Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello.

I have four family members and two close friends who have faced a cancer diagnosis. Two of the family members and both friends have passed away from this debilitating disease.

Needless to say, I would love to see an end to this virtual epidemic, but I believe that modern medicine is NOT the answer.

I currently ran across the controversial topic of processed milk and its relationship to the cause/growth of cancer cells. Contrasted with this evidence is a study conducted by School of Medical Sciences , Universiti Sains Malaysia, in which goat's milk combined with soybean milk were used somewhat effectively to treat hepatocarcinogenesis.(Comparison between the Effect of Soybean and Goat’s Milk on Tumor-Marker Enzyme Activities During Hepatocarcinogenesis in Rats https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433963/)

Also, Dr. J. R. Crewe, of the Mayo Foundation, forerunner of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, has reversed and even cured multiple diseases, including certain kinds of cancer, using raw milk from grass-fed cows.
(https://www.realmilk.com/health/milk-cu ... ent-558768)

So my question is how can I form an experiment on the basis of this knowledge and find out for myself the effect of different kinds of milk on cancer cells. The information available is so controversial that one really can't trust anything they haven't proven for themselves. Additionally, the effect of various types of substances differs from person to person and in relationship to the human body verses an animal experiment. So the results are bound to be inconsistent which can only be made up for by multiple tests and many different test groups.

I realize this could be a quite lengthy and involved project but I want to know if I could somehow write the investigation plan and submit it to be tested by professional Microbiologists or work in affiliation with our local community college. In case it is not evident I am desperately fascinated by this topic.

Any ideas or information would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

I am sorry to hear that you have been so deeply affected by cancer. It is indeed a devastating and very complicated disease, and I commend you for taking such an interest in contributing to its study. You are absolutely correct that this is controversial research, and that testing it thoroughly would be an involved project that would really need to be done with/in a professional/university lab. But you are also right that it is a testable hypothesis if you can find such a lab to do this work with you.

In terms of your sources, let's begin with the second one. While I can see why it is appealing, it is unfortunately not a reliable source on which to base any hypotheses or experimental proposals. This is a for-profit company with major financial motivation to prove a specific claim. (Consider the cigarette companies that continue to deny that smoking causes cancer.) It is also not a professional scientific organization, so while the basics of the research they describe may (or may not) be accurate, the writers of this article likely did not fully understand the complex science underlying the findings. I don't suggest that anyone is (necessarily) outright lying, but what is described here is not reliable, and no university lab would accept this evidence in an argument to pursue this line of research. (I've been a cell and molecular biologist in university labs for eight years, so I say this with confidence!)

Your first source is much better, coming from a peer-reviewed, scientific journal. (Peer review is what we call it when scientists submit their research for publication and it must be reviewed by an independent team of scientists to determine whether the claims made in the paper have scientific merit and credibility based on the evidence presented.) Although this paper is missing some key information, which raises serious questions about how meaningful the results are, that actually makes it a good example for us to go over as we think about the variables you will want to consider as you draft your own proposal.

First, there is no clear description of their model system. The title refers to hepatocarcinogenesis, but there is no evidence that liver cancer was actually developing in these rats. In order to assess the effect of a treatment (e.g., milk) on cancer-- there needs to be clear evidence of cancer. They say that they treated mice with DEN+AAF to induce liver cancer. This may be a method to induce liver cancer, but the authors need to show that this was actually successful. Keep in mind as well that different cancers (either in different tissues, or even in the same tissue type between different individuals) have different disease-causing mutations. These different mutations will have different reactions or sensitivities to different treatments, so this needs to be controlled for.

Another important factor in your proposal would be a clearly defined expected or desired outcome. The authors report enzyme activity and body weight, but this says nothing directly about important variables like cancer cell growth rate, cancer cell death, or long-term survival/prognosis of the rats. In order to assess what effect, if any, that milk is having, you will want to perform some clear assessment of how it is affecting variables like this.

A non-experimental factor to consider is when this paper was published-- 2001. That is a very long time in terms of the advancement of science. On the right-hand side of the screen in the link you posted, you will see a section titled, "Similar articles on PubMed." The fact that all of those papers were published in 2001 or earlier is, unfortunately, not very promising. In addition, PubMed on the right-hand side usually also has a section called, "Cited by x PubMed Central articles," with links to all of the subsequent work that refers to the paper you're currently looking at. The fact that this section is absent from this article means that this work has not been pursued in any meaningful way in 16 years. This most likely means that this turned out not to be a promising avenue in subsequent research.

As a side note, NCBI/PubMed is an excellent place to continue to search the literature. This is where peer-reviewed, published science is compiled. Especially if you want to convince a university lab to work on a project like this with you, I highly recommend that you restrict your sources to work compiled here as much as possible. Another option is to search for the websites of individual university labs that might be doing related work (especially in your local area, where they might be willing to meet with you to discuss your ideas). The research described there will be less detailed, but it will give you a sense of what types of projects the lab is interested in.

With all of that in mind, I'm not convinced that milk/milk components as a treatment for cancer is a promising direction for an in-depth research project in a university lab. That said, I really commend you for taking such an interest in this, and I encourage you to 1) continue to think critically about the research that is out there, and 2) team up with a local university lab doing cancer research. I hope this helps, and good luck!