Canberra Skeptics Argos 8: November/December 2003

N.B. The next function: Saturday 13th December

Vicki Moss emailed all on Nov 2nd that at the AGM it was resolved that the Canberra Skeptics will henceforth hold their monthly meeting on the 13th day of each month.  This makes it easy to remember the date (of course no true Skeptic is superstitious) and results in different days of the week being involved thereby allowing those with other regular Monday night functions to come to at least some meetings.

The meeting on 13 December will not be at the Wig and Pen, but instead will be from midday on til late, at a private home. Members will know where this is; non-members are very welcome as well (a good opportunity to meet fellow skeptics!) but should email me for details on igriffit@bigpond.net.au or ring 6296 4555.  Bring your family and all appropriate life support systems, including togs (there's a heated in-door pool), and musical instruments.

Tuesday Jan 13th.  An informal social get-together at the Canberra Yacht Club from 6.30pm on.

Past events

The Annual General Meeting at the Indian Affair in Colbee Court, Philip, was followed by an excellent and inexpensive dinner and the reading of some skeptical (and other) poems by those 16 or so present.  The Committee elected at the AGM comprises:

President:              (Ian) Pete Griffith

Vice-Pres:             Peter Barrett

Treasurer:             David Wilson

Secretary:             Vicki Moss

Public Officer:       Vicki Moss

Members:             Jennie Louise
                              Michael O'Rourke                   
                              Borek Puza

Julie McCarron-Benson was nominated as auditor.


Anyone wishing to have a copy of the President's Report, Treasurer's Report, or Minutes please let us know.
 

David Wilson's talk at the RSL on October 16th on Peppered Mothology and Mythinformation revealed some insights on how entomologists gather information, and how creationists will grasp at any straw in an attempt to discredit Darwinism. It also revealed that PowerPoint projection has certain software requirements and that the RSL Club still has trouble communicating with its caterers.  In view of the latter, the Committee is investigating alternative venues for future lectures.


News

Welcome to new members

A warm welcome to new members: Dal(more) Clifton, Jim Foley, Tony Martin-Jones, Bob Montgomery, Laurel Morris, Barbara Newman, Allison Söderblom, Jason Söderblom
 

From the Committee

At its last meeting the Committee decided to investigate a listing in the Canberra white pages, to examine whether the Constitution needs updating, started compiling a list of potential speakers and other activities for 2004 and possible venues for these, and voted to donate the Branch's spare The Skeptic subscriptions to the ACT Library Service.


The Committee will meet on Saturday 13th December. 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.


Argos

All recent members who would like copies of  back issues of the 2003 Argos please let me know: perhaps the correspondence would then be more meaningful.
 

Following my appeal for Canberra Skeptics' archival material, David Vernon has lent me early copies of the Argos. It was started in May 1987 as "The Canberra Skeptic" and was renamed "Argos" in April/May 1989. The last issue edited by David appeared in Spring 1992.  Whether any further issues appeared is not known to the current committee.   It has an ISSN number (1033-3282) and, as a publication, should have been lodged with the National Library.  Maybe the Nat Lib can tell us.
 

Barry Karr of CSICOP has emailed us that the next International Skeptics conference will be held in Italy, at Padua (which is 30 mins drive from Venice) from October 8-10, 2004.
 

Greg Keogh, master of the Australian Skeptics web site is revamping it; he tells us much email is received from the general public and in the past this has been forwarded by him manually to members who might have a special interest in a particular message. Things are about to change.  We will keep you informed.
 

"Secrets of Psychics Revealed".  For those who missed this on Prime at 9.30 to 10.30 pm on Tuesday 4 November, a video taped copy is available.


Correspondence

Ron Wells writes: 

Interested in the apple pip cyanide bit. However I think wild black cherry pips may contain more cyanide and syrup of wild black cherry made by boiling up whole cherries might have been used by Cleopatra to avoid being paraded in chains (albeit probably of gold) by Octavian.

I wonder if one of the Canberra Sceptics meetings might be interested in "are higher proportions of boys (than girls) born in wartime, and if so why?" [Ed: Yes Ron - ’ you're on!]
 

Maria Greene writes:

Your ramblings on the oil question are interesting.  My scepticism took another path, however. Did any Pope ever say Catholics should eat fish?  I think this is a misconception of the English-speaking world. I've always thought that the idea was a fast on Fridays, which involved giving up meat for the day. Those with limited food imagination probably decided that fish was the only option. I have a chuckle when people have sumptuous seafood meals on Good Friday, which I think is totally at odds with the idea of fasting.

My Catholic Czech ancestors/relatives simply ate vegetarian (often sweet) meals on Fridays. Being landlocked, of course, their only choice in fish was carp.

Something to mull over...
 

John Moss writes:

It may have been the King and not the Holy Father who required the Poms to eat fish on Friday. This was to encourage shipbuilding for Fishing, and, indirectly, The Navy.


Well, I checked my Brewer's Phrase and Fable: both Maria and John are right.  Brewer states the following: "Fish day. In France known as jour maigre (a lean day), a day when Roman Catholics and others used to abstain from meat and customarily eat fish. In the Roman Catholic Church there was a general law of abstinence on all Fridays (unless Feasts), but Bishops now urge the faithful voluntarily to practise this or some other form of self-denial " and "He eats no fish. In the time of Elizabeth I, a way of saying he is an honest man and one to be trusted, because he is not a Papist.  Roman Catholics were naturally suspect at this time, and Protestants refused to adopt their custom of eating fish on Fridays …….. The government, however, sought to enforce the observance of fish days in order to help the fishing ports and the seafaring population; and to check [Ed: reduce, presumably] the consumption of meat which encouraged the conversion of arable (sic)into pasture."


Ramblings from the President -- ’You are what you eat': Part II

The other week (the day before the opening of grouse shooting in the UK) I dished out $55 to go and listen to Prof Stephen Myers of the Southern Cross University (not, as stated in the Canberra Times next day, the University of Canberra) address the Press Club on the merits of alternative remedies. Some of the latter would no doubt have been more palatable than the fragment of dried out carcass of lukewarm chicken served for lunch -- ’ but I digress. This function, organized by the Complementary Health Care Council (CHCC), was replete with Alt Med Practitioners and Manufacturers, several from "overseas" (New Zealand, actually).
 

Prof  Myers mentioned, in passing, the merits of tea tree oil (the new President of the CHCC makes and flogs the stuff) for treating nail infections but not the reasons why it was dropped from the Prescriptions and Proprieties Guide some years ago (maybe because it was too corrosive, being an excellent solvent for Perspex - something I discovered trying to test its antifungal properties using plastic petri-dishes!). He spoke about the merits of Black Cohosh as a herbal remedy for something or other without mentioning it is very toxic for the liver.  And he castigated the Government for not adding D-glucosamine to the Pharmaceutical Benefits list -- ’ it has been a prescription item in Europe and the USA for years. He spoke at length about the demise of Pan Pharmaceuticals and what can be learned from that.  I don't recall him mentioning the substitution by this company of beef cartilage for shark fin in one of its products, something considered naughty by the Therapeutic Goods Administration but, in view of the abominable trade in shark fins, highly laudable in my opinion: after all, following digestion, they are effectively they same stuff. But more of that anon.


I heard the other day that 70% of the aged are variously vitamin deficient.  Being now officially classified a Senior Citizen this was of some concern to me. Is it that we oldies can't absorb and/or process our vitamins, or is it we just don't eat enough?  Perhaps a bit of both, but I suspect mostly the latter.  Oldies, being more sedate, eat less. After all, if, as a youngster, one has been running round all day chasing dinner (or being chased for dinner) or doing the housework/minding the kids one tends to work up an appetite and just eat lots. In the process one presumably ends up acquiring enough of the essential chemicals our evolution has dictated we don't need to waste time making for ourselves. But what about the ones we do make for ourselves? Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate for example. Both of these are being actively peddled by the Alt  Med practitioners as the answer to an oldie's prayer for a cure for osteoarthritis (OA).


The aetiology of OA is not well understood. The ends of the bones that work against each other in joints are covered by smooth cartilage which becomes rough, brittle and weak with age; the bone below thickens, spreads out, and forms knobbly outgrowths to compensate, causing pain and stiffness. With age, the viscous synovial fluid used as lubricant in the joint becomes thinner.  All this leads to joint damage and an accompanying inflammation that only aggravates the whole set-up. A variety of anti-inflammatory drugs are used in the treatment of OA; all have side effects.  So claims that natural products with no side effects can be used effectively to treat the condition merit a closer look. 

Both synovial fluid and cartilage contain lots of D-glucosamine derivatives. Currently D-glucosamine 500 mg thrice daily is recommended by some for treating OA. But does it work, and if so, why?  The body synthesises D-glucosamine by substituting an OH group in the sugar fructose with an NH2 group provided by glutamine.  Both fructose (which, along with a molecule of glucose, is what cane sugar is) and glutamine (a major component of protein) are well represented in even an oldie's diet. It seems the enzyme involved in the synthesis of D-glucosamine is "rate limiting" i.e. has various controls placed on its activity. This makes sense, since both glucosamine and its N-acetylated derivative are major constituents of the normal diet. No point synthesising things unnecessarily. But they are also a major component of the cell walls of the bacteria in our gut.  But, since the level of microbes is relatively low in the upper small intestine, I doubt these microbes mop up the dietary glucosamine and glutamine before they're absorbed into the blood.

So what in our diet is rich in glucosamine and do we really need to take pills of the stuff?  Well cartilage is for starters.  Those soups made from the skin of any animal, chicken carcasses, bacon knuckles, fish bones, shark fin or birds' nests (the ones stuck together by the bird's saliva). For vegetarians, diets rich in the cell walls of fungi (mushrooms, yeast) or the yeast or bacteria in fermented products such as Vegemite, home brewed beer, Soy tempeh or yoghurt would be a useful source. The exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans are mainly glucosamine derivatives; so prawn shell soup, chocolate-coated ants, locusts in honey, Bogong moth fry-up or witchetty grub shashlik should be on your summer menu. [Commercial D-glucosamine is derived from crab and prawn shells -- ’ so beware if you are allergic to either; but there is a version made from corn syrup by fermentation with a genetically engineered microbe]. So, if your diet is high in D-glucosamine, will this help your OA?

Apparently yes --- according to recent reviews --- even though most (75%) of that absorbed from the gut is removed by the liver before it reaches the general circulation.  A Cochrane Collaboration systematic review, which critically examines methodology, concluded [Towheed TE, et al. Glucosamine therapy for treating osteoarthritis. Cochrane Database Syst Rev Issue 4, 2002] supplemental glucosamine, as its sulphate salt, is effective for modifying the course of osteoarthritis, but questions its long-term safety (especially for diabetics) and efficacy. It is better than placebo over a period of weeks in reducing the progression of early osteoarthritis in the knee. The only published clinical trial involving glucosamine as its chloride salt (500 mg three times daily), reported no statistically significant improvement compared with placebo. [ Houpt J, et al. Effect of glucosamine hydrochloride in the treatment of pain of osteoarthritis of the knee. J Rheumatol 1999;26:2423-30]. So the question has been raised as to whether the glucosamine is simply acting as a vehicle for intestinal absorption of sulphate, as the latter is an important component of cartilage and connective tissue hyaluronic acid.  For this reason chondroitin sulphate (where the sulphate is chemically bound to another amino sugar N-acetyl galactosamine) is being claimed to improve OA though the evidence for this is less clear. Additional reports supporting the efficacy of D-glucosamine as its sulphate salt have since appeared and other trials are being conducted.  How it works is yet to be established. In the meantime, take a dose of Epsom salts (for the sulphate) and throw another prawn on the barbie --- and eat the rough end as well!

And all the best for the festive season and the New Year.

 
Pete Griffith

7th December 2003