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【Takungpao News 2006-4-12】
Prostate cancer has long been associated with age, race, and family history, but a recent report published in the "Annals of Oncology" by an Italian research institution suggests that high cholesterol may also trigger prostate cancer. This is the first time researchers have linked cholesterol to prostate cancer.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 12, Italian epidemiologist Francesca Bravi, who participated in the study, said that the findings help explain why patients taking cholesterol-lowering drugs seem to have a reduced risk of prostate cancer.
Bravi and her colleagues studied the health records of nearly 3,000 men from four different regions in Italy. All participants were under the age of 75, with 1,294 diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1,451 without the disease.
The results showed that 22% of prostate cancer patients had a history of high cholesterol, compared to 16% in the non-cancer group. After considering other factors such as family history and smoking habits, researchers found that prostate cancer patients were more than 50% more likely to have high cholesterol than the control group.
Bravi explained that the male body uses cholesterol to produce male hormones, and excessive cholesterol may lead to hormonal imbalances, thereby affecting prostate health. However, researchers noted that it is still unclear whether lowering cholesterol benefits prostate health, and the conclusion that high cholesterol may trigger prostate cancer requires further validation.
Source: http://www. takungpao. com/ news/ 06/ 04/ 12/ YM- 551425. htm
Individuals often question this type of statistical research, as modern medicine frequently reports studies that overturn previous conclusions. There are at least two major issues with such research.
Issue One: Over-simplification of the human body system. How many factors are there in the human body? Assuming there are N known factors, and each factor is interconnected, then to study the relationship between any two factors, one must first control the other N-2 factors, which is impossible. Moreover, it is not even known when, where, or in what form the other N-2 factors affect the two factors being measured. Additionally, factors within the human body are not merely pairwise related but are interconnected in an extremely complex manner. Therefore, one could also study the relationships among three factors, four factors, and even N factors. Furthermore, considering that the human body is an open system interacting with M external environmental factors, how many studies would that entail, and when would they ever be completed? And the results obtained are guaranteed to be wrong because even if there were divine power to control those N and M factors, there are still factors N+1, N+2, ..., M+1, M+2, etc., that have not yet been discovered or controlled.
Issue Two: Complete lack of reproducibility. The environment and the human body are constantly interacting and interpenetrating, and each person's state varies across different times and spaces. Because there are nearly infinite factors in flux, the state of the system measured each time is different. Therefore, changing the group of researchers or the group of subjects will yield different results. Even the same group of researchers and subjects, but at different times or locations, will produce different results, sometimes even diametrically opposed. For example, if the aforementioned Italian statistical method were applied to male monks or male office workers in Taiwan, the results would certainly differ significantly. This type of research system is not like a man-made physics, chemistry, or mechanical laboratory where temperature, pressure, and every factor can be controlled, and experimental results can be reproduced.
Such statistics, superficially scientific, are actually not scientific at all because the human body is an open system, a dissipative structure, not a motherboard in a laboratory where every factor is artificially controlled within specified limits. There are too many unknown variables that cannot be "statistically" negligible. Arbitrarily measuring and statistically analyzing a few factors of the human body or environment to infer a conclusion; or even using statistical results from certain local regions to overgeneralize to other parts of the world or other individuals, is far too frivolous. No wonder modern medicine always has reports of "we used to think... but now we find...".
High Cholesterol May Trigger Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer has long been associated with age, race, and family history, but a recent report published in the "Annals of Oncology" by an Italian research institution suggests that high cholesterol may also trigger prostate cancer. This is the first time researchers have linked cholesterol to prostate cancer.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 12, Italian epidemiologist Francesca Bravi, who participated in the study, said that the findings help explain why patients taking cholesterol-lowering drugs seem to have a reduced risk of prostate cancer.
Bravi and her colleagues studied the health records of nearly 3,000 men from four different regions in Italy. All participants were under the age of 75, with 1,294 diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1,451 without the disease.
The results showed that 22% of prostate cancer patients had a history of high cholesterol, compared to 16% in the non-cancer group. After considering other factors such as family history and smoking habits, researchers found that prostate cancer patients were more than 50% more likely to have high cholesterol than the control group.
Bravi explained that the male body uses cholesterol to produce male hormones, and excessive cholesterol may lead to hormonal imbalances, thereby affecting prostate health. However, researchers noted that it is still unclear whether lowering cholesterol benefits prostate health, and the conclusion that high cholesterol may trigger prostate cancer requires further validation.
Source: http://www. takungpao. com/ news/ 06/ 04/ 12/ YM- 551425. htm
High Cholesterol May Trigger Prostate Cancer
Issue One: Over-simplification of the human body system. How many factors are there in the human body? Assuming there are N known factors, and each factor is interconnected, then to study the relationship between any two factors, one must first control the other N-2 factors, which is impossible. Moreover, it is not even known when, where, or in what form the other N-2 factors affect the two factors being measured. Additionally, factors within the human body are not merely pairwise related but are interconnected in an extremely complex manner. Therefore, one could also study the relationships among three factors, four factors, and even N factors. Furthermore, considering that the human body is an open system interacting with M external environmental factors, how many studies would that entail, and when would they ever be completed? And the results obtained are guaranteed to be wrong because even if there were divine power to control those N and M factors, there are still factors N+1, N+2, ..., M+1, M+2, etc., that have not yet been discovered or controlled.
Issue Two: Complete lack of reproducibility. The environment and the human body are constantly interacting and interpenetrating, and each person's state varies across different times and spaces. Because there are nearly infinite factors in flux, the state of the system measured each time is different. Therefore, changing the group of researchers or the group of subjects will yield different results. Even the same group of researchers and subjects, but at different times or locations, will produce different results, sometimes even diametrically opposed. For example, if the aforementioned Italian statistical method were applied to male monks or male office workers in Taiwan, the results would certainly differ significantly. This type of research system is not like a man-made physics, chemistry, or mechanical laboratory where temperature, pressure, and every factor can be controlled, and experimental results can be reproduced.
Such statistics, superficially scientific, are actually not scientific at all because the human body is an open system, a dissipative structure, not a motherboard in a laboratory where every factor is artificially controlled within specified limits. There are too many unknown variables that cannot be "statistically" negligible. Arbitrarily measuring and statistically analyzing a few factors of the human body or environment to infer a conclusion; or even using statistical results from certain local regions to overgeneralize to other parts of the world or other individuals, is far too frivolous. No wonder modern medicine always has reports of "we used to think... but now we find...".
Shen Yaozi said, "The sun bakes the earth, dissipating all things."