I’m aware of research that shows breastfed babies are less likely to contract cancer. I’ve also heard that mothers that breastfeed are less likely to have breast cancer.
I recently read an article about a team in Sweden, I believe it was, that may have been successful in using breast milk to cure some types of cancer. Has anyone else heard of this? What is your take?
-Rhet
My take would be: eh??
I’ve heard that there is less incidence of cancer among breast-fed babies, but I had assumed that it had more to do with the notion that they were exposed to fewer potential carcinogens and that their immune systems were strengthened by the exposure to the contents of breast milk. I don’t know anything about breast milk potentially being used to cure or treat cancer, and I must admit I’m somewhat skeptical.
Do you have any links or other information to go on?
I’m a little skeptical myself. That’s what made me decide to post here. Here are some links I found after searching the web briefly.
http://www.bcaction.org/Pages/SearchablePages/2000Newsletters/Newsletter058J.html
http://www.boardconsulting.com/table_of_contents.html/hamlet.html
Apparently the article I read was published in the June 1999 issue of Discover magazine. It speaks of Dr. Catharina Svanborg and company at Lund University in Sweden who are conducting the research. Found that info at http://www.foryourhealth.net/BreastIntro.html
The whole article is not available at the Discover magazine website unfortunately, only a synopsis. http://www.discover.com
What do you think?
What I think is that you have to be careful when you evaluate a ‘cancer cure’.
There are many benefits to breast feeding; but when I hear it’s a cancer cure I get wary. There is so much bullshit out with cancer. Breast milk to cure cancer?
My mother is presently dying of cancer. The conventional treatments (chemo and radiation) aren’t going to save her.
This leaves my family and me (and especially my father) susceptable to ‘alternative’ cancer cures.
I think that just about all of these alternative cures are designed, not to cure cancer, but to liberate money from the family’s wallet.
Cancer is not a simple disease. It is a grab bag term for a disease that arises when a cell that goes beserk and forms a tumor. There are over 200 types of cells in a human. That means there can be potentially over 200 types of cell specific cancers. On top of that, each cell can have many dozens, and almost surely a higher number, of things go wrong to causer cancer.
Selling cancer cures can be a big money maker; if you’re dying of cancer and traditional treatments don’t work–you’ve got nothing to lose by trying something else (except your money).
Most of the people selling ‘snake oil’ cancer treatments are hucksters.
But you also get legimate researchers who may believe they’ve got something.
The guy with MGN-3 (Mamdooh Ghoneum) comes to mind.
He’s got several published articles on PubMed; it appears he was a legimate scientist (or PostDoc at one time). But closer scrutiny shows that all his research since he patented his cancer cure (MGN-3) has been presented as abstracts at meetings or in bullshit journals.
It doesn’t take a lot to get an abstract published at a meeting. The organizers are looking for as many abstracts as possible. And his Mgn-3 has been published at anti-HIV, anti-aging, and anti-cancer meetings.
Wow! This MGN-3 (that is patented by the presenter) works on all the hot issues. IT CURES AGING, CANCER, AND AIDS.
As Clint Eastwood asked the carpetbagger in 'The Outlaw Josey Wales: “How’s it work on stains?”
The researcher may legitamately believe there’s something there. That means they want more money to fund their research. That may be in good faith.
But when my father showed me these ‘clinical studies proving the effectiness of : MGN-3, breastmilk, and etc’, in curing cancer, my response was that if there was a cure for any cancer–WOULDN’T IT BE THE BIGGEST NEWS?
A cure for any cancer would be on the front pages of every newspaper in the world. I’m I to believe that the drug companies are going to hide this?
The drug companies are going to supress some obscure researcher’s cancer cure? No, they’re going to steal it and sell it for a shit load of money.
When there’s a cancer cure, you’re going to know it because it’s going to be a 1000x bigger than Viagra.
The poor researcher oppressed by the big drug companies is akin to the guy who has the perpertual energy machine that the oil companies don’t want being made public. It’s an urban myth. Maybe not always, but they’d steal it and the public will still have heard of it.
SORRY TO RANT. But this shit sets me off, given my personal situation.
To address to OP, if it were true (I didn’t read all the links), it wouldn’t be an article in ‘Discover’ magazine (the researcher wants more funding). Check the dates if you’re skeptical–wouldn’t there be a lot of 2000 and 2001 publications that followed up; it’s huge news if true?
Dopers who believe in some alternative treatments; please give me something to check out.
The breast milk/alpha lactalbumin story looks more like one of those cases where a scientist foolishly talks to a reporter about preliminary findings; and the reporter gets all excited about the possibilities and writes a story that mixes up fact, conjecture and outright fantasy in such a way that the average person can’t tell which is which. If well told, the story can live on for years, much to the embarassment of the scientist involved.
Squink–I agree with that.
Where does the general public hear about cancer cures, or whatever scientific ‘breakthrough’–the general media, meaning newspapers or TV news reports.
How many of these reporters hold Ph.D.s in the area that they’re reporting? Maybe you don’t need to be an expert in the field to report findings; but it helps to be able to smell BS.
I’m not saying you need a Ph.D or M.D. to understand the latest research, but news has become a thing to sell. CANCER CURE, film at 11:00. That will get viewers. How does the reporter know this shit is real vs a quack trying to make a buck? Do they care, if it gets ratings or readership?
A case in point, during the last Olympics, a discussion among my friends about cheating was going on. My friend’s wife mentioned a news report she heard saying that growth hormone was almost impossible to detect in the blood. WTF?! I’ve measured GH in serum many times; the assay is commercially available. You can buy a kit to measure it.
What she (definately), the reporter, and the general public might not realize is that GH causes most of its effects through another hormone (IGF-I) and GH is easy to measure in blood (serum). What do you measure, and since these are normal hormones, what level is cheating? What levels of GH or IGF that constitute cheating is where the rub lies in althetic watchdogging.
Point being, when she said GH can’t be measured in blood, I was like WTF. Her response was: “excuse me ‘mister scienctist’, I’m just telling you what I saw on the news”.
“Exactly” was my response. I asked her who she wanted to believe: me, a guy who has measured GH in blood many times (RIA assays, which are for sale by many companies), or the reporter that said it was impossible?
“I don’t know” was her response. I was like whatever. I do this for a living and have an advanced degree in this science, but the journalism major on the TV news is going to your Bible.
And I wonder why (not really), why people buy this snake oil.