Puzzling, indeed. There might of course still be genetic factors, but it does not support a purely genetic background, rather either a purely environmental cause, or a genetic / environmental interaction.
That, and perhaps there’s something epigenetic going on.
Whaaaaa, this is science reporting. Didn’t you know that Mother Jones just “proved” that cell phones cause cancer, for really real this time?
That said I Want To Believe.
Oh good god.
No.
Just…no.
I’m going to side with Mark Crislip, Harriet Hall, and Steven Novella on this one, because they actually use their brains responsibly, are credible, and know how to learn from other experts.
If they’d actually read the study they’d also see that the rats exposed to cellular signals lived longer than the controls that were not… which kind of nukes a study on late-developing cancers.
Not only didn’t they try, but they missed out on ‘Cell Phones increase your lifespan’ (no, I don’t think it does, I think they screwed up their control and weren’t properly peer reviewed)
Yes. Science based medicine.
On something that might or might not be provable before making use of it for a long time.
In a world where pharma companies will encourage the use of a product with patients who want to lose weight when it was developed to treat diabetes, never mind the (very negative) secondary effects. And that’s only one amongst a heap of medical scandals.
So, yes, I will tend to be skeptical of such claims until proven in a very definitive way, and not believe the hype. More importantly, I will keep taking anything said by pharma Cies and those who might be on their payroll with a very large amount of doubt.
Being skeptical is fine, just so one doesn’t throw away the baby with the bathwater. We all know the pharma industry has financial motivations, but they’re also filled with people and they’re not universally corrupt. This particular approach is actually pretty sound (not a microbiologist myself, but I’m a nerd for such things and the subject of using viruses to deliver payloads is something I’m pretty versed in and some really cool people have been great about answering my questions and educating me, like the folks previously mentioned as well as those at places like Small Things Considered (Check out Merry Youle’s 'Life in a Phage World to have your mind blown, it’s very accessible!)
These are complicated subjects and there are people who understand them well and have a real passion for behaving responsibly where human life is concerned.
The key is finding them and NOT falling for a bunch of woo or falling for the arguments of charismatic amateurs who refuse to stand on the shoulders of giants and don’t value thinking responsibly.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
