Who would say that?why Dave Scot at Uncommon Descent of course.

Well, it started already. Shifting economic priorities from food production to reducing CO2 emission has already started causing significant problems. The environmentalist whackos are at it again. Evidently unsatisfied with derailing nuclear power plant construction in the United States 30 years ago, a whackjob by the whackos that has gotten us into the foreign oil dependency mess we're in today instead of getting most of our electricity from nuclear power like France, their latest stupid panic is going to lead to the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. I don't often laud the French but they at least got their ducks in a row with nuclear power and the U.S. could have too if we'd had the good sense to ignore the environmentalist whackos. Will we never learn?

Yes, what a horrible thing we didn't ignore the environmentalists. Think about how much better we'd be without the clean water act, why, it's been years since we've had a nice beautiful fire on the Cuyahoga river. When was the last time? 1969? And that completely retarded clean air act? I liked leaded gasoline and acid rain, it gave buildings such character, and city air such an wonderful tinge of homey emissions.

Besides being just an appeal to consequences (although not in a direct attack on the science), this is once again an example of the "environmentalists will eat your children" canard. If any other demand had caused a market to create a increase in the cost of food, that would just be capitalism. But when concern from the environment does it? It's a holocaust! Millions will die! Environmentalists will eat your children!

What a load.

Labels: Dave Scot, global warming denialism, uncommon descent

So, who else has heard of the latest conspiracy of the big bad medical research community - DCA?

The thing is some researchers at the University of Alberta published this paper showing that, in rats, DCA could shrink tumors by forcing them to switch their energy metabolism from glycolysis (which tumors tend to rely upon) to glucose oxidation, while largely not affecting normal cells. The result? The tumors proliferated less, underwent greater apoptosis and essentially shrank. A nice promising little result.

The problem was, as frequently occurs with the lay press, they made a huge deal out of a chemical that was essentially only shown to be efficacious against cancer in an animal model of tumor growth. Not that this is a bad thing, but there really needs to be more testing before you start throwing a potential neurotoxin at thousands of cancer patients. But that didn't stop the cranks from coming out of the woodwork, and of course, the quack sites immediately appeared to start selling this with completely inadequate knowledge of the chemical's effect in humans. And the conspiracy-mongers started coming out of the woodworks, sheesh. Orac probably has the best coverage in concert with Abel Pharmboy on the subsequent DCA hysteria and talk of how it will never be researched because evil scientists won't research things unless it makes them money, yada yada yada.

One study of a model of cancer in "nude" athymic rats, animals that have no immune system so that human tumor lines can be studied inside an organism, and people are rushing to take this stuff. And who is egging them on? None other than universal crank Dave Scot at Uncommon Descent.

To date there has still been no start of an FDA-approved clinical trial so it looks like the conspiracy theorists were right - DCA is a common chemical that has no profit potential for big pharma so even though it shrunk several different types of human tumors in immuno-compromised rats 75% in 3 weeks with no adverse side effects, and even though it's been used for decades in humans in treating chronic lactic acidosis so its safety was already well characterized in humans, no one will put up the hundreds of millions of dollars to test its efficacy as a chemotherapeutic for cancer.

This is where denialism and cranks get really ugly - when their disregard for science, careful study of biology, and cautious advance of scientific knowledge leads them to suggest people at their most desperate potentially poison themselves.

DCA may turn out to be a wonder drug. There are signs, however, it is quite dangerous to take, and Dave Scot and other cranks that are pushing this conspiracy theory are essentially encouraging people to take this drug without the proper supervision they would undergo in a clinical trial. No information will be gleaned from this, and the probability people will be killed is quite high. The safety has not been "well characterized" as several studies point to neurotoxicity, one with significant signs of neurotoxicity requiring the drug be stopped, and many of the trials were acute studies in very sick people without long term follow up (go to pubmed and search "dichloroacetic acid" with the clinical trial limit to see whats been done). There is not nearly enough data to suggest widespread use of this drug without extremely careful monitoring and study, and there is quite a bit of data that suggests this drug could be highly toxic.

Irresponsible does not even begin to describe this kind of crankery. This could be deadly, but since Scot is only suggesting people experiment on themselves (and their children, pets etc.) it isn't completely illegal. Anyone else think he and the quacks selling this stuff belong in jail for this though? Where is the damn FTC?

Labels: Dave Scot, DCA, uncommon descent