Burzynski's evidence (or more like lack thereof) up 'till now suggests that he is a quack. A well-intentioned one at best, a fraudulent one at worst.

>> ^marbles:

Preface: It's great if this really is a breakthrough.
I'm a bit skeptical though.
1. Genetic engineering/manipulation "therapy" has had little success. 5 years ago they claimed gene therapy could cure melanoma in the American Journal of Science. It's addressed in this article here: Don't be deluded that this is the cancer breakthrough.
2. The Powers-that-be don't really want a cure to cancer. Antineoplastons show great promise as a cure. They're non-toxic and replicate natural occurring chemicals in the body that inhibit the abnormal enzymes that cause cancer. Antineoplastons are responsible for curing some of the most incurable forms of terminal cancer. Why have you never heard of it? Good question. This is the answer: http://videosift.com/video/Burzynski-Cancer-Is-Serious-Business

It takes an extremely cynical leap of faith to believe companies aren't curing cancer because it's profitable not to.

I can believe companies chase what is profitable, often times losing focus on what's important, but deliberately not curing cancer, considering how profitable it would be to develop a cancer cure, is preposterous.

>> ^marbles:

Preface: It's great if this really is a breakthrough.
I'm a bit skeptical though.
1. Genetic engineering/manipulation "therapy" has had little success. 5 years ago they claimed gene therapy could cure melanoma in the American Journal of Science. It's addressed in this article here: Don't be deluded that this is the cancer breakthrough.
2. The Powers-that-be don't really want a cure to cancer. Antineoplastons show great promise as a cure. They're non-toxic and replicate natural occurring chemicals in the body that inhibit the abnormal enzymes that cause cancer. Antineoplastons are responsible for curing some of the most incurable forms of terminal cancer. Why have you never heard of it? Good question. This is the answer: http://videosift.com/video/Burzynski-Cancer-Is-Serious-Business

Preface: It's great if this really is a breakthrough.

I'm a bit skeptical though.

1. Genetic engineering/manipulation "therapy" has had little success. 5 years ago they claimed gene therapy could cure melanoma in the American Journal of Science. It's addressed in this article here: Don't be deluded that this is the cancer breakthrough.

2. The Powers-that-be don't really want a cure to cancer. Antineoplastons show great promise as a cure. They're non-toxic and replicate natural occurring chemicals in the body that inhibit the abnormal enzymes that cause cancer. Antineoplastons are responsible for curing some of the most incurable forms of terminal cancer. Why have you never heard of it? Good question. This is the answer: http://videosift.com/video/Burzynski-Cancer-Is-Serious-Business

Pain aside, one of the most important roles for a cancer patient that marijuana can fill is to give them back their appetite when the nausea of chemotherapy sets in.

The fact of the matter is that marijuana is proven to benefit patients in this way. That's the reason we have Marinol. I watched my uncle die a slow and incredibly painful death from melanoma and I would've happily given him anything he asked for. The fact is, he asked for weed and it helped.

I say this as an ex-pot smoker. I don't do it anymore but I think it should be legal. The fact that it's not at least a legal medicine everywhere is a crime.

Cannabinoid receptors as novel targets for the treatment of melanoma research paper:

Abstract:
http://www.fasebj.org/content/20/14/2633.short

Full paper:
http://www.fasebj.org/content/early/2006/10/25/fj.06-6638fje.full.pdf

>> ^Ryjkyj:

Guys, guys, guys. You're missing the point.
The radiation IS a non-issue. Just like terrorists blowing up your plane is a non-issue. Yes, the idea of a bomb on your plane is scary, but the odds of that happening to you are about the same as you getting cancer from a TSA screening. Which is to say: effectively zero.
PS: Low energy or not, the rays that backscatter machines use are still x-rays. The energy is quantifiable, low or not. So to say that there are no studies on varying amounts of exposure to x-rays is, well...


The problem isn't that TSA screenings all alone are going to cause cancer, but adding this to the cumulative risk factors that people experience throughout their lives simply because some company invented the technology and wanted to sell it is fucked up. A frequent flier who already has multiple risk factors doesn't really need the added exposure. And shouldn't have to be subjected to a thorough groping for not wanting to accumulate additional free radicals twice a week

(i picked twice a week because my mom is a business traveler and she averages about 2 flights a week, 50 weeks a year ...plus with her two weeks off she usually goes on a exotic vacations and flies in and out of various airports world wide, in a given year my mom probably goes through airport security 100-110 times a year, now she's already getting radiation on her flight, what if she had cancer that was in remission or had multiple risk factors of a different nature? since shes in her 60's and has no more risk factor than the average person, I'm not worried about it. But what if she worked the job she does and was in her early 20's? had a strong family history of breast cancer? had already had a few bits of melanoma removed? and like most of the population, was poorly informed about the effects of radiation and unable to make an educated decision about whether or not she wanted to opt out and face the groping? without knowing the math, i'd say her chance of developing cancer in her lifetime had indeed risen and probably exponentially)

of course there are studies about the effects of radiation, but there are not studies about the effects of exposing millions of frequent fliers of various cohorts to a light grazing of xrays all over their bodies a few times a week throughout their careers, and what their chances of cancer look like at the end of their working lives.


i'd say the chances that this is dangerous to someone are far greater than the chance that a terrorist will hijack your flight.

also, it's times like this i wish i knew statistics and wasn't horrible at math.

I swear the "Buck Melanoma, Moely Russels' Wart..." line was the first time in my life I started laughing and couldn't stop.

Jesus, rottenseed. You'd better get that mole on your face checked real soon- some serious melanoma action right there.

In reply to this comment by TheSofaKing:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Uncle-Buck-Old-Melanoma-Head

Dupe

sorry bud.
i dumped the vid.
title was close but our tags were different.
my apologies.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Uncle-Buck-Old-Melanoma-Head

Dupe

I'd agree it was more an example on how a normal guy becomes in douche 365 days.


He certainly is cut though. Its just to bad he has malignant melanoma from spending 4 hours a day in a tanning bed.

There's some good stuff in this video. There's also some truly laughable items.

My following comments are chronologically ordered with the video. They are not all meant to be examples of "laughable items".

1) He uses the first two anecdotes he mentions in exactly the same way in which he says the characters in those anecdotes used their own. In other words, he comes to a conclusion of the characters' behavior based upon supposition derived from a single experience, not upon statistically significant data.

2) The second optical illusion (moving petals) is completely static for me. I'm red-green colorblind, and I wonder if that's why?

3) "Skeptics don't state as fact that paranormal phenomena don't exist," "No paranormal claim has ever been validated by independent means."
Tautological much? Of course no paranormal claim has ever been validated, because as soon as it has been, it is no longer considered paranormal!

4) When the sunbather that has not contracted melanoma claims that sunbathing can do you no harm, he or she is correct in a certain sense. It apparently cannot do them any harm. This is where anecdotal evidence is in fact useful. If I find that I have an uncanny ability to avoid breaking my bones when I fall, then it is logical for me to conclude that the next time I fall, I won't break any bones. Obviously I can't apply that to anyone else, because it is dependent upon my own physiology, kinesthetics, athletic ability, etc. I'm happy to finally find a video like this that at least acknowledges the flip side of the coin.



I'm not entirely sure this belongs in the 'brain' channel. It is a description, not an explanation, of human behavior. If the 'Mind and Brain' channel is to have any coherence, I feel I must demand that explanation. Otherwise, any video with a description of human behavior would valid for inclusion. The end result is that any video showing human behavior (nearly every non-lolcat video on the sift) is then qualified for inclusion. I'm going to leave it for now and revisit again in a couple of days.

I'm sorry, but Matt Damon is TOTALLY right about the reality of the situation that the McCain camp has created. This is a story straight out of a Disney movie - the Hockey mom staring down an ex-KGB Russian leader. They could totally fucking adapt that into the next fucking "Mighty Ducks 12: American Hockey Mom vs Russian Spy-turned-Prime Minister," complete with a shoot-out to decide whether or not WORLD FUCKING WAR III happens.

We don't know enough about her, aside from the fact that she's a raving fucking lunatic fundamentalist Christian with a Down's baby and a pregnant teenage daughter. She may also be a nepotistic, vindictive (Trooper-gate?) woman who believes that god's will has dictated her entire political career. It is also not unlikely that McCain would kick the bucket given that he's had FOUR FUCKING MELANOMA SCARES and we all know that the stress he had at the Hanoi Hilton certainly didn't ADD years to his life. Do we REALLY want this woman in control of the Nuclear Missile codes? Am I the ONLY ONE besides Damon who sees the total fucking ABSURDITY of the situation?

In 2000, McCain had a malignant melanoma removed from the left side of his face. He also had his lymph nodes removed, I believe. Part of what you are seeing is the scar. Also, this surgery can often damage the nerve that controls facial movements and expressions. I believe this is what's happened to McCain.

more info

In the intro to the pdf you posted, it refs a study on human cells which agrees with my assertion about exposure mutation.

Well, that was kind of the point of my referencing that particular study, as the basis for using a study on S. cerevisiae was as a setup to establish a baseline by which to compare mutagenicity, carcinogenic response, and other potential to reactions. It references the human cell exposure (notably, melanoma and osteosarcoma cells) study and a few others specifically because it was indirectly questioning the validity of those results, as they study S. cerevisiae's mutagenesis but also its recombinational repair. If you note in the conclusion, Shimizu et. al. suggest that ELF-MF "LF-MF does not injure the basic genetic system in the same manner as ionizing radiation or chemical carcinogen does". It is because of this that they call for further research on yet-more indirect mechanisms for any effects of MF exposure, and also a call for better exclusion of experimental setup issues ("involvement of eddy currents induced in the culture medium could not be precluded"). In fact, I do believe these issues of experimental procedure are very difficult to deal with - going through similar papers, they are a constant concern, especially when it comes to bacteria. This is ultimately a large issue of expanding all disease-related effects from simple organisms to more complex organisms, as complex organisms - in full, not just isolated cells - will ultimately not respond to such delicate, unintentional and untracked variable changes in experimental environment. This is, again, why epidemiological studies of humans will trump small-scale bacterial studies.

Certainly many of the things we take for granted in our lives are many times more dangerous then HV lines, you will get no argument from me on that. While I do see the tendency by many to fixate on a minor risk while ignoring real risks(terrorism vs car accidents for instance), that does not mean that the proper response should be to discount concerns of risk which are based on unexceptional claims, even if we lack conclusive proof.

I see your point, in that in the face of a great risk, minor risks should not be ignored. However, my argument is that in the face of all adequate studies, all evidence points to an either insignificant or non-existent risk.

Due to the complexity of the systems involved the correlation of leukemia to HV lines (as in the 2005 study from Oxford) is very similar to the correlation of global atmospheric temperature to CO2.

To the specific study (Childhood cancer in relation to distance from high voltage power lines in England and Wales: a case-control study):
This study actually is pretty deep and requires a strong analysis not typically afforded it. Of note in the study, is the fact that they control using the Carstairs deprivation index for socioeconomic status statistically, specifically for affluence vs. risk of childhood leukemia. This needs to be considered with the fact that they're studying an association between distance of home address at birth from high voltage power lines. Do you see the issue in the combination of that control and that effect study? The basic control isn't so easily useable because of the number of confounding variables, including numbers of moves vs. birth location (stress factor), parental employment vs. location, etc. (These are only indirectly related to socioeconomic status as countered by Carstairs index, which uses four indicators: population density, owning a car, low social class, and male unemployment.) Then when you consider, within 200m, the analysis found a relative risk of 1.69 (95% confidence interval 1.13 to 2.53), the result becomes not merely questionable but likely variably confounded, something that the paper notes: "There is no accepted biological mechanism to explain the epidemiological results; indeed, the relation may be due to chance or confounding." and "We have no satisfactory explanation for our results in terms of causation by magnetic fields, and the findings are not supported by convincing laboratory data or any accepted biological mechanism." and "We emphasise again the uncertainty about whether this statistical association represents a causal relation.", which altogether amounts to an immense amount of ass-covering.

It is also worth mentioning that assuming "400-420 cases of childhood leukaemia occurring annually, about five would be associated with high voltage power lines" approximately, and childhood leukemia is a pretty rare disease as it is. The amount of money blown on these types of studies would cover the treatment for these patients many times over. Of course, the issue of extended disease results still needs to be dealt with, but from the standpoint of pragmatism....

Overall my concern is more that the HV lines are an anachronism, just as with CO2 spewing cars and power plants, it is not technologically necessary to put up with these things when we have better option which use less energy, and produce less waste, both in physical and EMF terms. I think arguing that it may be a small risk, but it would be better to do away with the tech even if it were not, is more pragmatic then arguing from a complex, and sometimes conflicting, body of data that we should ignore it.

My argument with this sift specifically lies in epidemiological claims, and I take up the debate because of my interest in the topic and my exposure to the issue. I am arguing against claims of increase in disease incidence as caused by EMF exposure from power lines, cell phone towers, etc., something that has not only not been demonstrated but that, if causally linked, is highly unlikely to matter in any reasonable scale of public life. From a scientific/academic perspective, it's worth researching. From a medical perspective, most likely not. From a public health perspective, almost certainly not. And we're being practical here.

Like I said, I have no experience or anything approaching debate-worthy levels of knowledge on the technological necessity or lack thereof of HV lines, something separate from its possibility of causing diseases. If you would like to sift something about the technology of HV lines and its economic feasibility or some such that I could watch and then read up on, I'd be more than happy to look into it.