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from the it-does-a-body-good-(in-small-doses) dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...]Research on 5,834 U.S. adults by Brigham Young University exercise science professor Larry Tucker, Ph.D., found people who drink low-fat milk experience several years less biological aging than those who drink high-fat (2% and whole) milk.
[...]Tucker investigated the relationship between telomere length and both milk intake frequency (daily drinkers vs. weekly drinkers or less) and milk fat content consumed (whole vs. 2% vs. 1% vs. skim). Telomeres are the nucleotide endcaps of human chromosomes. They act like a biological clock and they're extremely correlated with age; each time a cell replicates, humans lose a tiny bit of the endcaps. Therefore, the older people get, the shorter their telomeres.
And, apparently, the more high-fat milk people drink, the shorter their telomeres are, according to the new BYU study, published in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity. The study revealed that for every 1% increase in milk fat consumed (drinking 2% vs. 1% milk), telomeres were 69 base pairs shorter in the adults studied, which translated into more than four years in additional biological aging. When Tucker analyzed the extremes of milk drinkers, adults who consumed whole milk had telomeres that were a striking 145 base pairs shorter than non-fat milk drinkers.
-- submitted from IRC
Larry A. Tucker. Milk Fat Intake and Telomere Length in U.S. Women and Men: The Role of the Milk Fat Fraction. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2019; 2019: 1 DOI: 10.1155/2019/1574021
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @03:13AM (4 children)
Check into the writings of Bret Weinstein. He's the evolutionary biologist she was running studies for when she decided to take the work for herself. I'd stick to the biology bits unless you're looking to get angry over politics though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @08:11PM (3 children)
Are you actually claiming that Greider stole the discovery of telomerase from Weinstein, who was supervising her at the time? She isolated telomerarse in 1984 and published the results with her doctoral advisor Elizabeth Blackburn in 1985†, while he was almost certainly in high school at the time (as he was a college freshman in 1987††). Or are you talking about something else? I'm not sure what that would be because it doesn't seem like they were ever in a position where she would have "run studies" for him. Especially given the number of her articles that show up in my research index (over 100) compared to his 2, which means that whatever he was researching probably wasn't medicine.
† https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2009/press-release/ [nobelprize.org]
†† https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Professor-Who-Roiled/240267 [chronicle.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:59AM (2 children)
Okay, you get that the 2k9 Nobel was not given for her 1984 work, yes? What he was researching was this: There was a company that supplies lab mice for research studies. Every mouse they shipped had abnormally long telomeres. He was interested in if this was affecting drug safety studies (Yes, it was passing a lot of drugs that should not have been even tested on humans, much less declared safe for them.) by giving a misleading cancer risk because of said telomeres and did a hell of a lot of related research on the subject, some of which he farmed out.
No, he is not a doctor, he is an evolutionary biologist. He's also one of the smartest people you will ever refuse to read or listen to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:09AM (1 child)
The Nobel Prize committee explicitly said that it was "for the discovery of 'how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase'" based on these three papers: Szostak JW, Blackburn EH. Cloning yeast telomeres on linear plasmid vectors. Cell 1982; 29:245-255. Greider CW, Blackburn EH. Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell 1985; 43:405-13. Greider CW, Blackburn EH. A telomeric sequence in the RNA of Tetrahymena telomerase required for telomere repeat synthesis. Nature 1989; 337:331-7. It isn't uncommon for Nobel Prizes to be given many years later, once the importance of the work to the field is more apparent. After all, "The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded for discovery of major importance in life science or medicine. Discoveries that have changed the scientific paradigm and are of great benefit for mankind are awarded the prize."
That said, I did look into the situation you described. I can see why he would be pissed. The timing does look really suspicious given the timing of some of her papers around 2000-2002 and his submissions to Nature and Experimental Gerontology. And there is definitely some bad feelings there on both sides. My only real problem is that other than his assertions in various media outlets, I haven't found evidence that she stole his work beyond what could have been a misunderstanding of paper rights, a lack of acknowledgement that could have been caused by the bad blood, the bad feelings he got from the way she critiqued his Exp. Gerontol. work before submission, and his suspicions that she was the peer-reviewer. I would have hoped for some emails, letters, contracts or something. However, even if the worst of what he said is true, I don't think it would entitle him to her Nobel Prize. As stated, they gave it for the discoveries in the 80s, when he wasn't even conducting his research in biology. Although the unethical behavior may have disqualified her personally in the eyes of the committee.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:30AM
I don't either but dishonest shitheads should not receive Nobel prizes. Oh and he damned sure deserves at least a heartfelt attaboy for finding out using mice whose telomeres aren't shortening like they should because of unnatural breeding habits by the supplier was allowing lots of cancer-causing drugs to be wrongly approved. I know it's a controversial position but I've always been in the anti-cancer camp.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.