[quote=njtosd]I agree that everything should be viewed with a skeptical eye, and I agree that the website mentioned in the original post is a little heavy on hype. [/quote]
njtosd, the website wasn’t “a little heavy on hype”. It was nothing but hype. If you read through it, it made claims of “natural” cures for a large number of widely differing diseases and disorders. It misquoted legitimate research, used material quoted on similar sites as “research findings, and made wild claims of extraordinarily successful results from technologies that don’t exist.
Are you aware of the incredibly high number of sites out there just like this one? All being read by people who take it as gospel because the site owners put on a white coat, talk about a “natural” cure, and talk about “research findings” from “scientists” at institutions with immediately recognizable prestigious names.
[quote=njtosd]However, the journal citation that you are looking for is here:
Berwick M, Armstrong BK, Ben-Porat L, Fine J, Kricker A, Eberle C, et al. Sun Exposure and Mortality From Melanoma. J Natl Cancer Inst 2005;97:195–99.
And furthermore, there is an interesting (although I know very little about this) summary in Science Daily entitled “Two Studies Find Evidence That Sunlight May Have Beneficial Influence On Cancer”
The Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, in “Benefits of Moderate Sun Exposure” admits the possibility of a relationship between low Vitamin D levels and cancer, and suggests that people may have gone a little too far in avoiding sunshine: http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0604d.shtml%5B/quote%5D
There’s a lot of completely different stuff here. But if you actually read these papers, you find that virtually every one talks about “risk” and “incidence” of cancers. These are epidemiological studies, and the papers are authored by epidemiological researchers. They look at a certain number of people who have or have had some form (or various forms, but I won’t go into why that’s not a good idea…) of cancer, and then ask them all sorts of questions about their health, habits, diet, family history, work, education, etc. They do the same with a group of people who have never had cancer. Then they look at the common factors, and low levels of Vitamin D is one of them. Supposedly, many of these studies show very low or nonexistent levels, and these are the ones that the “natural cure” proponents are all over.
Epi studies are very tricky, and quite often, even though the papers are supposed to have been peer-reviewed, they have very serious flaws. or design issues. But even more important is the fact that INCIDENCE does not mean CAUSE. As I mentioned in my previous post, there is no scientific evidence on record of sunlight or Vitamin D megadoses curing cancer, and there’s been no causal link established between the development of any of the cancers she mentions and lack of sunlight and/or Vitamin D.
The Journal of the NCI reference you provided is from 2005. Six years have elapsed since then, during which time, some causal link should have been isolated, if it indeed exists. But there’s nothing on record.
I’m sorry: establishing increased incidence is not enough to go around the country claiming that hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer could have been prevented, or avoided, as many of these epidemiologists have done. That is wildly irresponsible.
[quote=njtosd]
The Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, in “Benefits of Moderate Sun Exposure” admits the possibility of a relationship between low Vitamin D levels and cancer, and suggests that people may have gone a little too far in avoiding sunshine: http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0604d.shtml
[/quote]
No offense, but……Gee, y’think?! And that’s precisely the problem with what these people are doing. It doesn’t take much for the news media to get all up in arms about medical “discoveries.” That’s how sunscreen got to be so popular and, ultimately, completely abused.
[quote=njtosd] And you’re right – there is no evidence that megadoses of Vitamin D cures cancer, but dismissing the possibility of a relationship out of hand (and you were pretty harsh) seems a little closed minded. I used to TA for a class at Michigan called “The Biology of Cancer;” the number of things that have gone from being accepted to disproved (and vice versa) over the years should make everyone a little careful about dismissing ideas that make some sense. [/quote]
njtosd, I didn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand. Not at all. But establishing a causal link means that a researcher has to be able to identify the mechanism of the link, if it exists. That HAS NOT happened. There was some preliminary identification of some D3 pathways as possibly complicit, several years back, but very little since then. What’s more is that there’s almost no one working on it.
When you really start to examine this in greater detail, you begin to recognize the same names coming up over and over on lists of researchers working on the Vit D issue. The list is strikingly short, and it is made up primarily of epidemiologists whose work is being disseminated not by respected medical journals, but by non-peer-reviewed nutrition site.
I do believe that most Americans probably lack sufficient Vit D in their diets, and a whole mess of other vitamins also. But that doesn’t mean that suddenly increasing Vit D intake by 1000% will instantly cure you of cancer, or totally prevent it from developing.
There’s a lot of ideas out there that appear to make sense. That doesn’t mean that we should try to force them to fit desired results. Wouldn’t that defeats the whole purpose of the scientific method, doesn’t it?
