Great...woo-mail...I'm sure he expects you to start plugging the product right away.

Posted by: PalMD | July 25, 2007 7:43 PM

Ah, I found out about the larger study.

It is currently underway, at the University of Calgary. It is a clinical trial has been approved by the Ethics Committee at the University of Calgary (Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board), as well as by Health Canada.

It has a website: http://www.moodstudy.com

Posted by: S.o.G. | July 26, 2007 6:29 AM

Care to give a link that goes somewhere other than a site recruiting for this "study"?

Posted by: PalMD | July 26, 2007 9:26 AM

"Care to give a link that goes somewhere other than a site recruiting for this "study"?"

Um, I don't know anything more about it. I'm not connected with it in any way. I merely found it because I was curious.

But now I'm really curious. Why the scare quotes around study? It's a clinical double-blind study, being supervised by a research scientist at a University, it's purpose and methodology duly approved by the University and by Health Canada.

Why the scare quotes? I don't get it.

I totally get mocking obvious quackery. And if there is something inherently quacky about the hypothesis -- that violent mood swings may indicate that the biology or neurochemistry of the individual is such that a diet that would provide sufficient vitamins and minerals for an ordinary individual results in deficiencies that contribute to those violent mood swings -- I would like to know what it is. On the face of it, it does not seem like an inherently quacky hypothesis. There is some known circumstantial evidence to support it -- the prison studies, the thiamine study, the selenium study.

Why should it not be studied?

Why should the person studying it be subjected to ridicule for daring to study it?

Why should it be implied their study is not a "real" study?

If you have some good reasons why the idea is inherently quacky, I would genuinely like to know what they are. I'm not trying to pick a fight or say you are wrong. You seem to have information that I, a layperson, do not. I would like to know what it is so that I can add it to my quackery-detecting toolbox if I deem it reasonable.

Posted by: S.o.G. | July 27, 2007 4:33 AM

Woooo! First, the hypothesis is a little odd,but sure...test it. Just don't push the product without first conducting the study!

"Any fool with a passing understanding of cellular metabolism, recognizes that you are what you digest (not what you eat). I suggest you do some reading on how the human body manufactures peptides and their role in emotional states and how cells reproduce and favor the receptors on their "copies" to which they are most exposed."

Any fool! Ha! Love the logical argument! "You are what you digest." Sounds plausible...until you think it through. Food provides energy and basic molecules for constructing and maintaining a body. Amino acids, carbs, lipids, etc. Oversimplifying metabolism doesn't add to knowledge.

I still say "Woo unto you" until you can prove something.

Posted by: PalMD | July 27, 2007 8:06 AM

In fact Truehope is under court order to continue selling the product. In their criminal trial (not clinical) last summer the judge ruled they would be liable for criminal negligence if they stopped selling the product.

The Crown had 30 days to appeal the Provincial court ruling and chose not to. I am unaware of any civil actions against Truehope and am aware of thousands of letters of support from users of their product. (see healthcanadaexposed.com)

Most of the on line ranting about the "dangers" of the product come from the discredited "wannabe" Dr. Terry Polevoy, a yank pediatrician who for some reason runs an acne clinic in Kitchener Ontario.

In one of those ironies you couldn't possibly make up, the author of the Calgary Sun stories on the trial Licia Corbella is an advisor to Calgary based think tank, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, along with Canada's Minister of Health Tony Clement. Lest you think so what, the Manning Centre was founded by Preston Manning, twice Canada's leader of the Opposition. Mr. Manning's protege, Stephen Harper, is now our PM.

For the politicaly inclined, research your Hansards and read the debates about how the use based definition of "drug" ever became law in your food and drug acts.

Peter

Posted by: peter helgason | July 27, 2007 9:38 AM

I must admit I am unfamiliar with Canadian law...can you prove that someone is being FORCED to sell this woo?

Posted by: PalMD | July 27, 2007 1:48 PM

Had I wished to be shilling, I would have posted. Instead I sent you a personal email, thinking that given your thoughts in your post on "augmented cognition" you would find it interesting. I had no commercial intent.

Without exception, every researcher who has given the protocol a fair shake has been amazed. The founders of the Truehope group are both devout Mormons (with large families) who personaly experienced the pain of mental illness in their lives. Desperation drove them to discovery after one lost his wife to suicide and their children started exhibting the symptoms (Standard psychiatric care failed them). These are people of deep faith and pure heart and I am honoured to be considered their friend. BTW, I take the product for the simple reason that it makes me a better human. I think better lateraly (do far better at NYT daily crossword)I am a better father and more patient with my kids. I work in a pressure cooker and it used to be easy to blame other for my own "stinking thinking". I now maintain a far more even keel.

Peter

btw I do tip my hat to you for not editing me out.

Posted by: peter helgason | July 27, 2007 2:57 PM

I feel tough for PaLMD. He's going to be so disappointed when his Big pharma pals finish cashing out and the field is left to BIG food and little pharma and he is forced to deal with a world where informed citizens who are sovereign over the bodies are "allowed to make informed choices"... as long as those choices are limited to ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, Roche Crop science, etc. products (all patented of course)

I suspect many of the readers of this blog are independant thinkers and see through his self serving pomposity.

I suggest any who are curious investigate exactly why the cost to market for products is so high and how the current system evolved. For any who wish to learn the evidence is easy to ferret out. K Street lobbyists in DC, funded by Wall St. financial interests in NY, sugar coated with the best Maddison Ave. pig-lipstick appliers money can buy, enforced by a bought and paid for FTC and FDA have excelled for years at crushing threats to their chokehold on the medical monopoly. Mainly with regulatory burden. "How dare you feel better, by changing your lifestyle and diet. You're not cured till I say so." In spite of this modern medicine remains at, or near the top of the heap when it comes to killing the public. (With the very notable exception of emergency medicine, which only a fool would want to do away with.)

As a heads up, I'll let you know that Canada's top health bureaucrat is an expert in intellectual property and his new assistant is an expert in international agricultural trade policy. The future is easy to read if you know what signs to look for...biotech anyone?

Peter

Posted by: phelgason | July 27, 2007 6:30 PM

Your argument coming back around to big pharma being evil and screwing over the average man does not help your case. I see this all the time on science blogs, it's generally a symptom of being a nut. I'm not saying you are a nut but spouting the whole "big pharma is evil" and they are specifically out to ruin normal peoples lives with misinformation and lies does not help your cause. You sound to suffer from the "if it's not a perfect system it must be wrong" failed logic when it comes to pharma. I'm sorry, but the human body really IS more complex than "you are what you digest" and that is why finding drugs that work is so difficult. If you don't think that the human body is more complex than this then it would guess you are just living in a dream world. Take some medical classes or something to see what the reality is instead of spreading naive thinking on a blog.

Posted by: apy | July 28, 2007 9:56 AM

Well, I guess it was too much to hope that Peter would either come out and admit he advertises woo, or try to get some legitimate evidence. I posted my mini-critique at my place to avoid stealing bytes from our generous host here.

Posted by: PalMD | July 28, 2007 5:39 PM

I agree 100% that the product should be properly studied. As to how risky & irresponsible it was to market the product before it was studied, a couple factors need to be taken into consideration:

1) from the Discover article, it seems that the makers made a concerted effort to drum up some interest in third-party studies, but were mostly responded to by people like PalMD on autopilot. Not only that, but apparently when the two scientists who did decide to have a look published their preliminary results, they too were greeted with the sort of automatic derision exhibited by PalMD. This pisses me off almost as much as obvious snake oil shilling does.

2) No claim to secret ingredients or a special unique un-reproducible secret formula (the hallmarks of snake oil) is made by the makers.

3) All ingredients are listed, and the product is essentially a multi-vitamin with higher than normal dosages of many of the minerals. Not only do the makers not try to disguise that in any way, it is core to their theory of why they believe it works. I understand that it is nonetheless true that some of these high doses of vitamins/minerals may have adverse side effects, hence the necessity for studying both efficacy & safety.

PalMD is apparently some kind of "doctor" with some sort of "background" in what he likes to call "science."

If the scare quotes in that sentence offend you, PalMD, you might want to rethink your use of them to characterize a study being performed by a respected researcher at a University in full compliance with both their University's and Health Canada's standards for clinical studies.

Posted by: S.o.G. | July 30, 2007 6:22 AM

I take no offense at your scare quotes. You don't know who I am, so you have no reason to trust me beyond what I write, and I'm willing to be judged on that.

Snake-oil doesn't have to have secret ingredients, at least by my definition of woo. It just has to be marketed to do something as yet unproven. If this were 30 years ago, and someone tried to sell me beta blockers for my CHF patients, I'd tell them no way, prove it. Well, they did.
Now it's your turn.

Posted by: PalMD | July 30, 2007 3:04 PM

It wasn't a 'calming effect' - the guinea pigs in question were so overcome by toxicity that they were practically comatose.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 30, 2007 8:59 PM

I have a hypothesis for why you chose to sneer not only at the purported snake oil but at the idea of studying it and at the study itself: because your skeptical response is not a true skeptical response -- arrived at by examining a claim and the evidence for it and coming to a conclusion about whether the claim is worthy of further study by using your existing knowledge and some critical thinking -- but rather just kneejerk skepticism. An opportunity to enjoy a shared experience with your peer group by mocking something and goading the quacks who come out of the woodwork to defend it.

Now this would be perfectly fine if the claim were something that could easily be rejected prima facie -- shoe magnets for example. In this case, however, the claim can not be rejected prima facie, was developed by analogy to an effect known to exist in animals, and has substantial anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that would seem to warrant its being studied further.

It's a shame, because in many other comments of yours that I've seen you come across as quite intelligent & dedicated.

In my opinion, kneejerk skepticism can sometimes be nearly as deleterious as quackery with respect to retarding progress. This is a good example of that: where two real scientists, with real credentials, did real preliminary (ie, case series) examinations of a claim, published, and were responded to with such a wave of kneejerk skepticism -- based purely, so far as I am able to determine using google, on the source of the claim they were examining -- that they were reluctant to be involved in studying it further.

Luckily, it seems that despite the reactions of the PalMDs of the world, one of those real scientists has decided to go ahead and study the claim further, so it looks like it will get examined more deeply and we will eventually get to find out whether or not the crazy people who took Health Canada to court all the way up to a Supreme Court decision to ensure continued access to the product were doing so on the strength of something more than the placebo effect.

Posted by: S.o.G. | July 31, 2007 4:32 AM

"You keep responding to me like I'm a shill for the product."
--Because you are acting like it.
I'm not. I also believe the product ought to be studied before it is sold.
Good. So continue to make that explicit.

I'm not trying to convince you to support an unstudied product.

I'm trying to get you to explain why you feel the need to ridicule the idea of studying it, ridicule the study being done, and ridicule the scientists doing the study.
-Im ridiculing the whole idea...a product being aggressively promoted without existing evidence. It should be taken off the market, shelved, and not see the light of day until real evidence exists.
The hostility comes in because it separates ill people from real treatment and from their money.

Can you please answer that for me? WHY?

Posted by: PalMD | July 31, 2007 2:03 PM

"Meanwhile, websites are selling this stuff, pretending you are joining some sort of study. I'm pretty sure it's criminal down here beneath the 48th."

this is a lie. The website is not selling the product. It is recruiting for the study. People in the study are not asked to pay to be in the study.

Why do you persistently refuse to distinguish between the marketing of the product, and a research scientist at a University studying it?

"-Im ridiculing the whole idea...a product being aggressively promoted without existing evidence."

this is also a lie. You have, and are, explicitly ridiculing a research scientist with no connection to the marketing of the product, and her University of Calgary & Health Canada approved study.

Not only ridiculing her, but trying to make the absurd and offensive claim that her website is a front to sell the product.

You are offering no reason why. I understand very clearly the reasons for not marketing products that have not been studied for their efficacy & safety and I agree with them.

What offends me is that now here there IS A SCIENTIST DOING A STUDY and it is that that you are ridiculing & dismissing. WHY?

Is it because she's a woman?
Is it because the University is in Canada, ie, a furrin' country?
Is it because the hypothesis she is studying did not come from a large pharmaceutical company?

What is your actual critical-thinking based reason for your derision of the study of the product? Not of the fact that originally the product was marketed without being studied -- I've said about 50 times already I understand and agree with that. What is your evidence-based reasoning behind rejecting and ridiculing the fact that IT IS BEING STUDIED now????????

Posted by: S.o.G. | August 1, 2007 5:37 AM

I should mention that to be honest my initial instinct about the moodstudy website was the same as yours, that it would be a front for selling the product.

However, unlike you, rather than blindly listening to that instinct -- which is purely an emotional response if you are honest enough to admit that to yourself -- I relied instead on investigating. I did a whois. I did a google. I read through the site. And I contacted the author of the site with a question about the study and received an answer from Bonnie Kaplan, the research scientist doing the study, from her official Calgary Health Region email address.

Doing this allowed me to have an information-based opinion about what the moodstudy site is. It is in fact a site to recruit participants in an independent, officially sanctioned clinical trial.

That you did none of this but felt comfortable posting in a public place your gut feeling about what the site was as though it were fact tells me a lot about you, and confirms my opinion of you as more of a kneejerker than a critical thinker.

Posted by: S.o.G. | August 1, 2007 6:28 AM

I was curious about the idea that a judge found that Truehope was "legally obligated" to continue selling the product after being cited by Health Canada, as mentioned earlier in the thread by Peter Helgason

Here is the actual court decision: http://www.truehope.com/_media/TruehopeCourtDecision.pdf (this is from Truehope's site, but google amply confirms it's veracity)

The "legally obligated" idea refers to the fact that the judge found that Truehope could "rely on the defence of necessity", ie, that they could not stop selling the product despite being ordered to do so by Health Canada because of people whose continued health depended on access to the product.

(please note, I am not stating that people's health depended on the product as my own opinion. It was the defence used by Truehope, and the judge found in favour of it)

Posted by: S.o.G. | August 1, 2007 6:54 AM

I'm not sure what Soggy thinks I said. I never said that it shouldn't be studied.
I did follow the links (perhaps different from the ones you followed), and found the product being sold, with the deceptive tag line of calling it a study. I suspect that that site is not the same as the one attached to an actual clinical study.
I'm sure you and I agree on many things, but are just passing by each other on our comments.
The basic point I make is that this product should be available ONLY to researchers, and anyone else selling it with health claims should be ashamed.

Posted by: PalMD | August 1, 2007 8:18 AM

The point I think SoG is missing is that it's being sold NOW, before the proper evidence is available. Do you see why that's a problem, SoG?

That fact, taken in conjunction with the claims of conspiracy, name checking of ancient philosophers, and allegations of being an idea too far ahead of its time, means that it scores pretty high on the crackpot scale without even considering the company and product naming.

Posted by: Mr. Gunn | August 3, 2007 11:48 AM

Well after reading the many comments upon this e-mail I have been convinced of my theory about why chronic disease is getting worse not better. The lack of open-mindedness to approaches that may be very non-invasive and help others is quite appalling. Every human has the right to freedom and it is highly arrogant to believe that the small brain that you operate from could possibly be more superior than any other brain on the planet and that only your fixed view of how a study must be performed is the way. Do you even realize who wrote your text books? Why don't you spend the better parts of your days looking into who stands to gain by certain pieces of information becoming mainstream and who stands to gain by you vehemently fighting something you have not been trained to understand.
This is by no-means a put down or intended to be so. I have spent the better parts of my days like yourselves conducting research and if you look at the top of the information ladder you will see that there is mountains of information on both sides of this debate. My next question then would have to be...Who has the most to lose or gain.
Whenever information is put out one has to open his view and look to all sides of the arguments to see not just what facts are presented but if the facts are even true or if someone had a reason for facts to be presented in such a way as to benefit from people believing it.

Since this is well-being and health we are talking about in the medical field how about we stop seeing others as a chance to prove to the world that we are right and work to find common solutions that are working for patients.

Posted by: Richard Reiffer | January 29, 2009 3:10 AM