August 20, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Department of very bad science
Consider this scary scenario from the New York TImes article on human growth hormone:
“My mother wanted to be healthy,” says Erick Schenkhuizen, a financial planner in San Diego, whose mother, Hanneke Hops, an avid tennis player and runner, began taking almost daily injections of H.G.H. in 2003, at 56. Her prescribed dose, like those for most patients at anti-aging clinics, was designed to raise the hormone level back to where it had been years earlier. She lost 16 pounds in two months and raved in The San Francisco Chronicle that the drug “makes me feel good.” Seven weeks later, she was diagnosed with multiple inoperable tumors in her liver, pancreas and ovaries, and seven weeks after that, she was dead. Was there a connection between the hormone injections and the cancer? “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” Schenkhuizen says. “But my mother questioned it. I question it.”
The reporter, of course, doesn't question it, which is a real pity, because the idea that someone developed inoperable cancer with widespread metastes in less than four months is--at least as far as my knowlege of cancer goes--completely idiotic. Cancer can be very fast moving, but it is not that fast moving. The reason people often die shortly after diagnosis is that some cancers, like ovarian and lung, generally don't make themselves known until they are just about to kill you.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 20, 2006 10:15 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksUh, correlation proves causation. Don't you know anything?
In any event, to be taking human growth hormone during a period in life when you are more likely to be producing tumors seems unwise. Especially if the goal, as I fear, is essentially a vain one.
Actually, I believe that testicular cancer can move this fast. There are two forms of it, one of which (the faster version) double in size every week.
(Oddly, testicular cancer, which used to be the worst cancer, is now actually curable (thanks to developments in chemotherapy drugs), which is fairly unique among cancers — I don't believe that doctors will talk about "curing" any other form of cancer.)
That being said, I doubt that this woman had testicular cancer.
It wouldn't surprise me if getting cancer caused her to take HGH, rather than vice versa.
The article doesn't say why she decided to start taking HGH, but if she was an avid tennis player & runner, she might easily notice a loss of energy and stamina as the (undiagnosed) tumors on her liver & pancreas grew. So she goes to a friendly doc who tells her she just needs some HGH to boost her metabolism and energy.
Sometimes correlation does stem from causation, but not in the direction we think.
All speculative, of course, but I suspect the above causal chain is more likely than the one suggested in the article.
Actually, you don't even have "correlation" here. You just have one data point.
This is an instance of the fallacy of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" (after it happened, therefore because it happened). This is different from the "correlation implies causation" fallacy.
Cancer can be very fast moving, but it is not that fast moving.
Ordinarily, yes, but query what rate of tumor growth and metastasis might be possible if you were taking megadoses of a growth hormone. (You may be right, of course, but I think there is reason to be less certain.)
Rapid and unexplained weightloss is a warning sign of cancer. It's likely that she had cancer before starting the HGH, but that the injections caused the cancer to spread faster.
Certain types of thyroid cancer are essentially curable. Others are aggressive and can spread very quickly.
Cancer takes years from initiation to final progression. To claim that something happens to cause a cancer free person to develop and die of cancer in a few months is idiotic.
One reason to give growth hormones to people with cancer is to make the cancer grow faster, which makes it vulnerable to chemotherapy.
As the above poster implied, HGH can dramatically increase cancer risks and speed cancer growth.
source
Taking those injections might not have given her cancer, but they certainly sped up its progression and shortened her lifespan. Autopsies reveal that most people who are 60 already have small tumors.
If the initial tumorogenesis was in the pancreas, the typical mortality rate on that's something like 95% of patients dead within six months of diagnosis, HGH or not.
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1712.htm
There are cases on record where cancer has moved this quickly, but a cursory examination certainly raises the question of whether the HGH injections played a role in this illness. It would take a great deal of study to reach any certain conclusion.
Human growth hormone does not increase metabolic rate. Therefore, I postulate that the 16 pounds of weight loss in two months was an effect of the undiagnosed cancer. The primary cancer probably was ovarian, which often is silent until it has spread throughout the abdomen and its organs. Ovarian cancer also commonly strikes women in their 50s.
It is unlikely that growth hormone was a factor in the woman's death, though its use as an anti-aging drug is risky due to lack of data on the long-term effects of hGH in older adults.
(reading label)
"Contains gelatin, FD&C yellow #5 ... oh crap, 'Cancer Growth Hormone'?!"
"Dr." T -
Where do you get the notion that HGH won't affect metabolic rate?
hGH has many varied roles throughout ...including ... the regulation of selective aspects of metabolic function including increased fat metabolism
Human GH is capable of inducing weight loss and increasing lipolytic sensitivity following long-term treatment in mice. pubmed
Natural Growth Hormone levels shown to correlate negatively with BMI
pubmed
GH has been used as an adjunct to severe calorie restriction for obesity
wikipedia
True, her weight loss might have been from the cancer. But your blatantly false assertion that HGH doesn't effect metabolism tends to invalidate any weight that might be given to your postulation. I assume (and hope) that you're not really a doctor.
If the HGH in question is administered orally, it's questionable if any actually reaches the bloodstream. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to actually administer HGH to a human is via injections; all those pills that are flogged in spam are as useful as the wedding-tackle-size-enhancement "all natural herbal" products.
But if the question is, "how can there be such bad science in the New Duranty Times", to ask that question is to answer it...
"Dr. T" - My answer was deferred, perhaps because I cited several sources with URLs.
Human growth hormone does not increase metabolic rate.
Yes it does! Injected HGH increases fat metabolism. It makes humans and animals leaner in a number of experiments. I assume (and hope) that you're not really a doctor.
Ryan:
Yes, I am really a physician. There are published studies on young adults who received supraphysiologic doses of hGH. It altered their carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, but did not cause weight loss. Studies of older adults who received physiologic doses of hGH showed that some subjects replaced fat with muscle, but that was not associated with weight loss. The older adults who benefited were those with the lowest hGH levels prior to the study.
The main hormone affecting metabolic rate is thyroxine (thyroid hormone). Thyroid hormone would have to be administered in toxic doses to cause a 16 pound weight loss in two months. Human growth hormone, even at supraphysiologic doses, could not cause that much weight loss.
Actually, I believe that testicular cancer can move this fast. There are two forms of it, one of which (the faster version) double in size every week
The implied claim is that the cancer went from "nonexistant" to "inoperable" in about 16 weeks (two months of weight loss, then diagnosis 7 weeks later). Two to the 16th is less than 66,000 -- around one one-billionth of the body's cell count.
I would like to wish you much luck. And a lot of money. Thank you.
Very many thanks for a good work. Nice and useful. Like it!
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