I have a question ... for anyone ... because it looks like many of you know more about prehistoric man than I do.

I looked up the average lifespan for some older humans (I don't know prehistoric designations, but this chart said Neanderthal, Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic):
Wikipedia: Life Expectancy

Given the heated interest in resistant starch (RS) these days, lab rats' diets have been getting pretty darn starchy. And by the looks of it, their colons are healthier for it.

Well, how about that. Mark Bittman has a blog. (Thank you, Melinda.)

Bitten: Mark Bittman on Food

It doesn't look like he posts often. Although he did make a few comments yesterday about his recent article that appeared in the New York Times, the one we discussed on my post, Got Vegetables?:

Eating Meat Is Only Human, Bitten, 5 Feb 2008

He lamented (I think he was lamenting), that he "got only two comments [on his original article]: one from a cattle rancher with some smart reasoning, and one from someone who was a little more emotional."

I haven't written much about the whole embryonic stem cell thing, partly because I never saw it as the most pressing issue. The media and the public are obssessed with the possibilities for dramatic, high technology biomedical breakthroughs, but what we're really talking about are procedures that in a decade or two might benefit a small number of people in wealthy countries who have uncommon injuries or degenerative diseases associated with advanced age. The vast majority of the earth's people will never be able to afford these treatments, and they already are lacking in far more basic needs. Even in the wealthy countries, as a matter of fact, we can accomplish far more public health benefit for far less money with simple measures that we don't bother with. So while I have thought that restricting stem cell research on putative moral grounds is absurd, and the opposite of moral, I have had more important things to worry about.

Bill Marler is blogging about raw milk if you'd like to add your two cents.
He posted a link to this video of Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, defending the sale of his raw milk:

"You have no question in your mind that you are absolutely fricking on target. There's no question. There's no scientific test. There's no rationalization. There's no argument. You're fricking right."

Sauerkraut!

But it has to be unpasteurized (Don't heat it above ~130 degrees F. either.) - Or else all those species of beneficial Lactobacillus will sacrifice their lives for a sterile kraut.

As a source for probiotics, fermented cabbage is a great alternative to fermented dairy foods. And the levels of good bacteria are typically higher in raw sauerkraut than in cultured milk products.

Sauerkraut is also high in vitamin C:"In 1776, Captain James Cook was awarded the Copley Medal for demonstrating that sauerkraut could be used to allay scurvy in British crews on long sea voyages."

Here was Part 1.

I'm surprised by what I'm discovering about the possible carcinogenic effects of meat. I'm also surprised that these points weren't raised in any of the literature I read so far surrounding low-carb diets, which almost universally promote meat consumption. I've been experimenting with low-carb diets as a way to manage my blood sugar. But with the recent diagnoses of cancer in my family, I'm revisiting their safety.

Guilty pleasure #114: Swiping spoonfuls of cranberry sauce from the refrigerator. To engage in guilty pleasure #114, there has to be a ready supply of cranberry sauce from which to spoon.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup cranberries
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
17 grains table salt. Kidding. Sort of.

Returning now to Stem Cell Century, Prof. Korobkin argues along very much the same lines we have argued here about the moral status of the zygote and the embryo. It seems apparent that the qualities that give a creature moral status have to do, first of all, with sentience. We respect the rights of others because they can perceive, and feel, they are self-aware. Hence we generally agree, for example, that someone who is brain dead but whose body continues to live thanks to a respirator and a pacemaker is not really a living human being and that it's morally permissible to harvest the person's organs and turn off the machines.

Now, let us consider the process for obtaining human embryonic stem cells (HESCs). At the time Stem Cell Century went to the printer, there was one way it was already being done, and another way that seemed just over the horizon which offered potential advantages for medical applications. Since the book was published, there are indications that a third method may be possible, one that Prof. Korobkin did not consider at length because it did not yet seem plausible.

Both the methods he did consider require the creation of human embryos. They do not actually necessarily require the destruction of human embryos in principle, but the embryos in question are likely to be destroyed because nobody has any other use for them.

Score another point for a plant-based diet!

The American Association of Cancer Research (along with its co-sponsors and supporters, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and the Cancer Research Prevention Foundation) held its very popular Frontiers In Cancer Prevention Research meeting last December.

It's described as "the only comprehensive conference on cancer prevention in the world."

I was browsing through its abstracts (hundreds) and came across a number that discussed the benefits of raspberries ... raspberries!

But first, a brief digression to note that Her Majesty's Parliament has approved research using cells created by transfer of nuclei from human somatic cells into non-human ova. The media report, as usual, is scientifically inaccurate, calling these "animal-human embryos." They aren't really. As I have discussed previously, the nuclear DNA is 100% human. Only the mitochondria are from other mammals.

Ohhhhh, I could live on a diet of fruit and nuts!!

Early Humans On The Menu

An excerpt:You wouldn't know it by current world events, but humans actually evolved to be peaceful, cooperative and social animals, not the predators modern mythology would have us believe, says an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

For those of you who don't know, which I presume is all of you, Dr. Bashir was the genetically enhanced chief medical officer on Deep Space Nine. He was something of a sci-fi cliche: genetically enhancing human beings, in the future, is generally illegal and/or morally repugnant, and the genetically enhanced face discrimination, banishment, imprisonment or termination. Dr. Bashir had to keep his true nature a secret, although as I recall the commander ferreted it out in one episode. The way it works in the Star Trek universe is that his parents were criminals, but he merely faced ostracism and general hatred.

Anyway, today we are confronting mass hysteria over the news that some Top Docs (as the tabloids always call them) in New York inserted a gene into a human zygote. Various moral watchdog groups are viewing with alarm and slippery sloping and demanding public debate and whatnot, on the grounds that this is a step toward making a Dr. Bashir.

So let's take this in two pieces: Is it? And what if it were?

A couple of weeks back, Jack invited me to guest blog about my new book, Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for a Breakthrough Technology, just out from Yale University Press. The book examines a broad range of legal and policy issues raised by stem cell research, starting with the issues that garner significant media attention, such as President Bush’s restrictive federal funding policy, but going substantially beyond to consider issues concerning cloning research, the patenting of stem cells, innovation policy as related to stem cells, issues of research subject protection and tissue donor compensation, and questions of regulation by the FDA and the tort system.

Many of my ancestors came to this country less than a generation ago. (Many have yet to make the trip!) One thing I have in common with them (not a brogue, but my father could slip into his with ease) is insanely low cholesterol.

That's why this study caught my eye:

An Association Between Hypocholesterolaemia And Colorectal Carcinoma In An Irish Population

I'm convinced - there's no one diet that's best for everyone. You like cheese and I like peas. You say roast; I say toast. You like "tomato" and I like "tomahto". *

Dr. Roger John Williams agrees. (Thank you, Dave Lull, for bringing him to my attention!)

Williams (1893 - 1988) was a biochemist and author of a number of books on nutrition, as well as several widely used textbooks on organic chemistry and biochemistry. He taught at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and the University of Texas at Austin. He discovered the B vitamin pantothenic acid, and named the B vitamin folic acid. In fact, "More vitamins and their variants were discovered in [his] laboratory than in any other laboratory in the world."

Cancer is frightening, but it's also damn interesting. It's a very stark reminder of what we are, as metazoans, and that's something quite astonishing.

There are two major inventions that make us metazoa fundamentally different from all the other life forms except the plants and fungi (which are actually closely related to the metazoa). They can't really be separated, but I'm going to say that the most fundamental is the transfer of the reproductive capacity from the level of the cell, to the level of the organism. The second is the organism itself -- a colony of cells with identical genomes but which have many different patters of gene expression and hence constitute various tissues with differing functions, organized (and note the etymological link) into a complex structure.

In the other kingdoms of life, individual cells reproduce by division. Bacteria may form structures called biofilms. (Think of the slime that may adhere to the bottom of a sink strainer that hasn't been cleaned for a while.) These may even have some structure, and cells in different locations may even behave differently, but biofilms cannot reproduce themselves. Only the individual cells within them reproduce, and whether they end up forming a biofilm depends on whether they happen to encounter the right conditions.

I sure am glad it's not my job to come up with the best eating plan for all Americans, let alone the world.1 (The World Health Organization has my sympathy.) The choices and defenders of those choices are numerous and polarized.

Regarding carbohydrates, it may be that a low-carbohydrate diet, around 10% of calories, is the best eating plan for overall health for everyone. Alternatively, it may be that a high-carbohydrate diet, above 45% of calories, is. Research has not sufficiently compared and contrasted the two.

They became unstuck in time a day later.
"So it goes."
- Billy Pilgrim 1________
Photo above: Homegrown, from a couple days ago. It's frozen water in the cut-off bottom of an old gallon jug. I use it as a water feeder for birds. They, however, use it as a bathtub. There's one particular female cardinal that sits in it at night (if it's warm enough) for about 5 minutes. The water comes up to her neck. She occasionally flutters her wings.

There was a full moon last night. It will be visible tonight too, and according to NASA, it will be the brightest full moon you'll see for the next 16 years:"That's because it's the highest-riding full moon until the year 2023."

Sometimes pointing to where it hurts doesn't give the best clue as to what's wrong. It doesn't help that human anatomy can vary so much.

Below are two images of the large intestine. There are 3 sections visible ... the ascending colon on your right side (left in pictures), the transverse colon that goes across the top, and the descending colon on your left side (right in pictures).

The sentence above is haunting me.

Doug asked:"I still don't understand why more care isn't necessary to avoid deficiencies of the essential amino acids. Is it the case that these amino acids are present in all fruits and vegetables? (I didn't think this was so, but you mentioned on that other thread that thinking has changed in this regard.) Or is it simply that easy to avoid a deficiency of an essential amino acid by consuming any mixture of fruits and vegetables?"Doug, I would answer "Yes." to your last question. I thought it summed up the facts well.

Plants are capable of manufacturing all 20 amino acids, which include the essential amino acids (EAAs), although amounts vary. I checked a number of foods (potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, asparagus, corn, rice, oatmeal, beans, and others) and found all EAAs in each of these foods. Even an apple which is listed as having 0 grams of protein has all the EAAs, albeit it small amounts.

Until after the esophagogastroduodenocolonoscopy.1 Well, not all eating. This is tonight's dinner:

And tomorrow's breakfast too. Actually, just 4 Dulcolax. But the whole bottle, 14 complete servings of that MiraLax must be enlisted to perform the unsubtle function.

I had reservations posting this. But, well, what's a blog for? So, if you have any experience with this procedure, your comments are welcome!
________1 A combined esophagogastroduodenoscopy and colonoscopy.
Photo: Homegrown. I wish it wasn't.

The UK Department of Health released its "Health Profile of England 2007". They noticed a trend:

The UK Government Office for Science projected that trend 40 years into the future and determined that a "bold whole system approach is critical":

Every day, a little bit of my faith blows away ...

Cancer Docs Profit From Chemotherapy Drugs
Situation begs the ethical question: Are they overprescribing?"The significant amount of our revenue comes from the profit, if you will, that we make from selling the drugs," says Dr. Peter Eisenberg, a private physician who specializes in cancer treatment.________

I was perusing research on hormone-related cancers - breast, endometrial, prostate - looking for therapies to complement conventional treatments (surgery, radiation, drugs).

I saw this (pdf):
Intensive Lifestyle Changes May Affect The Progression Of Prostate Cancer, The Journal of Urology, 2005

Men (n=93) with early, biopsy-proven prostate cancer were randomly assigned to one of two groups:

Control Group (n=49):

• Did not plan to undergo any conventional treatments (6 did owing to cancer progression).
• Employed lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, stress management) recommended by their physicians.

Treatment Group (n=44):

• Did not plan to undergo any conventional treatments (none did).

Some sad irony here:
Rising Food Prices Are Likely To Worsen US Obesity Rate"... she lives on public assistance and eats junk food because it's cheap and more readily available in her Philadelphia neighborhood than carrots and apples."

No, really. A comprehensive, online, free!, encyclopedia of every living thing on the planet. One page for each. Millions of pages. And it's a wiki - a collaborative, updatable effort from people all over the world. I can't think of a more ambitious project facing the internet.

And it went live on Tuesday (although it may be slow, it's getting over a million hits per hour):
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)

Here's what the New York Times had to say:
The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required

Here's its official blog:
Encyclopedia of Life Blog

Here are some sample pages (clicking the image will take you to EOL's demo page):

Yeti Crab

Death Cap Mushroom