The China Study demonstrated pretty conclusively...

Conclusively? A book that's been charitably described as "a tower of vegan propaganda"?

Do you know any vegans who have died of cancer?

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Do you know any vegans who have died of cancer?

I don't know any vegans. Do you know if any Chinese person has died of cancer?

China Daily reports that 300 of every 100k residents of Shanghai report cancer but it doesn't say if any of them have died.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

According to this information, the incidence of breast cancer in China is 18.7 per 100,000.  The death rate from breast cancer is 5.5 per 100,000.  Thus I guess the incidence of other types of cancer must be somewhere in the range of 200 to 280 per 100,000.  One would assume that a proportional number of Chinese die of their various forms of cancer.

On a side note, I find it rather touching somehow that you have found THE ANSWER to cancer.  I only hope that you never, ever are touched by cancer.  I'm certain that diet does play a role in whether you'll suffer from cancer.  But then so does heredity and being around chemicals in the work place or a water supply which has been fouled from industrial waste.  By the way, I have been close friends with a number of vegetarians and one Vegan in my life.  The Vegan and most of the vegetarians are alive.  The vegetarians who died did so a). from an auto accident, b). stroke, and c). prostate cancer.  

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Thanks dude, I'm glad I have, too. You don't know who I've known with cancer so you're concern is a little hollow but--to borrow your word--touching nonetheless. Vegetarianism is a far cry from veganism but for the record, I'm not a proponent of either. I was responding to Ken's highly incorrect swipe that the china study pushes veganism in some way. If I were going to recommend a diet for someone to explore it would be akin to that which joshv describes but everybody's needs are different.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Actually there are recent studies that indicate that carbohydrate intake is linked to cancer, there are some very promising animal models that actually saw tumor regression on a low/no carb diet, and researchers are starting to explore ketogenic diets as a form of cancer treatment in humans with some promising results so far.  http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/users/jyelon/lowcarb.med/topic8.html

There are compelling microbiological reasons to believe that simple carbs are a powerful promoter of tumor growth, as almost all tumors switch to a very inefficient form of metabolize that can only burn glucose.  If you cut out carbs from the diet, blood sugar levels drop dramatically, and tumors can cells literally starve for energy, because they can't run on ketone bodies.

Interestingly, if you eat excess protein, your body can turn that into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis.  Thus the ideal ketogenic diet is high fat, adequate protein, and low carb.

As for "THE CHINA STUDY", data based on retrospective population studies is some of the worst stuff from which to draw conclusions, in fact almost any conclusion can be made, because it's impossible to control for all variables.  Worse than that, you will only be able to observe correlations.  We humans love to see causation in every correlation, but wishing it don't make it so.  So you don't know if the kids are coming down with liver cancer because of protein consumption, or because of the chemicals in their water, or because of a spike in ice cream sales halfway around the world.

Eh, that's how anybody who I know that kicked cancer did it.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Actually there are recent studies that indicate that carbohydrate intake

Does liquor had a lot of carbs?  Not beer...but things like scotch et al?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Assuming the study is rigorous, how do you know that diet doesn't work only for people of Chinese descent?

I was talking about 5 year survival rates.  They are next to useless as a statistical measure of much of anything other than improved diagnostic capabilities and earlier diagnosis.  

There may be other problems with the statistics quoted in the study if the methods used to derived these statistics did not controlling for socio-economic status, as others have noted.  We know people who have lower socio-economic status get sicker more frequently, and die younger - whether white or black.  The question to answer is, do blacks and whites with similar SES and access to the same level of health care have significantly significantly disease rates or life expectancy.

So you argue that by time Medicare kicks in, lower socio-economic status would lower life expectancy even if health care was identical thereafter? So major disparities in treatment between blacks and whites proved by these studies gets explained in your book by fact that blacks will have shorter life expectancy anyway so why bother to give them access to things like chemotherapy or radiation treatment? Or do you just argue that when blacks receive lower quality medical care, burden should be on them to prove that it doesn't amount to "harmless error"?

You seem to enjoy putting words in my mouth.  I am saying that IF you want to do a proper comparison, the only difference between your cohorts should be race.  If these studies have other variables which are not controlled for, then there may be other explanations for the data that cannot be scientifically excluded.

What part of

"Whites were 19% more likely than blacks to receive surgical removal of lung cancer tumors, 27% more likely to get chemotherapy after surgery for rectal cancer, 24% more likely to get chemotherapy for colon cancer, 7% more likely to get radiation treatment after breast cancer lumpectomy, and 11% more likely to get surgical or radiation treatment for prostate cancer"

provides improper comparison? You reject five-year survival statistics as meaningless? Fine. But what about these statistics? What additional information do you need after you consider that everyone in this study got their medical care paid for by government, but one group got shafted while another got best care money could buy? You don't believe there might be any correlation between getting best care available and getting inferior care? Would you want to be denied surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy for cancer while patient next to you in line got them, because you happened to belong to wrong ethnic or racial group? Would you want to have to prove that being denied best care posed any special problem before being given level of care other people took for granted? How would you feel if someone explained that there might be other scientific explanations for why you were getting screwed and demanded that you prove otherwise?

Sentence that read "You don't believe there might be any correlation between getting best care available and getting inferior care?" should have read "You don't believe there might be any correlation between getting best care available and surviving your bout with cancer?"

As far as I am aware, I've made no specific claims about this particular research.

As for cancer treatment.  I am not aware of any scientific evidence that would lead me to believe that people who are treated for cancer live any longer than those who are not.  There are a few types of cancer that are very treatable using surgery, but on average, I think most people will live longer if they are never tested or treated for cancer.

"How would you feel if someone explained that there might be other scientific explanations for why you were getting screwed and demanded that you prove otherwise?"

I wasn't aware that "feelings" should have anything to do with science.  But perhaps you'd like to live in a world where researchers regularly fudge their results because they are worried that they might offend a particular group.  Oh wait, we already live in that world.  

"Specific types of cancer that are very treatable using surgery," like prostate cancer, one of those forms that were part of this study?

Do you claim that this study was "fudged" and that study in 1992 was "fudged"? Do you have any evidence to prove that, or have you invoked "feelings" to arrive at your conclusions?

Your point seems to be that since most cancer treatments accomplish nothing, getting worse treatment may actually be better for black people. Does that also mean that in terms of diseases which you wouldn't doubt were treatable that getting worse treatment might also be better? Or do you claim blacks only get shafted in medical care when it comes to cancer? Oh, I remember, this study was only about cancer, so you can claim blacks probably get medical care just as good as whites when it really matters. No wonder American blacks think so many whites really harbour racist sentiments when disingenuous arguments come so naturally.

Are you aware that a large percentage of men over the age of 80 who died of some cause other than prostate cancer, have prostate cancer?  Prostate cancer is one of the least aggressive cancers.  If you get it later in life, it's not likely you are going to die of it, it's that slow.  Additionally, testing positive on a PSA screening test earlier in life doesn't tell us what kind of prostate cancer you will develop, aggressive or slow, or whether or not you even have prostate cancer.

Counter balance this with the effects of treatment - death (yes, people die in surgery and from infections contracted in the hospital), erectile dysfunction, increased risk of cardiovascular disease on some treatments, and incontinence and you will understand why "watchful waiting" is included in the standard of care for prostate cancer.  Basically this a fancy way of saying "do nothing".

Check out the following:  http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/167/18/1944

"Ten-year specific survival was 83% (95% confidence interval [CI], 73%-93%), 75% (95% CI, 67%-83%), and 72% (95% CI, 66%-80%) for patients who underwent surgery, radiotherapy, and watchful waiting, respectively (P < .001)."

Note that although surgery appears to have the highest survival rate, it's confidence interval has significant overlap with the confidence interval of "watchful waiting" - doing nothing.  So this study failed to find a statistically significant difference between doing nothing and surgery.

Further we have "At 10 years, patients treated with radiotherapy or watchful waiting had a significantly increased risk of death from prostate cancer compared with patients who underwent prostatectomy (multiadjusted hazard ratio, 2.3 [95% CI, 1.2-4.3] and 2.0 [95% CI, 1.1-3.8], respectively). "

Again, notice the confidence interval, it goes down to 1.2 and 1.1 on the low end, this is a weakly significant result.  But the important fact here is that they don't quote overall mortality, presumably because there was no statistically significant difference.  Yes, if you don't have the cancer cut out, you are more likely to die of prostate cancer, but if you have it cut out, apparently it ups the the risk of your dying of something else.  Or maybe people die of so many things other than prostate cancer that those numbers swamp the slight increase in prostate cancer deaths in the untreated.

As for your other statements.  It's clear that increased access to health care is not always a positive thing.  The UK spends half of what we do in the US, per capita on health care, and their citizens have a very similar life expectancy when socio-economic factors are controlled for.   I honestly believe that a clean water supply and effective sewage systems, improved infant/childhood nutrition, antibiotics, and advances in trauma surgery are responsible for almost all the gains in life expectancy in the last 100 years.  The rest of our bulging health care apparatus does save lives, but at a significant cost, both in money, and in lives.  You risk infection just going in to a modern hospital.  You also have a significant risk of death due to mistreatment and misdiagnoses.

Now, would all this justify racial discrimination in the distribution of health care? Clearly not.  But if blacks are culturally predisposed to avoiding the doctor, for whatever reasons, I don't think it's doing them much harm.

I'll ask you this though.  As the people in the linked studies had similar health care benefits, how do you explain the differences in treatment?  Are thousands of white doctors across the US joining together in a massive conspiracy against the black man?

Fascinating final question ("As the people in the linked studies had similar health care benefits, how do you explain the differences in treatment?"). Rather than respond directly, I will quote "Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, [who] opined, 'This sort of thing has been a problem in the United States for a long, long time. I think individual racism likely accounts for a small amount of it, but not a large amount. What I would refer to as institutional or societal racism accounts for a much larger component of it.'" He thinks "institutional or societal racism" accounts for differences in treatment, since he can't believe that "individual racism" on part of doctors accounts for more than "a small amount of it". What do you think he was trying to say? Do you think him so obviously ignorant that you can safely ignore his opinion?

As for prostate cancer, you might find Rudy Giuliani's rap interesting, since it shows what can be done with statistics. (He claims survival rates for prostate cancer in United Kingdom were 44%, that survival rates were higher in US because of superior health care, which claim you strongly reject.)

But just to make sure we understand one another, your contention has been that increased access to health care doesn't help any and that black people should consider themselves lucky they don't have access as good as white people. You don't practice Christian Science, do you?

Let's pretend for one moment that joshv and you were absolutely correct in claiming that survival rate should be considered utterly meaningless statistic. Key portion of story says

"Whites were 19% more likely than blacks to receive surgical removal of lung cancer tumors, 27% more likely to get chemotherapy after surgery for rectal cancer, 24% more likely to get chemotherapy for colon cancer, 7% more likely to get radiation treatment after breast cancer lumpectomy, and 11% more likely to get surgical or radiation treatment for prostate cancer."

Now, if you argue that surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments don't do anything for cancer, that entire cancer "industry" amounts to scam that doesn't save any lives, then these disparities in treatment may truly be meaningless. If you would reject any surgical, chemotherapy, or radiation option if you had cancer, maybe blacks have no reason to gripe in your book. But if you would let someone perform surgery to remove tumour (prostate cancer, breast cancer, or otherwise), or if you would accept chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer, then blacks who get denied these options because they were black get not only screwed but set up for early deaths.
 

"Let's pretend for one moment that joshv and you were absolutely correct"

It should be obvious we are.

"blacks who get denied these options because they were black "

Are people being denied because they are black?

That was precisely what cancer doctors concluded based on study. But who can be sure of anything? Maybe Up is Down. Maybe sky could seem green if you want to believe it badly enough. Based on your second remark, It should be obvious at this point that you intended to be intellectually dishonest, and that your argument about five-year survival statistics was made in bad faith, to obscure what should have been obvious, that black people get screwed by medical system.

"That was precisely what cancer doctors concluded based on study"

Where did they conclude blacks were being denied care because they were black? That's not what the article you linked to said. The study discovered "racial disparities in cancer care", which is caused by "enduring educational and socioeconomic inequities".

" Based on your second remark, It should be obvious at this point that you intended to be intellectually dishonest, and that your argument about five-year survival statistics was made in bad faith"

Maybe those medical researches I quoted are secretly members of the KKK? Now that you mention it, I think I saw them at a rally.

Pretend you didn't read quote in story. Pretend whatever you like. Sell your poison package to your friends at Stormfront because I don't buy it. But why deny it anyway? If white people have more power and hate black people like you do, why not just fly that flag and admit it, come out of closet and accept things as you want them to be? Because you still feel need to pretend that people who abuse power to harm others belong on same moral plane as (or even higher moral place than) people that they victimise? Because "black racists" would then be seen to have better reasons to hate people like you than you have to hate people like them? So what?

That response was a bit unhinged, don't you think?

You were born in Belarus and live in Canada, I don't think you know anything about the plight of the American Negro.

True enough. We treat people equally up north (except for First Nations, who claim huge tracts of land that we still want to steal from them). All I had to go on was your media and old Soviet propaganda. If I had any doubts, though, you have confirmed that your media has it right. As for old Soviet propaganda, even stopped clock shows right time once or twice per day.

"You were born in Belarus and live in Canada, I don't think you know anything about the plight of the American Negro."

Dangit...I tried looking up the class of fallacious argument to which your comment belongs but I didn't have any luck.  Can you help me out?

However, in the spirit of things I will play.  I call you out Gordon.  How much do you, a white American male born in the 20th century, know about the "plight of the American Negro"?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Fallacious? He has no personal experience with American race relations. Growing up in Minsk I doubt it was in the papers much, either.

"How much do you, a white American male born in the 20th century, know about the "plight of the American Negro"?

Pounds, baby, pounds.