Liza:
Why did you leave out this part?:
[Snip]
But much research has focused on the fat content of animal fat or byproducts
of cooking meat as the cause of disease.
Varki's collaborator Dr. Elaine Muchmore developed an antibody -- an immune
system targeting protein -- that would hook onto Neu5Gc. The team found
Neu5Gc in human tumor samples and to a much lower degree in healthy tissue.
More tests showed that most people had made their own antibodies that
recognized Neu5Gc, and thus could potentially initiate an inflammatory
immune response.
Varki and two colleagues drank Neu5Gc purified from pork sources, and the
molecule showed up in their urine, blood, hair and saliva.
"We need to find out if there is any association between the presence of
Neu5Gc and/or the anti-Neu5Gc antibodies with any disease," Varki said.
"This will require large-scale population studies."
In some cases the human immune response was similar to that seen when people
are exposed to another animal molecule, this one a cell surface molecule
called alpha galactose.
Varki noted that the molecule is almost certainly not immediately toxic to
people.
"Meat eating has certainly been a feature of human ancestors for many
hundreds of thousands of years," he said.
"Thus, it is indeed possible that humans have developed some kind of
tolerance or indifference to Neu5Gc. However, most humans are continuing to
make antibodies against Neu5Gc."
It could be that the damage only builds up over years -- and that as people
live longer, the consequences make themselves felt.
"However, we are now living longer and the question arises whether the
gradual accumulation of Neu5Gc and the simultaneous presence of antibodies
against could be involved in some diseases of later life," he said.
[snip]
Basically, the research is interesting but inconclusive. However, snipping
it where you did seemed designed to play up the case against meat and
down-play the uncertainties the researchers expressed.
Tumors contain a lot of molecules. As they said, large scale studies and
research on possible mechanisms would have to be done to show any firm
causitive link between this Neu5Gc and cancer. So far its just a tenuous
link and speculation.
The authors make the common mistake of assuming that all people in the past
lived shorter lives than we do. They like others confuse average life
expectancy, which is reduced by early deaths, and actual individual life
spans.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all lived past 70, more than 2000 years ago.
Socrates you know may have lived longer but was put to death.
In the McDougall article that was discussed here last week the same mistake.
To distill it:
The average life expectancy is based on averaging all deaths. So if you have
5 people die in their first year of life (infections), 5 die at an average
age of 35 from hunting accidents, and 5 live to 70, the average life
expectancy of this group will be calculated to be 35 years of age. Yet 33%
of the people lived to 70. This is an oversimplification of how stats are
misunderstood to make it look like all pre-industrial people died at 35.
McDougall made the more remarkably misguided statement that you only have to
live to 20 to reproduce. If he means just popping out a baby he has an
incomplete view of reproduction. Most people understand that infants are not
self-sufficient. In fact, it takes about 16 years to truly reproduce oneself
in a child, i.e. get him/her to the point of true self-sufficiency. Because
of the long dependency period in humans, I find it difficult to imagine any
human group surviving long if all members died at 30 or so.
Weston Price and Stefansson searched for cancer among primitives without
success although many ate large amounts of animal products and lived to
advanced ages (as documented by the photos in Price's book). Moreover, U.S.
cancer rates have skyrocketed since 1900 in America, but average red meat
consumption has actually slightly declined according to USDA figures. These
researchers are suggesting poultry is safer, but over the past century in
the U.S. chicken consumption has gone up. And these days cancer is growing
in prevalence in young people, so the meat+aging hypothesis seems to be
leaking from the start.
Don
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