From: levin@world.std.com (Levin F Magruder)
Subject: Re: Milk and calcium (here we go again)
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:34:57 GMT

young@clpd.kodak.com writes:
>	presented by Dr. John McDougall in "McDougall's Medicine" which
>	shows hip fractures per 100,000 population for a group of varied
>	populations.  He claims a high correlation between consumption
>	of animal protein and hip fractures...he neglects to mention that
>	the correlation is almost identical with life expectancy at birth.

And this in turn suggests that lifespan is correlated with animal
protein consumption; that a high intake of animal protein would be
associated with a longer life.

I suspect that this is in turn correlated with financial income; that
people with more money tend to live longer and break their hips,
because they live in their homes, rather than state subsidised
safe-to-age-in instituions, and have stairs going down to the sidewalk
and go out to shovel snow off the sidewalk because in nice
neighborhoods people do that, and when there is snow the chance of
slipping on stairs is probably greater than it is at other times, 
and when you slip on the steps, you are more than ten times more
likely to break your hip than you are when descending steps
normally.

Seriously, I have known three people who've broken hips.  Two were
over 70, homeowning widows.  One was about 50 or 60, the wife of a
homeowner.  All three were ice incidents.  All three women were
omnivores.  I know my exposure to hip fracture isn't "representative",
in that not all broken hips occur in older omnivorous women in winter.
However, I'll be a lot of them do.  And, in short, I think Mr. Young's
point is right: McDougall's stats are suspect.  Not that I necessarily
think the conclusion is wrong; the mechanisms by which animal-free
eating are claimed to contribute to health sound plausible enough to
me, a lay person.  But the people who make those claims should realize
that if their audience is sophisticated enough to be persuaded by
their arguments, it (the audience) will also be able to understand
debunking, and will come to discredit the debunkee.

In this particular instance, I can picture McDougall (whoever he is)
examining the data and thinking "There's a strong correlation here."
and throwing it in the book.  You're not going to think of every
complication when you're writing a book about something as complex as
nutrition.  However, proponents of veginess ought to deliberately look
for the kind of related stats that Young pointed out, and mention them
explicitly.

I imagine that it wouldn't be easy, now, to come up with a large 
sample of long-term vegan 70+ year olds and get hip breakage stats
on them.  I think, 20 years or so from now that will be different.
Even then, though, it'll probably be hard to separate veganism from
other lifestyle elements.  

In the long run, throwing out stats of questionable meaningfulness
may alienate intelligent would-be vegs.  I suppose you'd have to 
get up a study of people who had been exposed to debunking and 
people who hadn't to find out.  Is there are Clinical Journal of 
the Effects of Propoganda on Behavior?

Finally, a question.  It's my impression that currently, people with
greater incomes tend to eat less animal protein than poorer people.
For example, I own three major metropolitan radio stations, two cruise
lines, one of the three largest long distance carriers, the Boeing
Corporation, Cray, Mitsibushi, and Nabisco.  I control and reap over
90% of the profits of the so-called "cocaine cartel."  My annual
income is over 275 million trillion dollars a year.  I eat nothing but
millet and parsly.  My parents, on the other hand, are destitute, and
live in a two room apartment in a slum in Waltham, Mass.; their only
income is from Social Security and digging returnable cans out of the
trash.  And they eat at McDonald's twice a week.

levin@world.std.com