The latest in the long, dubious lineage of snakeoil salesmen was exposed yesterday by the Wall Street Journal--Dr. David Sinclair, a biochemist at none other than Harvard Medical School. Sinclair has a leading researcher into the effects of Resveratrol, a compound that naturally found in red wine. Sinclair and others believe it is a Fountain of Youth that can slow the aging process.
The thing that's caught up to Sinclair is his relationship with a California nutritional supplement company, Shaklee. Turns out Shaklee makes a syrup (that's a "cellular anti-aging tonic" to be precise) called Vivix that contains Resveratrol as its active ingredient--take a look at the link and you'll get all fired up about being able to the grand old age of 150. All you have to do is shell out a $100 a month (which provides you with the Resveratrol equivalent of 3000 glasses of wine according to the Vivix website).
Turns out maybe you want to spend that kind of cash if you have a pet mouse you want to keep alive a bit longer--Sinclair's research shows that Resveratrol helps mice who take it live 12 whole weeks longer than mice who don't (a claim that has been called into question, by the way). But for people, there's no evidence to date that the stuff has any effect whatsover.
Of course, that hasn't stopped entrepreneurs from selling the stuff. Shaklee, however, uses Dr. Sinclair's name to endorse Vivix and keeps him on its advisory board. He's made public appearances touting Vivix and Shaklee has used his name to peddle it.
Suddenly, people are wondering, what's the deal? By Sinclair's behavior and reaction to inquiries, it seems he was unprepared to be held accountable.
On Shakee's payroll since August, Sinclair seemed quite surprised about the revelations that Shaklee was using his name to sell Vivix. He quickly claimed that he was "misinterpreted," by the company stating that:
"To my dismay I have found numerous uses of my name and reputation on the Web and in other media that implies endorsement by me of Shaklee's Vivix product," he wrote. "I have engaged counsel to deal with this matter and have demanded that Shaklee cease using my name."
Really? Do you have rainbow with a pot of gold at one end you'd like to sell me as well?
As a physician, it's discouraging to see others in science and medicine get in bed with companies to endorse products. Sure, maybe it's ok for Dentyne to claim 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it, because chewing gum is cheap and safe. But when scientific experts start selling themselves and their reputations to companies like Shaklee, which market products that have no evidence to base their claim on, one that's untested and unsafe in humans, and one which they charge a lot of cash for, it reeks.
At the end of the day, there shouldn't be any such thing as allopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine, or complementary and alternative medicine. There really just ought to be Evidence-Based Medicine. If Sinclair or others can prove Resveratrol is safe and effective in humans, then go ahead and sell it--it's the American way. But at this point, with nothing but a study in mice in his back pocket, people who act like Sinclair and then plead ignorance don't deserve the benefit of anybody's doubt.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. Doctors and other researchers need to be more transparent with whom they are in bed with outside of the bounds of their normal job. Some universities are beginning to publicly list the ties their doctors have to industry. It ought to be the standard of care for doctors and their employers to do this.
Here's a link with the Wall Street Journal's story about Sinclair, along with a video of him plugging it:
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Comments
Why do you think state medical societies and physician organizations aren't making more efforts to police their membership concerning this type of behavior. One of the defining charteristics of professional groups is that they are supposed to regulate the behavior of their membership.
1) The timing: When the biggest thing going on OS at present is "Dueling Docs", this would seem to advert to Dr. Duck.
2) The tenor: The title seems to imply Sinclair is the snake-oil salesman. While the video (of Sinclair talking to Shaklee salespeople) may partially justify that, it is Shaklee selling the snake-oil. And you forgot to mention that Sinclair has resigned from the Shaklee Advisory Board.
But why not make the case against Dr. Duck directly? As a believer in evidence-based medicine, what do you think of:
(1) Safe use of cortisol: "Other uses of low dose cortisol include ovarian dysfunction with infertility, chronic fatigue, allergies and auto-immune diseases."
(2) Hyperthyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness; Hypothyroidism Type 2: The Epidemic -- "An unforeseen outcome of the medical victory over infectious diseases with modern antibiotics is the creation of new generations of low thyroid children who in earlier times would have succumbed to childhood infectious diseases. They now survive to adulthood thanks to antibiotics, and according to both Starr and Barnes, later develop heart disease as undiagnosed low thyroid adults."
(3) Breast Cancer and Iodine: How to Prevent and How to Survive Breast Cancer : " a unique 100 page volume which presents the academic case for iodine as prevention and treatment of breast cancer."
These are all quotes from reviews by our prolific Dr. Duck. There's more. A lot more. Both snake oil and shilling. Why not see the whole lot for yourself here and pen another, more relevant "Snake Oil Files" piece?
WOOF
Just as it was easy for me to compromise my ethics -- I'm only writing copy -- so it is for drs rsrs who are often paid very well to make sure their research results come out as their employers wish. The movie The Insider paints the ugly truth about these practices, and about the insidious behavior of corporations who have but one measure of worth -- profit.
good question. probably because a lot of those societies are also very closely aligned and supported by private corporations. go to a medical convention sometime and you'll see how many pharma and nutriceutical companies are sponsoring it.
thanks for your insights--the best real world example I can think of is how Merck's Vioxx studies had shadow authors writing the articles and then using the names of prominent researchers when published. shameful stuff,
It's a shame these things are allowed to be sold at such a price to bilk the masses.
Rated
First, at some point any basic discovery that suggests a potential human therapeutic has no evidence that it will work in humans. I thought that in evidence based medicine would ideally rely on good evidence from other organisms (like mice, flies and worms) before we test things in humans, and on that count there IS suggestive evidence that resveratrol (or at the very least, the enzyme whose activity it enhances, sir2) actually does have a role in controlling lifespan. You can find multiple peer reviewed studies on this from several labs, particularly those of Leonard Guarente and Cynthia Kenyon.
Second, in the study cited, mice "lived a whole 12 weeks longer." From an average of 102 weeks untreated to 114 weeks with resveratrol treatment, that is about a 10% increase in lifespan. If scaling to human life span is linear, that would mean an increase of about 7-8 years given an average life expectancy of 70-80 years for humans. The rub here is that to replicate the study in humans you would need a statistically large enough sample size–of people fed a very bad high fat diet, mind you*–where you could treat one group with and one without resveratrol beginning in middle age until all members of both groups were dead, which would take decades.
I'm certainly not saying that everyone should rush out and buy some resveratrol concentrate, or that you can make the claim that resveratrol is going to extend human (emphasis on human) lifespan, but you cannot dismiss it out of hand. It has been established by several independent labs in multiple organisms that altering sirtuin function does affect lifespan. Therefore the claim that resveratrol MAY increase human lifespan is not unreasonable. Absence of evidence, after all, is not evidence of absence. What would be unreasonable is the claim that resveratrol DOES increase human lifespan. If we insist on evidence in humans–which ultimately we should–we should be prepared to wait for a VERY long time to get it in this case. (I personally doubt that resveratrol will increase human lifespan, but that is for technical reasons related to scaling and metabolic efficiency.)
* What I find more damning than his overblown claims about the potential of resveratrol for increasing lifespan based on his 2006 Nature study is that Sinclair's own lab published a study in Cell Metabolism two years later finding that resveratrol does not affect the lifespan of mice fed a standard diet. (Though it does reduce the onset and severity some age-related deterioration.) Especially bad because I know that his lab had that data at the time that the study on lifespan extension in overfed mice was published, but there it is.
I'm still hoping for the advent of "smart pills," but based on the current lack of advertising, there apparently isn't much of a market for them.
who is ntp?
you do make some excellent points--the slowness of the drug study and approval process is painful!
I knew about Sirtis from the original WSJ article--I don't have a definite answer to your question, but as Gordon Gekko says, "Greed is Good"
thanks for your insightful comments. More than one of you has posted responses about their concerns about the slowness of the drug approval process and what it takes. I agree the FDA moves too slow. On the other hand, nutriceutical companies are not regulated by the FDA or anyone else--I suppose, therefore, we have to accept the potential reward of new ideas from these companies with the risk.
Evidence-based medicine gets my vote!
You write with a casual aplomb and fine wit. As in "...a study of mice in his back pocket". he he.
Certainly, all drugs with the potential to improve human health will at some point have no evidence supporting that potential. The question is whether a scientist or doctor should provide a paid endorsement for a drug in the absence of such data. In this case, it is made even worse by the fact that the amount of resveratrol in Vivix is not even close to the dose required for Dr. Sinclair's overfed mouse experiments. So, even the argument of extrapolating from mouse studies doesn't hold water here. IMO, what Sinclair did amounts to nothing less than scientific fraud. I think the term "snakeoil" is right on.
No, I don't. I asked for one for Christmas but Santa didn't bring one down the chimney.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI
And yes, icemilkcoffee, you should wait for those evidence-based clinical trials. Mice are not humans, and the vast, vast majority of therapeutic approaches that show promise in rodents will fail in our species. The FDA may be slow but they perform a necessary service.
And don't wait for a pill to make you live longer - just recognize that your time on the planet is finite and make the best of it. Or read Huxley's "After many a summer dies the swan" for an argument against longevity.
I realize I'm probably preaching to the choir, here, but the subject steams me. I do appreciate your broaching this subject, here.
Kathyjoane1@aol.com
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