THE MOSS REPORTS

Many of today's most prominent nutritional and dietary supplements are sold through multi-level marketing organizations. What this means in practical terms is that products are enthusiastically promoted to the consumer by trusted friends and neighbors, whose enthusiastic endorsements tend to carry considerably more weight than those of slick company sales staff.

When trying to assess whether a substance may have health benefits it is extremely important to separate objective scientific fact from commercially motivated embellishment. While we may earnestly wish that by taking a certain nutritional supplement we would be beneficially influencing our health and longevity, wishing alone does not make it so. As the nineteenth century British biologist Thomas Huxley commented, "Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."

What makes it particularly hard for the consumer to distinguish one from the other is the fact that among the more extravagant claims made for some of the most popular health and nutritional products there is often a small kernel of plausible truth. My aim in adopting an attitude of what I call 'friendly skepticism' is not to denigrate worthy products or destroy hope, but to provide consumers with the tools they need in order to discern the point at which fact stops and hype starts.

I have brought the same perspective to bear in writing the Moss Reports, a series of nearly 200 detailed reports on different types of cancer. In each report I examine and evaluate the treatments currently offered by practitioners on both sides of the medical divide, conventional and alternative. My goal is to provide cancer patients and their families with a road map and a decision-making tool that they can trust and rely on.

If you would like to order a Moss Report for yourself or someone you love, you can do so from our website, www.cancerdecisions.com, or by calling Diane at 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 from outside the US).

We look forward to helping you.

A FRIENDLY SKEPTIC LOOKS AT AMBROTOSE, PART TWO

Note: Last week I spoke about Ambrotose and the claims made concerning its health benefits. I conclude this week with a look at its relationship to standard science.

A Promising Avenue

Glycobiology is a promising avenue of research, to be sure. However, network marketing creates a rah-rah atmosphere, in which a chemical becomes a product and a product then becomes a profit center…and an ideological cause.

There have been reports in the media that glyconutrients have been sold with an implicit claim that they have benefit in the management of existing cancers. What is the scientific basis of such claims? I experienced a disconnect when I tried to track down the hard science behind such claims. Here for instance are the numbers of Google search engine 'hits' for various Mannatech products or their components compared to the number of citations in the standard 15-million entry US medical database, PubMed.

PubMed + Cancer refers to peer-reviewed article delimited by the further search term 'cancer'

For Ambrotose in particular, we see an enormous popularity in publications by and for lay people but nothing listed in the standard medical literature to substantiate claims of health benefits, at least not under this particular brand name. To put it mildly, this isn't very reassuring.

I also searched for arabinogalactan, a prime ingredient in Ambrotose. This is a sugar derived from the wood of the Larix, or larch, tree. Larch arabinogalactan is in fact approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a source of dietary fiber. I had more success with this search. There were nearly 600 references to this topic in PubMed. But when I limited my search to articles investigating arabinogalactan in relation to cancer, there were only 17, mostly cell line studies.

According to PDRhealth.com, arabinogalactans mainly occur in the Western larch. It is not one substance but in fact a mixture of several different arabinogalactans with widely varying molecular weights. Arabinogalactans are water-soluble polysaccharides widely found in plants, fungi and bacteria. They may be involved in intercellular signal transduction pathways in plants.

Dietary sources of arabinogalactans are found in carrots, radishes, tomatoes, pears and wheat, among other plant foods. So whether we realized it or not, we all probably had some today. Gum arabic, a commonly used food additive, is also composed of highly branched arabinogalactans (from which the substance derives its name). Arabinogalactans are also found in herbs such as Echinacea and edible mushrooms such as Ganoderma lucidum (reishi) and may contribute to their possible immune-enhancing ability. But does this mean that Mannatech's products, taken orally, would be good for cancer patients?

I can find no hard evidence for this at all. While there is some indication that products derived from aloe, polysaccharides in particular, may possibly have a role in cancer treatment, the substantiation of such an effect is weak at best, and I can find no evidence whatever in standard sources that would point to the superiority of Mannatech's products. What's more, they seem quite expensive compared to other sources of monosaccharide sugars, such as generic aloe or plant gums.

According to a press release from a non-profit trade organization, the International Aloe Science Council, Inc.:

"To assert, as several writers have done - seemingly with information obtained from the developers of Manapol™ - that aloe-based products not containing Manapol cannot offer the benefits associated with aloe vera - seems little more than product ballyhoo..."

The main danger I believe is that patients will not only lose money but will also lose precious time. Cancer is a complex disease. It requires professional help. Regardless of the sometimes uncaring attitude of certain errant members of the medical profession, one should not reject everything that conventional medicine has to offer in favor of a regimen discovered on the Internet. The answer is not simply to construct a do-it-yourself program, but to find expert and sympathetic guidance in the rapidly expanding realm of complementary oncology.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

References:

Alleged promotion of Ambrotose:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/mannatech/mannatech2.html

International Aloe Science Council:
http://asktom-naturally.com/naturally/aloenews.html

Gabius, Hans-Joachim and Gabius, Sigrun. Glycosciences: Status And Perspectives. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 2002. Find it on Amazon.com at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3527308881/cancerdecisio-20/103-7078641-7532649

Gabius, HJ and Nagel, GA (Eds.) Lectins and Glycoconjugates in Oncology. Springer Verlag, 1988. Find it on Amazon.com at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038719228X/cancerdecisio-20/103-7078641-7532649

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

The news and other items in this newsletter are intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.

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