Canberra Skeptics Argos 6: August 2003


N.B.

The next function: Monday 11th August

The Wig and Pen night reverts to the Wig and Pen next Monday at 7.45pm. Come along and there's a chance you can still sneak in an early bird registration for the Convention if you hand it in on Monday and date your cheque the 10th! Also hear the outcome of the great homoeopathy debate at the U3A forum held on 15th July. Stewart Ward, a homeopath, trotted out some fairly unconvincing arguments that his craft really was the goods, including the usual one about Queen Elizabeth II believing it works, so surely there must be something in it. For this reason I have nominated her for the Bent Spoon Award (see below).

Forthcoming events

Answers in genesis - a reminder

As advised in the previous Argos, Answers in Genesis is coming to town. Dr Tas Walker's is conducting a half-day seminar on Sat 16 Aug (2:30-9pm) at the Woden Valley Alliance Church, 81 Namatjira Dr, Waramanga.

The Young Skeptics' Cartoon Competition

Schools in Canberra have been sent flyers about the Cartoon Competition and info about it is posted on the Convention and Australian Science Festival websites. There have been no enquiries so far and the deadline for entries is the 15th August. Any young skeptics out there - sharpen your wits and your pencil and knock up a cartoon on a sceptical topic and you'll have a good chance of winning a prize for both yourself and your school. And it would look good on your Curriculum Vitae too.

The Young Skeptics Forum --- Fri 22nd Aug, 1.00-4.00pm

We have a few registrants for this to date. Lots more would be nice. If you have kids, perhaps you could encourage the teachers at their school. Attached is a flyer for that purpose.

Open Forum on Alternative Remedies --- Fri 22nd Aug, 7.00-10.30pm

We have at last managed to recruit a speaker to represent the Alt Med industry. Ms Val Johanson, Executive Director of the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia will talk on how the CHC protects the consumer, in a manner of speaking. Prof Bob Montgomery, Peter Bowditch and I will also speak, and possibly an Alt Med practitioner.

The Convention --- Sat/Sun August 23rd-24th

Your Committee has been hard at work organising a two-day feast for the mind. Register by Sunday 10th on the Skeptics website and you will save money.

It has also been organising a feast for the gourmet -- the dinner, and Barry Williams in full flight, on Sat 23rd are not to be missed; but numbers have to be finalised soon so unless you extract the appropriate digit and apply it to the key board (or pen and cheque book) soon, you will miss out.

There have been some minor changes to the program. Keep an eye on the website for the final version.

Volunteers

The committee will welcome anyone who volunteers to help on the day. You will not be expected to miss sessions.

Bent Spoon Award

The 2003 Bent Spoon Award will be announced at the Dinner at the Convention. Nominations can be made through the Australian Skeptics website. There has been much behind the scenes discussion on who of those so far nominated should be short-listed. On July 22nd I e-mailed the following to "Spoon"

I do not regard Pan Pharmaceuticals as a worthy nominee.  Having taught Good Manufacturing Practice to a generation of Victorian Pharmacists I am of the opinion that this fiasco was just another example of a pharmaceutical manufacturer not doing the right thing and getting caught.  If, for example, it had been Ph*rm*ci* that had been closed down for 6 months for not effectively mixing the powder used in the manufacture of S*m*c , would anyone have nominated them for the BSA?  

I am tempted to nominate, in support of Simon Jarman (see 2002 nominations) as joint recipients, the Sydney Museum/Prof Mike Archer plus the Australian Skeptics for (unbelievably) supporting a project to clone the Thylacine DNA. Anyone acquainted with the problems involved in cloning sheep nuclei (in sheep) will appreciate the problems involved in cloning an extinct species using just extracted DNA that is probably fragmented (and to some extent chemically altered to boot) into the egg of an unrelated host.  The Thylacine cloning project is about 60 years ahead of its time.  One does not need to attempt to do it to conclude it will not succeed for technical reasons.  But then I would be treading on some big toes a little too close to home for comfort ? and backing losers is not my practice.

Last week I spoke at a U3A forum on homoeopathy.  Quite predictably the homoeopath who was presenting the case for homoeopathy trotted out, as evidence that it is a Good Thing, the fact that Queen Elizabeth II of England (and Australia) is a believer in this stuff.  So instead I nominate The Queen of Australia for continuing to use homoeopathic remedies herself, and, more especially, for using them on her horses (which clearly have no understanding of placebo effects).  Now that would be hot news!!

Strangely this nomination did not appear on the Bent Spoon site.  So last Thursday I sent the following to Spoon:

I nominate The Queen of Australia for continuing to use homoeopathic remedies herself, and, more especially, for using them on her horses (which clearly have no understanding of placebo effects). The Bent Spoon has in the past been awarded to individuals who have had a much more tenuous connection with Australia than Queen Elizabeth II --- our head of State.

This has now been posted on the Web site. Any local skeptics who are not closet royalists and who feel this nomination has merit might care to take a couple of minutes to lend their support by letting Spoon know (via www.skeptics.com.au).

News from the Committee

The Committee meets fortnightly and organization of the 2003 National Skeptics' Convention continues to be the main item on the agenda. Its numbers have been thinned by the loss of Jennie Louise to Brisbane and the resignation of Arno Mikli through pressure of other commitments. Arno has been associated with the Skeptics for a number of years and will be well known to many in Canberra. We thank Arno for his many contributions and wish him well in his future endeavours. Both his and Jennie's enthusiasm and experience will be sorely missed.

Any members of Canberra Skeptics who would like to be considered for cooption onto the Committee should make the appropriate noises.

The next meeting of the Committee will be on 11 August. Please contact me by email, or phone me or Vicki on 6296 4555 if there are any issues you want raised at the meeting, if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list or if you know of someone who might wish to be added to it.

Ramblings from the President: Herbal remedies - the stuff of death.

A number of years ago I read in the Melbourne Age about a chap who died of a surfeit of apple pips. Not from an attack of appendicitis, but from cyanide poisoning. It appeared he had a passion for them and collected a whole heap and ate them in one sitting. Ho Ho Ho I hear you Ho - another urban myth ? or is it? A pharmacist (and a Quaker to boot) who made his fortune in Sydney, poisoned his mistress in 1845 with cyanide and claimed, in his unsuccessful defence, her death was caused by apple pip consumption (Miller, G [2002] The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 269; pp905-907).

Now many fruits have seed kernels containing cyanogenic compounds. Apricots and almonds are good examples. Their seeds contain nitrilosides such as amygdalin. The cyanide in amygdalin is present as mandelonitrile - an unstable addition compound of cyanide with benzaldehyde - attached to two sugar (glucose) molecules through the cyanide bit. The flavour of marzipan, which is made from ground almonds, is due to benzaldehyde and its bitterness to the cyanide.

Anticancer activity was first ascribed to amygdalin in the 1840s, Amygdalin was rediscovered in the 1920s by Dr Ernst Krebs Sr who was looking for flavours for boot-leg liquor. A synthetic version of amygdalin lacking one of the glucose molecules (laevo-mandelonitrile-beta-glucuronoside) was dubbed Laetrile in the early 1950s by his son "Dr" Ernst Krebs Jr, who promoted it as a cancer cure. In the early 1970s, after its claim to be a cancer cure was banned in some US states, Krebs Jr started calling it vitamin B17. This compound is still peddled as a cancer preventative (or even a cure) by some Naturopaths.

As far as I am aware amygdalin has never been shown to be a micronutrient essential for normal health in humans or animals, so calling it a vitamin is misleading. Indeed, its purpose in nature is to protect the seed from microbial, fungal and insect attack. And any bird (or human) that cracks open and eats too many at one sitting is likely to end up as a heap of compost for the benefit of any seeds that survived ingestion.

The "science" behind its supposed selective action on cancer cells runs along the following lines. To release the cyanide and benzaldehyde, the sugars in amygdalin need to be hydrolysed off by beta-glycosidase - an enzyme that cancer cells seem to contain in abundance. Normal cells are supposed to lack this enzyme and are anyway protected by an enzyme rhodanase, which converts the cyanide to thiocyanate, a form eliminated in the urine. It can be shown that cancer cells in tissue culture are killed by Laetrile, while normal cells are not. Hence ipso facto Laetrile is a cancer cure.

Laetrile taken by mouth appears to survive the acid of the stomach. However in the gut, the microflora and cells of the gut mucosa hydrolyse off the sugar and the mandelonitrile decomposes, and the released cyanide and benzaldehyde are absorbed. The cyanide complexes with ferric iron in pigments involved in the energy producing system of cells. (The ability of cyanide to complex iron is why it is poisonous and also why it's so useful for removing rust stains from clothes.) The benzaldehyde, a reactive compound, is oxidised to benzoic acid and excreted in the urine. Large ingested doses of Laetrile can cause poisoning in humans. (See Harry Menz's contribution to Qakatak for references to cases of human poisoning by Laetrile: http://www.skeptics.com.au/features/qakatak/visbookc.htm). So Laetrile broken down in the gut will not reach cancer cells in the body and be preferentially hydrolysed by them. This is why proponents of its use in cancer therapy recommend the intravenous form be used (at least initially).

Several trials by the National Cancer Institute in the US have found Laetrile to be without selective therapeutic effect in the treatment of cancer. Proponents of the use of Laetrile claim that these studies were flawed and there is a conspiracy to prevent its promotion as an anti-cancer drug. They argue that, as it is a natural product and not patentable, the drug companies, anxious to promote their own (patented) drugs instead, are behind this conspiracy

In a detailed review (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html) of the Laetrile story, Dr Benjamin Wilson writes:  In 1977, a U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) held hearings on Laetrile ..Senator Kennedy concluded that the Laetrile leaders were "slick salesmen who would offer a false sense of hope" to cancer patients." Dr Wilson continues:   As long as there remain crippling and fatal diseases, there will undoubtedly be individuals eager to offer "alternatives" to scientific treatment and large numbers of desperate individuals willing to purchase them. The Laetrile phenomenon started with a pharmacist-physician who developed one concoction after another for the treatment of serious diseases, especially cancer. It continued with his son, a self-imagined scientist, who spent many years in college but failed to earn any graduate degree. A man who earned his fortune from gun-running and a catholic newspaper columnist promoted it as a persecuted drug that cured cancer. A cadre of John Birch Society members saw the repression of Laetrile as a sinister plot against their basic freedoms. After it was dubbed "vitamin B-17," an army of health food devotees promoted Laetrile, along with vitamins and diet, as nature's answer to cancer. After peaking in the late 1970s, the "Laetrile Movement" ran out of steam in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, the NCI study, the death of Steve McQueen, and other unfavorable publicity. But as the Laetrile fantasy faded, its prime movers added many other "miracle cures" to their arsenal and added AIDS, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and multiple sclerosis to the list of diseases they claim to treat. Although they appear to speak with sincerity, they still fail to sponsor the type of research which could persuade the scientific world that anything they offer is effective.

Unfortunately, with the development of the Internet, it has become easy to evade laws designed to protect consumers from "slick salesmen offering false hope to the vulnerable". Dr Stephen Barrett (http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/News/apricotseeds.html) reports on the prosecution of an organization called Christian Brothers and its President, Jason Vale, for unsolicited spamming of America Online customers. Vale has repeatedly ignored Court Orders closing him down and is currently in jail pending a case against him for Criminal Contempt (http://www.quackwatch.org/02ConsumerProtection/FDAActions/vale.html).

Our TGA classifies Laetrile as a systemic poison, and it is illegal to supply or sell Laetrile in Australia without a TGA permit. A Google search of Australian pages on "Vitamin B17" threw up six sponsored links, one advertising Laetrile tablets 500mg "quality cancer treatment excellent prices MD advisory". The latter site advertises the injectable form of Laetrile which is not allowed to be sold in the US but can be bought from Mexico. A San Diego phone number is provided "for advice".

Australian sites revealed included one (Beacon Media) directed at Christian Schools, Sunday Schools and Home Education, which had a testimonial in its Health section from a melanoma patient reporting Vit B17 as being responsible for disappearance of a number of symptoms. Another site states "treating Cancer with a combination of B17 and pancreatic enzymes as part of a total nutritional therapy has and can rid the body of cancer" and implies Laetrile is nontoxic by stating "If you choose a non toxic nutritional treatment for cancer and you wish to incorporate Laetrile into it, treatment in Australia gives you 2 options." The site advertises apricot kernels, whole and shelled, for sale. It provides information on how Laetrile/Vit B17 can be imported, how a permit from the TGA can be applied for (the relevant forms can even be downloaded from this site!), and how doctors prepared to administer it can be contacted at a clinic in Queensland and elsewhere. It advises of a site in the UK where Laetrile can be bought by mail order with or without a permit (and claims 80% of the latter will get through Australian Customs).

Amygdalin is only one of a great number of plant poisons which have been in use as medicines over the centuries. Some, such as colchicine from the Autumn Crocus (as Colgout), hyoscine from the deadly nightshade (in Travacalm) and digitalis from the foxglove (as Digoxin) to name just three, have found a use clinically but, because of their toxicity, must be administered in carefully controlled amounts. If not done so, as Pan Pharmaceuticals found out the hard way, patients can be at risk.

So why is it so many believe that, if it is natural, it must be harmless and trot off to the Naturopath or Herbalist instead of a General Practitioner? And even attempt to get round the regulations introduced to protect them?  I guess, when you are desperate, you will believe anything.

Register (it's free) now on 6296 4555 for the Forum on Alternative Remedies on the evening of Friday August 22nd when Prof Bob Montgomery, Peter Bowditch, Val Johanson (Executive Director of the Complementary Healthcare Council) and I will be airing some of these issues.

Pete Griffith

10 August 2003