A surprising cause of cancer?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

I don't thing you're giving 'objective' the same meaning I am. A google search for "objective subjective" may help you understand how I have been using the word here.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

ad hominem

Well ... I didn't actually label anyone present such a nerd.

However, yes, I will grant I came a bit too close to suggesting as much.

arguing over the meaning of words. choose your definition; choose your conclusions.

There's more to this subject than just arbitrary and subjective choices of words, their meanings and ones conclusions.

However it's pretty clear that my views are far enough out in left field from your perspective (that is, I'm somewhere in the swamp three miles outside your stadium) that we are not likely to have a useful discussion.

I wish you well, look forward to your posts, and will try not to wear out any remaining welcome I might have with you on this subject.

[shiny!]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

I'm thoroughly enjoying this thread even though it's waaaaaay over my head. I clicked on it because I had cancer 13 years ago and the subject line interested me.

I have a lot of respect for the scientific method, but like Mr. Cow, I have seen many things that seem to be true even though the scientific method says they can't be. I've gone from being rigorously logical as a young person, to New Age mystical in my young adulthood, to cheerfully agnostic in my 50's.

When I had cancer I looked at hundreds of "unproven" alternative cancer therapies. Most of these therapies cannot be patented, thus Big Pharma has no interest in spending millions of dollars testing them. So should I have ignored these "unproven" methods and only gone with conventional surgery, chemo and radiation? These are the only three medically accepted cancer treatments allowed in the United States.

I looked at conventional treatments, their side effects, cost and long-term prognosis, and I looked at loved ones with cancer who went that route. I did not like what I saw. I tried to set up appointments for conventional medicine, and had panic attacks as soon as I hung up the phone. So I went with what my GUT was telling me. Followed a hunch, if you will.

I talked with alternative medicine doctors, looked at many options, and went with what my GUT told me would help. And I got well. If I had waited for "science" to positively explain the therapies I used before trying them, I'd probably have died waiting. Some of the things I did were psychological, including mental visualizations. Perhaps it was "only" the placebo effect in action but it WORKED, so who am I to disparage it because science can't explain how it worked? Maybe science just doesn't have all the necessary tools or filters to see certain aspects of reality? We can't see certain spectra of light without the proper filters, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

My adoptive mother got bone cancer. The first tumor was found in her skull, just over her ear where her mobile phone antennae pressed on her head. It was a soft spot the size of a baby's fontanelle. I can't "prove" that her phone caused the cancer, but after seeing that, I don't care what science has to say about cell phone radiation not causing cancer... I refuse to use one of those things! I know I'm uneducated about electromagnetism and physics, but if you guys had pressed your finger into her skull like I did, you might take a more cautious approach to cell phones, too.

For 8 years I was a live-in caretaker at a large self-storage facility. Lived there for 4 years when the owner let a cellular company put in a tower about 150 feet from our house. Within 4 more years, 3 of the 4 guard dogs and I had contracted cancer. Probably just a coincidence...

Have any of you heard about Teslar watches? Someone gave me one for my birthday:

http://www.teslartech.com/technology.html

Can any of you smart science guys (I really do have a LOT of respect for your knowledge) tell me what you think of their claims? They say these watches shield the body from "harmful" ELF fields. Their website reads like New Age BS and if there's any truth to their assertions, I wouldn't know. I don't feel any different when I wear it, and I don't "believe" in it, but I have a whopping sleep disorder and I've noticed I sleep better on nights when I wear it than on nights when I don't. And I needed a watch anyway...

[jk]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

no harm in having a watch, or in doing anything that reduces stress, but their web site reads like new-age pseudo-science gobbledygook to me, and i am waaaay more open minded than most physicians.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

And I got well.

I'm glad you're still with us.

If I had waited for "science" to positively explain the therapies I used before trying them, I'd probably have died waiting.

Yeah - it's a little difficult to run proper double blind, independently reproducible tests on one's life. You've got to call them as you see them when the time comes to make the call, regardless of how incomplete and inconsistent the available information, and then live, or die, with the consequences.

Have any of you heard about Teslar watches? Someone gave me one for my birthday:

http://www.teslartech.com/technology.html

The website http://www.teslarscience.com/ seems to be related, from what I can tell after a few minutes glancing around.

It reads like pure bunkum scam to me. What's more, nothing in even my rather "flexible" intuitions of what's possible here sees any chance of this being worth anything to one's well being.

[shiny!]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

... but their web site reads like new-age pseudo-science gobbledygook to me, and i am waaaay more open minded than most physicians

and...

It reads like pure bunkum scam to me.

Thanks, guys.

[nedtheguy]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

redacted

[ASH]

Re: A surprising cause of cancer?

I have a lot of respect for the scientific method, but like Mr. Cow, I have seen many things that seem to be true even though the scientific method says they can't be.

I would argue that if you have seen something, then barring some sort of impaired perception, the scientific method asserts that it must be true. The problem, rather, is methodology, reproducibility, and interpretation. Fundamentally, science is empirical -- direct observation always trumps theory. In general, if you observe something that is literally true (e.g. "I had cancer" or "I survived cancer"), there can be no scientific refutation of that fact. The problem is rather the inference "I got cancer because of X" or "I survived cancer because of Y". The facts are undeniably true; the inferences may be true. All science says is that one can't conclude whether the interpretation embodied by the inferences is a general truth without application of further methodology.

Elsewhere in this thread, some of us have argued against the likelihood that metal bed frames enhance cancer rates through their interaction with radio waves. Those arguments are based upon "science" in the sense that they are based on what is already known scientifically about the various actors involved, but they aren't technically an application of "the scientific method". We may have introduced some confusion on this point by both reasoning from what we "know" thanks to application of the scientific method, and separately talking about whether the scientific method was the correct way to validate what we know about the universe. The distinction is important. Mooncliff was arguing that we should bother to apply the scientific method to verify rigorously that there is no connection between metal bed frames, radio waves, and the incidence of cancer. Others of us were arguing that such a scientific investigation would be a waste of time because the proposed connection was implausible, given what we already know. It is important to be clear that those arguing against the bed frame link on "scientific" grounds cannot claim to "scientifically disprove" the linkage through such arguments.

When I had cancer I looked at hundreds of "unproven" alternative cancer therapies. Most of these therapies cannot be patented, thus Big Pharma has no interest in spending millions of dollars testing them. So should I have ignored these "unproven" methods and only gone with conventional surgery, chemo and radiation? These are the only three medically accepted cancer treatments allowed in the United States.

Your point about what governs the research topics on which limited scientific resources are trained is very well taken. However, I would like to point out that "science" doesn't make any strong claims with regard to that which has not been scientifically studied; the weak claims are along the line of plausibility arguments based upon more-or-less direct reasoning from what has been well studied. Someone could make a weak "scientific" argument against a particular cancer intervention if the proposed intervention clearly violated something that was already scientifically understood about either cancer or the methods proposed, but the only strong scientific statement would be that the effectiveness of the proposed intervention was not known. Rather, it is medicine -- and more generally, the business of medicine -- which care whether a cancer treatment has been scientifically tested or not. A doctor who is sworn to do no harm may have ethical problems providing a therapy that is not known to be harmless, and which is of uncertain effectiveness. A health insurer with limited resources has a strong financial motive to limit coverage to scientifically proven therapies. However, I want to stress that the lack of scientific knowledge about any given thing may mean it is "unscientific", but that could just mean it is unknown. Only the subset of "unscientific" ideas which violate known facts or scientifically established principles should be regarded with skepticism by scientists. Doctors and businessmen have a different standard.

I talked with alternative medicine doctors, looked at many options, and went with what my GUT told me would help. And I got well. If I had waited for "science" to positively explain the therapies I used before trying them, I'd probably have died waiting. Some of the things I did were psychological, including mental visualizations. Perhaps it was "only" the placebo effect in action but it WORKED, so who am I to disparage it because science can't explain how it worked?

Exactly. Just because something hasn't been studied rigorously by science doesn't mean it won't work. On the other hand, the fact that science hasn't examined something yet doesn't mean it "can't" explain how it works... it merely means it "hasn't" explained how it works yet... if it indeed works. And only through application of the scientific method could you determine whether the alternate therapies you applied were generally of therapeutic value to similar cancer patients.

Maybe science just doesn't have all the necessary tools or filters to see certain aspects of reality?

Science cannot detect idiosyncratic phenomena which are only "real" for individuals, but which are not reproducible. For instance, it is technically possible that what you did to cure your cancer indeed was responsible for your recovery (for which I'm thankful, by the way), but that it would only ever work once... and only for you. If physical reality has a component that is objectively individual (and I don't mean a question of perceptions or other subjective individual values, about which science makes few claims), the scientific method would have no way to assess such phenomena. The idea that we all play by the same physical rules is a hypothesis that seems to be borne out by observation, but then again, our tools of observation are only adequate to identify those aspects of reality upon which we can all agree, independent of the observer. In my opinion, it is largely a leap of faith to believe that there are no idiosyncratic physical phenomena that are not independently reproducible, but which are objectively real.

Related to this is the class of phenomena which are functionally idiosyncratic, due to their complexity or sensitivity to too many variables. Such phenomena could technically be addressed by science, but practically might prove impossible to reproduce, measure, and predict. I personally think that a lot of things in medicine tend in this direction; vastly differing experiences with pharmaceuticals is just one example. This has particular relevance to your example of alternative cancer treatments. Suppose some part of what you did worked, but only in 0.01% of cases. It might never be detected by science, and its limited applicability means that it wouldn't make a big difference on overall cancer mortality rates even if it was understood, yet it could have made all the difference in your life. The frustrating thing is that one might never know whether this made the difference or not. Science probably couldn't tell you, but neither could any other means.

My adoptive mother got bone cancer. The first tumor was found in her skull, just over her ear where her mobile phone antennae pressed on her head. It was a soft spot the size of a baby's fontanelle. I can't "prove" that her phone caused the cancer, but after seeing that, I don't care what science has to say about cell phone radiation not causing cancer... I refuse to use one of those things! I know I'm uneducated about electromagnetism and physics, but if you guys had pressed your finger into her skull like I did, you might take a more cautious approach to cell phones, too.

For 8 years I was a live-in caretaker at a large self-storage facility. Lived there for 4 years when the owner let a cellular company put in a tower about 150 feet from our house. Within 4 more years, 3 of the 4 guard dogs and I had contracted cancer. Probably just a coincidence...

That's just it. In your case, 3/4 guard dogs plus yourself developed cancer. But if the influence of cell phone towers on cancer rate was anything remotely as strong as that, the linkage would be blindingly obvious in the large-scale studies. When I hear a story like that, it makes me wonder what other nasty carcinogen was at that self-storage facility. It sounds like it was something really bad, the toxicity of which would be without question, if only someone looked for it. Maybe someone cooking meth in a storage unit?

One last note: when it comes to cancer, the epidemiology can be real, yet the precise nature of the physical connection might be different than one assumes. For instance, some of us have been complaining that electromagnetic emissions from power lines "can't" cause cancer. In one study I read about, a linkage was found, but it wasn't the EM radiation. Instead, particulate pollutants which passed near the high tension power lines picked up static charge, increasing their propensity to stick in lungs. I don't know how well that conclusion has been backed up in further studies, but it illustrates the possibility that the scientists could be "right" about one particular mechanism not causing cancer, yet there being other effects at work.