Tweets for 2009-09-24
September 24th, 2009 12:30 am by admin
- http://bit.ly/1bcCCo Latest post about "Natural" animal medicine #pets #natural #medicine #skepticism #companion #animal #
Return to Companion Animal Medicine
September 23rd, 2009 11:39 pm by Shane
This past week has been a busy one for me as I take time off from my day job to spend some time working on home projects. This year has been so successful thus far, that I'm really enjoying a sense of accomplishment. Kelly and I are just knocking a number of things off of the big todo list. However, none of this will keep me away from this week's post, which is a return to discussing homeopathic treatments for companion animals.
With the power of Google, I decided to just do a search for "homeopathic pet medicine" and see what the first site that came up was (for the record, I try not to use the word "pet", but I had to follow popular convention. Oh, the irony, of a site calling itself "petalive.com". A graphic of kitten is in the header as well as the word "Naturally". For the record, arsenic and strychnine are "natural" as well. Just saying.
So, on the day I happened to get to this homeopathic pet companion animal medicine site there are a number of specials on "herbal" remedies, though the title of the page contains "homeopathic". I found it interesting that the site is initially presenting itself as a purveyor of "homeopathy", which is nonsense, but seems to really be selling "herbal" remedies. While most herbal remedies are just as much junk as homeopathic remedies, they contain actual substances. The question is, do these substances work?
Here is a list of various substances in various treatments:
* Dandelion
* Indian Ginseng
* Scullcap
* Belladonna
* Passion Flower
* Kelp
* Burdock
These substances are in products aimed at both cats and dogs, which are very distinct species. It would somewhat surprise me if both cats and dogs reacted the same to all these different products, so I did a little searching.
Dandelion extract has shown "moderate anti-inflammatory, cholagogic and hypoglycemic activities" in laboratory animals, however, there haven't been many studies designed to test it, and the one positive study seems to be from 1974. Not a total washout, but far from conclusive, especially compared to the modern medicines available for animals that are being studied currently. Ginseng contains substances that work well in rabbits, but I can't seem to find any dog studies. Furthermore, ginseng seems to be an inefficient source of the advantageous substances.
Scullcap seems to be completely lacking of any studies proving efficacy. It seems to be simply folk medicine. Belladonna in the context of this website seems to be the homeopathic belladonna solution. Since homeopathy is junk, I can safely move on from that. Passion Flower was shown to be more effective (in people) than a particular anti-anxiety drug in a double blind study. However, the sample size was too small to be definitive. The trial was only on 36 people, which is fine, since you have to start somewhere, but the conclusion was that more testing needed to be done.
Kelp..well, kelp is pretty good for dogs. It's a nice food for any animal, as a vegetable. Kelp, however, won't remove toxins from the body, as that is pretty much nonsense. By all means, add it to your dogs diet, don't worry if it's organic, and watch your dog benefit from better nutrition. Lastly, Burdock. I couldn't find much about burdock and animals, so it looks like to me that the purported effects on humans were simply transferred to animals. Nothing much else to go on I'm afraid.
So, to conclude this post, which I've tried to keep short, I have to say that natural companion animal medicine is probably a complete waste of time. Very few of the ingredients are actually tested on animals for the purpose of treating animals. Animal studies kind of get globbed together, so when a study says laboratory animal it could mean dog, rat, rabbit or mouse. Just because it worked in the lab doesn't mean it works on your animal (same goes for humans btw). In most cases, the evidence is very weak.
Furthermore, just because a thistle plant contains a valuable substance, doesn't mean thistle is the best source. A great example of this is salicylic acid. A great source of salicylic acid in ancient times was willow bark. A hot drink made from willow bark would be prescribed to help alleviate pain and fever. You could still do that today, or...you could just pop an aspirin and spare yourself from the crappy tasting bark tea. That's pretty much how it works for a lot of these substances. I'd rather talk to my vet about an actual medicine created to treat my animal that might expand upon what's available in thistle instead of sprinkling thistle dust on his food. It is the 21st century and all. We may not have flying cars yet, but our medicine for animals is much more amazing to me.
References:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11679026
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69200.cfm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10589445?dopt=Citation
A Monster By Any Other Name
September 21st, 2009 2:53 pm by Jonathan
It's been over a week since I've written for this site, but it is not for a dearth of topics or news. So let me kick off this article with something that's probably been burning in everyone's mind.
Last week, in Panama, the body of a creature only identifiable as a “Montauk Monster” was discovered. The article (posted at the hard-hitting UK Telegraph), goes on to state that the creature (and even the original Montauk Monster) has yet to be identified, but there is speculation that it may be a dog, a sloth that lost its hair, to a discarded prop used in a marketing stunt.
This particular specimen, according to those who happened upon it, was crawling out of a cave. Rather than try and route or capture the creature, the witnesses did the natural human thing and attacked it and then took pictures. This is why we can't have nice things.
My problems with how this has played out are many, but for the sake of not going on a tirade about destroying that which we do not understand, I will limit this to why we know so little about this living anomaly when it makes itself apparent.
First and foremost, regardless of if this creature was beaten to death by a pair of youngsters who balanced the fight or flight equation in their own special way, they had a corpse. The boys could have brought this into town or somewhere to have it studied. Rubber props don't move of their own volition, so if this thing is an animal, we could better understand it from examining its remains than we can from a couple of pictures posted on the internet. Anyone can have her/his version of the Patterson-Gimlin expedition these days.
Secondly, if we look at these photographs, this Montauk Monster (I'll address the name in a little bit) has hair tufts on the lower torso. I am willing to speculate that this creature probably had a coat of some sort, and lost it to disease, chemicals, or someone who though how weird certain animals look if shaved (my neighbor's cat, for example). I know this was touched upon by scientists the first time people were trying to resolve what this type of creature was, and (unlike what The Telegraph stated) with results.
Lastly, and this has nothing to do with skepticism, can we give this a different name? I understood calling it The Montauk Monster, when it washed up on the shores of Long Island, NY. This one, however, was found in Panama. It needs a new label. We all know what a Frankenstein's Monster is and looks like (or simply “A Frankenstein” if you want to be pedantic about it), but this thing is far from that iconography or allegory. I'm toying around with the idea and rationale behind a temporary endangered species list for cryptozoological creatures. If we come across an anomaly, let it live, document it through pictures, and let people know where you saw what you saw. If you find a body, or accidentally kill or injure one (I saw Harry and the Hendersons once, so I consider myself pretty damned qualified in this field), bring it somewhere to be studied. If it turns out to be a variant of a common animal (raccoon without hair, I'm looking at you), or in abundance but well hidden, then great! Open season! We'll see Sasquatches and Montauk Monsters replacing the turkey in Rockwell paintings.
If you have a crypto experience you would like to share, or if you want to offer a new and better name for The Montauk Monster, I encourage you to leave your stories and comments.
Tweets for 2009-09-17
September 17th, 2009 12:30 am by admin
- http://bit.ly/148xEG Review of An Edible History of Humanity #history #food #
Review: An Edible History of Humanity
September 16th, 2009 9:43 pm by Shane
I love history books and I try to read/listen to as many as I can. In the last year or so, I've read two books about the Roman Empire, two about the Middle Ages, one about Charlemagne, one about Alexander the Great, and one about Augustus Caesar. It's not a huge number of books, and I wish I had more time: I mostly listen to books while I mow my lawn which can be measured in acres. Coming across this book, "An Edible History of Humanity" by Tom Standage, something about it clicked, and I gave it a listen and was rewarded with a really great book.
The first thing that a reader will notice in the first part of the book, is that Standage is somewhat critical of the concept of "organic" equaling natural. Almost immediately in the book, the author explains how not a single crop we eat today is natural. Cereal crops were all manipulated by man to produce better yields. The forerunner of maize, teosinte, is completely unrecognizable as a food. Tomatoes were yellow until Europeans bred them to be red. Carrots weren't originally orange: the orange color arose from the House of Orange in the 17th century and became popular in the west. Nothing we eat is "natural" anymore. It's all man-made. Now, mind you, Standage is not hostile to organic farming per se, but he wanted to dispel some of the mystique around it.
One other interesting thing I learned from the book, was the difficult transfer from hunter-gatherer cultures to agrarian cultures. It is true that hunter-gatherers lived short and brutish lives, however they seemed to have better nutrition that the initial agrarians. They were as tall as modern humans: around 5'9 for men and 5'4 for women. After transitioning to agrarian societies, ignorant of the concept of nutrition, those numbers dropped to 5'4 for men, and 5'0 for women. It's taken us nearly 7,000 years to get back to the same height as our early Holocene ancestors.
There were actually advantages to being a hunter-gatherer that I hadn't considered either. In some places, gathering food was much easier and less time consuming than farming. Families were smaller (anything that promotes less kids is a bonus in my book) because large families are hard to move around. Standage, by no means, advocates going back to hunter-gatherers, but simply illustrates that it hasn't been a direct line of progress over the last 10,000 years.
Standage mentions Thomas Malthus a lot, who two hundred years ago declared that the Earth would soon not be able to feed its population. At the time there were about a billion people worldwide. Obviously, Malthus was wrong and he was one in a long line of people who have predicted doom concerning population growth. Every time we've been able to figure out some way to produce more food on the same land increasing overall yield. This part made me a little uneasy, because, well, now that we have almost 7 billion people we have to be close to the limit, right? Well, while my gut says yes, most times in history I would be dead wrong, so I have to pause. Growth rates are slowing and some population models have us declining in the late 21st century.
Another interesting part of the book was the large section on the Middle Age spice trade. Spices we take for granted today, such as black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger were only known to Europeans in the finished form. No one had ever seen what unprocessed cinnamon looked like as late as 1492 when Christopher Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage with some sort of bark he claimed was cinnamon but didn't really smell or taste like it. No one knew how to make it. A lot of the spices originated from small islands in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, imported into Europe through Arab traders. Remember my post about my oldest known ancestor Martin Vielhauer? When Martin was born, his family had no idea what cinnamon was made from, where nutmeg came from, or what it took to make black pepper. It wasn't until the mid 1600's and early 1700's that Europeans finally found the actual islands the spices came from. This desire for spices helped trigger the exploration of the Americas and European colonialism that forever changed history. All for food additives that few of us even think twice about. (As a side note, the book also highlighted the non-European world of commerce and trade, while not new to me, is not taught nearly enough).
The last section of the book I want to go over is the section on the "Green Revolution". This part of the book will also bother "organic" proponents, because Standage can come off somewhat cavalier about the use of ammonia based fertilizers and pesticides. The invention of both has had a huge impact on farming and our environment. Before the invention of mass produced ammonia based fertilizers farmers relied on animal manure and legume type crops to reintroduce nitrogen into the soil. Both methods were improvements from ancient times, but still very inefficient.
In the early 1900's, the Haber-Bosch process was developed which brought on the age of chemical fertilizers and the world hasn't been the same since. It's fair to say we would have starved without this process. Also, important to the "Green Revolution" was the development of new cereal crops the by the late great Norman Borlaug. He practically single handedly changed the way the world is fed, and he won a Nobel Prize for it. This post cannot do him justice, and since he recently passed away (September 12, 2009), there happens to be a lot of information about him in the news, so check it out. Reading about him is somewhat awe inspiring, to think that a single man could have such an impact on the food supply of the world. There is some controversy surrounding him and the concept of cross-breeding, but his effect on the world cannot be denied.
At the end of the book, Standage talks more about "organic" farming, and while parts of the book could seem hostile to proponents, in the end he wraps it up by positing that the future really lies in the combination of the industrialization of modern agriculture and the environmental concerns of the "organic" movement. There already has been some cross over, and I don't mean in terms of big agriculture companies running "organic" farms. Methods like "no-till" farming are something that could be catching on. Seed companies are working on plants that require less fertilizer and pesticides, not to mention significant changes in how crops are watered.
I'm not sure that everyone will see the book the same as I did: some reviews on Amazon.com were down right harsh. However, I have to say that I think Tom Standage did his best to present the facts as unbiased as he could. I don't know his personal opinions on "organic" farming, but I really think he was pretty balanced in this book. If you're fan of food, or just like history in general, I think you'll like this book.
The Family Tree
September 11th, 2009 1:49 pm by Shane
This past week I caught the genealogy bug and started looking back at my family tree. I'm a somewhat avid reader of history and I just wanted to see where my family was during the last couple hundred years. Something about knowing that my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents lived in a small city state just outside of the Holy Roman Empire holds great appeal to me. (I didn't count out the "greats" so I might be off there) If, along the way, I find out that someone in my family was a noteworthy person of a time, well, that would definitely spark some interest in wherever my family was.
I have only started the long process of tracking down my family. I've been contacting family members collating names, places, stories, etc, all the things one needs to slowly piece a family tree together. I have access to Ancestry.com through the Kansas City Public Library, and it's been an invaluable source so far. All the US Census Lists from 1790 through 1930 are available with the exception of the 1890 census which was lost in a fire, tons of marriage and death records are online, and various newspapers have been scanned in and optically read. A lot of the documents are also available as image files so you can peruse them yourself to interpret the handwriting. I've found a lot of names that were just hard to convert from image to text automatically.
So what have I found? The most distance ancestor I can find is Martin Vielhauer born in 1505 in a village known as Böeckingen, Germany. When he was born, it was basically a free village associate with Hielbronn, Germany which seems to have worked out some deal with the Holy Roman Empire to remain free and independent. The Vielhauers stayed there until the 1860's when they started to emigrate to the Herkimer, NY area where a bunch still remain. It is in Herkimer, NY that the Brady and Vielhauer line came together.
Which leads me to the next thing I found. My great-grandfather Roy Brady's father has been extremely hard to find. I don't even know his name yet. It's also possible that his name was originally spelled "Bradey" and that he changed it later. I have a bunch more avenues available to me to find out who my great-great grandfather was, so I'm not done yet. Once I figure out who he is, I can finally trace my Brad(e)y heritage. I do remember my grandfather telling me there was some Scottish in the line as well, so that is helpful.
On my mother's side, I found out something completely new to me. I was always under the impression that my grandfather on my mother's side was born from two German immigrants. I was surprised to learn that my great grandfather was born in Belgium and reported on the 1930's census that his first language was French. I had no idea. I found his brother and his birthplace, and he too was born in Belgium, specifically the Leuven, Belgium area. I still can't explain why French was listed as a first language, but it appears that I have a lot of Flemish in me, and that's something I wasn't aware of.
I'm not that familiar with the Flemish ethnic group, but now that I know I'm part Flemish, I'm interested enough to read a book or two. I don't expect to learn anything about myself, and I don't feel any particular connection to Belgium that would effect me. There is just nothing I have in common with anyone then in Belgium. My ancestors were either farmers or jacks of all trades living in a time before electricity. Me, I'm a computer programmer addicted to electronic devices for almost everything I do. I've made it thirty-four years without knowing I'm Flemish, and if I'd never found out, I'm sure I'd be just fine.
So what is the end result of this? Some of the result of all this, I will explain in next week's post, when I talk about a book I recently read. It's history book that detailed the spice trade history of the middle ages, and now I'm able to tie it into my family history somewhat. You'll see next week how I do it. But more importantly, I think genealogy is a great way to get people interested, to see how history could have affected their lives. My Irish ancestors came here most likely because of potato famine. That's why I'm in the United States. This post is really an introduction for future posts about science and history and ways it shaped the different paths my family has taken. I would also like to suggest people all try ancestry.com out or see if your local library has access. I think everyone could find it very interesting.
The Louisville which took great-grand uncle Richard Max from Liverpool to New York City
Alien Baby Corpse: Real, Hoax, Or First Casualty In The Oncoming Galactic War?
September 4th, 2009 1:02 pm by Jonathan
Okay, we've been promising since the inception of Less Than Credulous that we were going to write articles that fell into the realm of the paranormal. So, (with a little help from our neighbors to the south) rather than review an off-center movie, give you a definitive list of video games that changed the industry, or discuss the mortally depressed bovines of Switzerland, I present to you this:
The story has it that in 2007, a Mexican farmer saw two of these creatures and drowned one out of fear (the other fled the scene). Now research has revealed that the corpse contains both human and reptilian characteristics, and a large brain (which points towards intelligence).
Mexico (particularly this area of the country) has a great number of reported UFO sightings and crop circles. Award-winning Mexican UFO researcher Jaime Maussan was the first to break the story.
Now, I am enthralled by tales of encounters with creatures, aliens, and the unexplained; but this article begs some questions that go beyond whether or not this is a hoax:
This is Mexico, for crying out loud! Why are we approaching this as the corpse of an alien, and not a chupacabra?
This one seems pretty easy to me. Chupacabra was sensational in the mid-1990s. Over time, sightings and evidence have been debunked to the point where it has become a B-list cryptid. It won't achieve the status of a Bigfoot, Jersey Devil, Loch Ness Monster, or even Champy. However, when one says this thing is an alien, groups and societies worldwide might actually pause and take interest.
Look at the size of that thing! That flew across space and time to play with a well pump?
I'm not saying that this little guy's sole purpose was to check out farm equipment. It could be part of a naturally curious species. It may not even have traveled through the cosmos, but rather interdimensionally, or from some subterranean dwelling. However, it could also have been some varmint infestation that the farmer was eliminating when he realized that the dead thing (when devoid of hair) looks pretty damn strange (Montauk Monster, I'm looking at you).
It has characteristics of both human and reptilian nature? How is that possible?
Now, before everyone gets in a panic that this might be a descendant of the Rothschild family on behalf of The Illuminati, exercising their will over humanity (or whatever the hell else David Icke believes), let's approach this with a critical (but open) mind:
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The teeth do not have roots. I cannot explain this one. I do not know enough about biology across different species to give any sort of answer (though I certainly welcome advice) other than saying that since its death, perhaps the roots decayed and no longer exist. Who knows, maybe this guy killed a baby sleestak.
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It can stay underwater for long periods of time. Evidently not long enough to outlast a Mexican farmer bent on starting an intergalactic war. But seriously, the farmer did say he had to hold the thing underwater for hours before it stopped moving (died). The issues I have with this are a) given its size, I can think of methods that would probably be quicker and more efficient to terminate the life of this creature – provided it wasn't some sort of space-Rasputin (perhaps to be covered in a later article), and b) I'm not seeing any sign of a struggle or any damage to the body in any of these photos or x-rays shots. Maybe it was a gentle drowning, or the creature was biding its time in hopes that the farmer would tire of trying to drown it in a ditch. (But seriously, who ever tires of that kind of fun?)
I'm not saying that researching this is a waste of resources. I'm not even saying that hands-down this is not an alien, but a more earthly creature. I'm not entirely joking in this proposition, but why not include the possibility of goblins, gremlins, and other “fey beings” into the line-up? Does it not fit those descriptions, as well?
I really haven't been around that long, but in my lifetime I've seen people come forth confessing how they faked famous photos of Nessie, a preserved dragon in a jar, alien babies (I know my harlequin kids), and (most recently) an authentic Bigfoot displayed for all the world to see. Not a one of them was what it was supposed to be. However, I am not averse to sound proof to the contrary. I encourage everyone to post their comments, questions, and any evidence they have regarding this, and other anomalies in this reality.
To quote The Bard (or one of them), “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Tweets for 2009-09-03
September 3rd, 2009 12:30 am by admin
- http://bit.ly/dRweF Less than Credulous takes on Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray! #skeptic #Homeopathy #
Dr. Frank’s Pet Pain Spray Redux
September 2nd, 2009 10:13 pm by Shane
I have already written about this topic once before, in fact, almost two years ago. My original article, while overly thin in content, had a huge response and I've decided to revisit the topic again. I hope this time I can expand on some of the points and criticisms my original post received.
First, let's once again include the definition of homeopathy:
Homeopathy (also spelled Homoeopathy or Homœopathy) is a form of alternative medicine, first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, that treats patients with heavily diluted preparations which are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented. Homeopathic remedies are prepared by serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking, which homeopaths term "succussion," after each dilution under the assumption that this increases the effect of the treatment. Homeopaths call this process "potentization". Dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains.
There is often a lot of confusion as to what homeopathy is. It's not just any "alternative" medicine. That's a whole other topic that I may or may not choose to write on. Homeopathy is the process of diluting active substances so much that none of the original substance remains. Again, it's just water.
When it comes to animals, and what people will do for their companion animals, I get it. I really do. My wife and I have adopted 5 dogs together and before we met, I had adopted a cat named Ozzy. Three of our pets are over ten years of age, which seems to be a dividing line between young and geriatric animals. Luckily none of our animals have reached their old age, but when they do we'll be sure to do everything we can to keep them comfortable and happy.
A lot of people feel the same way about keeping their animals comfortable and happy. They see the commercials for Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray where overweight dogs waddle around in obvious discomfort. They see video of people spraying something in the dogs' water bowl, and viola! The dog is now playing like he is a puppy again. What is in this magic spray? I'll get to that in a bit, but first let's look at some "great" quotes from Dr. Frank's website:
* "Homeopathy is an alternative form of medicine which relies on research that uses homeopathic provings. This is entirely different than the scientific double blind study methods most people are familiar with." It's refreshing to see the website admit they don't do tests that could prove effectiveness. Double-blind tests are a necessity for proving the efficacy of any medication. Without them, you shouldn't even waste your time. For more information on double-blind tests click here.
* "All these ingredients are present in exceedingly small amounts; all diluted more than one trillion times. It is for this reason that they are well known for having no substantiated reports of side effects." In other words, it's just water, and since water has no known side effects, it's cool.
* "The ingredients in the formula are identified by Latin names for the natural ingredients that are, for the most part, plants or minerals." This sounds like window dressing to make the ingredients sound more impressive than they are.
And now, on to the ingredients:
* Bryonia Alba - This treatment is derived from the white bryony vine – a plant that's in the same family as the cucumber Water.
* Calcarea Carbonica - This treatment is derived from calcium carbonate. Water.
* Causticum - This treatment is derived from calcium also. Water.
* Sulfur - This is organic sulfur. This is kind of funny to see. First, because it's an actual substance that can do something in the body. Supposedly I was/am allergic to penicillin so when I was sick as a kid, I used to take these foul tasting sulfur-based medicines to fight off infections. Secondly, there are some studies out there that were designed to test whether sulfur helped arthritis (I can't find any positive results though). Alas, Dr. Frank has decided to dilute it down to, yep, water.
* Rhus Toxicondendron - It is made from poison ivy. It will not and has never caused a poison oak or ivy outbreak because it is so highly diluted. Water...again.
* Ruta Graveolens - This treatment is made from a small evergreen shrub. Water.
* Pulsatilla Nigrans - This treatment derived from the wild plant commonly known as wind flower or meadow anemone is often called the queen of homeopathic remedies since it is indicated in so many conditions including pain of the back and extremities. Water.
* Calcarea Phosphorica - This is another homeopathic form of calcium. Water.
* Silicea - This is homeopathic silica, a compound of silicon which is found in quartz and other rocks. Water.
So after looking at all the active ingredients, they all boil down to water. Distilled water. There is no substance left that has any interaction with the body for anything other than hydration. So if you think homeopathy works, remember what you're really saying is that you believe water takes on the "vibrations" or "essence" of the original substance after massive dilution and even though this has never been proven, you believe this imbued water somehow heals the body.
Specifically looking at Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray, you have a product with nothing but distilled water from a process the site admits doesn't use double blind scientific tests. There is a web page that tries to explain homeopathy too, but it's pretty disingenuous. I don't think the website has any intention of promoting good science.
So why does it work? It really doesn't. A couple things are in action here. The biggest one is simply that guardians of animals trick themselves into seeing their animals improving. Guardians might push their pets to be more active or simply pay more attention. Another thing that could happen, is that the animal gets better. It happens, and it's not uncommon. It doesn't mean the "magic" water had anything to do with it.
I said in the beginning of this article that I really get it when it comes to animals, so really, I don't want to sound too harsh when it comes to people with animals. Please, don't spend another dime on this scam. Feed your animal a little less, get him/her to lose some weight, and talk to your vet about real medicine. Homeopathy is not real medicine. It's a relic from the 1780's when our knowledge of medicine, physiology and biology was just a fraction of what we know now. It's a relic that I wish would just go away.
Note: Anything in italics was taken from here: https://www.mypetspainrelief.com/formula.php