists are on the IPCC list and, of those, only 382 are Americans. (In the more careful reports, the 2,000 are referred to as "scientists, experts, and government officials.'') Of these, only 85 wrote the summary "consensus report'' - which was edited later to reflect the views of an even smaller group of the participants.
In contrast, the Petition Project petition has now been signed by more than 16,000 American scientists. It unequivocally states: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.''
While the IPCC group included 382 American scientists - many of whom disagreed with the final summary report - the largest enviro effort to poll scientists was that by the group that calls itself "The Union of Concerned Scientists.'' They managed to obtain the signatures of only 453 American scientists (out of a world total of 1,564) -and are very reticent to release information about just what statement these people signed. (One signer, a Nobel Prize winner whom I know, told me that the UCS statement he signed said merely that research on this subject should not be discontinued.) This is a consensus? Perhaps so - a consensus against the global warming myth.
Some people like to limit the definition of "scientist'' entirely to those holding the degree of Ph.D. More than 6,000 men and women holding Ph.D.s in science have signed the Petition Project petition.
It is not surprising that the rules of the Kyoto meeting did not allow discussion of scientific matters. The new global energy rationing emperor has no clothes. He wears instead the fig leaves of raw political power, economic self interest, and globalist "population reduction'' planning - a euphemism for genocide through withdrawal of the energy supplies necessary for life-supporting technology.
So, what have the enviros offered in defense of their "consensus?'' First, they claimed that the 16,000 signatures should be ignored because the referenced review article that accompanied the petition and the letter from Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences (many members of which have now signed the petition), were misleading scientists to think that the Petition Project is an NAS activity. They managed to get articles published about this in Science and Nature
and a news release from the NAS saying the project is not theirs. The problem was that no one thought it was an NAS project in the first place, so this strategy failed.Next, they contended that the project is being paid for by oil and gas interests and others with large economic self-interests in preventing energy rationing. The problem here is that not one of the petition's organizers - institutional or personal - is connected with such industries, and no funds for the Project came from such sources.
They also tried the claim that the review paper should be ignored because two of its four authors have not published original research on climate change. Unfortunately for them, the other two authors have published extensive such research and the review itself is fully referenced to the peer reviewed literature anyway.
Now, the enviros are bragging that the petition's 16,000 signers should be ignored because they managed to place a false name on the petition signer list. A man telephoned here and talked with my 16-year-old daughter Bethany - saying that he was so anxious to be counted among the petition signers that he would like to fax rather than mail his petition. The faxed (falsified) petition claimed to be from "Geri Halliwell, a Ph.D. microbiologist living at an address in Boston.'' It turns out that Geri Halliwell is the real name of one of the Spice Girls (a singing group). She sings under a different name.
The enviros then advertised this in
The Washington Times and, more remarkably, succeeded in disrupting a Congressional hearing with word of Geri Halliwell and the "discrediting'' of the petition. They followed this with an Associated Press story (republished in the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers) claiming that several other bogus names had been found. They apparently combed the published list for well-known names. Their centerpiece was Perry S. Mason. This scientist, a Ph.D. chemist living in Lubbock, Texas, happens to have the same name as the well-known television character. The other "bogus'' signers also turned out to be legitimate signers with name similarities to personalities who are well-known.Pranks, of course, are generally harmless. The astonishing thing about these pranks is that the enviros are now basing their primary attack upon the petition - an attack that they are vigorously pursuing in the United States Senate and House of Representatives and in such media organs as the Associated Press
- entirely upon these pranks. Not only do they have no significant scientific support, they also apparently have a complete lack of adults in their own organizations.Next, the attacks may become personal. We are receiving reports from our friends and associates - even some we barely know and who would be difficult to connect with us - that callers they do not know are telephoning to ask questions about our family.
Not once, in all of this noise, has anyone attacked the science in our 8-page review or the substance of the statement signed by more than 16,000 scientists (and about 2,000 others). In all of the enviro publications, fewer than 10 people with university degrees in science have actually been quoted in opposition to the petition.
The remarkable truth is that the global warming parade has very few adult scientist participants. It is a media-created myth.
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NUTRITION AND CANCER
During the first week in May, newspapers such as
USA Today and Internet news outlets such as Microsoft MSBC headlined a new drug combination that has been successful in eradicating tumors in mice. This treatment with endostatin and angiostatin is credited to a hypothesis originated 30 years ago by Dr. Judah Folkman who is now a professor at Harvard and researcher at the Boston Children's Hospital. The idea is based upon the fact that cancerous tumors are fast-growing tissues that need lots of nutrients. Folkman suggested that the supply of nutrients to tumors could be reduced if they were treated with anti-angiogenic substances which interfered with the ability to create blood vessels necessary to the transport of nutrients into the tumors.It is reported that this combination of two anti-angiogenic substances not only stopped the progress of cancer in mice, but also caused the tumors to shrink to negligible sizes. This is very important work. The only depressing news is that human trials of this therapy will be carried out in the United States under the benevolent regula
tions and controls of our government. Thus the reports that "human trials are planned,'' but that use of the therapy for cancer patients (even if it works) is "years away.'' It now takes more time to conduct the clinical testing of a new medical therapy than was required for our nation to fight and win World War II - with all of the extraordinary technology that was invented and utilized in that effort.Government funding of research means that hordes of brain-dead bureaucrats stand between scientists and their objectives, while regulations governing anything affecting human lives assure that the work will go forward at a snail's pace. These regulations, in combination with a litigation industry ready to pounce upon anyone who does something that can be demonstrated to a jury as unusual, assure that even work that is not government funded is greatly inhibited.
The result is that only therapies that are very expensive are studied because enormous profits must be available to pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars and many years of work required to shepherd even a simple therapy through the government morass.
So what happens to an excellent hypothesis like Folkman's? Thirty years later, human trials are being considered. How many people -perhaps someone important to you - have suffered and died of cancer during the past 30 years? Folkman's is only one of many promising approaches that have been denied to you by your government, its retainers, and the "welfare'' system for scientists that they have created.
So, if you have cancer and want to take advantage of anti-angio-genic therapy, you are consigned to buying shark cartilage pills at your local health store. Do these help? I doubt that anyone knows for sure or that many government-funded scientists will risk their careers proposing to test shark cartilage. Its promoters point out that shark cartilage has few blood vessels, so an inhibitor may be present.
It is important to first distinguish between cancer prevention and cancer therapy - and, in fact, to understand the realistic objectives of cancer research. Figure 1, which we have published before with appropriate references to Bruce Ames in
Access to Energy 21-8, shows the virtual wall of cancer probability that faces all humans of advanced age. Figure 2 illustrates the proper objective of most cancer research.
Without advances in knowledge that probably will not be made during our lifetimes, people alive now are unlikely to live over 150 years. With, however, empirical research methods that are certainly available today (but not being pursued because they are not trendy with the bureaucrats paid by your tax dollars who have control of medical research), it should be possible to push the healthful intrinsic human
lifespan out to about 120 years. With that done, the overall objective should be to keep people in the best of health for as long as possible -constraining deterioration and death to as short a period as possible around the intrinsic life span limit (about 80-90 years today and about 120 years if technology were properly applied even in the absence of seminal advances in understanding the biochemistry of aging).Preventing cancer and controlling the growth of cancer are very different objectives, as Folkman's hypothesis illustrates. Who would suggest that preventing blood vessel growth was a desirable objective for well people? Yet, for a cancer victim, this may be life-saving.
Many years ago when Linus Pauling and I were looking for clues in the alternative health literature - clues that might suggest promising research areas in nutrition - we were drawn into the orbit of "super nutrition.'' With various nuances, the idea here is that the body needs a good supply of nutrients so, within the limits of apparently nontoxic doses, why not supply large amounts? Linus liked to call this "ortho-molecular medicine'' meaning literally "the right molecules in the right amounts'' but in practice meaning "megavitamin therapy.'' This made sense with respect to cancer prevention, since it at least avoided nutritional inadequacies that might weaken the immune system and other natural defenses against cancer and other degenerative diseases. The trouble is that people (even scientists) tend to classify things as "good'' and then attribute favorable attributes to them under any and all circumstances. Once a vitamin C guru gets rolling, there is nothing vitamin C won't cure except for nuclear war (and even this was talked about regarding vitamin C and mental instability).
High dose multiple vitamins do tend to increase the sense of well-being, especially in older people, and it is reasonable to suggest (although by no means proved) that this well-being extends to better defenses against degenerative diseases. But what about people who already have cancer? Do they need super nutrition? Folkman's hypothesis includes the idea that cancerous tissues should be deprived of nutrients by cutting off their blood supply.
Twenty-three years ago I designed a series of experiments to look into this question in mice and, with the help of two technicians, built a small animal lab for the work. We used a cancer system developed by Homer Black. See Black, H. S. and Chan, J. T.,
J. Invest. Dermatol. 65 (1975) 412-414. In Black's system, hairless mice (they have hair when born, but it soon drops out) are irradiated with measured amounts of UV light until they develop skin cancer. We improved Black's procedures to make them more quantitative and then proceeded to study the incidence and severity of the tumors as a function of diet. Approximately 2,000 mice were used during the three years of work. See Ro-binson, A. B., Hunsberger, A. and Westall, F. C., Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 76 (1994) 201-214.The most striking thing about these experiments was that, during the period of optimum effect, the rate of growth of cancer was varied over a 20-fold range as a function of diet. The most interesting finding was that the poorer the diet in overall nutritional content - the slower the rate of cancer growth. In the first experiment, the results per 50 mice 2 months after the initial 15 week UV radiation period were as shown in Table 1.
Diet - Table 1 - 15 Weeks of Lesions Lesions Radiation + 2 Months Severity 3-5 Severity 1-5 Control 11 145 Black Mix 2 90 12 g/Kg Vitamin C 12 152 0.535 g/Kg Vitamin E 14 178 20% Seawater 15 164 Meganutrient Mix 14 203
The Black Mix was a mixture of glutathione, butylated hydroxy toluene, vitamin E, and vitamin C that Black had used. This and the control demonstrated that our technique was comparable to his. The vitamin C and vitamin E groups received equivalent doses to the Black mixture, thereby testing the efficacy of these in the Black mixture. Pauling had recently become interested in sea water minerals, so this was included. The meganutrient mix was a mixture of megavitamins similar to that which an avid health food fan might take if he tried to follow all of the advice in
Prevention Magazine at once.Notice the increased cancer in all groups except the Black Mix and (increased slightly) vitamin C - given at the human equivalent of about 12 grams per day per person. Adding a rich mix of vitamins clearly accelerated cancer growth. The Black mixture was beneficial, either as a result of glutathione or butylated hydroxy toluene or some synergistic (cooperative) effect between two or more of its four constituents.
| Diet - Table 2 - 15 Weeks of Ra- | Lesions | Lesions | |
| diation + 2 Months | Severity 3-5 | Severity 2-5 | |
| Control - Exp. 2 | 12 | 47 | |
| Control - Exp. 3 | 11 | 45 | |
| Control - No UV Radiation | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 g/Kg Vitamin C | 31 | 94 | |
| 6 g/Kg Vitamin C | 19 | 77 | |
| 12 g/Kg Vitamin C | 16 | 58 | |
| 24 g/Kg Vitamin C | 8 | 53 | |
| 48 g/Kg Vitamin C - Exp. 2 | 3 | 24 | |
| 48 g/Kg Vitamin C - Exp. 3 | 2 | 21 | |
| 96 g/Kg Vitamin C | 0 | 6 | |
| 192 g/Kg Vitamin C | 0 | 8 | |
| 192 g/Kg Sucrose | 10 | 37 | |
| 0.16 g/Kg Vitamin E | 13 | 70 | |
| 0.285 g/Kg Vitamin E | 23 | 74 | |
| 0.535 g/Kg Vitamin E | 14 | 57 | |
| 1.035 g/Kg Vitamin E | 12 | 30 | |
| 2.035 g/Kg Vitamin E | 22 | 68 | |
| Fruits and Vegetables - Exp. 2 | 4 | 12 | |
| Fruits and Vegetables - Exp. 3 | 1 | 14 | |
| FaV + 165 g/Kg Vitamin C | 0 | 6 | |
| FaV + seeds and nuts | 24 | 86 | |
During the second and third experiments, the dietary results became even more remarkable. Vitamin C, in the human equivalent of 3 grams per day, sharply increased the cancer growth rate. Only at dose rates above the human equivalent of 48 g/Kg per day did vitamin C
measurably decrease the rate of cancer growth. Vitamin E, too, enhanced cancer growth in the amounts usually found in human supplements. The empty calories of sugar, however, decreased cancer growth rate. A diet of fruits and vegetables, FaV, markedly reduced cancer growth rate. This effect, however, disappeared when the fruits and vegetables were supplemented with soy protein, seeds, and nuts, which are popularly thought to be very nutritious. Moreover, in these experiments, the cancer growth rate was independent of what mixture of fruits and vegetables was being eaten except in the case of apples and pears. These are less nutritious per unit weight than the other raw foods, so, when they were removed, the diet became more nutritious.
| FaV without wheat grass | 4 | 17 | |
| FaV + extra wheat grass | 4 | 13 | |
| FaV without tomatoes | 2 | 16 | |
| FaV without carrots | 2 | 14 | |
| FaV without apples and pears | 6 | 28 | |
| Enriched Fruits and Vegetables | 14 | 50 | |
When the dry weight equivalent of 165 grams per person per day of vitamin C was added to the raw fruits and vegetables, the suppression of cancer growth rate was even more spectacular. These mice were, however, in a disastrously poor nutritional state. They were ingesting a mixture of fruits and vegetables that would barely sustain their lives and a nearly lethal daily dose of vitamin C.
Similarly, when mice were raised on control diets modified with respect to protein content, the maximum cancer growth occurred at 17% protein. Protein percentages above 17% and below 17% both lowered cancer growth. In each case, the farther the protein percentage was from the optimum of 17%, the more cancer growth rate was reduced. At both tested extremes, 5% and 60% protein,
cancer growth rate was reduced by a factor of three.Have you heard of these results (published in a major politically correct peer-reviewed journal) in your local newspaper or from your friendly oncologist? Will they be subjected to the hundreds of millions of dollars in government approved tests required before that oncologist would legally dare to mention them? Obviously not.
| Diet - Table 3 - 15 Weeks of Ra- | Lesions | Lesions | |
| diation + 4 Months | Severity 3-5 | Severity 2-5 | |
| Control - Exp. 3 | 85 | 195 | |
| 48 g/Kg Vitamin C - Exp. 3 | 38 | 134 | |
| 96 g/Kg Vitamin C | 14 | 62 | |
| 192 g/Kg Vitamin C | 32 | 92 | |
| 192 g/Kg Sucrose | 60 | 158 | |
| Fruits and Vegetables - Exp. 3 | 32 | 82 | |
| FaV + 165 g/Kg Vitamin C | 1 | 35 | |
| FaV + Seeds and nuts | 101 | 236 | |
| FaV without wheat grass | 24 | 99 | |
| FaV + extra wheat grass | 32 | 88 | |
| FaV without tomatoes | 27 | 96 | |
| FaV without carrots | 31 | 77 | |
| FaV without apples and pears | 55 | 171 | |
| Enriched Fruits and Vegetables | 77 | 174 | |
It turns out that eating a diet restricted entirely to fruits and vegetables - without staples such as grain, beans, or animal products - is a
relatively enjoyable way to starve. Even though these foods have a highly nutritious composition, their high water and fiber content prevents their being eaten in sufficient quantities.Even the magic vitamin, vitamin C,
increases the rate of cancer growth until the doses are so high they constitute malnutrition. At doses normally considered healthy, it increases cancer growth.Yet, there is extensive evidence that good nutrition reduces cancer
incidence - incidence, not growth rate once cancer is established. See Ames, B. N., et. al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 90 (1993) 7915-7922 and Block, G. et. al. Nutr. and Cancer 18 (1992) 1-29.Optimum nutrition is best unless some part of your body is growing too rapidly. In this case, until Folkman is able to starve that part selectively, you may want to starve the whole thing. It works for mice.
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1998 DDP MEETING
The annual DDP meeting will be held July 10-12, 1998 in Scottsdale, Arizona near Phoenix. As usual, a very remarkable group of speakers will participate. These and their subjects include:
Sallie Baliunas - global warming.
Bonner Cohen - the new EPA standards for particulates and ozone.
Joseph Douglass - chemical and biological weaponry.
William Dresher - pseudoscience, politicians, and the press.
J. Gordon Edwards - the Endangered Species Act.
Keith Idso - effect of carbon dioxide on plants.
Robert Jastrow - strategic defense.
Cresson Kearny - war winning and losing equipment.
Jay Lehr - ozone depletion and other scares.
Henry Lamb - green religion, Kyoto and other treaties.
Lawrence Parks - the hazards of fiat money.
JoAnn Stuke-Diethrich - effects of the ban on methyl bromide.
Lowell Wood - the dangers of biological weaponry.
Ed York - when nothing happened: failed nuclear tests.
Each year this conference is so outstanding that it seems that it cannot be better; but each year it improves. This year promises the same. The location is the Scottsdale Hilton where reservations for conference participants will be $59 per night for a single and $69 per night for a double. The hotel number for reservations is (800) 528-3119. Registration for the meeting, which includes two luncheons and the annual awards banquet, is $95 per person. For registration and other information write to DDP, 2509 N. Campbell, Box 272, Tucson, AZ 85716 or telephone (520) 325-2680.
The conference will also include a tour of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and a visit to the laboratory of Dr. Sherwood Idso and his coworkers along with a presentation there by Dr. Idso. This laboratory is the foremost laboratory in the world in the study of the effects of carbon dioxide on plant growth under natural conditions.
This tour will include a visit to the longest running experiment on tree growth and carbon dioxide that has ever been carried out. When you see Sherwood Idso's trees, the extraordinary value of increased carbon dioxide in the biosphere will come spectacularly alive. This laboratory is also carrying out open field experiments on the growth of various crops under increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The secret method by which Dr. Jane Orient assembles these extraordinary meetings is this. The speakers attend because they want to meet the other speakers. Everyone else comes to hear the speakers, to participate in the tours, and to enjoy the format which gives lots of time for personal interaction with the speakers and other participants. Actually, the audience itself usually contains such an accomplished group of people that they could put on a great extemporaneous meeting even if none of the scheduled speakers arrived.
This is one meeting that I would not be willing to miss. Each year I find it an enlightening and rewarding experience.
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STARK RAVING MAD
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GOOD READING