Your Life in Your Hands by Jane Plant

Public Archive
21

Just in case anyone is in any doubt I too value my life. I simply don’t wish to spend the rest of it chasing a fantasy that there’s anything I can do with my diet to stop cancer killing me if its going to. (which it will probably) I stick by my critique of what is written in Jane Plant’s book…and have no desire to get into direct correspondence with her about her writing.

I’m really interested in the ways in which alternative diets, treatments and remedies are mythologised in the light of diseases whose causes are not yet fully understood.

Earlier in this thread Holeybones suggested that someone other than food companies ought to fund properly conducted resaerch on diet and cancer and I support that vew. There is no way of ‘proving’ that a dairy free diet saves the lives of people with breast cancer unless you have a control group to compare diary and non dairy eaters.

I’m also not daft by the way!

Jane

22

You are most certainly not daft, Jane. Merely sceptical. However, I have pointed out that all the work undertaken by Cornell and Oxford universities which point to casein - yes, milk protein, protein only found in milk, was done over a period of 30 years and a lot of other work from Dublin to Wisconsin to California besides, with PUBLIC money. This over the decades has amounted to megabucks but not even a small fraction of what the dairy industry has spent, of course.So whose voice is heard the loudest? the independently funded scientists or multinational industry which is threatened by it? Please read the China Study and follow up some of the refs. This being the only life I believe I have, I want to enjoy it feeling well, slowing down all the degenerate diseases I had when I stumbled on this research, including: uveitis (auto-immune disease of eyes), arthritis, (haven’t had any joint pain and have much more freedom of movement), overweight (I’ve shed it all except a kilo or 2), cancer, (seemingly advancing at snail’s pace, though stage 4 in bones and lymph nodes in peri-hilar region), chemobrain (memory improved and concentration too), and osteoporosis; these improvements all since I adopted the Plant Programme. I’m not looking for a cure, I’m looking to enjoy my life and not be troubled by symptoms. So far as it goes - Success!

Wishing you well,

Jenny

23

,sorry if I’m being thivk here, but isn’t that what some of you objected to when JP compared fatality figures of the 5 who didn’t stick to her diet and lifestyle plan? Out of 63 or whatever the figure was, all who stuck to it are still living (or were at time of print) but the 5 who didn’t, died? Does that not count as a control group ? Having read a great many peer-reveiwed scientific papers on health and veterinary topics over the years, there are published papers with far smaller control groups than Jane’s 63!

Or what about the majority of the Chinese population? Is that not what JP did, compare them and their non-dairy diet against us and our diary-full diet? That’s certainly a control group of sorts, but a naturally occurring one. And she makes the highly valid point that when Chinese women come to USA or UK, and change their diets to the dairy-full one, their incidence of cancer rises to exactly matches ours. Now, it may well be that there is some other environmental element involved in those facts, but it sure as hell isn’t just genetic based on that evidence. And that IS evidence. Chinese women on traditional Chinese non-dairy diets don’t get breast cancer, when they adopt a western dairy-full diet they do…how is that NOT evidence of a possible if not probable causal link?

And most definitely yes, someone other than food companies (AND drug companies, come to that) should fund full research into this area. It’s only by investigation that the causes of these dreadful diseases will come to be understood.

Love and light,
Angel xx

PS As Winnie Churchill said (think it was him, but am having a bad Zoladex day so it could have been anyone really!) I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

24

…errrm, that should say “sorry if I’m being thick” not thivk, whatever that is!

A x

25

Hi, angel.

Yes I’ve had positive results (see what I mentioend to Jane above.) I only started the Plant Programme in July last year, when a recurrence of breast cancer showed up in my tumour markers. Unfortunately the cancer had already spread to 3 places - a vertebra in my spine, my left hip and 2 lymph nodes in the para-hilar region of my lung cavity. It took from July last year until the end of Jan. this year to detect these as they were growing so slowly. I have had radiotherapy to treat them all. The radiotherapy was no trouble and I continued working throughout - I couldn’t do this 4 years ago the last time I had RT and had to rest for hours every day. Both my oncologist and radiotherapist have been surprised at how well I have been and continue to be. I haven’t had any tests for the last 4 months so I cannot tell you what the analyses ahve shown up but my cancer is triple negative - that means that apart from chemo and RT there is no treatment, though I have recently gone on to Femara as my onc. says that with the minimal levels of progesterone receptors that I have which would normally be classed as negative, he believes this may be able to give me a 1 or 2% advantage. I don’t know if I shall continue to take this as I don’t want to have to fight the side effects of fatigue and bone weakening. There is no chemo recommended at this stage. I did have passing anaemia from the RT which I treated mainly by diet.

I am very well and strong and fit. I am sure I have improved my immune resistance to the cancer and in the absence of new developments in immune system rebuilding which are in the pipeline, I am doing all I can, including strengthening my bones by reducing my body’s acid load to foster bone rebuilding. This site will be the first to know what my next test results reveal, whatever that may be. This in oestrogen-receptor negative cancer is a slower process as the cancer is more aggressive and less amenable to any treatment. It took me years to let cancer get the upper hand. It takes time to try, in a 57 year old body, to put the balance back in favour of health and to create an internal environment hostile to cancer.

I think it is important to reflect on how we got to here. In my particular case there have been many factors which have brought on the physical stages of degeneration which also include cancer. But I think, apart from a very conventional and dairy and meat-rich diet during a pretty much sedentary infancy and adolescence, I sowed the seeds when I was a farm worker and shepherd and exposed to all sort of endocrine disrupting chemicals, from sheep dip to herbicide and insecticide. There are other factors I wont go into. But I reckon in my case the country life, over 39 years, and exposure to agricultural chemicals, including those sprayed from the air, may have just fostered the growth of the embyonic cells into something more sinister and then there were other life circumstances and events and environmental conditions which upped the ante. So in my case, the deep seated pollution of my bones from endocrine disrupting agro-chemicals would in any event take a while to detox and it’s not possible to rid my sytem of them completely, though this diet must have reduced the burden substantially already.
For some other experiences of people who are following the Plant Programme, you can log on to the www.cancersupportinternational.com page. This is a site set up to support people who are following the programme.

In as far as anything can and in combination with appropriate conventional treatments, the Plant Programme is working for me. I am confident that it can work for you too. Being a scientist helps.

Wishing you well,

Jenny

26

I produced peer-reviewed scientific journals for a number of years covering many different subjects. I am concerned to read in JP’s book, that while there are many well documented papers on growth factors cited there, many of her other references covering other subject matter come from just one journal (and just one issue of same), a special issue of Scientific American. There are a couple of mentions of the British Medical Journal, a couple for Nature and The Lancet but very few from other medical or cancer related journals. I don’t see a very diverse picture emerging from this, it looks like cherry-picking to me and until we see more refereed papers in the well-known medical journals backing her claims, I can’t see that any of her citations point to scientific proof.

Jenny.

27

Come of it, Jennywren.

Yes, I do have better things to do with my time than to enumerate the refs. in the back of Jane Plant’s book (Your Life in Your Hands, Latest edition) but it is not true what you say. Of the total of 938 cited references (many of these duplicates as they are cited more than once) there are 91 references to journalistic websites, weekly and daily newspapers and popular magazines as well as industry publications and Jane Plant’s own books,(also many of these duplicated) such as the New Scientist and Scientific American, etc. This to me adds up to over 90% of her references coming from peer reviewed journals, proceedings of scientific meetings, government, EU and UN/WHO sources and books written by other reputable scientists, including nutritionists and doctors of medicine.

I am concerned that someone in your position is prepared to try to reduce the value of the work of a scientist to bring potentially lifesaving information to a wider public than that reached through peer review journals.

You may have been involved in journal production. Jane Plant has contributed as a scientist to peer review journals in her own field over decades which means her work has been scrutinised by a world-class team of her equals. Most people only get to have their owrk scrutinised by their immediate boss, if they’re not the boss, that is.

She is a reputable scientist who has been honoured for her work, including her work in the field of health research. She would therefore be unprepared to publish what she could not scientifically justify as her reputation as a independent scientist with many years of research behind her, depends on the rigour of her self-scrutiny. This goes with the scientific territory.

She has now put her review of research up for public scrutiny and her book is now in its 3rd edition in 7 years. Also I am sure that the very many peer review journals she cites would be surprised at your belief that they are not medical or cancer related, for instance the New England Journal of Medecine, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the European Journal of Cancer, the Journal of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medecine, the American Journal of Epidemiology, Endocrine Journal, the British Journal of Cancer, Nutrition and Cancer, Anticancer Research, etc. etc. etc.

Your analysis of her bibliography does you no credit. It would be better to keep your negative remarks for purveyors of charms and snake-oil.

Wishing you well,

Jenny

28

Hi all
This is a subject that has certainly opened up a lot of debate and stirred up some strong feelings. I hope that I don’t come accross as ignorant and of closed mind but I wonder if there are levels of desperation of hanging onto to life…please don’t take it the wrong way. I really don’t know, I mean if I was desperate enough, scared and hanging on to dear life, would I hang up any sceptism I MAY have and try anything and everything to prolong my life? May be I am still in somekind of denial, trying to ‘put it behind me’ and all that pants - who knows? If if works for you - go for it. If the mind believes - then maybe that’s enough. I’m sure there have been studies done some where in mind over matter etc.
I just wonder when there will be a government health warning appearing on milk cartons?!!
Just trying to lighten things up a bit, (sorry)

Hope you are all well - and stay that way whatever you eat.
Love
Scarlet. xx

29

At the risk of further inflaming this thread,

hear hear Jennyw !

Can’t believe what a hornets nest this issue is!

Whilst I’ve spent years advising people on nutrition, and firmly telling everyone that vegetarianism is wrong for how our systems have evolved, I am grateful to find that although I approached the book with sceptcism, I do at least possess a brain that is open to new ideas - even if it means acknowledging that I was wrong in the first instance. Like Jennyw, I find JP’s work to be good, solid, scientific and truthful, and I am encouraged by Jenny’s progress. I look forward to your next set of results, Jenny, and will be re-reading and making notes from the book and making the appropriate changes as soon as I can. It’s harder with a partner, but I’ve asked the key question - how much is my life - and possibly his too in light of JP’s insights into prostate cancer - worth? Is it worth making some dietary and lifestyle changes? Obviously the answer is a resounding yes.

Clearly something I’ve done so far has led to this, or I wouldn’t have it, so changes would seem a logical way forward to hopefully a better future.

I also stuck religiously to organic dairy produce - I was consciously avoiding exogenous oestrogen with regards to female cancers, but didn’t then know about casein or IGF. And it all makes so much sense to me.

I do know that in my particular case, my poor thyroid status has had a lot to do with it, and I’m angry about that, because I’ve fought and fought to get that recognised and sorted out, but have had so many thoroughly unpleasant meetings with so-called specialists over the years, one of which told me in Feb that I was on too much thyroid med, and instructed me to reduce it. It was literally 3 weeks after reducing it that my lump appeared - obviously, at 4.5cm it had been there some considerable time (up to 10 years if the work of Drs Zava and Lee is accurate, and I think JP and others also cite similar time scales), but that reduction in thyroid hormone must have given it a bigger window to jump through and allowed it to accelerate. Needless to say, I upped the dose again once I’d found out about that connection.

It’s amazing how much key info can get past even the most enquiring mind - and I definitely have one of those! Fortunately, my GP considers me to be a logistician (he told me so at our last appointment), and takes all my investigations and presentations of evidence very seriously - I know others are less fortunate with their docs, like I was with all the ones I had when I lived in London. It sucks that to an extent we are at the mercy of our healthcare professionals’ egos and (in some cases) ignorance. I loved JP’s “checklist for your Doctor” where she covered that subject! And I thank my lucky stars that I now have a GP who takes me seriously, listens to what I present to him, and talks it through with me. I wish I could give everyone who doesn’t have a great GP one of him!

Wishing everyone the very best of health and speedy recoveries,
Angel x

30

JP is a geologist and she misleads people by publishing books outside that sphere of expertise that use the title “Professor”. If she is not writing about geology, she should just call herself Jane Plant.

As JaneRA has pointed out, JP’s claim that she was given only a very short time to live was very dubious. By UK criteria, she has NEVER been at Stage 4, though by an looser US set of criteria, she was.

In the UK, only those at Stage 4 are told they are terminal and even then, to be told you are only likely to last 6 months is very unusual! AND she was consulting a UK oncologist who one presumes he would have used the UK criteria for Stage 4.

So, if I have doubts about those issues, I’m hardly likely to take anything else she says too seriously.

I’m at Stage 4, know I’m going to die at some point and that no cranky diet will change that, even if I knew which cranky diet to choose! I don’t want to waste what life I have left, learning to cook all over again (to put back the iron and calcium that I would lose by eliminating forbidden foods), to comply with rules that I simply don’t accept.

31

Hi, Holey. Sorry to keep bashing on, but I do hope you will read the China Study. I’ll be interestd what you make of the analysis of the data on a population of hundreds of millions of people.

We are all going to die at some point. I am more interested in the quality of the living before then.

Please read my remarks on her oncologist and her staging and why not contact her to raise these issues which obviously anger you?

Jane Plant doesn’t claim to be a member of the medical profession but has extended her sphere of action beyond her original training discipline of geology. Many scientists work across a variety of disciplines. She is presently professor of environmental geochemistry.

In the field of medical epidemiology this is bound to happen, including as it does an environmental approach to demography, sociology, geography, geology, biology, microbiology, biochemistry, soil science, agronomy, endocrinology and nutrition and no doubt others, including medecine and genetics. This is neither a precise nor exclusive domain and demands the participation of a wide multi-disciplinary field to make sense of it, as does the profound and applied research into how living systems operate in their environment. The problem with medicine is the narrowness of the preparation of our doctors who are focussed on the human body, as if it were to live in glorious isolation, largely devoid of lifestyle or environment. Health is a wider discipline than medecine which generally deals with the disease and not the patient. It takes many years of both training and experience for scientists to broaden out beyond a single narrow discipline but it happens all the time, if those individuals have an intrinsically broad view of the world and accept the challenge. Many scientists don’t. Thankfully, some do.

Wishing you well,
Jenny

32

Hi everyone,

We need to be very clear about how science works - it works in many ways through falsification (designing research that allows a hypothesis to be disproved) rather than induction (collecting large quantities of data and creating a hypothesis).

Consider the trees in a wood scenario. Woman walks through wood and thinks “every tree I see has green leaves therefore all trees have green leaves.” This is induction. However induction has a fatal weakness: it only takes one exception (a tree with red leaves) and the whole hypothesis is shot to bits.

So let us extrapolate from this to JP’s book. JP says that the imbibing of milk in the western world is responsible for the higher rates of breast cancer in the western world. Okay, fair hypothesis but let’s put it to the test. We need to produce research that will allow us to challenge this theory (falsification). However, merely comparing British (western European women) with Japanese (Far Eastern) women isn’t enough because they don’t just differ in terms of how much milk they drink. Japanese women may drink less milk (many adult Japanese don’t have the enzyme to digest milk past childhood), but they also drink less alcohol (many Japanese don’t tolerate alcohol very well), eat more fish and seaweed, take more exercise, are often shorter (less growth hormone), have a greater chance of close-knit families, encounter more pollution (if city dwellers), have more children, have a greater risk of stomach and colon cancer, have some differences in genetic make-up, don’t encounter the stress of British spelling and are more likely to encounter locally earthquakes and volcanoes.

The question I want to know the answer to is why JP thinks that it’s the milk that’s the problem.

JP does have some anecdotal evidence but that is what it is - anecdotal. Sixty three women followed the diet and have so far survived while five refused to follow the diet and died. How does JP know that the diet was the key issue? Were all the sixty eight women matched for other possible factors? How much alcohol did they all drink, did any of them have a past history of eating plenty of fish and seaweed or exercising frequently, did anyone measure their heights (and presumably growth hormone levels), how big was their family support network, what was their lifetime pollution exposure, did anyone count how many children they had, record their family history of stomach and colon cancer, investigate their genetic markers, test their attitude to spelling tests or ask if they have ever been in the vicinity of a volcano or experienced an earthquake?

The answer I suspect is no. And this is all before we even begin to ask what we do with the hypothesis if a woman follows the diet and still dies of cancer.

I think all this shows the difficulty of trying to do science by induction. There are too many confounding factors. That’s why we need big scale studies with some very careful mathematics. Take the example of Richard Doll. He was the person who discovered through a large scale study that there was a link between cigarettes and lung cancer. When he set the study up he and others all thought that it was materials involved in road building that caused the increase in lung cancer because it just so happened that road building and lung cancer were increasing at the same time. It’s a good job that he set up is research so that his initial ideas could be rejected (and a very poor job indeed that no one gave him a Nobel prize for his research).

I don’t think the JP’s book does anything more than raise a hypothesis. It’s worth noting and maybe even investigating but not at this stage mistaking for incontrovertible evidence.

Hope that these thoughts are useful.

Best wishes,

Sue

33

Changing the subject slightly…I was given a recipe for THE MENOPAUSE CAKE and advised by my BCN not to eat it as I am ER +.

karen

34

Hi, SuperSue. I’m happy you have raised the question about the need for a large study. The 68 women to whom Jane Plant refers were not by way of being an experimental cohort. They were peopel with whom Jane shared her experience and research.

Perhaps you haven’t seen my posts about the China Study. It is based on the largest study of cancer mortality and biomedical resaerch project ever undertaken in human history which resulted in the Atlas of Cancer Mortality in China (See the International Journal of Epidemiology 10 (1981):127-133 “Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the People’s Republic of China. An aid for cancer control and research”)

You wisely point to the value of Sir Richard Doll’s work on smoking.

Sir Richard Peto, who worked at Oxford with Doll and who co-authored the work on smoking and is one of the world’s premier epidemiologists, also co-authored the resulting China Study, with T. Colin Campbell from Cornell, (who was the Project Director) and Dr. Junyao Li a key scientist in China’s Academy of Medical Sciences and Dr. Junshi Chen. It was a massive undertaking and as significant in linking diet to prostate, colon and breast cancers as Peto and Doll’s link between smoking and lung cancer.

This was published by Oxford University Press, Cornell University Press and People’s Medcal Publishing House (China) in 1990.

Thankfully, Prof. Campbell and his son, Thomas Campbell, have published a recent book (2006) title: The China Study. This details the study and its significance to human health and includes the experimental design of the study. If you at least read this recent book rather than resorting to consulting the original study, you will find the answer to your question: “Why JP thinks that it’s the milk that’s the problem”. And I’m sure you will learn a lot more besides.

Wishing you well,

Jenny

35

Hi, Karen. A shame about the menopause cake - these usually taste delicious. Maybe you could ask your BCN which ingredients to knock out as you may be able to make a potent but less controversial version.

Wishing you well,
Jenny

36

You will find individuals all over the place who “cured” their cancer by something remarkable.

There is a strong lobby for the oestrogen effect. Chris Woollams is another strong advocate of avoiding additional oestrogen, believing that it is a culprit in many cancers.

However, there are so many forms of cancer that a catch-all does not seem to make a great deal of sense. I have a book written in the 1920s in which the writer faced dying from stomach cancer, realized he was sedentary and ate meat of preference. He changed his diet to one based on grains, pulses and vegetables plus fish and miles, and took up long distance walking. He survived for 20 years in excellent health. Then there is Michael Gearson-Tosh who held his cancer at bay with the Gerson Diet. Neither case seemed to involve oestrogenic sources.

Far more important is the education early on about proper nutrition, balanced lifestyle, and avoidance of over-stressing the system. This combined with increasingly good knowledge of genetics and their problems is what will be the better and balanced way forward.

37

Hi JenniW,

I’ve tried to find the reference:

The Atlas of Cancer Mortality in China, the International Journal of Epidemiology 10 (1981):127-133 “Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the People’s Republic of China. An aid for cancer control and research”.

No luck.

I’ve emailed the journal to see if I can find out if they have removed it, and if so, why.

Best wishes,

Sue

38

Hi,

This link is a foreword by Richard Doll and Liming Li on the sequel to the studies on diet, lifestyle and mortality in rural China by Campbell, Peto and others. To be fair I haven’t found or gained access to the original research paper (which I would tend to go to in preference to the book) but this foreword gives a flavour of the limits of epidemiology, how it needs to be linked to other studies and just how careful epidemiologists need to be in looking for patterns. This isn’t to criticise the original work (which I haven’t seen) but to demonstrate some of the difficulties involved in trying to find causal links.

Hope that this is interesting.

ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~china/monograph/Mono_Foreword.pdf

Best wishes,

Sue

39

I agree with you Sue. But a lot more research HAS been done since 1981 which is why I commend the China Study book to anyone as it brings the lessons to be learned bang up to date.

Jenny

40

Hiya everyone, what a debate!
I have read Jane plants book among others which make similar claims. Yes she is a geologist, but like many of us here once you have been hit by his disease you research and question until you have the answers. I have a medical background but i’m convinced there is a link with diet. I dont think the answers are all there by any means but we are on the right path.
Please read icon magasine who are completely indpendent. Websites are www.iconmag.co.uk and also www.canceractive.com
I’m with you on this one Jenny and Angel