In the absence of the Penguin's contribution to this little blog, he is still huddled down in his small 'turtle' with others of his folk, I (MG) thought that I might as well make a small contribution so that 'beauty and elegance shall not entirely vanish from this world'.
I have recently changed my primary email address and, as a result, I find it more convenient to use bt.com as my home page to ensure speedier access to what few emails I receive. Now, bt.com posts 'news', UK and world, although the standard of journalism leaves much to be desired; much of it appears to be gleaned from whatever falls into the inbox from PA (the Press Association, a news agency) with inadequate checking of facts and dubious sources. However it is very good at (1) promoting BT products under the guise of 'news' and (2) attracting UKippers (supporters of the UK Independence Party) to the comments section of every 'story' and who seem to lay the blame for any or all of the UK's current problems at the door of (1) immigration, (2) the EU and the UK's membership of same and (3) its own rampant and rabid xenophobia. That is to be expected; any website that allows an individual to comment will attract its fair share of nut-jobs, single issue fanatics, the misinformed, trolls and the just-plain-ignorant. However one comment on a 'news-story', how 10% of all diagnoses of cancer affect the under-45s, attracted my attention.
(I should add here that I am not surprised at the fact that 10% of all cancer diagnoses affect the under-45s; disease is not selective about whom exactly it targets but the the longer that you live the more liklihood you have, statistically speaking, of contracting it.)
So what attracted me? A comment that 'Gerson therapy appeared to show promise' and that this, together with other so-called alternative therapies, should be investigated. Should it?
The name sounded familiar from when I had the time to read any Tom, Dick or Harry's blog after the stroke but I could not remember exactly why. A quick search on Google (which would be a lot more democratic if people could not buy their way into the top-ranking spots - just Google 'Gerson Therapy' to see what I mean) found the article which I had once read; the article had remained in my mind as being worthy of note not the actual therapy itself. The article is here , although it is long and you must bear with the preamble; the point of it is obvious later in the article.
You may have noticed that the Penguin and I share a belief, if belief it is, of the value of the 'scientific method'; first realisticly practised by Roger Bacon, a 13th century monk who surely formed the genesis of Umberto Eco's Brother William of Baskerville and formulated by Karl Popper some seven centuries later. This holds, at its core, that observations about the natural world must be repeatable and adhere to a rational and logical exxplanation, however bizarre that explanation may be. The value of the scientific method lies in its repeatability, the same result may be obtained by whomever performs the experiment, and any subsequent theorem or explanation must explain all of the 'facts' (obtained by experiment) not only a selective subset. Herein, lies its power; and no method has produced such a dizzying array of support for the method of attempting to make sense of our world as we perceive it.
Some would no doubt argue that a 'belief' in the method is no more an article of faith than is the divinity of Christ or that a turtle supports the world and it, itself, is supported by another, larger, turtle or an elephant and so on, ad infinitum. This misses the mark by so wide a margin as to be inconceivable to a rational human being. There is no direct evidence to our senses of a turtle that supports the world just as there is no direct evidence of the divinity of the character, fictional or not, that we choose to call Jesus of Nazareth. However there is evidence to suggest that chemotherapy or radiation therapy in cancer victims does have measurable and quantifiable results; some patients live longer than the norm, assuming no treatment, and some are 'cured' beyond the bounds of statistical probability. Therapies, like Gerson, seldom, if ever fully record or follow-up, on the short-term or long term success of their treatments and rely on anedoctal testimonies, which seldom provide any evidence that the treatment regime is worth pursuing. Without rigourous analysis of the data, which is largely unavailable, it is impossible to determine whether the treatment is successful or why? Some people go into spontaneous remission for unknown reasons; it only takes one such case for some bright spark to laud this, what ever it may be, as a miracle cure!
I, once, in a school cricket match made the most stupendous catch; a ball hit hard and fast to my left (my weak hand) and high that prompted the most prodigious leap from point or cover, I can't remember which, to my left with an outstretched left hand. I caught the ball firmly in my grasp; I don't know how. That ensured my place in the 'First Eleven', the highest accolade, until the other members of the team realised that it was a fluke; that one time when I caught 'an impossible to catch' ball. The captain fielded me at slip, silly mid-on, silly mid-off and short-leg because they thought that as a result of a fluke, I had a safe pair of hands. They soon realised their mistake and they dispensed with my services shortly after.
One swallow does not a summer make. It takes the repeatable occurance of swallows to herald warmer weather and so it is with all things. Remember 'cold' fusion; and the research it engendered. No-one could repeat the results and so it became consigned to the backwaters of research. Maybe it is possible but why waste valuable, limited resources on a pipe dream?
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