DaveScot, the anti-science slug from UncommonDescent, is doing an experiment: he’s got a friend who is taking dichloroacetate (DCA) to treat his cancer. DaveScot thinks this is wonderful and useful, but quite the contrary: a one-person uncontrolled trial is pretty much a perfect example of bad science.
One funny (funny weird, because it’s also actually kind of evil) point from the post: he’s shilling for a quack commercial site that is selling DCA—purportedly for animal use. They sell doses for 150 pound animals. That’ll come in handy if my pet kangaroo gets cancer.
Anyway, nice to see that crackpottery is so unfocused. Many of the big wigs in ID are also HIV-deniers, in addition to being evolution-deniers; now we’re seeing one of them jump on the snake oil bandwagon. I wonder if there are also greater than average numbers of cold fusion fans and UFO believers in the ranks of the IDists? There might be an interesting sociological study in that.
I suspect it won’t be long until someone spouts this.
Well, the Raelians are IDists, as are all the “earth was seeded by aliens” types, so it would be likely that there would be a large number of UFO-believers among the ID ranks.
Cold fusion is the FUTURE OF BEER STORAGE.
And don’t forget his recent diatribe about Global Warming! He posted that he spent 2 hours doing “research” on it, so he is now qualified to post about the Global Warming Conspiracy. He’s one scarey dude. And DO NOT. I repeat DO NOT get between him and his bag of Cheesy Poofs!
In addition –
Sources of this character are known to be less reliable (that is, less likely to deliver the compound expected by the customer) than traditional medical sources.
In other words, there cannot be much confidence that DaveScott is actually getting DCA, or that it is of the specified concentrations, or that it is relatively free of contaminants.
Lessee: Vioxx, Baycol, Statins (any re women and elderly or anyone without established heart disease) Propulsid, HRT, gardasil (not tested more than a couple months, or a couple hundred not in the age group using it). There’s more. But that should make my point.
No. I’m not going to use what DAVE is shilling either. But let’s stop pretending we’ve got good and bad here. It’s just bad and worse.
Typical conspiracy theory nonsense. Just because a few mistakes were made and some people died, let’s just condemn a whole system that has been responsible for the production of thousands of effective treatments and millions of saved or improved lives.
No system is perfect, and mistakes will always be made, and there will always be people who want to cut corners, but to tar the FDA and the drug companies with the same brush as this DCA hooey? Utterly ridiculous.
Actually, I don’t think that DaveScot is actually doing the experiment. However, he is pushing the DCA Site on Uncommon Descent and apparently the guy who started this site found out about DCA through Uncommon Descent. Dave also thinks that having one guy take one dose of the drug the experiment will tell us within 60 days whether DCA has any anticancer activity or not.
The sad thing is, this drug might be legit. The preclinical data in cell culture and rats are promising. It might have decent anticancer activity in humans. But we won’t know whether it does until the clinical trials are done, and, while that’s happening, we have idiots like DaveScot and the people running the website doing their best to make DCA look like another laetrile.
I can see the headlines now:
Creationists do what science could not – discover miracle cure for cancer!
HIV deniers? Why on earth would anyone waste their time claiming that HIV-AIDS isn’t real? What possible gain is there?
JMark: In my experience the denial is generally not that AIDS is false, but that it isn’t caused by HIV. As for gain, I have no idea. For some, I think it’s just a symptom of a susceptibility to pseudoscience and conspiracy theory.
HIV-AIDS deniers deny that there’s a link between HIV and AIDS. That way, then can get people off of their antivirals and get them to pay for expensive herbs that’ll take away the “real” cause of AIDS, which is bad chakra, negative thoughts, and fornication.
And for the ones who aren’t selling anything, they get to enjoy the arrogance of being the ones who know The Truth About HIV/AIDS. The rest of us are too ignorant to realize we’re being made into suckers by a massive government/scientist/pharmaceutical conspiracy.
To Bronze dog
NOOOOO not my fornication!!!!
There is a real issue, however, regarding whether or not DCA will be tested as it should be for cancer treatment. This is not to agree with DaveTard’s usual lack of understanding of the matter, of course, it’s just to point out that the lack of patentability may mean that related chemicals will receive the proper trials while the cheaper DCA will not.
That’s my niggle. My main concern is, why has PZ listed the violations and so ably characterized the relatively few people kicked off of Pharyngula while leaving DaveTard off of his list? Surely elucidation of DT’s odious methods, ignorance, and general lack of abilities is as necessary as JAD’s (John at least knows and occasionally evinces some science) and Robert O’Brien’s. I like “anti-science slug,” for instance, and think it deserves the same exposure as the various adjectives and epithets in the list of those whose manners and intellect were so bad that they even got dumped from Pharyngula (I would note here that I like the much greater tolerance of this forum over that of the majority).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
There is a real issue, however, regarding whether or not DCA will be tested as it should be for cancer treatment. This is not to agree with DaveTard’s usual lack of understanding of the matter, of course, it’s just to point out that the lack of patentability may mean that related chemicals will receive the proper trials while the cheaper DCA will not.
That’s my niggle. My main concern is, why has PZ listed the violations and so ably characterized the relatively few people kicked off of Pharyngula while leaving DaveTard off of his list? Surely elucidation of DT’s odious methods, ignorance, and general lack of abilities is as necessary as JAD’s (John at least knows and occasionally evinces some science) and Robert O’Brien’s. I like “anti-science slug,” for instance, and think it deserves the same exposure as the various adjectives and epithets in the list of those whose manners and intellect were so bad that they even got dumped from Pharyngula (I would note here that I like the much greater tolerance of this forum over that of the majority).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
Also antiretrovirals, heroin, EMF, bad nourishment and even poverty.
Do really some creationist gurus are HIV-deniers?
Also antiretrovirals, heroin, EMF, bad nourishment and even poverty.
Do really some creationist gurus are HIV-deniers?
As a rule, Evangelical Christians who think UFOs are something significant (in more important sense than sociologically or psychologically significant) attribute them to demonaic activity. No doubt many lay fans of ID take this view; it would be interesting to know whether any of the bigwigs do.
Medea,
I don’t see how 5 years of testing Gardasil equates to a couple of months.
Both pseudoscience and religion often share an underlying theme of “try it for yourself and see if it works.” Take the herb and see if it “cures” your problem. Ask Jesus into your life and see if He “helps” you cope. If so, then you can trust your own personal experience, and know that what seemed true, must be true. You “tested” it. It must be real.
The ability to stand back and realize that the strong emotional component and biases involved in evaluating our own particular situation makes us less reliable, and not more, seems to be rather basic to skepticism in general — and often appears to be lacking among the general public.
I can’t believe y’all are commentating on stuff like controlled experimentation, the psychological foibles of the ID/quack medicine crowd, and FDA rules and missing the important news in the post: PZ has a pet kangaroo! That is the COOLEST THING EVAR!!!
@ MedeaOnCrack:
From the prescribing info for Gardasil, >20K women aged 16-26 received the vaccine, with median follow-ups of several years. In addition, more than 1000 girls 9-15 received the vaccine (the prescribing info makes it hard to tell the exact number). Hard to see how that equates to “a couple months, or a couple hundred.” Unless your point is that they didn’t do much testing in people for whom it isn’t even indicated? If so, so what?
No doubt that pharma has its problems. But I’m not favorably impressed with people who feel they must invent negative statistics to make pharma look worse than it is.
@ Glen D:
If DCA really has a large therapeutic benefit, it would be easy to show in a modest Phase 2 study. Such a study could easily be funded by NIH, or the Canadian equivalent. OTOH, if the benefit is too small to pick up in such a modest study, then it’s probably at best similar to existing chemos. Which is to say, it’s not very good. In that case, if it never gets tested “as it should” there’s no great loss.
Besides, as others (including Orac) have pointed out, it may still be possible to cover DCA for cancer in a method of treatment patent. That would probably provide adequate protection. If you get cancer, which version of DCA would you want – the “official” version that’s FDA approved, reimbursed by insurance, and covered by the use patent? Or the “kangaroo quality” version that DaveScot’s friend is taking and that you’d have to pay for and administer yourself? Most people with insurance are gonna opt for the first one, which means a method of treatment patent would provide more than enough profit incentive for pharma to develop DCA. Assuming DCA really has potential, of course.
Dave Scot Springer is a perfect example of the rethinker/denialist mentality.
Once you have swallowed the idea that you have the truth about one issue (evolution, SARS, global warming, ufos, vaccinations etc) and that thousands of scientists are ignorant, stupid or corrupt then anything is possible.
What I find surprising in this case is how rapidly the DCA thing went from overly optimistic press release to New Scientist editorial to webblog anti-science hype to quack medicine. Is this a new record?
I know I’m stating the obvious here, but it makes perfect sense that someone whose core philosophy is predicated on the irrational would also show enhanced susceptibility to ancillary fraud (MLM/pyramid schemes, quack remedies, snake oil, miracle cures, junk science etc.). When you’ve already fallen for the biggest scam of all, it’s no great stretch to buy into a host of comparatively minor scams as well.
Sadly, I’ve seen overwhelming evidence in my own family to back up this assertion.
It’s also weird that people who profess serene confidence in the afterlife will go to ridiculous lengths trying to cheat death…
For DaveScot, anything that doesn’t jibe with his views is a conspiracy. I’d wonder, though, how hard he’d be pushing DCA if the people who took his advice to “try it” were able to sue him if it doesn’t do what he says it does. He can rant all he wants about ID, global warming, any of the other numerous things about which he claims to have expertise, but in no other case than this would the consequences of taking him seriously be anything of impact. With DCA, though, people could die – from lack of other effective treatment, or from the effect of the drug itself. He’s awfully confident of his superior knowledge of all things, but if he could actually be held accountable, would he be any more conscientious?
I watched a little Hovind once. He was advertising Laetrile as a biblically-supported cancer remedy, encouraging eating apricot pits. Really. The Pooflinger summaries mention him doing it too.
And what do you want to bet that if the guy dies in the next few months, DaveScott will not repudiate his snakeoil. He’ll just not saying anything about it at all, I imagine.
I have a question:
PZ and the other scientist people here
How ethical is it to do what the University of Alberta has done here, and mention the possibility that DCA might work, and cash in on the hype by throwing out the message that you are looking for some major donors?
To me it seems that science is being done a bit backwards.
Here is the official U Of A DCA Study link, with the donation info:
http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/
I am trying to remember the last time I saw this happen and it fails me. Does anyone else remember anything this odd?
I hope that DCA is a magic bullet. I also hope that if it is, it has been tested properly and all the ‘i’s are dotted and the ‘t’s crossed.
But here it just seems a bi hot doggish.
impatientpatient, I think that maybe they are doing what you hope:
just at a quick glance at the Web site, it looks like they are mounting a development effort to raise funds to test DCA properly. The first steps included their own animal studies, on the basis of whose preliminary results they now want to move to Phase I and Phase II trials in humans, in order to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. These efforts cost money (salaries, equipment, supplies, lab space), and so university development offices work with PIs and donors to find funders who want to make gifts to support particular research efforts, as well as more general donors.
stylistically, it’s a bit more direct than most university development pages I’ve seen, but it doesn’t look like they are overstating preliminary results or disguising where the money is intended to go, or any ethical violations like that.
I seem to recall (backing it up with a Wikipedia check) that Bob Guccione’s wife Kathy Keeton Guccione was taking hydrazine sulfate for her breast cancer. She died and apparently Bob got involved in a class action suit over it. I’m not quite sure what to think about that.
Posted by: Cat of Many Faces:
“To Bronze dog
NOOOOO not my fornication!!!!”
They’ll only get my fornication when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
There seems to be quite a bit of affinity fraud in the Christian Right — wouldn’t be surprised if this was related.
Bob Altermeyer’s research, available free online, includes the surprising claim that “Right-Wing Authoritarians” tended to show more gullibility about just about every belief their authorities had failed to condemn.
By the way, anyone, if you want to have some fun, DaveScot has shown up over at the link that PZ mentioned. ;-)
Speaking of Gardasil – Just when I think I have the ironic chuckle down pat so I don’t have to get outraged, something like this comes along (from today’s Washington Post):
“Because Gardasil is intended to halt the spread of a sexually transmitted disease [cervical cancer], concerns have been raised among politicians and parents that a mandate might encourage promiscuity.”
Man dates always had that effect on me…
Do really some creationist gurus are HIV-deniers?
The connection is this: a preeminent cancer researcher, Peter Duesberg at UC Berkeley, and member of the National Academy of Science has proffered a hypothesis that cancer is caused by aneuploidy — an imbalance of the chromosomes, not a single gene mutation.
Here’s a good Scientific American article on the issue.
20 years ago, Duesberg wrote a peer-reviewed article in Cancer Research that challenged the conventional wisdom that retroviruses caused cancer or any disease, in general, and that HIV caused AIDS in particular.
The problem is that Duesberg is published extensively in the literature and has impressive credentials, so it’s hard to cavalierly dismiss his opinions.
I have no idea if he is a creationist, but Phil Johnson and him taught at Berkeley at the same time.
Over at Uncommonly Dense, DaveScot is now trying to call you a liar, PZ. Apparently he is taking issue that you said he has a “friend” who has cancer. He apparently doesn’t “know” anyone who has cancer. Having someone tell you online that they have cancer and are taking this stuff to treat it apparently does not count as “knowing” them; Davetard thus equivocates on this point. He is indeed a slug.
Oh, my — I saw the comment that he had a “personal interest” in the outcome of the ‘test’ to mean he had something other than an abstract concern, but OK. I accept the correction and take it back.
I apologize to DaveScot for ever implying that he had a friend.
Yeah, but give DT some credit, at least he didn’t dispute the “anti-science slug” bit.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
PZ:
Your statement was:
“he’s got a friend who is taking dichloroacetate (DCA) to treat his cancer”
This was false. This false statement served as the basis of your ad hominem attack against DaveScot.
Either DCA does or does not shrink tumors. That is a good scientific proposition, which probably concerns many people. Whether it is true or not, is the issue. Why side-track this?
Also, since when do honorable scientists use false statements and ad hominem attacks to address scientific issues?
It looks like an attempt to use the guilt by association logical fallacy. Unless empircal evidence is presented, and a cause-effect relationship of some kind is proven, I think it might be arrogant to use an argument that there’s no evidence for.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html
Where’s the guilt by association fallacy? DaveScot trumpeted this person on the other site, and he has gone around to several blogs basically touting this “miracle cure” and essentially shilling for the site that sells it. He’s associated himself.
>>”I apologize to DaveScot for ever implying that he had a friend.”<< PZ, you should know that lackeys don't have friends, they have masters. DaveScot is Wormtongue to Dembski's Saruman. Did Wormtongue have friends?
PZ – Please cite your reference to prove that DaveScot knows anyone that has cancer, or that he is conducting a uncontrolled experiemnt on such a person. You speak so matter-o-factly. As YOU wrote:
Either you are telling the truth or simply another lying pseudoscientist.
Please respond.
CT101
“Critical Thinker 101” (ah, the irony):
Do you know what a pseudoscientist is? Even if PZ were lying about this (which he isn’t), that would not make him a pseudoscientist.
By the way, nice use of the either-or fallacy: “Either PZ is telling the truth or he’s a liar. Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Critical Thinker, that there are other options in between. For example, he could be mistaken. Don’t that teach the either-or fallacy in Critical Thinking 101?
For the record, PZ isn’t lying. Davescot said all this himself.
Whoops. Above, I meant to type “Don’t THEY teach the either-or fallacy…” Anyway, I trust my point was clear.
This is the typical creationist obsession with trivia to distract attention from the main point. It really doesn’t matter if DaveScot has a friend or not, although his claim that he had a ‘personal interest’ is what led me to think he did; the main point is that DaveScot is a credulous boob who is shilling for a relatively untested cancer ‘cure’. That’s still true.
And as I said above, I sincerely apologize for thinking it was reasonable that DaveScot might have had a friend.
CT, didja notice where PZ didn’t put any words into DaveScot’s mouth at all, but rather a link to DS’s post? I’d be hard-pressed to call a link to something DS wrote himself any kind of lie. Plus, it’s just the citation you asked for. Read it yourself. Click on the links. As DaveScot is fond of telling people, don’t expect PZ to do all your work for you. Heh.
Critically Blind, you appear to have missed the link PZ provided in the original post – and the link was part of the text you quoted. Had you followed it, you would have found that DaveScot himself wrote the following post over at Respectful Insolence:
So, no, not a friend or anyone that he knew prior to the DCA hype, but otherwise accurate.
What’s funny is that someone else claims to have called up TCI America only to be told that they don’t carry pharma grade DCA, yet DaveScot was claiming they’re the sole supplier of pharma grade DCA in the US.
I can’t stop laughing at the silliness of this response from DaveScot’s crew. Or the irony: “Why side-track this?” Yeeeess, because obsessing over whether DaveScot personally met and/or befriended the person he had clearly discussed taking DCA with is totally not a sidetrack from the core issue of how this is not the way to evaluate DCA’s anticancer activity. That, and DaveScot’s stunning idiocy and lack of integrity.
haha. Wow I can’t believe Dave Springer (DaveScot) is so desperate for a retort that he assumes a narrow definition of “friend” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friend . the person davescot thinks isn’t his friend could easily fit a number of definitions listed) and uses that as a basis to make the really exaggerated claim that “PZ lied through his teeth”. And he just had to post this stupidity as a new post on UD. What a fucking dumbass.
Anthony K: You’re correct. He might not have been lying. I apologize to PZ for leaving him without that thirsd option et al.
Now, the way he, PZ, handled his self-correction in Post #39 didn’t seem like a very sincere or humble apology – if was even classifiable as an apology. We’ll just leave it at that and let others feel it out. Personally, it didn’t seem like a REAL apology came from the PZeudo scientist.
AND You wrote, “Do you know what a pseudoscientist is? Even if PZ were lying about this (which he isn’t), that would not make him a pseudoscientist.”
Simple response – I didn’t say that if he was lying would be what made him a pseudoscientist. That was a given for teaching lies that he may/may not believe to be true or not. So, I guess you might need a little oil on your critical thinking gears yourself.
Alison :
PZ’s link didn’t back up his false claim. That’s why PZ made his half-assed Mickey Mouse “apology” in comment #39. He doesn’t even have the balls or fortitude (mental nor emotional) to make a normal apology without making a jab. Guy like him and Dawkins are probalby the best thing for ID.
If they really want to stop ID – for their philosophical preferences – then they’ll have to plead to the scientific community to actually stop making new discovereies & progress.
W. Kevin Vicklund :
What’s your point? You simply proved that PZ made a false claim when you wrote, “So, no, not a friend or anyone that he knew prior to the DCA hype, but otherwise accurate.”
And that was the point of my question to PZeudo.
Critical Thinker,
So in calling him a “lying pseudoscientist,” you are saying that you didn’t mean that his lying made him a pseudoscientist. You just tacked that on, even though it had nothing to do with what you were saying? Sure. That’s really likely. So if you had said, “Either you’re telling the truth or you’re a lying nazi,” you think any reasonable person wouldn’t infer that what you are accusing the person of lying about doesn’t have some relation to nazis or nazism? Come on now. Try using language more precisely.
Speaking of not understanding how to use language, or how other people use language, when PZ said, “I apologize to DaveScot for ever implying that he had a friend” he was being IRONIC. He was implying that DaveScot doesn’t have any friends (which seem entirely likely, by the way.) Thus your accusation that he doesn’t have the balls or fortitude to make a real apology is pretty ludicrous, considering that that wasn’t his intent.
I won’t even get into your comments about a pseudoscientist. Suffice to say that someone who teaches something that they know to be a lie is also not necessarily a pseudoscientist. That is certainly not the definition.
Let’s put it this way. I recommend that you abandon the handle “Critical Thinker.”
You’re still running away from the main point. It wasn’t that DaveScot had a friend, or a friend with cancer: it is that DaveScot is shilling for an untested medication and promoting its acquisition from sources of dubious quality and its unmonitored use. When you’ve got a complaint about that, then come back and whine.
CT, I still fail to see what PZ might have to apologize for. He hasn’t lied, and any emotionally-based description of what DS is doing is surely justified by not only the illegality an unethicalness of what DS is doing, but by the antipathy that he has carefully cultivated among others all by his lonesome. Perhaps, indeed, he could have written a bunch of fact-based bullet points, but that doesn’t make for very interesting blogging.
However, if your point is that PZ owes DaveScot an apology, then perhaps he should be held to the same standards. In that case, he’d better get cracking, because he owes a heck of a lot more apologies than anyone I can think of offhand.
W. Kevin Vicklund:
What PZ wrote:
Well, what DaveScot actually wrote, and you quoted, was (sentence #3):
What part of that do you and PZ (and the rest of the greek chorus) fail to comprehend??
If this blog represents the state of the art in science and critical thinking, we’re doomed.
I’ve gone over to UD and read some of DS’s posts and comments on DCA. It seems to me that what he’s “shilling” for is to test this “untested medication”.
And that’s bad, how…?
Its amazing that you guys are giving DaveScot such a hard time for pushing DCA! When put side by side, I bet the effectiveness of DCA has more empirical evidence going for it than NDE. Yet, why should that matter?
Here’ s a part you haven’t yet managed to comprehend: whether DaveScot has a friend taking DCA or not doesn’t matter. I really don’t give a damn, and if you think I was giving him grief because he has a friend with cancer, you are frankly nuts.
What’s interesting is that you kooks at Uncommon Descent have gone on a bender over DCA hype. It’s typical credulity — you simply have no capacity to assess the evidence.
Funny that you mention intelligent design and UFO’s; I have an uncle who makes films. The one he is most well known for is a ‘documentary’ on UFO’s. His most recent is about the Kansas School Board’s ID debates. Guess which side he favors?
whether DaveScot has a friend taking DCA or not doesn’t matter
I’m sorry, Dr. Myers, but this is another false statement on your part.
It mattered when you wrote it, because you segued into a critique of a 1-person study (which obviously proves nothing), implying that Mr. Scot, somehow, placed scientific value on a mere case report. Re-read you’re own words:
DaveScot thinks this is wonderful and useful, but quite the contrary: a one-person uncontrolled trial is pretty much a perfect example of bad science
Yes, a one-person uncontrolled trial is an example of bad science. Agreed.
But, that is not what Mr. Scot was advocating. You have attributed a bad scientific position to a person without evidence that said person holds such view.
That, in and of itself, is unscientific.
If Mr. Scot does assert that a 1-person uncontrolled trial is scientifically relevant that would be unscientific as well.
You need a better class of trolls, PZ. Whatever happened to reading for comprehension?
Michael O’Connor writes:
DaveScot asserted:
Ok, Michael–if “We’ll all know in 60 days or less whether DCA works in humans or not” is *not* asserting scientific relevance, just what does it mean?
You’re a funny man, C Bass. (Off-topic: I used to go to school with a “Randy Bass”, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Here’s the money quote from DaveScot:
So DaveScot is:
1) claiming a one-person anecdote is externally valid (generalizable) to all humans;
2) peddling false hope to cancer patients;
3) bending, if not actually breaking, Federal law.
And the part you object to is none of that, but that PZ got the detail that the case involved was a friend of DaveScot’s??? (Although I agree, the concept of DaveScot having a friend should have been a big red flag to PZ, but still–*that’s* the only part of the whole thing that sticks in your craw?)
Is it Opposite Day again, already?
Like I said, C Bass, you’re a funny man.
RavenT,
I rarely correspond with children, but this is an exception.
Here is the full statement of the person experimenting with DCA:
This will be my first post an I hope to give a update to this post after taking Sodium DCA for several week. I am 46 year old with metastatic Protsate Ca. I have aquired a supply of DCA through a pharmaceutical supply company here in the USA ,as of now the supply of DCA is back order so it may be more difficult to get a supply for at least a month. I attend to take 12.5mg per kg twice a day. I believe this will limit the degree of potential side effects from the DCA, I will be also be using thiamine 400mg or Benfotiamine 600mg day which according to studies reduce the PN down significantly. For individual dealing with stage 4 cancer I can’t see the down side of trying this relatively safe drug when compared to conventional chemo. You just must understand that many promising treatments throughout the years melted tumors in rats to then show minimal efficacy in humans. If this treatment translate over to humans I believe a new era in the treatment of Cancer shall begin and the signficance of the Warburg effect will be validated. God bless to all whom try this for if there is no hope then what do we have
Any person with stage 4 prostate cancer, who wants to try DCA, over conventional cancer chemotherapy, has the perfect right to do so — notwithstanding the juvenile opinions of purportedly scientific bloggers and their commentators.
Still didn’t answer my question about the discrepancy between DaveScot’s assertion and yours, I see.
True, but irrelevant. The subject is your failure to comprehend what DaveScot’s statement means, and your claim that he didn’t make an assertion about scientific relevance. I’ll repeat it for your convenience:
Get back to me when you’re ready to address the answer to that question; I’m not interested in your attempts to move the goalposts.
Anthony K. :
Ironic? Really? … Well Golly… Why d’ya think I said I didn’t see a real apology. Apparently you didn’t “catch” the idea that I “caught it”.
Insulting someone doesn’t take near the balls & fortitude as a real apology.
First, I apologized for leaving PZ with ‘lying’ as the only other option to telling the truth. My mistake. Second, you can believe, or not that I mean pseudoscientist first or not. But I did – I would say this about any dogmatic evolutionist. And, as an example, if someone called George Bush an lying President.. would that mean he’s a President becasue he’s a liar? No. As for how you are suggesting my intentions, without leaving me another option of the benefit of the doubt. Interesting.
Oh, I almost forgot:
That’s probably a really good thing, overall–given your reading comprehension, the children I know would hand you your ass.
For all those idiots that think PZ owes an apology, here’s an edit that demonstrates the absurdity of focusing on the friend/stranger inaccuracy:
Changing from “friend” to “random stranger” does not alter the post in any meaningful way. If that is the only criticism you can generate, you look like a pathetic moron to outsiders.
Years ago a hawaiian singer went to Mexico and was treated for months with DCA, he died. But it’s not fair to to say DCA had no effect, just ask DaveScott, the one person most likely to be un-true.
Would all the DaveScott defenders please go back to the dimwits site, we don’t need any more laughs on this topic.
When put side by side, I bet the effectiveness of DCA has more empirical evidence going for it than NDE.
assuming “NDE” is the latest creobotism for the ToE,
not only will i take that bet, I’ll give you 3:1 odds in your favor.
3:1, heck 100:1.
prediction:
as usual, none of these idiots will be willing to put their money where their mouth is.
You can tell that these guys are inbred, incestuous, and isolated from reality by the bizarre terminology they splutter out, and by the fact that they expect everyone to know what their jargon means. NDE refers to some misconception of evolution that they have; it’s not a term that you will find anywhere other than the IDist websites.
yeah, I’ve been seeing it circulating more frequently of late.
still don’t know what it really means, but I’ll take a stab at what the letters stand for:
naturalistic darwinian evolution
is that right?
Actually, I think it is neo-Darwinian evolution. In other words, 50-year-old theory (and in their hands, strawman versions of said theory).
ah, of course.
i always tend to think of hyphenated words as singular, so i would have though that abbreviated as NE instead of NDE.
well, one extremely minor mystery solved.
maybe i should sell my version to them? after all, it includes the word “naturalistic” which they seem to glom on at every opportunity.
I don’t know that they should go away. Their sheer lunacy provides a good laugh for me in the morning, especially the ridiculous megalomania of DaveScot. But there is a danger: every morning I nearly choke on my coffee while reading the latest crap at Uncommon Descent.
The first line of PZ’s post is a lie.
Scott has no personal frends taking this drug.
PZ’s hate is clouding his judgement. This makes his work suspect.
Hey Climatidud,
DaveScot has communicated with the “friend” by email and has apparently gotten details of the treatment… would “acquaintance” make you feel better?
It doesn’t matter. One guy taking DCA is not a study any scientific conclusions can be made.
Stop being an idiot, PZ’s point is completely valid. Go back tot he UD swamp.
You are a liar.
Scott does not even know anyone with cancer.
Put up the proof or shut up.
Scott’s quote…
The guy who started the DCA site discovered DCA by reading my articles on Uncommon Descent so I have a personal interest in how it turns out. There is now one person writing there who obtained a supply of DCA (works in the medical profession so was able to order pharmaceutical grade dichloroacetate acid sodium salt from TCI America), put it into 500mg capsules, and is taking two doses of 1000mg per day for 25mg/kg as used in the congenital lactic acidosis phase 2 trial. He’s also taking 500mg of vitamin B1 to counter possible side-effect neuropathy. He has metastatic prostate cancer. We’ll all know in 60 days or less whether DCA works in humans or not. If not for avarice we could have known two years ago. If it turns out the stuff works I don’t know how the discovers will be able to sleep at night knowing they sat on this for 2 years trying to find a way to profit from it.
He knows OF someone. I think YOU are perhaps focusing on “friend” too much.
It’s pretty clear that Scott think whatever the results they’ll be scientifucally important.
Which is dumb.
Climaticus:
The point of the post is not whether DaveScot personally knows the person with cancer who’s story he told, it’s that he stupidly believes that a single person trial is of any scientific value. Whether or not PZ was wrong in the relationship is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that you are too stupid to understand that.
To be fair: “Single person” was clearly the logical conclusion from DaveScot’s first comment, and I very much think that was his meaning, but he’s subsequently backpedalled and claimed he was referring to a large number of similar people independently acquiring DCA, and doctors prescribing it (both claims largely unsupported.)
Of course, many people independently taking DCA on their own is barely any better than one person. Indeed, if you look through Orac’s deconstruction of the problems with DaveScot’s original claim, not much of it was referring to the obvious problems of a sample size of one. He was pointing out the problems of having an uncontrolled, unscientific testing environment. As Orac reminds us, the plural of “anecdotes” is not “data.”
I think there is a lot more to this than woo. I have linked to the papers I mention at the bottom of my post. I had to pay for the full articles so these links will only get you the abstracts (unless you have some kind of institutional access).
It has apparently been known since the 1930s that among the unusual traits of cancer cells is their reliance on glycolysis for energy production even in the presence of adequate oxygen. This is anomalous because glycolysis is much less efficient per glucose molecule than oxidative phosphorylation (which I refer to as respiration or mitochondrial respiration the rest of the way). Glycolysis takes place in the cytoplasm. Respiration takes place in the mitochondria of the cell. Both processes use glucose as an energy source, but glycolysis can take place without oxygen. Mitochondrial respiration further breaks down the end products of glycolysis to produce approximately 14 times more energy. The papers discuss all of this in more detail. The advent of widespread use of PET scans has apparently confirmed that all (or almost all) cancer cells rely on glycolysis for their energy production. The important point here is that reliance on glycolysis now appears to be a fundamental feature of cancer cells.
Other scientists have found links between reliance on glycolysis and apoptosis resistance. Specifically, Pelicano, et al. discuss a link between mitochondrial respiration defects and what is called the Akt survival pathway. This paper is from the December 18, 2006 edition of The Journal of Cell Biology. I am not a scientist, but my understanding is that the Akt pathway ends up interfering with the action of proteins called caspases which are basically the triggers for apoptosis. So there is evidence that mitochondrial respiration defects and activation of the Akt survival pathway are linked. Put another way, cells relying on glycolysis for their energy production are not going (or are at least less likely) to kill themselves on schedule as normal cells would. At the end of the Pelicano paper, the authors speculate that the Akt pathway might be related to the decreased drug sensitivity associated with the Warburg effect. I have taken the Pelicano paper as offering support for the hypothesis that the reliance on glycolysis and the lack of apoptosis in cancer cells are intrinsically linked (apparently via abnormal mitochondria).
Michelakis, et al. and Fantin, et al. report results that appear to me to tend to confirm the link between apoptosis resistance and glycolysis suggested in the Pelicano paper. The paper by Fantin, et al. comes from the June 2006 issue of Cancer Cell. The Michelakis, et al. paper is from the January 2007 issue of Cancer Cell. The Michelakis Cancer Cell article and the Fantin Cancer Cell article test therapies that attack two different parts of the glycolysis pathway. Both report that interruption of the glycolysis pathway induced mitochondrial respiration and apoptosis in cancer cells, resulting in large effects on human tumors implanted in mice.
Michelakis, et al. go on to link all of this to a suppressed potassium channel in the mitochondria of cancer cells and demonstrate that the channel can be normalized, leading the cancer cell mitochondria to engage in respiration and ultimately leading to apoptosis. This is the biggest news of all because it indicates a more fundamental understanding of what cancer is (and I believe suggests a complete reworking of the current theories of carcinogenesis may be in order). At bottom the Michelakis paper is not a story of a wonder drug but is instead about this more fundamental explanation of the cancer cell. The thing that leads me to believe that these results will be replicated in humans (and I think this does include the DCA part of it) is the fact that Michelakis and Fantin have taken two different approaches to attacking glycolysis and report similar esults. It seems to me that if you establish a link between apoptosis resistance and reliance on glycolysis for energy, and then demonstrate that disrupting the glycolysis pathway (using two different methods) forces cancer cells into mitochondrial respiration and thereby also into apoptosis, that is big news. The usual warning about murine models not translating to people are certainly relevant here, but the fact that this approach has not been tried before makes me think they could be less relevant than with other drugs. This is especially so in light of the fact that dichloroacetate is already used in humans to treat conditions involving congenital mitochondrial defects and lactic acidosis. Lactate, of course, being the ultimate waste product created by glycolysis. I don’t see why this will not work in people, the mechanism is so well-characterized down to the level of the cancer cell mitochondria, is supported by two other lines of evidence (Fantin interrupting glycolysis and Pelicano on activation of the Akt survival pathway), and we know dichloroacetate has the effect of turning pyruvate into acetyl coA in normal human cells because that is how it reduces production of lactic acid (actually it inhibits PDK which inhibits PDH; by inhibiting PDK you have more PDH and PDH actually converts pyruvate into acetyl coA).
http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/abstract/175/6/913
http://www.cancercell.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1535610806003722
http://www.cancercell.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1535610806001450