SLIMMING DRUGS CANCELLED.

Evidence-based  reviews hereunder   have  warned since April ie for 6 months of the obvious  fraud of  modern touted designer appetite-weight suppressants (which among other adverse effects often cause depression if not suicide)

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The Sanofi-Aventis drug  rimonabant was turned down in USA in Feb 2006,  June 2007 and again April 2008, based on lack of efficacy and safety.

 

The question remains: why prescribe new designer drugs  especially for overweight and type 2 diabetes with diet-resistant overweight, without a long trial record of both safety and efficacy,
when metformin and it’s parent herb galega officinalis  titrated simply to tolerance has been the proven gold standard for centuries,  losing on average 6% of weight (up to 20kg in 2yrs) and halving the incidence of new diabetes, while  in diabetics it almost halves the death rate and most major chronic degenerative  diseases of aging.

 

Based on the clear published evidence  (of risk, and lack of long term benefit from rimonabant, and abundant evidence of the superiority of metformin)  on which rimonabant was never  licenced in USA ,  patients who were prescribed rimonabant in 2008 have a prima facie case for damages against both European Regulators, the NHS  and doctors there who prescribed it.

 

and this month, for similar reasons, the Merck clone taranabant crashes out. 

 

The for-profit Disease Industry and the  researchers and Regulators they pay will  never stop trying to promote the profitable new over the proven  cheap old. So it’s up to consumers- the public- to seek out the evidence for themselves.

 Fenfluramine / Phen-Fen/ Ponderax crashed a decade ago after lethal complications  .

Orlistat (foul faecal problems) and  sibutramine(hypertension, nausea/vomiting, palpitation, and sweating) have major potential adverse effects, and do not do as well as metformin for longterm reduction in all-cause mortality and major adverse outcomes.

now   Anti-obesity drug use suspended 23 Oct 2008 
The European Medicines Agency  is recommending doctors do not prescribe the anti-obesity drug rimonabant, also known as Acomplia – it says the risk of serious psychiatric problems and even suicide are too high.

 

Why accept  risky mediocre  new drugs  (sibutramine, orlistat) or risky bariatric surgery (40% complications in first 6 months) when only metformin simply adjusted to tolerance  has been shown for decades to reduce all-cause mortality by at least 1/3 to 1/2, and even reduce cancer incidence.

 Tesofensine  seems similar to sibutramine in it’s potential to increase bloodpressure, dry mouth, nausea, constipation, hard stools, diarrhoea, and insomnia. But the longest trial so far seems to be only  24 weeks.

 

Most importantly, it is medical negligence to wait for frank obesity,  instead of early prescribing metformin to tolerance  to prevent progression from mild overweight  to obesity, diabetes, vascular disease, depression and cancer.

DEMENTIA AND THE CRIMINAL PROMOTION OF PLANT OIL DIET SUPPLEMENTS INSTEAD OF NATURAL FISH OIL.

It is common cause that  our vital fatty acid levels are  controlled through diet,  in which the problem is excessive (meat/ plant)  omega 6 (especially arachidonic, linoleic and gamma-llinoleic GLA acids) causing increasing relative deficiency of the crucial omega 3 neuro-fatty acids-  the fish  EPA and DHA. 

 

“Modern Western diets   typically have ratios of n−6 to n−3 in excess of 10 to 1, some as high as 30 to 1. The optimal ratio is thought to be 4 to 1 or lower. Excess n−6 fats interfere with the health benefits of n−3 fats; in part because they compete for the same rate-limiting enzymes. High ratio of n−6 to n−3 fat in the diet shifts the physiological state in the tissues toward  many diseases: prothrombotic, proinflammatory and proconstrictive,  heart attacks, thrombotic stroke, arrhythmia, arthritis, osteoporosis, inflammation, memory and mood disorders, and cancer .    Adding more controversy to the n−6 fat issue is that the dietary requirement for linoleic acid (the key n−6 fatty acid), has been seriously questioned, because of a significant methodology error discovered by University Toronto scientist Stephen Cunnane 2003  that the seminal research used to determine the dietary requirement for linoleic acid was based on feeding animals linoleic acid-deficient diets, which were simultaneously deficient in n−3 fats. The n−3 deficiency was not taken into account. The n−6 oils added back systematically to correct the deficiency also contained trace amounts of n−3 fats. Therefore the researchers were inadvertently correcting the n−3 deficiency as well. Ultimately, it took more oil to correct both deficiencies. According to Cunnane this error overestimates LA requirements by 5 to 15 times.”
  

For this reason human experience has always shown that good fish intake throughout life promotes better health and mental and mood development.

 

Now Mucke and Sanchez–Mejia from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and  University of California write Oct 2008  “Tests on  genetically engineered Alzheimer’s mice showed that reducing excess levels of omega 6 acid lessened animals’ memory problems and behavioural changes.. The most striking change  in the Alzheimer’s mice was an increase in omega6 arachidonic acid  metabolites  in the brain memory centre that is affected early and severely by Alzheimer’s disease; too much arachidonic acid might over-stimulate brain cells, and that lowering levels allowed them to function normally.”

 

While population studies show convincingly that high fish oil intake associates with better learning and health, there are no trials showing that anything but these natural balanced marine oils (EPA plus DHA) give the global health  benefit.  This new Californian study reinforces that  while plant oil intake  rather than exclusive animal fat in the diet is crucial, it is fraudulent if not criminally dangerous to promote plant oil supplements when what most people (who now can rarely afford scarce  fish-  especially oily fish) need is at least a gram if not 4 grams a day of reasonably quality fish oil- of which cod liver oil may be the best.  It is  gross fraud for industry to remove the fish oil from fish during canning, then replace it with saline or plant oil as one often finds in  eg tinned sardines  (or margarines)  - while the fish oil is reportedly then often used as animal feed, or exported, or recycled for aquaculture.

 

In an era when the survival (let alone fertility) of mankind for even another generation is no longer assured owing to the ongoing lunatic insatiable greed  of most industrialized countries’  leaders,  the failure to ensure at least about 10gms a week of fish oil to all from conception to dotage  – or at least avoid plant oil supplements that worsen the omega 3 deficiency-   is a crime, especially while Big Business is buying up marine oil resources let alone agricultural output  for unnecessary extra biofuel. This must be outlawed.

 

    Given the limitless availability of solar  (and even safe nuclear) energy, there has been no need  (except  for corporate profiteering- disaster capitalism ) to use much fossil- or biofuel to produce power for decades, so there is no shortage of fossil  (petroleum or coal) fuel reserves- essential as they are for eg producing ubiquitous plastics, the nuts and bolts of industry and homes. 

 

And remind all that ALL “fish oil” is effectively synthesised ONLY by algae, plankton- which is apparently what crustaceans eg krill, and small fish live on (and in turn feed the big fish) to store “fish” oil- the EPA and DHA that are the key  vital marine ingredients, which are the building blocks for our nervous system, cell membranes, clotting  and anti-inflammatory immune systems.

So ALL “fish” oil is in fact marine vegetarian, the only source (apart from mother’s breast milk) providing us with the unique EPA-DHA omega 3 FFA as well as  some essential vitamins A and D.

METFORMIN AT TOLERATED HUMAN DOSE INHIBITS BREAST CANCER ALSO VIA ACTIVATING CYCLIC AMPK

 This column discussed a month ago the multiple benefits of metformin including halving new diabetes and deaths, and  reducing cancers- whereas induced hypocholesterolemia may increase cancer.

 

The thoughtful analytical letter from Toronto University’s Cancer Institute (Stambolic et al ) highlights the gulf between rodent experiments and human experience, between mice and (wo)men.

 

        While not decrying the theoretical risk of neoangiogenesis, they remind that in humans metformin reduces incidence of cancer when it  is used at modest daily doses to reduce hyperglycemia and insulin resistance;  not at the 300fold higher bloodlevels  used in rodents and with superabundant nutrients used to grow cancer cells in petri dishes.

        Similarly their McGill  associates Ryan et al in 2007  showed in vitro  that Metformin Inhibits Mammalian Target of Rapamycin–Dependent Translation Initiation in Breast Cancer Cells via AMPK.

 

 

ANTICANCER DRUGS AND COMPLEMENTARY SUPPLEMENTS eg INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C

   BBC NEWS today says  Health Vitamin C ‘may blunt cancer drugs’:

 

  Vitamins may blunt cancer drugs- 
     but this research by Mark Heaney et al at the Sloan Kettering  was on lab bench cells and in mice, not in humans, and proved nothing.
     While it used cancer-toxic prescription drugs, it used levels of vitamin C that are known to be ineffective against human cancers -
 

        it used the doses found in oral supplements ie up to a few grams a day- which in rodents is equivalent to one-hundredth of the dose that Cameron and Pauling found works intravenously in humans.

 

Mayo Clinic trials that tried with  oral supplement to discredit vitamin C  ignored Pauling and Cameron’s work with highdose intravenous vtamin C, since humans cannot tolerate enough vitamin C by mouth to kill cancer.

This would be like using one-hundredth of the proven effective dose of an antibiotic against an infection- guaranteed to breed resistant infection, not cure.
     
      Recent NIH studies,  like Pauling and Cameron’s group, have confirmed that highdose vitamin C as given intravenously which is well tolerated, may indeed cause  major cancer cell death when used either cycled with conventional cancer therapy,  or in otherwise untreatable cancer.