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Nobel laureate says 'superfoods' may cause cancer
Wednesday January 09, 2013 03:44:59 PM,
IANS
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London: James Watson,
who won the Nobel Prize for cracking the DNA code with Francis
Crick in 1962, questions the role of superfoods in preventing
cancer and suggests they may be acutally causing the disease.
Watson said that unless scientists rethink the role of
antioxidants, provided by vitamin pills, and foods such as
blueberries and broccoli, cure for cancers will elude humankind.
These foods are believed to boost health and fight cancer by
mopping up oxygen molecules called free radicals. But Watson
argues these free radicals may be key to preventing and treating
cancer, so depleting the body of them may be counter-productive,
the Daily Mail reports.
Free radicals not only help keep diseased cells under control,
they are also pivotal in making many cancer drugs, as well as
radiotherapy, effective, he believes.
The 84-year-old Nobel laureate stated that antioxidants "may have
caused more cancers than they have prevented. For as long as I
have been focused on the curing of cancer, well-intentioned
individuals have been consuming antioxidative nutritional
supplements as cancer preventatives, if not actual therapies," he
said.
"In light of recent data strongly hinting that much of late-stage
cancer's untreatability may arise from its possession of too many
antioxidants, the time has come to seriously ask whether
antioxidant use makes cancer more likely rather than preventing
it," Watson says.
He said a vast number of studies had found antioxidants, including
vitamins A, C and E and the mineral selenium, have 'no obvious
effectiveness' in preventing stomach cancer or in lengthening
life. Instead, they seem to slightly shorten the lives of those
who take them, and vitamin E may be particularly dangerous.
The American, who describes his theory as among his most important
research since the DNA breakthrough with Crick in 1953, said
blueberries may taste good but give no protection against cancer.
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