Spices don’t cure cancer

When you look at so-called alternative medicine, one of the remedies that is often pushed is using different spices against different disease, and quite frequently using spice as a cancer cure. Every time anyone have looked into any of these spices as a cure for something, they have of course turned out to be mostly worthless, though a few have turned out to have some effect.

This of course, leads to the claim that spice consumption is an ancient remedy against cancer. Unfortunately, a study from last year has shown that this is not likely to be the case.

No evidence that spice consumption is a cancer prevention mechanism in human populations by Antoine M Dujon et al

Abstract

Background

Why humans historically began to incorporate spices into their diets is still a matter of unresolved debate. For example, a recent study (Bromham et al. There is little evidence that spicy food in hot countries is an adaptation to reducing infection risk. Nat Hum Behav 2021;5:878–91.) did not support the most popular hypothesis that spice consumption was a practice favoured by selection in certain environments to reduce food poisoning, parasitic infections, and foodborne diseases.

Methods

Because several spices are known to have anticancer effects, we explored the hypothesis that natural selection and/or cultural evolution may have favoured spice consumption as an adaptive prophylactic response to reduce the burden of cancer pathology. We used linear models to investigate the potential relationship between age-standardized gastrointestinal cancer rates and spice consumption in 36 countries.

Results

Patterns of spice are not consistent with a cancer mitigation mechanism: the age-standardized rate of almost all gastrointestinal cancers was not related to spice consumption.

Conclusions

Direction other than foodborne pathogens and cancers should be explored to understand the health reasons, if any, why our ancestors developed a taste for spices.

I appropriate the effort to understand why spice was introduced into food in some parts of the world, and am looking forward to future research results

This is the type of person Tucker, Trump etc sucks up to

Putin is not a nice person. He is a despot and a warmonger.

Today we saw another piece of evidence for this, as yet another of his critics was killed

Putin critic Alexei Navalny, 47, dies in Arctic Circle jail

Russia’s most significant opposition leader for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, has died in an Arctic Circle jail, the prison service has said.

It is highly likely he was killed directly, but even if the death wasn’t caused by a direct murder, it was still caused indirectly by Putin by sending him to this harsh prison. I don’t, however, believe for a second that he wasn’t murdered – it is not like it was the first attempt to kill him after all

Most of the Russian president’s critics have fled Russia, but Alexei Navalny returned in January 2021, after months of medical treatment. In August 2020 he was poisoned at the end of a trip to Siberia with a Novichok nerve agent.

Yet despite this, and the invasion of Ukraine, you have powerful people in the US singing Putin’s praise. You have so-called journalists interviewing him and Trump praising him, even encouraging him to attack US allies.

For the best dissection of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin, I highly recommend Knowledge Fight’s podcast episode on it.

Short film Thirstygirl at Sundance

A few years ago I went to a conference, QCon, in London, where among the speakers, there was one who told her personal story of how she wasn’t taken serious in the tech field, until she cut her hair. That was my first encounter with Alexandra Qin.

Since hearing her talk, I’ve followed her work. She founded Emergent Works (as Code Cooperative) in 2016 and ran it until 2021. Emergent Works is a NYC based organization which does amazing work helping formerly incarcerated people, through training and mentorship. I highly recommend supporting them, if you have time and/or funds to spare.

From being the CEO of Emergent Works,  Alexandra Qin went on to write a short film, and raise money for it through Kickstarter. It was Thirstygirl, which was funded and made.

After it was produced, the short has been shown at a few film festivals. I went to a screening at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK, where I also got the chance to say hi to Alexandra Qin.

Currently, the short film is being screened at the Sundance Festival, which obviously is fantastic. To read about how Alexandra Qin felt when she heard about the selection and to hear more about the background of the film, go read Unpacking sex addiction: Director Alexandra Qin talks about her deeply personal Sundance short film

Disclaimer: I have helped support Emergent Works financially, and I was one of the backers of Thirstygirl on Kickstarter.

Denmark has a new king

The Danish monarch changed earlier today – Queen Margrethe II abdicated and King Frederik X became the king. Unlike the English traditions around crowning a new monarch, the Danish procedure is a fairly low-key affair, in which the Danish Prime Minister declares that the former monarch has abdicated (or died, as is the usual case), long live the new monarch.

The official Instagram account about the Danish royal family (run by the staff connected to the royal family), posted a clip showing this happening.

I am firmly against anyone being born outside the law and into a privileged position, and I think the royal family should be abolished. Denmark claims to be a democracy, yet we still cling to these old remnants of the undemocratic past.

It is often argued that the royal Danish family is good for branding Denmark, and rather large valuations of that branding is thrown about, but these claims haven’t been proven (and indeed, cannot be proven). We don’t even know exactly how many money are used towards the royal family. The direct payouts are known, but not indirect costs, such as security, which is part of the military budget. But even if the branding value of the royal family is as high as claimed, then it doesn’t change the principle that a royal family has nothing to do in a modern democracy.

Edit note: I had written “have been proven” when I meant “haven’t been proven”. The text has been corrected.

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark adbicates

In Denmark, the Monarch always gives a live TV address during New Years Eve. This year, it contained a bit of breaking news: The fact that she is abdicating on January 14th, and that her son, Crown prince Frederik, will become the Monarch instead.

Probably unsurprisingly to all, I am not for monarchies, even as symbolic and defanged as in Denmark, and I had hoped that we could do away with it after the current monarch. Unfortunately it probably won’t happen this time.

Source: Queen of Denmark Margrethe II announces abdication live on TV

Conversion therapy banned in Norway

This has flown under my radar, but the Norwegian parliament voted to ban conversion therapy on December 12, and the ban was approved 85-15. The ban makes it illegal to try to change someones sexual orientation or gender identity through medicine, alternative medicine, and religious methods among other things. The maximum penalty is 3 years of jail, 6 years in serious cases.

Source: Forbud mot konverteringsterapi vedtatt i Stortinget (article in Norwegian)

One monster less

Henry Kissinger has died, 100 years old. He was a monster, who was held in high regards by the political elite in both US parties. He was undeservedly treated as a respectful elderly statesman, instead of the monster responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths all over the world.

Anthony Bourdain, a man who sadly lived fewer years than Kissinger, had a perfect description of Kissinger

I’m still around

This blog is somewhat quiet due to my work/life balance not being as healthy as it should be. I am working hard on fixing this, in part so I can blog some more.

A lot of stuff is happening in the world right now – the indictments of Trump moving forward in several different courts, the war in Ukraine continuing, more and more right-wing grifters grifting for Putin etc., so there is plenty of blogging material. I just need to tap into it.

If you want to keep track of what I am doing between my rare blog posts, I would suggest following my Instagram feed, where I am the most active.

 

Harry Frankfurt (1929-2023)

I am sorry to see that Harry Frankfurt has died.

He was a emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton University, but most of us probably knows him from his impactful book On Bullshit. It was originally printed in Raritan, volume 06 number 2, Fall 1986 from the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.

On Bullshit is a slim volume, and brings a core message about the role of bullshit, as distinct from lies, in the modern discourse. In many ways, it addressed the current QANON, Trump and the GOP long before they became what they are now.

For more, see the obit at the NY Times: Harry G. Frankfurt, Philosopher With a Surprise Best Seller, Dies at 94