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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!wivax!dyer
From: dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Data in Support of Macrobiotics
Message-ID: <18875@wivax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Oct-83 23:36:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: wivax.18875
Posted: Thu Oct 13 23:36:34 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Oct-83 22:01:05 EDT
References: <104@houxk.UUCP>
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 30

houxk!jmg apparently likes to selectively read our responses to fit his
prejudices.  No one has said that "spontaneous" cancer remissions are
due to magic--rather, we state only what we CAN state as scientists:
that we are not yet aware of the mechanisms involved in the cure.
This is a far more conservative position than attributing it without
firm evidence to an arbitrary environmental influence like a macrobiotic
diet.

I know nothing of macrobiotic diets other than from the popular lore
of the past decade, and what houxk!jmg recently posted.  My comment
still holds--the diet he posted doesn't look particularly unsound (save
for dairy products and calcium) and I would be quite willing to believe
reports that state that a population on such a diet is healthier than one
high in animal fats, sugar and low in fibre.  I have heard, though,
that the macrobiotic diet is actually a series of diets, each one containing
successively less animal protein, with rice alone as the final diet.
I cannot believe that this is healthy, given what we already know about
human nutrition.  But, I am disinterested--show me a well-run study that
refutes my preconceptions, and I will entertain a change of opinion.

Nevertheless, this is irrelevant to the problem at hand--the treatment
of cancer.  houxk!jmg states that a macrobiotic diet is "harmless"
compared to the "wanton removal of organs".  Let me emphasize, that
if houxk!jmg is recommending that cancer patients follow his diet
IN PLACE OF traditional medical therapies, then one wonders what
his definition of "harmlessness" is.

/Steve Dyer
decvax!wivax!dyer
decvax!genrad!wjh12!bbncca!sdyer