Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: TylerDurden on September 12, 2009, 07:20:32 pm
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Here's a text I copied from the other rawpaleodiet (yahoo group) which points out the some of the flaws in Weston-Price:-
Here's a report re Incas and tuberculosis found pre-contact:-
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0205/feature5/index.html
Here's a study showing tuberculosis across pre-Contact America:-
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1580139
Here's a link re Inuit and disease in pre-Contact times:-
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/74885/abstract?
There are many other issues, of course, Weston-Price did a whirlwind tour
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
around numerous native tribes and made wide-ranging assumptions that these
native tribes all had supposedly perfect diets, despite the fact that those
native tribes' diets varied very widely from each other. Then he made arbitrary
claims that all criminality was caused by diet and Pottenger even made some
dodgy claim re homosexuality being caused by poor diet(yet current studies show
homosexuality as being present in some species in the wild despite having great
diets). One of the worst and most fraudulent)claims that Price ever made though
was that he had temporarily improved the mental retardation of a Down's Syndrome
patient solely through surgery - which is ridiculous as Down's Syndrome's mental
impairment is due to genetic factors re faulty cell-division etc.:-
http://pediatrics.about.com/od/birthdefects/f/down_syn_causes.htm
So, anyway,the worst claim Weston Price made was the supposed perfect health of
native tribes in pre-Contact times. He claimed that they were decimated,
population-wise, by health problems after abandoning their traditional diets and
taking up Western-style diets. Yet, when one actually looks at the evidence, one
finds that native tribes actually died very quickly as a result of
settler-introduced diseases like smallpox , well before they ever adopted
Western-style diets by 19th/20th century times. Ironically, I even found that
Maori health/lifespan actually improved considerably only after they adopted a
western diet c.1900
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/events/ruralhealth/2005/papers/8nrhcfinalpaper00603.
pdf
http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/publications/publications-2006/maori_eco_develo
pment.pdf
I am not denying that Weston Price contributed a lot of positive information re
diet in many ways, but it is highly misleading for people to cite Weston Price
and claim that cooked foods are healthy as long as they are not too processed.
In fact, if one reads Weston-Price more carefully one finds that the healthiest
tribes he visited all incorporated a degree of raw animal food into their diets,
hardly an endorsement of cooking. Plus, there are other factors, it's been shown
that reducing the amounts of AGEs in the body can be done by adopting caloric
restriction(AGEs are short for "advanced glcyation end products", 1 of the types
of heat-created toxins produced by cooking food)- and it is well known that
native tribes did not have a constant food-supply and were routinely subject to
caloric restriction at times, thus helping them to ward off, to a partial
extent, the more serious negative effects of a cooked diet. An additional point
is that these native tribes did huge amounts of exercise each day, quite unlike
most Western contemporaries(except Olympic athletes), so were able to partially
protect themselves against cooked diets as a result. Here's a study of the Masai
which shows atherosclerotic tendencies in that tribe, somewhat mitigated via
exercise:-
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/1/26
Excerpt:- "The coronary arteries showed intimal thickening by atherosclerosis
which equaled that of old U.S. men. The Masai vessels enlarge with age to more
than compensate for this disease. It is speculated that the Masai are protected
from their atherosclerosis by physical fitness which causes their coronary
vessels to be capacious. "
Geoff
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I think you are merely looking at Weston's Price work as if he pre-meditated "dodginess."
I did not see that in his book.
His true calling was that of teeth. He was a dentist.
He took photographs of teeth.
He statistically proved that on their native diets these tribes had great teeth, very very low % of cavities, their facial structure well developed so their is no crowding of teeth.
Whatever diet those native tribes lived on, it gave them superior teeth.
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Did WAP claim these people had perfect health?
There is no doubt that primitive people had superior facial development/teeth than those that had adopted modern diets.
I look at old photos all the time and even though the people rarely smile they have a broad face with excellent mid facial development (These photo's included prisoners etc so no one can say these people were cherry picked) No droopy eyes, overbites, pinched noses unlike what I saw today around my city..
I still can't see why you can't improve a Down Syndromes persons condition through palate expansion surgery. It's not as if the kid magically became a fully functioning teenager! He showed some improvement then got worse...what's so hard to believe there?
That link had nothing to do with palate surgery on Down Syndrome's and most people understand it's genetic condition that can only be treated not cured (basic surgery included)
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I think you are merely looking at Weston's Price work as if he pre-meditated "dodginess."
I did not see that in his book.
His true calling was that of teeth. He was a dentist.
He took photographs of teeth.
He statistically proved that on their native diets these tribes had great teeth, very very low % of cavities, their facial structure well developed so their is no crowding of teeth.
Whatever diet those native tribes lived on, it gave them superior teeth.
That's just it, he made all sorts of arbitrary, fraudulent claims(mostly based on healthy-looking teeth) yet he was merely a dentist, not even a doctor. And it seems clear to me that he cherry-picked his clientele as even the Eskimoes described by Stefansson seem to have had very worn-out teeth.
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Did WAP claim these people had perfect health?
YES! All of the tribes he visited ,with high-meat-intake, that is!
I still can't see why you can't improve a Down Syndromes persons condition through palate expansion surgery. It's not as if the kid magically became a fully functioning teenager! He showed some improvement then got worse...what's so hard to believe there?
The point is that Down's Syndrome's mental retardation simply cannot be cured by simple surgery. Now, if that surgery had included incredibly advanced genetic manipulation as well, I might believe it, otherwise it's about as believable as the Flat Earth Theory.
[/quote]
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YES! All of the tribes he visited ,with high-meat-intake, that is!
The point is that Down's Syndrome's mental retardation simply cannot be cured by simple surgery. Now, if that surgery had included incredibly advanced genetic manipulation as well, I might believe it, otherwise it's about as believable as the Flat Earth Theory.
There is some evidence for the flat earth theory that might be considered by those not too mentally petrified:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/
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The point is that Down's Syndrome's mental retardation simply cannot be cured by simple surgery. Now, if that surgery had included incredibly advanced genetic manipulation as well, I might believe it, otherwise it's about as believable as the Flat Earth Theory.
Tyler, I dare say you don't understand everything about genetics, yes? Who does? Here's a possible scenario I'll throw out to you, trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) may very well exert it's influence in an improperly built skull. Fix the skull, and although the individual still has 3 copies of the 21st chromosome, the symptoms go away.
Is that how it is? I don't know. Do you know? No, you don't, but you're slamming Weston Price as if you know exactly the way trisomy 21 exerts it's symptomatic effects.
I think you're failing to understand that all genes do is code for proteins that go and do work in the body, build things, digest things, etc...If you can get the proteins you need for a reaction that you don't have the genes for somewhere else, diet or a drug or whatever, than the lack of the gene doesn't exert it's symptoms anymore. Case in point, in sickle cell anemia the blood cells are shaped wrong and can't transport oxygen very well. If you could give someone a drug that induces their blood cells to reshape to the proper oxygen carrying shape, although they would STILL have the genetic abnormality, they would be asymptomatic. Cured, if you will, although they could pass the mutation and it's symptoms onto a child if the mutation was in their germ cells. Then that child would need the drug in order to function properly, and so on.
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YES! All of the tribes he visited ,with high-meat-intake, that is!
The point is that Down's Syndrome's mental retardation simply cannot be cured by simple surgery. Now, if that surgery had included incredibly advanced genetic manipulation as well, I might believe it, otherwise it's about as believable as the Flat Earth Theory.
This is crazy! WAP never claimed to cure anyone of Down Syndrome, where do you get this I idea from?
First you claim it's outrageous that WAP claimed he could improve Downs Syndrome symptoms with simple surgery now your talking about cures with simple surgery? Improve or cure?
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Does WAP use the term 'Perfect health'? anyway if he did I don't think he mean't 100% never ever got sick, ever had disease, a tooth fall out, TB, or a cold in all eternity. That would be a ridiculous notion that most people of intelligence would understand.
He just most likey used the term to show the wildly different levels of health in the two groups.
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"Perfect health" to me refers to the reports of the absence of marks of disease on the bones of paleolithic man, compared to the numerous marks almost always seen on bones of neolithic (us) man. This is of course the reason why we try to copy paleolithic diet.
I don't know if Dr. Price was aware of that finding, but he was certainly aware of the state of the teeth and jaws of pre-contact primitives compared to those of the bread-and-jam eaters, which probably indicate something much the same as a paleolithic level of health.
The whole book is a demonstration of the truth of the old (and otherwise cryptic) saying "you are what you eat". IMO
As to whether Down's Syndrome can be cured by a perfect (meaning raw paleo) diet, the only thing that I can imagine doing so is the human immune system, and I'm not aware of evidence of such a trial.
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Does WAP use the term 'Perfect health'? anyway if he did I don't think he mean't 100% never ever got sick, ever had disease, a tooth fall out, TB, or a cold in all eternity. That would be a ridiculous notion that most people of intelligence would understand.
The WAPF certainly makes this absurd claim re perfect health:- "Dr. Price's research demonstrated that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation after generation only when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators found exclusively in animal fats." taken from:-
http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm
He just most likey used the term to show the wildly different levels of health in the two groups.
The fact is that Weston Price claimed the native tribes were completely free of disease etc. Yet such tribes were constantly affected by disease, as shown above.
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This is crazy! WAP never claimed to cure anyone of Down Syndrome, where do you get this I idea from?
First you claim it's outrageous that WAP claimed he could improve Downs Syndrome symptoms with simple surgery now your talking about cures with simple surgery? Improve or cure?
I got the idea from this and other sources:-
"Dr. Price paid particular attention to a sixteen year old boy who had Down's syndrome (or what they termed mongolism) and had been born to an older mother who was sickly at the time of his conception. Down's syndrome often occurs in children of mothers who are over 40 or to mothers experiencing reproductive exhaustion. Dr. Weston Price felt that perhaps the crowding of the pituitary gland caused by constrictive jaw structure, contributed to the underdeveloped sexual organs and mental capacities.
Through surgery Dr. Price widened the boy's maxillary arch, which resulted in improvement of the mongoloid features and a definite increase in mental abilities. The boy wore an appliance in his mouth to keep the bones in place but when it subsequently became dislodged, he reverted and many of his previous abnormal characteristics returned."
Now this "improvement" is physically impossible. To undo mental retardation one has to regenerate neurons in the brain or add extra brain-matter etc. Simple surgery cannot undo that kind of damage.
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Tyler, I dare say you don't understand everything about genetics, yes? Who does? Here's a possible scenario I'll throw out to you, trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) may very well exert it's influence in an improperly built skull. Fix the skull, and although the individual still has 3 copies of the 21st chromosome, the symptoms go away.
Is that how it is? I don't know. Do you know? No, you don't, but you're slamming Weston Price as if you know exactly the way trisomy 21 exerts it's symptomatic effects.
I think you're failing to understand that all genes do is code for proteins that go and do work in the body, build things, digest things, etc...If you can get the proteins you need for a reaction that you don't have the genes for somewhere else, diet or a drug or whatever, than the lack of the gene doesn't exert it's symptoms anymore. Case in point, in sickle cell anemia the blood cells are shaped wrong and can't transport oxygen very well. If you could give someone a drug that induces their blood cells to reshape to the proper oxygen carrying shape, although they would STILL have the genetic abnormality, they would be asymptomatic. Cured, if you will, although they could pass the mutation and it's symptoms onto a child if the mutation was in their germ cells. Then that child would need the drug in order to function properly, and so on.
Look, I concede that minor symptoms can be fixed by diet or surgery(eg:- diet healing digestive issues, surgery fixing flat feet or whatever), but the best that surgery could do, re improving intelligence, is perhaps improve blood-flow to the brain or relieve pressure on the brain. That's it. You can't build extra masses of brain-tissue via surgery and even a healthy diet won't help significantly increase the mental abilities of an adult born with a mental age of 2, say. Yet Price makes outrageous claims re improving substantially a down's syndrome patient.
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Did you actually read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration or are you attacking it second hand?
The WAPF is not the same as Weston Price. He did not claim that native people's were in perfect health, he claimed that their health was superior relative to their contemporaries living on a western diet. He then proceeded to document that with pictures and spent the rest of his life trying to explain it with vitamin theory. He quite clearly documented dental caries and illness in native diet populations, which is not something you do if you're trying to prove that they're in "perfect health". The main point about infectious disease he noted was that native dieters tended to survive better and/or become infected less than western dieters (I'm thinking particularly of the Inuit and northern Indian chapters here). Obviously smallpox, being non-native and deadly, wiped out huge swaths of native populations, but that's not relevant to Price's observations.
Your fixation on Down's Syndrome would go away if you actually read the chapter about the "mongloid" child. There is no claim of a cure. There was simply the documented result of physical changes in the child after palate separation surgery, which reversed after the surgery was reversed. It's entirely possible, in fact probable, that the improvement obtained by the surgery had little to do with Down's syndrome at all. Price brought the result up as interesting but he didn't claim that surgery was a cure for Down's. It's not like the child suddenly became high functioning. He just went through measurable signs of puberty and had less mood issues until the surgery was reversed. This was important data to Price, given that he was a dentist who theorized that facial structure had measurable impact on mentality.
Again, you should actually read the source material if you want to attack it intelligently. Price was a product of his time and by no means a dietary messiah. He does make numerous claims that have since either been proven false or otherwise shown to be incorrect. But your attack here is little better than setting up a strawman. He wasn't a fraudster, he was a scientist. Science is the process of testing ideas by experiment, which means that you find a lot of ideas that are wrong along the way. A lot of Price's ideas were wrong. That doesn't invalidate his observations and it sure doesn't make him a fraud.
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Did you actually read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration or are you attacking it second hand?
I have his so-called "Bible" at home and have indeed read it, along with all the cherry-picked photos and other nonsense etc.
The WAPF is not the same as Weston Price. He did not claim that native people's were in perfect health, he claimed that their health was superior relative to their contemporaries living on a western diet. He then proceeded to document that with pictures and spent the rest of his life trying to explain it with vitamin theory. He quite clearly documented dental caries and illness in native diet populations, which is not something you do if you're trying to prove that they're in "perfect health". The main point about infectious disease he noted was that native dieters tended to survive better and/or become infected less than western dieters (I'm thinking particularly of the Inuit and northern Indian chapters here).
The WAPF is indeed representative of WP's ideas and I note the multitude of links provided when I Google for claims re perfect health on WP diet. The simple fact is that WP deeply exaggerated claims re health among the natives. As for quibbling whether Price himself stated the word "perfect" or his disciples, that's irrelevant given the exaggerations involved.
Obviously smallpox, being non-native and deadly, wiped out huge swaths of native populations, but that's not relevant to Price's observations.
Of course smallpox is very relevant indeed as Price claimed that the native populations died or suffered healthwise because of a switch to a western type of diet, whereas, as with smallpox and other issues, one can see that there were plenty of alternative explanations. When someone like Price carefully ignores such aspects, he is clearly being dishonest.
Your fixation on Down's Syndrome would go away if you actually read the chapter about the "mongloid" child. There is no claim of a cure. There was simply the documented result of physical changes in the child after palate separation surgery, which reversed after the surgery was reversed. It's entirely possible, in fact probable, that the improvement obtained by the surgery had little to do with Down's syndrome at all. Price brought the result up as interesting but he didn't claim that surgery was a cure for Down's. It's not like the child suddenly became high functioning. He just went through measurable signs of puberty and had less mood issues until the surgery was reversed. This was important data to Price, given that he was a dentist who theorized that facial structure had measurable impact on mentality.
Well, according to the above reference I cited before, Price did indeed make an outrageous claim re improving mental retardation:- "Through surgery Dr. Price widened the boy's maxillary arch, which resulted in improvement of the mongoloid features and a definite increase in mental abilities." I'll check WP's incredibly longwinded book when I get back but I doubt there'll be any degree of difference re accounts.
Again, you should actually read the source material if you want to attack it intelligently. Price was a product of his time and by no means a dietary messiah. He does make numerous claims that have since either been proven false or otherwise shown to be incorrect. But your attack here is little better than setting up a strawman. He wasn't a fraudster, he was a scientist. Science is the process of testing ideas by experiment, which means that you find a lot of ideas that are wrong along the way. A lot of Price's ideas were wrong. That doesn't invalidate his observations and it sure doesn't make him a fraud.
Well, then he was either an incompetent scientist(for the most part) and/or a fraud(for the most part). I'm not suggesting he was wholly wrong on everything, merely that his claims should be viewed with extreme scepticism given that so many of his views have been debunked by other anthropologists etc.
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Of course smallpox is very relevant indeed as Price claimed that the native populations died or suffered healthwise because of a switch to a western type of diet, whereas, as with smallpox and other issues, one can see that there were plenty of alternative explanations. When someone like Price carefully ignores such aspects, he is clearly being dishonest.
They did suffer due to that switch. Nowhere did he claim that they suffered exclusively due to that switch. Unless you are claiming that smallpox causes tooth decay, the evidence Price collected is conclusive in that regard (especially considering the vast array of confirmation from other sources). You are inventing strawmen here.
Go ahead and read the chapter. Price claims that the child showed improvement after the surgery which was later reversed post surgery. There is not enough detail in the account to really say what was going on. To cry "fraud! dishonesty!" is completely unwarranted. For all you know, the child Price operated on happened to have an unknown other ailment which was alleviated by the surgery, creating a confounding result. You have no actual clinical experience in this area and so your absolute claim of fraud/dishonesty is worth even less than Price's writings on the subject; at least he was a dentist. He presented his hypothesis as to why the change occurred - not his claim for a cure.
I don't understand your tone and attitude towards Price. It's as if you have a personal vendetta against him. Science is testing and falsifiying ideas with experiment. Hurling abuse at a dead guy and his observations because he was wrong in how he interpreted them is neither scientific nor rational. No one is right all the time and all scientists are in fact wrong most of the time. This does not imply that they are wrong all of the time, and that we should seize on their failures to throw out everything they did.
I agree that Price's claims should be treated with skepticism. I think all claims should be treated with skepticism. However, that skepticism must be rational, open and demanding of testable hypothesis, not angry, adamant and dismissive.
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I think Tyler is just having fun playing devil's advocate. -d
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Look, I concede that minor symptoms can be fixed by diet or surgery(eg:- diet healing digestive issues, surgery fixing flat feet or whatever), but the best that surgery could do, re improving intelligence, is perhaps improve blood-flow to the brain or relieve pressure on the brain. That's it. You can't build extra masses of brain-tissue via surgery and even a healthy diet won't help significantly increase the mental abilities of an adult born with a mental age of 2, say. Yet Price makes outrageous claims re improving substantially a down's syndrome patient.
You are showing that you don't understand exactly what Down's Syndrome does to the brain or any part of the body. In order to make the argument that surgery could not treat the symptoms of Down's you would have to have some kind of information about exactly what having 3 copies of the 21st chromosome does. I'm not sure anyone has that, but we certainly don't. I think you're making a big mistake with your view of how genetics influences changes in the body, as if they are irreversible changes because the genetic problem itself is irreversible.
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I just broke out my copy of NAPD to check out the Down Syndrome case TylerDurden references.
Here's a basic summary:
A "mongoloid defective" with significant facial deformity was given a dental appliance which widened his upper jaw. The result reported was that the boy exhibited marked physical and mental changes after the surgery, developing mentally and physically. When the appliance became broken, he regressed mentally back to a state of lethargy accompanied by nausea, which cleared up when the appliance was put back in place.
Price's hypothesis was that by forcing the facial structure of the boy into something approaching normalcy, the brain was allowed to develop. Specifically, by opening the skull, the pituitary gland was either stimulated or allowed to release normal growth signals. Price's idea, I think, was that facial development was some sort of trigger for other developmental changes, and so widening the boy's maximal arch caused further development to occur. The boy was not cured and Price does not appear to claim that he reached a "normal" state. He simply developed further than a typical case of "Mongoloid idiot" usually would, due to a correction of some of the problems associated with the condition that alleviated other symptoms.
Even assuming that Price's explanation of the results was wrong, there is no reason to cast extreme doubt on the observed result itself. To claim that Price simply doctored the accompanying photographs and invented the story is unwarranted, and not rational. There is no reason to believe that he is lying about the event. He might be wrong, even deluded, but without some reason to believe that he's lying, it's not justified to claim that he's acting fraudulently.
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Right, I've got the book in front of me and can cite the following sentences to back up my point beyond doubt:- (page 369 of my edition of NAPD)"With the movement of the maxillary bones laterally, as shown progressively in Fig.126, there was a great change in his physical development and mentality."
Page 370:- He goes on to make absurd claims re sudden increased physical development(to teenaged phase) and then states unequivocally "His mental change was even more marked."
"In a few weeks time, he passed through stages that usually take several years."
Price then further down the page claims that the boy regressed when the surgical appliance in him became dislodged but that he returned rapidly to his improved condition once the surgical appliance was readapted. In other words, the cure was not described as "failed" , there was only a temporary setback described.
So, there is no question that Price was claiming a significant improvement in mental ability for a Down's Syndrome patient - an incredibly unlikely event given that no brain-tissue was built up or whatever(and the purported change described is absurdly rapid(12 weeks) that no serious scientists could possibly accept such rubbish.
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You are showing that you don't understand exactly what Down's Syndrome does to the brain or any part of the body. In order to make the argument that surgery could not treat the symptoms of Down's you would have to have some kind of information about exactly what having 3 copies of the 21st chromosome does. I'm not sure anyone has that, but we certainly don't. I think you're making a big mistake with your view of how genetics influences changes in the body, as if they are irreversible changes because the genetic problem itself is irreversible.
It all depends on the scale of the changes made in the womb via the genes. If , for example, someone is born with a cleft palate and a healthy brain(unusual as many cleft-palate babies also have severe mental retardation), then fixing the cleft-palate via surgery will indeed correct that genetic anomaly. But it's pointless to claim miraculous benefits for surgery for something as severe as severe permanent damage to the brain. I mean, raw foods have proven very beneficial but they have not had any success in reversing autism or any other genetic-related conditions. Now, it is vaguely possible that the chance for a few genetic diseases could be removed in future generations if parents reverted to a healthy raw diet, but that is mere speculation.
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Another point:- Weston Price routinely ignored such factors as alcoholism which did in the native populations re ill-health to a far greater extent than diet. One only has to look at Australian Aborigines to see how alcohol destroys them more so than diet.
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You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, yet you claim absolute authority. Are you playing devil's advocate or are you serious?
Price did something and reported a result. You are leaping to conclusions left and right to support your notion that he's a fraud and a liar - there's a simple alternative explanation between "cured Down's" and "fraudulent quack", which is simply "corrected other problem". We have no idea if the child even actually had Down's syndrome or simply had some brain issue that generated similar symptoms. We have no idea if the improvement in brain function would be sustained or repeatable in other patients. We lack the data to evaluate Price's claim, which indeed should be treated with skepticism. However, to call it absurd, fraudulent or dishonest is totally unwarranted, irrational and unskeptical - it shows a prejudice being projected on the data rather than a cold, objective analysis.
You claim that no brain tissue was built up - how do you know? Why is that even relevant or necessary for the obtained result? You claim that it's absurd that changes can take place rapidly over three months - really? What clinical experience do you have to back that claim up? Let's review: you don't know what the problem with the child was, you have no training or schooling which would inform your opinion, you have no clinical experience treating patients with this type of surgery, yet you can state absolutely and without qualification that Price is lying. Apply your own standard of proof to your own claims and see what conclusion that leads you to.
Again. The man was wrong on many issues. That does not mean he is a fraud or that his observations should be thrown away as wrong.
You now make yet another sweeping general claim, that alcohol played a greater part in the ill health of populations than the switch to a western diet. Alcohol? Alcohol is part of the western diet. Leaving aside the obvious contradiction, I'm left wondering why it is you are grasping at such a straw. Of course alcoholism destroys people. Does it also rot their teeth, destroy their facial structure development and cause multiple vitamin deficiencies? Are you actually claiming that every single native populations' children were consuming enough alcohol to cause those issues? And you attack Price for absurd claims! Those problems were obviously caused by malnutrition, predominately as a result of switching to a bleached flour/sugar based diet. Alcohol certainly played a role in the breakdown of many societies' structure and health, but to claim that it's somehow a significant confounding factor demands a much greater justification than a bald assertion.
You seem desperate to find one thing on which you can base a wholesale dismissal of everything Price did that doesn't fit your belief system. Why? Most people seem capable of separating the 1930s medical theory from the 1930s observed results without throwing out the whole lot while accusing the man of being a liar.
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I think Tyler is just having fun playing devil's advocate. -d
Yep
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Why wouldn't changing the skull shape do something to development? I mean, that stuff pushes and pulls on glands. Certainly if you smashed your nuts in a wedged position it could interfere with testosterone production and cause a man to have less manly features and development some female ones. Then you remove the nut wedging device and it starts production up at normal levels again.
Now imagine that some genetic defect could cause your nuts to wedge into a corner in your sack and impinge on hormone output. Then imagine someone like Weston Price gave you a special pair of underwear that put them in the right place. See what I'm getting at?
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Why wouldn't changing the skull shape do something to development? I mean, that stuff pushes and pulls on glands. Certainly if you smashed your nuts in a wedged position it could interfere with testosterone production and cause a man to have less manly features and development some female ones. Then you remove the nut wedging device and it starts production up at normal levels again.
Now imagine that some genetic defect could cause your nuts to wedge into a corner in your sack and impinge on hormone output. Then imagine someone like Weston Price gave you a special pair of underwear that put them in the right place. See what I'm getting at?
It's a false analogy. Sure, surgery could fix(if only to some limited extent) a brain injury caused by an axe(if the axe didn't permanently harm certain crucial parts of the brain), but the evidence re Down's Syndrome shows unequivocally that the damage results from within the womb re damage to DNA and has nothing to do with increased pressure on the skull or suchlike during the organism's subsequent lifetime. The other aspect is that Down's Syndrome causes multiple health problems which are not solely related to just 1 or 2 glands, but are body-wide(due to the genetic influence), so any claims re a significant cure of major symptoms of Down's are clearly bogus.
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I think Tyler is just having fun playing devil's advocate. -d
Not at all. My initial dislike of Weston-Price was the result of having read all sorts of rubbish in school ages ago, about the foolish Rousseau and his theory of the "Noble Savage". When I subsequently discovered Weston-Price and his blatant recopying of the whole Noble Savage " nonsense, I was naturally up in arms when I noticed the clear gullibility of many RVAFers re their near-total acceptance of his beliefs.
I suspect this may be more of an American phenomenon, though. I have noticed that American Primal Dieters/WAPfers swallow all sorts of (Dances-with-Wolves-styled) nonsense peddled by Aajonus and the WAPF about the supposed perfect health of various native tribes. In the UK these sound ridiculous, of course, and most UKers would just be somewhat bemused by fake accounts of the supposed perfect health of ancient British tribes or whatever local equivalent.
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We have no idea if the child even actually had Down's syndrome or simply had some brain issue that generated similar symptoms.
Well, if the child didn't have Down's, then Price was either lying to us or so incompetent that he couldn't properly diagnose any serious condition(except possibly dentistry-related, and even then...)
We have no idea if the improvement in brain function would be sustained or repeatable in other patients. We lack the data to evaluate Price's claim, which indeed should be treated with skepticism. However, to call it absurd, fraudulent or dishonest is totally unwarranted, irrational and unskeptical - it shows a prejudice being projected on the data rather than a cold, objective analysis.
Too damn right it should be treated with skepticism. And when there are many other reasons to doubt Weston-Price re other issues, then claims of fraud are perfectly justified.
You claim that no brain tissue was built up - how do you know? Why is that even relevant or necessary for the obtained result? You claim that it's absurd that changes can take place rapidly over three months - really? What clinical experience do you have to back that claim up? Let's review: you don't know what the problem with the child was, you have no training or schooling which would inform your opinion, you have no clinical experience treating patients with this type of surgery, yet you can state absolutely and without qualification that Price is lying. Apply your own standard of proof to your own claims and see what conclusion that leads you to.
I don't base this on my sole opinion/expertise but on a multitude of scientists who similiarly do not believe that the major symptoms of Down's Syndrome are curable within a 3-month period. Plus, I've already shown that Price made all sorts of dubious claims(re the faulty focal infection theory/holistic dentistry) since debunked by other scientists, which gives further reason to doubt his claims in other areas:-
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
Simply put, I can accept a possible minor benefit re cognition but a massive increase in cognition would be impossible(unless Price was lying/incompetent and the boy had some other reason for impaired mental malfunction - which would have had to be slight)
You now make yet another sweeping general claim, that alcohol played a greater part in the ill health of populations than the switch to a western diet. Alcohol? Alcohol is part of the western diet. Leaving aside the obvious contradiction, I'm left wondering why it is you are grasping at such a straw. Of course alcoholism destroys people. Does it also rot their teeth, destroy their facial structure development and cause multiple vitamin deficiencies? Are you actually claiming that every single native populations' children were consuming enough alcohol to cause those issues? And you attack Price for absurd claims! Those problems were obviously caused by malnutrition, predominately as a result of switching to a bleached flour/sugar based diet. Alcohol certainly played a role in the breakdown of many societies' structure and health, but to claim that it's somehow a significant confounding factor demands a much greater justification than a bald assertion.
The claim re alcohol(not the only non-dietary factor, there are many others cited (such as smoking among the Inuit etc.) is valid. In case, you hadn't read on the subject, there are cases of "fetal alcohol syndrome" where even minor ingestion of alcohol during pregancy can lead to brain-damage in the child. There are also multiple reports of Australian Aborigines, even now, suffering far more from alcoholism than diet:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6353693.stm
. And alcohol is not a food or a drink per se, it is merely used as an intoxicant. If people depended on alcohol instead of water or soft drinks they'd be dead shortly, as alcohol causes dehydration. And like I said, there were several other issues such as a drop in exercise given reduced hunting as hunter-gatherer habits were abandoned etc. etc.
You seem desperate to find one thing on which you can base a wholesale dismissal of everything Price did that doesn't fit your belief system. Why? Most people seem capable of separating the 1930s medical theory from the 1930s observed results without throwing out the whole lot while accusing the man of being a liar.
Well, I agree that Price depended on outdated scientific methods much of which have now been disproven etc., but that still doesn't change the fact that Price was wrong/dishonest on many issues(not just 1!LOL!)
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The quackwatch article was rubbish.
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Tyler, you're making a fundamental attribution error. You seem to think someone being wrong makes them a liar and a fraud, or "dodgy". That's neither logical nor rational.
Since you have no clinical experience whatsoever, I find your continued assertion that you know exactly how wrong Price was or how he lied with respect to the Mongoloid idiot difficult to respond to. Your argument in that regard boils down to "I believe that he's a fraud, and will fit the evidence to that belief as necessary." Your total lack of experience, qualification or expertise is incapable of denting your ironclad confidence in your belief. You claim that multitudes of scientists back you on this; can you cite, say, five articles by five different authors evaluating Price's claims, please?
You're now claiming that fetal alcohol syndrome was the reason Price saw deformed faces in every society he went to. Incredible. I'm sure you're aware of the hasty generalization fallacy, so I wonder why you continue to apply it. Making absurd claims in an attempt to show someone else's claims to be absurd is an interesting tactic; I can't wait to see where you go next. Smoking and exercise as causative factors in dental development and rapid tooth decay? Really, what is so hard to accept about vitamin deficiency leading to developmental problems given the indisputable fact that a diet based on bleached grains and sugar is deficient in vitamins and minerals?
At this point, were I to apply your standard of fraud with respect to price to your posts, I would have to conclude that you are an outright liar and a fraud. It would also be interesting for you to actually enumerate and explain every time you write "etc, etc" or claim "multiple sources" - perhaps then I could actually evaluate your claims on merit rather than be expected to accept them on your authority. I'm not a fan of ex cathedra, either.
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Tyler, you're making a fundamental attribution error. You seem to think someone being wrong makes them a liar and a fraud, or "dodgy". That's neither logical nor rational.
Not at all, If Price had made only moderate errors, he could be just called incompetent, but his errors are so glaring and so obvious that nobody with any common sense could take them at face-value. I mean, the best one can claim is that Price was such an idealist re the "Noble savage" philosophy, that he, in his blindness, chose to "overlook" key discrepancies in his claims - but it's a long shot, I prefer the term "fraud".
Since you have no clinical experience whatsoever, I find your continued assertion that you know exactly how wrong Price was or how he lied with respect to the Mongoloid idiot difficult to respond to. Your argument in that regard boils down to "I believe that he's a fraud, and will fit the evidence to that belief as necessary." Your total lack of experience, qualification or expertise is incapable of denting your ironclad confidence in your belief. You claim that multitudes of scientists back you on this; can you cite, say, five articles by five different authors evaluating Price's claims, please?
Given that Price had no standing or respect in the scientific community(given such fake claims as the focal infection theory and many of his absurd claims re diet), it's a bit rich to challenge my own credentials(after all I don't claim to be a guru, unlike Price!). Every criticism of Price I make is derived from rather more competent scientists than Price ever was, and I do accept some of Price's findings(unsurprisingly, only those which have been independently corroborated by other more credible scientists).
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-misinformation-of-barry-groves-and-weston-price.html
(Relevant excerpt from the above which explains why scientists don't take WP seriously:- "Weston Price and the Weston Price Foundation's claims about achieving good health on a diet rich in saturated fat are entirely without substance or merit. Weston Price himself did not painstakingly document the lifespan of these people; he was a dentist who just made a quick visit and jumped to simplistic conclusions claiming people were healthy by looking at their teeth. He ignored life expectancy, infant mortality, high rate of infection and many other confounding variables. Weston Price did not grasp the complexity of multi-factorial causation and this tradition is continued by his followers today. This in no way dismisses or makes less of the importance of Price's criticism of the dangers of sugar and other processed foods modern societies eat. "
I mean how can one take Price seriously when he spent very little time with each tribes he visited(other researchers can take years to study individual tribes), when he focused primarily on dental health as opposed to overall health and utterly ignored the high infant mortality, infection-rates and the low life expectancy etc. Then there's also Price's dodgy claims re criminals and homosexuality and diet, since disproven as wild animals exhibit such behaviour even on raw diets:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
As regards scientific evaluation of Price's work, Price never provided any genuine scientific data that could be properly evaluated by the scientific community. The only vaguely scientific experiment of WP's work was the Pottenger cat Study, which was flawed from the start as it assumed that the natural diet of a cat in the wild was cows' milk, a grave error. Here's beyondveg.com's rather faulty review of that study:-
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1h.shtml
which claims that cooked food is OK for cats as long as it's supplemented by taurine, showing that cooked foods are deficient! At any rate, if only Price had tried to provide us with further studies, but, sadly, most of his utterings amount to a lot of hearsay about native tribes, much of which has already been debunked.
You're now claiming that fetal alcohol syndrome was the reason Price saw deformed faces in every society he went to. Incredible. I'm sure you're aware of the hasty generalization fallacy, so I wonder why you continue to apply it.
I;m afraid you're actually the one who is generalising. I merely gave fetal alcohol syndrome as an example of the effects of alcohol abuse and certainly did NOT claim that alcohol was the sole reason for ill-health among native tribes, merely that it was one of them.
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I note that not one of those links actually examined the Mongoloid idiot claim, thereby rendering your continued assertions in that regard moot.
Again, there is every reason to be skeptical of Price's conclusions. There is no reason whatsoever to claim that they are "dodgy", fraudulent or dishonest. Ascribing motive to incorrectness is unwarranted and irrational without significant proof. It simply does not follow on its own, and you have not provided any convincing reason for Price to spend years of his life compiling a giant pile of lies. Even assuming he was blinkered by a deeply held belief that natives were superior, it doesn't change the actual observational data. It only affects the weight of his conclusions.
I don't particularly disagree with one component of your claim, that Price should not be taken as gospel. No one should. However, your continued dismissal of anything you disagree with, and your continued assertion that this was active fraud and dishonesty are not well supported and not well constructed. For instance, you attack Price for making "dodgy" claims by citing a doctor (Furhman) who advocates an essentially vegetarian diet. Vegetarian?! What a liar and a fraud Furhman must be! What a dishonest charlatan! Why would you reference such a worthless, dodgy person?
Price's data is just that, data. He went around, took pictures of people's faces and teeth, and noted the striking difference between those eating their traditional diet and those eating the western diet of the time. That's virtually the entire substance of the book. He does not claim that natives had "perfect health". He claims that they had better health than their related contemporaries eating a western diet. Given the western diet of the time, this should be unsurprising and uncontroversial.
I did not take his claims of perfect childbirth, or the other random things he noted, as something intended to be believed as gospel. I read it as an observation or secondhand story being related in the notes. You seem to be taking it as some sort of intentional fraud intended to convince you of something - I did not get that impression at all. You are projecting your prejudice on to the text and then, apparently, believing it to be the only correct interpretation. There's no reason to be paranoid and no reason to ascribe a motive that tickles your superiority complex. Data just is, observations just are, and to call either fraudulent requires a whole hell of a lot more work than just saying "Well it is because I believe it so."
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I'm not surprised that there's no scientific evaluation of Price's absurd claim re removing Down's Syndrome via surgery. I mean, it's on a par with claims that Elvis is still alive etc. As regards Price's observations, his claims were, in some cases, so extravagant that they could not have been honest or even just mistaken.
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Elvis is still alive; he just went home.
See MiB.
;)
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It's a false analogy. Sure, surgery could fix(if only to some limited extent) a brain injury caused by an axe(if the axe didn't permanently harm certain crucial parts of the brain), but the evidence re Down's Syndrome shows unequivocally that the damage results from within the womb re damage to DNA and has nothing to do with increased pressure on the skull or suchlike during the organism's subsequent lifetime. The other aspect is that Down's Syndrome causes multiple health problems which are not solely related to just 1 or 2 glands, but are body-wide(due to the genetic influence), so any claims re a significant cure of major symptoms of Down's are clearly bogus.
What is, then, the mechanism for Down's? I'm not claiming it's a faulty skull, but you ARE claiming it's not.
Again, a brain injury by a faulty skull to the body is no different than from an axe, and if your genes build a faulty skull and you can fix it, then that's all there is.
If it is damage to glands, well then maybe the skull thing wouldn't do anything. But we do know that the skull is close to some glands, so maybe it would.
But unless you know what the 21st chromosome even does I don't think you're in a position to say that skull surgery would not correct a defect in it.
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The point re Down's is that there are multiple defects involved, thus making it clear that the brain isn't the only organ affected. Realigning the skull isn't going to do much re removing non-skull-related issues.
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I'm not surprised that there's no scientific evaluation of Price's absurd claim re removing Down's Syndrome via surgery. I mean, it's on a par with claims that Elvis is still alive etc. As regards Price's observations, his claims were, in some cases, so extravagant that they could not have been honest or even just mistaken.
Your the only one talking about curing Down's Syndrome though now your using the term removing.
The point re Down's is that there are multiple defects involved, thus making it clear that the brain isn't the only organ affected. Realigning the skull isn't going to do much re removing non-skull-related issues.
But the expansion surgery did something to improve the symptoms of Down Syndrome for a short period, so please explain where has WAP being fraudulent/dodgy?
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But the expansion surgery did something to improve the symptoms of Down Syndrome for a short period, so please explain where has WAP being fraudulent/dodgy?
We only have Price's word for it with no suitably independent verification. But the clincher is that Price made claims about massive (mental and physical)improvements within a remarkably short period, thus lending a great deal of credence to claims of fraud.Incidentally, Price appears to have made a claim that the surgery went wrong and the symptoms came back but were sorted out permanently when the surgical appliance was fixed. So his claim did not relate to a temporary fix, making his claim even less likely.
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Tyler, what if it's true? What if it's all true? I have no reason to believe that Dr. Price was lying about that case. Other things, he may have covered up the truth (particularly about the cultural practices/beliefs of some of the tribes he studied...these were brutal savages, in many cases, cannibals, etc.), but I see no reason for him to lie about this. I'm not saying that you would see this kind of improvement in every Down's Syndrome case. My guess is that this was not the only Down's case that he tried this on, but was the one that responded the best to the treatment, and he was using this to show the potential problems with narrow palates in general.
My reasons for thinking this are that not all Down's Syndrome patients are below average intelligence. Here's a link that shows that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burke_(actor) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burke_(actor)) That's Chris Burke, who most Americans around my age are familiar with. He's not the only Down's patient with above-average intelligence. My guess is that, in a few Down's cases, extreme improvements happen with palate-widening techniques, but in others (for instance, I doubt that Chris Burke would see much increase in his intelligence), there would be very little improvement.
Here's a quote about the the mental abilities of Down's patients from Wikipedia:
"Cognitive development in children with Down syndrome is quite variable. It is not currently possible at birth to predict the capabilities of any individual reliably, nor are the number or appearance of physical features predictive of future ability. The identification of the best methods of teaching each particular child ideally begins soon after birth through early intervention programs.[9] Since children with Down syndrome have a wide range of abilities, success at school can vary greatly, which underlines the importance of evaluating children individually."
I think it may be what Dr. Price doesn't say here that really is telling. He certainly would have had no trouble finding Down's patients to work on. He was the premier dentist in the United States, the first head of what became the American Dental Association. I'm sure many parents of Down's children would have been more than willing to let him try this type of operation on their child. He doesn't mention any other cases, though, which really makes me think that this surgery only helped some patients to any real degree.
Of course, he may have been lying like a rug. I don't care, I'm just stating what I think MAY actually be going on. :)
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We only have Price's word for it with no suitably independent verification. But the clincher is that Price made claims about massive (mental and physical)improvements within a remarkably short period, thus lending a great deal of credence to claims of fraud.Incidentally, Price appears to have made a claim that the surgery went wrong and the symptoms came back but were sorted out permanently when the surgical appliance was fixed. So his claim did not relate to a temporary fix, making his claim even less likely.
There's plenty of anecdotal reports of improvement of conditions from palate expansion. If fed the right diet a palate grows broad so that the tongue fits in the mouth correctly and the nasal pasages are broad. This allows the person to have a correct swallow action, breathe through the nose to warm/humidify the air and calm down the central nervous system.
This is quite different compared to a kid with a narrow palate who is ADHD, mouth breather (asthma allergies)always gasping for breath, always sick, crooked teeth, retracted mandible, head positioned forward.
Many dentists use Orthodontic appliances similiar to Prices to broaden the palate and relieve these conditions. So we don't just have Prices word for it these guys are carrying on Prices work doing similar procedures but with better knowledge and equipment.
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There's plenty of anecdotal reports of improvement of conditions from palate expansion. If fed the right diet a palate grows broad so that the tongue fits in the mouth correctly and the nasal pasages are broad. This allows the person to have a correct swallow action, breathe through the nose to warm/humidify the air and calm down the central nervous system.
I would agree re an improvement in mood being possible via surgery, I just draw the line at believing in the kind of dramatic cures Price claimed re this Down's Syndrome example.
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As regards scientific evaluation of Price's work, Price never provided any genuine scientific data that could be properly evaluated by the scientific community. The only vaguely scientific experiment of WP's work was the Pottenger cat Study, which was flawed from the start as it assumed that the natural diet of a cat in the wild was cows' milk, a grave error. Here's beyondveg.com's rather faulty review of that study:-
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1h.shtml
which claims that cooked food is OK for cats as long as it's supplemented by taurine, showing that cooked foods are deficient! At any rate, if only Price had tried to provide us with further studies, but, sadly, most of his utterings amount to a lot of hearsay about native tribes, much of which has already been debunked.
From what I'm reading, raw milk from everyday (even grass grazed) cows specifically of all things is one of the few RAF's that have practically no taurine.
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No one has yet seemed to tie the whole Down's Syndrome kid thing together yet. RawKyle was on the right track when he said changing the skull shape may affect "glands". In particular, the pituitary gland is sitting right on top of the sphenoid bone, which is connected to the maxilla. Apparently the maxilla expansion did make a difference on the pituitary, because WAP said that the kid suddenly grew facial hair and pubic hair. You can claim he may have exaggerated on behavioral changes, but on such an indisputable physical change, he would have had to either discovered something amazing, or be a flat out liar. The kid was 16 years old-- a little late if you ask me.
Another theory WAP had about the kid was that the continual mouth breathing contributed to his retardation problem. I can't remember if he specifically said "lack of oxygen", but this is the claim of recent carriers of WAP's work like Raymond Silkman, as seen here: http://www.westonaprice.org/Is-it-Mental-or-is-it-Dental.html. Raymond Silkman claims the nose releases small amounts of nitric oxide when breathed through, and this helps us absorb oxygen. Don't know how true it is-- he also says lack of oxygen causes black circles under the eyes, but I've been told by a doctor that this is wrong. There is also another book on the seemingly ill-effects of mouth breathing called "Shut your mouth and save your life", which predates WAP by about 100 years, as reported by the WAPF journal. This all seems plausible to me, and is another plausible mechanism by which fixing a person's skull could drastically change one's mental ability. "Shut your mouth" text is here: http://members.westnet.com.au/pkolb/indians.pdf.
And yes, just to reiterate, WAP did not claim to "cure" the boy-- he specifically said that he was drastically improved, but still retarded. But, he went from laying on the floor, playing with blocks and talking to no-one, to being trusted to run errands by himself, taking several trains, and also "having an interest in other people". In fact, he became a "sex pervert" and had to be institutionalized in the end-- another indication his pituitary received a massive wake up call, besides him growing like a foot. This detail is oddly edited out of my print-copy and can be seen here: http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price19.html
Also TylerDurden, I believe Price had nothing to do with the Pottenger cat study.
Also, I don't believe that WAP was "not taken seriously" in his day. Regardless of what you read on the Quackwatch page, this is what Dr. Ron has to say:
"He kept meticulous records and photographic accounts of all he saw. His work shows that nearly everyone in traditional cultures had all 32 teeth, perfectly fitting into the dental arch, perfectly formed, as long as the people had no access to refined foods. Eating refined foods invariably caused dental decay and systemic diseases, and in the next generation, crooked and crowded teeth.
Price collected over 10,000 samples of native foods. He sent them back to America for analysis in his laboratories. Price was a pioneer in developing assays for vitamins A and D in the 1920's. He wrote a textbook on dentistry that was on every United States naval vessel. His studies of problems associated with root canals were rediscovered 70 years later, and became the basis for the recent book Root Canal Cover-Up. His articles appeared in dental journals throughout the twenties and thirties. His classic book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, was required reading in Harvard anthropology classes for many years. "
http://www.drrons.com/weston-price-traditional-nutrition-5.htm
While I'm picking apart everything that you said, I might as well mention that WAP photographed and praised many natives with teeth that look "worn out", instead of dodging the subject like you said. The teeth may have been worn down considerably (I don't know the reason why), but Price still upheld them as examples of good health because they did NOT have cavities or decay, and had fully formed dental arches.
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The quackwatch article was very thorough and pointed out that Weston-Price had invented a theory, the focal infection theory which was later debunked completely within the scientific community(hardly a case of establishing a good reputation):-
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
And given numerous dodgy scientific practices such as prefrontal lobotomy etc. at the time, holding Dr Price up as a paragon of 1930s medicine isn't exactly an endorser.
As for the claims re Down's Syndrome, like I said the claims re recovery(albeit supposedly "temporary")are so implausibly extreme that the most likely explanation is that Weston-Price was an outright fraud as opposed to just being scientifically incompetent.
As for the teeth of HGs, quackwatch makes an excellent point in that HGs were subject to feast-and-famine, didn't indulge in sweets like settled humans - if they ate grains it was in fermented form, and usually in small to nonexistent amounts etc.
As such, I'm not terribly worried re this discussion. I realise that in the RVAF diet community, Weston-Price is held up as some sort of nigh-infallible cult deity figure, but his claims are derived ultimately from dodgy data, false conclusions and the ridiculous "Noble Savage" theory, which is why he isn't taken seriously in scientific circles.
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The quackwatch article was very thorough and pointed out that Weston-Price had invented a theory, the focal infection theory which was later debunked completely within the scientific community(hardly a case of establishing a good reputation):-
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
Stephen Barret who wrote this article or quackwatch in general are fairly often plain wrong or biased. Unfortunately.
Tyler, since you seem to believe in the importance of food enzymes (or raw food or other topics related to raw paleo) just look at what they tell us about them. ;)
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/mp.html
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umm...once again the kid didn't recover not even temporarily. Why even use the word recover? It's hard to debate with your confusing use of language/logic.
How does feast and famine poduce broad palates, perfect teeth?
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Tyler, since you seem to believe in the importance of food enzymes (or raw food or other topics related to raw paleo) just look at what they tell us about them. ;)
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/mp.html
I wasn't suggesting that quackwatch was 100% right on all issues. That is physically impossible, after all. The stuff they write re Weston-Price, has a greater ring of truth than other articles on that website, that's all.
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umm...once again the kid didn't recover not even temporarily. Why even use the word recover? It's hard to debate with your confusing use of language/logic.
How does feast and famine poduce broad palates, perfect teeth?
if symptoms didn't genuinely improve in a permanent fashion, one could cite any temporary improvement as being merely illusory and the result of something else. For example, a retarded child could suddenly become very sexual due to earlier or later puberty than usual, as applicable etc.
As for feast-and-famine, the idea is that teeth get worn through eating, so eating less often wears down the teeth less. An example are the old-style Eskimoes who Stefansson described as having teeth worn down to the roots because they frequently ate raw fish which had been contaminated with grit/sand of various kinds.
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As for the claims re Down's Syndrome, like I said the claims re recovery(albeit supposedly "temporary")are so implausibly extreme that the most likely explanation is that Weston-Price was an outright fraud as opposed to just being scientifically incompetent.
I still say that the kid was probably one of quite a few Down's syndrome patients that Dr. Price tried this on, and he was probably the one who responded the "best".
Dr. Price specifically chose not to mention that many of the groups he studied ate the organ meats raw. I assume he did this because he either found it disgusting, thought it dangerous, or wanted to make sure people didn't get turned off to native diets simply because they would be disgusted by reports of eating raw organ meats. I am betting on the third of those 3 reasons, mainly.
So, yes, I think Dr. Price deliberately withheld information. I don't think he ever outright lied, but definitely he withheld information. He was trying to use his position of high respect in the dental community to spread better nutritional practices, though. Not that it excuses it, but I think that's a big part of the reason. I think he may have assumed that he'd lose credibility with the medical community and the general public if he started talking about eating raw meat, organs, and fish.
I think he probably believed that it was better to spread the practice of eating cooked high-quality food than to let people keep eating the SAD of the day. I think he was right about that, too.
As far as grains go, I think he may have been legitimately confused about grain-eating. There were a number of groups he studied that consumed grains who still had excellent teeth, like the Peruvians. Of course, their good teeth were probably due to the extremely high-quality seafoods they ate, plus the high quality of the soil that their crops grew in, but...I can definitely see how he would get temporarily confused by that data.
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I wasn't suggesting that quackwatch was 100% right on all issues. That is physically impossible, after all. The stuff they write re Weston-Price, has a greater ring of truth than other articles on that website, that's all.
What's funny is that they are essentially 100% wrong about Weston Price and almost 100% right about the importance of food enzymes in digestion.
Well, nothing new actually, we definitely disagree here.
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I still say that the kid was probably one of quite a few Down's syndrome patients that Dr. Price tried this on, and he was probably the one who responded the "best".
Dr. Price specifically chose not to mention that many of the groups he studied ate the organ meats raw. I assume he did this because he either found it disgusting, thought it dangerous, or wanted to make sure people didn't get turned off to native diets simply because they would be disgusted by reports of eating raw organ meats. I am betting on the third of those 3 reasons, mainly.
So, yes, I think Dr. Price deliberately withheld information. I don't think he ever outright lied, but definitely he withheld information. He was trying to use his position of high respect in the dental community to spread better nutritional practices, though. Not that it excuses it, but I think that's a big part of the reason. I think he may have assumed that he'd lose credibility with the medical community and the general public if he started talking about eating raw meat, organs, and fish.
I think he probably believed that it was better to spread the practice of eating cooked high-quality food than to let people keep eating the SAD of the day. I think he was right about that, too.
As far as grains go, I think he may have been legitimately confused about grain-eating. There were a number of groups he studied that consumed grains who still had excellent teeth, like the Peruvians. Of course, their good teeth were probably due to the extremely high-quality seafoods they ate, plus the high quality of the soil that their crops grew in, but...I can definitely see how he would get temporarily confused by that data.
It is too easy to criticize WP today with what we know today. I'm quite sure that those such as TD who criticize him so violently today would have done better.
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What's funny is that they are essentially 100% wrong about Weston Price and almost 100% right about the importance of food enzymes in digestion.
Well, nothing new actually, we definitely disagree here.
If you're suggesting that the focal infection theory(mentioned by quackwatch), on which Weston-Price based his scientific reputation on , was correct, then you're sadly mistaken. It's long been scientifically debunked along with most of the other WP-derived notions. As for comments re sweets/frequent eating etc. ruining teeth, that is rather hard to dispute as there's plenty of evidence re this.
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If you're suggesting that the focal infection theory(mentioned by quackwatch), on which Weston-Price based his scientific reputation on , was correct, then you're sadly mistaken. It's long been scientifically debunked along with most of the other WP-derived notions. As for comments re sweets/frequent eating etc. ruining teeth, that is rather hard to dispute as there's plenty of evidence re this.
No Tyler, I do not suggest that. WP was wrong in some of his beliefs, as you are, I am, or others on this forum and elsewhere are for sure wrong in their present beliefs. Hope our kids and kids of kids won't judge our mistakes as severely.
It is definitely unfair to say WP is a lier and dismiss so pretentiously his overall outstanding work.
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My various reasons for criticising Weston-Price is as follows:-
1) He recommended all sorts of unhealthy Neolithic foods(fermented grains/raw dairy) as well as cooked foods which people do very badly on. That is mitigated a little by his observations re raw animal food-consumption by various tribes.
2) His more extreme claims re improving, however temporarily, people with genetic illnesses(I'm specifically thinking of the Down's Syndrome example, but I'm sure there are others(oh yes the claims linking criminals to poor diets, conveniently forgetting that many white-collar criminals have far better diets than the impoverished classes. There's even some modern WAPF-inspired claim linking homosexuality to soy-consumption which is similiarly bogus.
3) His promotion of the deluded "Noble Savage" theory, implying wrongly that because something was practised by relatively modern hunter-gatherers, that it must be healthy/OK for us to do the same. I absolutely loathe that theory as it presupposes that Mankind once lived in some mythical state of perfect bliss, an Edenist absurdity that needs to be demolished.
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Were talking WAP not WAPF please don't change the subject.
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Were talking WAP not WAPF please don't change the subject.
The WAPF incorporates most of WP's ideas, such as the supposed link between criminals and diet.
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Were talking WAP not WAPF please don't change the subject.
TD apparently never read the book by WAP....
And he nevertheless still naively believes he will convince us ....
A very amusing situation :)
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TD apparently never read the book by WAP....
And he nevertheless still naively believes he will convince us ....
A very amusing situation :)
That's just mindboggingly stupid. Not only did I read the rather tedious book a few years ago, but I even have it at home. And I don't really think I can convince the most dedicated pro-Weston-Price fanatics, given the incredible hold the "Noble Savage" theory holds over the more naive among us, such as William etc.. I simply point out the fraudulent nature of Weston-Price/Aajonus and others so that the more sceptical among us can take note. I'm not bothered re the opinions of the rest of the scientific community, of course, since they're to some extent on my side given the plentiful evidence re heat-created toxins in cooking and the fact that WP's so-called "science" is on such shaky ground by modern standards, in the form of the laughable focal infection theory etc.
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TD apparently never read the book by WAP....
And he nevertheless still naively believes he will convince us ....
A very amusing situation :)
Whether TD read the book is moot, as he does not understand what it is that WAP discovered. There is an old saying that " you can always tell a -----, but you can't tell him much" -
in the sad case of TD, he already knows everything, so trying to tell him something is futile.
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Whether TD read the book is moot, as he does not understand what it is that WAP discovered. There is an old saying that " you can always tell a -----, but you can't tell him much" -
in the sad case of TD, he already knows everything, so trying to tell him something is futile.
Further hypocrisy on your part, dear troll. I suspect this whole fanaticism is derived from your being a pemmican-addict. We've had numerous info on the addictive effects of heated foods re opioids, and you seem to be just another example. Sad, really.
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1) He recommended all sorts of unhealthy Neolithic foods(fermented grains/raw dairy) as well as cooked foods which people do very badly on. That is mitigated a little by his observations re raw animal food-consumption by various tribes.
Yes but he warned of modern foods, no ones perfect .
2) His more extreme claims re improving, however temporarily, people with genetic illnesses(I'm specifically thinking of the Down's Syndrome example, but I'm sure there are others(oh yes the claims linking criminals to poor diets, conveniently forgetting that many white-collar criminals have far better diets than the impoverished classes. There's even some modern WAPF-inspired claim linking homosexuality to soy-consumption which is similiarly bogus.
Your answer doesn't make sense your also getting confused with WAP and the foundation.
3) His promotion of the deluded "Noble Savage" theory, implying wrongly that because something was practised by relatively modern hunter-gatherers, that it must be healthy/OK for us to do the same. I absolutely loathe that theory as it presupposes that Mankind once lived in some mythical state of perfect bliss, an Edenist absurdity that needs to be demolished.
Evil NAPD/WAP/WAPF should be crushed!!!!!!!! get over it and when you travel around the world and write a better book let me know.
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That's just mindboggingly stupid. Not only did I read the rather tedious book a few years ago, but I even have it at home.
No Tyler. Definitely impossible.
Either you've read the book and you are stupid.
Or you never read the book and you are a lier.
There is no other alternative left. Sad.
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Yes but he warned of modern foods, no ones perfect .
Fair enough, his advice was of limited benefit. That I don't dispute. What I do dispute is the notion that he offered a genuinely healthy diet in an overall sense.
Your answer doesn't make sense your also getting confused with WAP and the foundation.
The remark re the WAPF was merely an aside remark,not my main point. WP was famous(infamous) for ascribing various characteristics such as criminal behaviour to diet, despite the fact there was no credible evidence re this.
Evil NAPD/WAP/WAPF should be crushed!!!!!!!! get over it and when you travel around the world and write a better book let me know.
One doesn't have to be a guru in order to criticise gurus. What I find odd is that you(and some others) are happy with me criticising Aajonus or Burger for certain clearly dodgy behaviours, but WP seems to be considered a godlike figure, above reproach.
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No Tyler. Definitely impossible.
Either you've read the book and you are stupid.
Or you never read the book and you are a lier.
There is no other alternative left. Sad.
Yes, there is, but you're too closed-minded to even consider it. The other alternative is that I have read the book and you are simply retarded or stupid or just plain ignorant. Well, like I said, there are quite a number of RVAFers who are too closed-minded on this issue so there's little point in convincing them; just those who are capable of adopting a more rational, sceptical viewpoint re gurus. What I find most amusing , judging from the native nutrition yahoo group and related forums, though, is the very large number of Creationists like William who favour WP's beliefs. Not surprising, really, as anyone dumb enough to buy into the whole Creationist mythology is going to be dumb enough to believe in WP's "Noble Savage" theories.Guilt by association....
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Yes, there is, but you're too closed-minded to even consider it. The other alternative is that I have read the book and you are simply retarded or stupid or just plain ignorant.
Oh, the second part of your sentence is not an alternative but just a certitude: I'm proud to be a "retarted, closed-minded" scientist (author of about 150 peer reviewed papers in Physics) that is so "stupid" to definitely not believe in Tyler's or other's "ultimate truth" or ideology.
And I'm even apparently not the only RP forumer that is so "stupid" :)
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there's a time to simply walk away, you guys are not adding anything
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Oh, the second part of your sentence is not an alternative but just a certitude: I'm proud to be a "retarted, closed-minded" scientist (author of about 150 peer reviewed papers in Physics) that is so "stupid" to definitely not believe in Tyler's or other's "ultimate truth" or ideology.
And I'm even apparently not the only RP forumer that is so "stupid" :)
Someone who is expert in physics can quite easily be an utter mindless moron in a non-related field such as food-science or biology(look at Linus Pauling or William Shockley as typical examples). Plus, we don't even know for sure what genuine status your papers have within the scientific community, and there are multiple examples of scientists whose scientific views/opinions were held with high regard in one era, only to be 100% debunked a generation or more later, due to evidence of past fraud, miscalculations etc. - given the bizarre, esoteric nature of modern physics, it's even more likely within that field of science than any other).Whatever the case, I'm sure you feel very proud to have the same opinions as similiar morons such as the Creationist William. Like I said, guilt by association..........
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there's a time to simply walk away, you guys are not adding anything
Well, you're right. Hopeless, useless, futile.
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Perhaps it's best to just lock this increasingly pointless thread. I should add that the main reason for all the kerfuffle is that alphagruis got (rather childishly) pained, a while back, because I dared to question one of his cherished "notions",namely the theory of punctuated equilbrium and so has had it in for me since then.