Posted 7/21/2012 10:46 PM (GMT 0)
This article is kinda a rambling piece which meandered all the way from “test of replicability” to “decline/regression to the mean.” Today’s medical studies employ full-time statisticians to avoid the majority of these problems. The advice I have passed on (don't confuse my advice as "medical advice"; it's just common sense advice, I'm not a doctor) to others regarding this general topic is to “ look for the accumulating mountains of evidence .” The effectiveness of pomegranate to stop or slow prostate cancer progression is a great example of this . Are we going to ever have the gold-standard large, well-designed, well-constructed, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled human clinical trial (or “RCT” for short, thank goodness; that’s a mouthful)? No, almost certainly not . Pomegranate is sold as a food, not a drug; foods have thin margins, drugs have huge mark-ups to recover the millions in cost for the FDA-approved “proof.” But all the smaller studies that have been completed continue to add-up over the years about the benefits of pomegranate. All of the major PC specialists who are treating men with PC progression are advising their patients to use it to “ help stack the odds in their favor .” They do this even though we don’t have, and won’t have a RCT. Dr Nicholas Vogelzang (PC expert and the doctor of at least several men here) has said that the results of the numerous studies, and the results of his clinical experiences from the use of pomegranate for patients wanting to slow down PC progression are “dramatic.” Yet, despite this , when newcomers visit this support site asking about pomegranate for their own PC case, they get silly comments, even from experienced (“elite”) members, like: “ Considering there is no 100% proof, I am against pomegranate .” “ Against pomegranate??” Really?? I had to reply to that comment about being “against pomegranate”; I posted:
“It is absolutely baffling why anyone could be for or against something like a medical intervention which has been shown to generate more good than harm. Does it make sense to be in favor of an appendectomy or anticoagulants? I don’t think so. Why then do people hold purely emotional views on complementary medical tactics such as pomegranate juice/extracts which (back to the original post here) has been shown to slow PC progression? Who is against slowing PC progression? When it comes to slowing PC progression, likes and dislikes should matter far less than evidence. Slowing PC progression could help thousands of men. We have been presented with the reliable, scientific evidence that pomegranate juice does just that. Who in the world is against this? (...and why in the world are you here?)”
Dr Mark Moyad (a PC specialist from Univ of Mich) made a comment similar to mine about looking for the “accumulating mountains of evidence” when he wrote this in the June 2011 PAACT newsletter (maybe he’s been reading my posts, too). This comment is important to understand for anyone wishing to read medical studies :
“Also, there is one more thing my friends that you need to know about medical studies. Never let 1 negative study that hits the media convince you that most positive studies are wrong. In other words, medical research is like a courtroom in that the majority of the evidence usually points in the direction of truth (except in that older television series “Matlock” where he always had just a little bit of evidence but still never lost a case). Once in a while you may hear a study about eating fish or fish oil and how it may not help or may hurt cancer patients, but this does NOT eliminate all the heart healthy and overall healthy benefits of fish for most people including cancer patients. In other words, 1 negative study is just that, 1 negative study. It does not represent the majority of the evidence for fish and should not be treated as fact .”
So, related to the original topic of this post, the bottom line is to look for the accumulating mountains of evidence …and apply common sense.
Post Edited (Casey59) : 7/21/2012 5:03:55 PM (GMT-6)