Saturday, August 1, 2026
The Gut Microbiome and Cancer: What This New Study Tells Us—and Why It Matters
Gut Microbiome Alterations in Cancer and Non-cancer Adults: A Cross-Sectional Metagenomic Study. (1)
Interest in the gut microbiome has exploded over the past decade. We now appreciate that the trillions of microorganisms inhabiting the human gastrointestinal tract are not innocent bystanders but active participants in immune regulation, metabolism, inflammation, and even cancer biology. The study by Hazan and colleagues adds another piece to this rapidly evolving puzzle.
The investigators performed a cross-sectional metagenomic analysis of stool samples from 60 adults, including 20 healthy controls, 15 patients with non-aggressive cancers, and 25 patients with aggressive cancers. Rather than focusing on one cancer type, the study included a broad spectrum of malignancies including breast, colorectal, ovarian, prostate, lymphoma, lung, bladder, thyroid, leukemia, and others.
Major findings
Patients with aggressive cancers demonstrated a characteristic pattern of gut dysbiosis:
Markedly reduced Bifidobacterium
Reduced Faecalibacterium
Reduced Collinsella
Increased Bacteroides
These differences reached statistical significance. Patients with less aggressive cancers showed a similar trend, although most comparisons did not reach significance, likely because of the small sample size.
Perhaps the most striking observation was the profound reduction in Bifidobacterium, falling from approximately 6.5% of the gut microbiome in controls to only 1.2% in aggressive cancers.
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Refinery Configuration Matters—But Markets Matter More
Let me introduce you to my friend, Karl Miller. Karl Miller is a US energy-sector figure known primarily as a trader, investor, and distressed-asset specialist rather than a sell-side or think-tank “analyst” in the narrow sense. Per his own professional materials and a Risk.net profile: his career began on Wall Street in 1989 at Dean Witter Reynolds, then moved into futures and options trading at Copia in New York; he later worked in the energy arm of Électricité de France (EDF) and became a partner at NEAH Energy (sometimes styled NEAH Power/Global Energy).
Karl has played a key role in educating me about the complexity of the oil industry and he had some comments on my last article. So here is his take:
Ultimately, I think your strongest point—that refinery configuration constrains the world’s ability to absorb the loss of Gulf heavy sour crude—is well supported. The weaker point is the implication that the United States somehow stands outside those constraints. In reality, the U.S. Gulf Coast is better positioned than most regions to weather such a shock because it possesses world-class deep-conversion refining capacity and access to diversified heavy crude supplies. Those advantages make it more resilient than many of its competitors, but they do not exempt it from the economic realities of an integrated global commodity market.
In a major disruption, the challenge facing Gulf Coast refiners would not be an inability to process heavy sour crude. It would be the escalating cost of acquiring the heavy sour crude upon which that refining system depends.
The engineering is correct.
The economics are considerably more complicated.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Why standard time is better for your health than daylight saving time - The Washington Pos
But research suggests that daylight saving time is worse for your body than standard time. That early-morning sunlight during standard time is key to maintaining our circadian rhythms, sleep-wake cycles and overall health. Taking it away permanently could lead to chronic circadian misalignment, which has been associated with sleep loss, and over time, an increased risk of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders and, in some studies, certain types of cancer.
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
How Modern Medicine Made Your Bones Brittle
Why the drugs that raise your bone density often leave you more likely to break, and the forgotten ways to restore the strength of bone.
Story at a Glance
•A gradual weakening of the bones which predisposes one to fractures is one of the most common and significant consequences of aging. Presently, to address it, we wisely try to head off bone loss in our younger years and routinely scan the density of aging bones so that a large volume of patients can be sold drugs to increase bone density.
•This approach is misguided because the data from those scans often does not correlate to the actual strength of the bones and because simply increasing bone density often creates brittle bones that fracture under stress. Additionally, the most commonly used drugs to address bone density are notorious for their side effects.
•Remarkably, medicine’s own data now shows that two-thirds of fractures happen to people who do not have osteoporosis, which means the number we have built this entire industry around is not the number that actually breaks bones.
•Anytime a large drug market exists (e.g., presently osteoporosis affects around 20% of women over 50), the medical industry will dismiss any approach to the condition which does not result in it being able to sell large amounts of lucrative medical services.
•Because of this, there is relatively little knowledge of the actual causes of osteoporosis or the most effective ways to restore the strength of the bones. The causes and treatments of osteoporosis, along with the specific things we use to restore the resilience (rather than merely the density) of bone, will be the focus of this article.
The years I have spent studying the medical industry have made me appreciate how often economic principles can allow one to understand its complex and contradictory behavior. For example, I believe many of the inconsistencies in medical ethics (e.g., “mothers have an absolute right to abort their children” and “mothers cannot refuse to vaccinate their children because it endangers their child’s life”) can be explained by simply acknowledging that whatever makes money is deemed “ethical.”.....
Sunday, July 12, 2026
Preventing Breast Cancer - by Cancer & Metabolic Healing
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women worldwide and represents a major global public health issue. Understanding its epidemiology helps clarify who is affected, why it occurs, and how prevention and screening strategies can reduce mortality.
1. Global Burden
Breast cancer is now the most frequently diagnosed cancer globally.
Key global statistics (recent estimates):
Important patterns:
Incidence is highest in high-income countries.
Mortality is highest in low- and middle-income countries due to later diagnosis and limited treatment access.
Over the past 40 years, incidence has steadily increased, largely from reproductive and lifestyle changes.
2. Epidemiology in the United States
In the U.S., breast cancer is the most common cancer in women excluding skin cancers......
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Honokiol: The Natural Compound That Reaches the Brain and Targets Cancer Stem Cells
Honokiol is a small biphenolic compound extracted from the bark, seed cones, and leaves of the Magnolia officinalis and related Magnolia species. It has been used for centuries in traditional Asian medicine for anxiety, inflammation, and gastrointestinal disorders. Over the past two decades, honokiol has attracted considerable interest in oncology because it appears to target multiple hallmarks of cancer simultaneously while exhibiting relatively low toxicity in preclinical models.
Unlike single-target drugs, honokiol affects numerous signaling pathways involved in tumor growth, metastasis, angiogenesis, cancer stem-cell survival, immune evasion, and treatment resistance.This broad activity makes it particularly attractive within a metabolic and systems-biology approach to cancer.
Supreme Court Upholds Paper - Vox Popoli
This is an absurd and pernicious anti-American ruling by the Supreme Court in defense of geography-based citizenship:
The Supreme Court slapped down President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in a major blow to the administration’s radical vision for the composition of the country. In a landmark 6-3 decision, the Justices halted the President’s attempt to end birthright citizenship – calling it blatantly unconstitutional and out of bounds.
The constitutional guarantee was enshrined by the 14th Amendment, and ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves, but has since applied to every person born on US soil or its territories.
It impacts an estimated 150,000 children born in the US annually to noncitizens.
The ruling is a major defeat for Trump, and comes as the high court has ruled against him in a handful of major cases – including invalidating his sweeping tariff regime, and blocking his effort to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed’s board of governors.
As one diehard liberal recently pointed out, the use of liberal democratic institutions to defend the indefensible and defeat the will of the people is only going to guarantee the eventual destruction of those institutions.
There will not be any independent judiciary in the governments that replace the corrupt governments of the West when they fall, because, as with so many Enlightenment concepts, their supposed value is net negative to society.
Friday, June 26, 2026
It's Too Late Now - Vox Popoli - (CITIZEN VIGILANTE is here sooner than later - GUARANTEED! - CL)
Law-abiding conservatives and immigration-loving liberals alike are wringing their hands over the popular chord that CITIZEN VIGILANTE has struck with the people of the West. The point is not whether it is a good movie, or a successful movie, or not, its significance can be seen in the viscerally fearful reactions to it.
I watched the film. This is disturbing. I understand the visceral reaction to the injustice portrayed in the film, but I worry that unhinged members of our society might try to copy the main character. There has to be a better way to deal with this very real threat than resorting to vigilantiism. Let’s use our voices and our votes to change the policies that are allowing the atrocity of mass illegal migration rather than resorting to violence.
WE can do better!
No, we can’t. That’s the problem. There isn’t a better way any more, there isn’t even a different way, because the very forces that have brought the West to this juncture have relentlessly prevented the people of the West from having any voice in their own invasion and subjugation. Popular approval for this program of legal, government-assisted invasion was never, ever, sought. Every attempt to stop it through political means was thwarted in an illegitimate manner by the system. Mass immigration, political refugees, and migration have ALWAYS been very politically unpopular. No one ever voted for open borders. No one in Minneapolis ever asked to be invaded by Somalis. Every time a European country voted against its own submission to the EU, people were paid off and it was forced to vote again until it voted “the right way”.
Just because something is done legally, or by government agents, does not mean that it is right. And just because something is deemed illegal, or government agents attempt to prevent it, does not mean it is wrong. To even bring up the question of “legality” in this regard is a category error......
“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us… GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”
Blood is not paperwork. Nationality is neither residence nor citizenship. Every nation, every people, have the immutable right to cast out the foreigners from their midst if that is their will. And every nation, every people, have a moral duty to do so when the foreigners are preying upon their women and their children.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
THE CANCER & METABOLIC LIBRARY Provisional Table of Contents
Welcome to the Cancer Library
This Cancer Library is designed to become a comprehensive, evidence-informed repository covering every major aspect of cancer—from the biology of cancer and metabolic theory to repurposed drugs, nutraceuticals, diet, conventional oncology, cancer-specific treatment strategies, prevention, survivorship, and the future of cancer care. The goal is not simply to collect articles, but to build a practical, continuously evolving educational resource for patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals seeking a broader understanding of cancer and its treatment.
This is a living document. Many of the titles listed below have already been published and are linked to their corresponding articles (hyperlinks). Others represent posts that are still in development and therefore do not yet have hyperlinks. As new articles are written, the library will continue to expand, sections will be reorganized, and additional topics will be added. Over time, I hope this dynamic Table of Contents will evolve into one of the most comprehensive collections of information available on metabolic and integrative approaches to cancer care, providing readers with a single resource that grows alongside our understanding of this rapidly evolving field.
Topics marked with a double asterisk (**) represent foundational or particularly important posts and are recommended as essential reading for anyone new to the library.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Debts That Cannot Be Paid Won’t Be, by Michael Hudson - The Unz Review
CRANSTOUN: The question of debt goes much further back than Ricardo. In your work on Sumer and Babylonia, what were debt jubilees, and what problem were they designed to solve?
HUDSON: Beginning in the third millennium BC, in Sumer and Babylonia, every new ruler would start his rule with a clean slate. For three thousand years, the Middle East, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were the most rapidly growing parts of the world. Almost all of the economic phenomena that we have today, money, interest, and land tenure, emerged from this period.
All early economies operated on credit because there really was not much money. Most economies were agricultural. During the crop year, cultivators would run up debts. If they went to the bar, the ale woman would mark up what they drank on the tab, just like workers in Britain for years. The bartender would say: okay, I am marking up your IOU, and on payday you are going to pay it off.
Payday was when the crops came in. So cultivators owed money not only for beer. They owed money to priests who officiated at weddings, burials, or ceremonies. The palace or other people would lend them animals to help with the harvest.
When it came to harvest time, the agricultural families that had land tenure would bring their grain to the threshing floor, and the grain would be measured out and used to pay the debts they owed. This happened in Britain until about the fourteenth century. For British serfs, whatever their status on the land, harvest time was the time to pay their debts.
Sometimes there would be a problem. What if there was a flood? What if there was a drought? Around 1750 BC, Hammurabi of Babylon wrote laws holding that if the storm god prevented the crop from being harvested, then the population on the land would not be forced to pay their debts. If they were forced to pay, they would fall into bondage to their creditors, many of whom were palace officials, and would ultimately lose their land. You would have a landlord class, and you would have an oligarchy developing.
If that happened, the population would run away. Or, if they were attacked by another country, they would go over to the attackers if the attackers promised to cancel the debts. That is just what Hammurabi did after he conquered another kingdom. He would cancel the debts of the people.
So there were three elements that every Near Eastern realm carried out. This was the subject of the five volumes of economic history that I edited as part of my Harvard project for twenty-five years. You would cancel the debts. You would free the debt servants to go back to their families. You would return the slaves to their original owners, and you would restore the land.
These were, word for word, the measures that the Jewish population of Babylonia brought with them when they returned to Judea under Persian occupation. The result was the laws of Leviticus. That is the Jubilee year. The Jubilee year was what Hammurabi had proclaimed, not in his laws, but in the four debt cancellations that he proclaimed, and that every king in his dynasty began his rule by proclaiming......
HUDSON: From the fifth century BC to the time of Jesus, there is hardly any documentation in Judea about what was happening politically, because it was not written on clay. It was written on perishable papyrus or other material. But obviously the creditors fought back, and the Bible describes this in the form of the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is described as giving his first sermon when he goes back to Nazareth, his home city, and unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, where Isaiah calls for the year of the Lord’s favour, the debt Jubilee year. Jesus says this is what he has come to fulfil.
Now that we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, translated and published over the last half century or so, we can see that what Jesus was saying was part of a whole movement of debtors against creditors. They were all calling for this. Basically, Jesus’s message was to go back to the original Judaism, to the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Mosaic Law, the Torah.
That became Christianity...........
......CRANSTOUN: You describe this as a five-thousand-year struggle over creditor power. Today that conflict also appears geopolitically — through sanctions, energy, and the dollar system. Where does Iran fit into that picture?
HUDSON: The Iran situation is not going to be solved. The United States is not addressing Iran’s decision to say: the world has changed. If you attack us, we are going to collect reparations. We are going to charge money for access to the Strait of Hormuz. And if you try to overthrow our government, if you attack us militarily again, then we are going to respond.
For the last century, the United States has based its foreign policy on control of the world’s oil. If you control oil, then you can cut off the energy supply to other countries if they do not follow the policies that you want. That is why the United States insisted, first of all, in 2022, on blocking Russia from exporting oil and gas to Europe. It is why the United States seized Venezuelan oil, whose proceeds are now paid into a bank account in Florida managed by Donald Trump.
The logic of Trump’s policy is: we want to overthrow Iran. In effect, it is: I want to appoint the new prime minister of Iran. I could act as prime minister myself, because I am going to control Iran’s oil exports, so that I will be in a position to restore America’s control of the whole international oil trade. Then I can cut off China, cut off Russia, and cut off any country that does not agree to impose trade sanctions against our enemies, Russia, China, and anyone else who seeks to achieve sovereignty along lines that we do not approve.
Iran has said: if you are going to destroy us, this is an existential problem for us. If you destroy us, we are going to prevent you from carrying out your designs to control the world, and certainly to control OPEC’s Arab countries. If we cannot export oil, then none of our fellow OPEC Middle Eastern countries can. We are going to blow it all up and plunge the whole world into depression.
Already, the interruption of oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz has created the conditions for what I think will be an economic depression by the end of this year. And if the United States attacks Iran again, Iran will destroy the oil export facilities that remain, all the way from the Emirates monarchies to Saudi Arabia, and the whole world could lose 20 per cent of its oil supply. That also means its supply of fertiliser, sulphur, and chemicals. Those are the stakes.
The United States is not able to make any agreement that Iran can accept, because Iran has said: you have grabbed $100 billion of our assets. We will not agree to any agreement based on what you promise to do, because you have broken your promise again and again. Until you pay us $25 billion as a signal that you are going to move to pay the remainder, we cannot accept it.
The US Congress has said that no matter what Trump and his negotiators agree with Iran, we in Congress are not going to permit any repayment of the money that we have grabbed. We have stolen it fair and square, as Senator Hayakawa once said. So there is not going to be an agreement. And without an agreement, there is going to be a continued interruption of oil trade. The world is going to be forced into a downturn.
What the increased price of oil has done is essentially create a financial crisis for Western banks. Suppose you are a Global South country. All of a sudden, the price of your fertiliser is up, the price of your oil is up. You are in the position of consumers who are being squeezed. How can you afford to pay your foreign debt, service your dollar debts, and still pay more money for energy and fertiliser for your agriculture?
Something has to give. What are they going to choose? Obviously, they are going to choose to preserve their livelihood. They need the energy. They are not going to pay their debts. There has to be a debt moratorium. The debts cannot be paid.
Since we have spent much of this conversation talking about how the Western countries cannot pay their debts, this inability to pay is even clearer for the Global South, Asian countries, and other countries that are now so debt-strapped within their own economies that, when you add foreign debt service to bondholders, they cannot pay.
The bondholders are not going to agree to any write-down. So what you are going to have is a break between the Western economies, the United States, Europe, and their associated states, probably including Japan, Korea, and so forth, and the rest of the world.
Trump’s and the US attempt to isolate Russia, China, and Iran is ending up isolating the United States and Europe from what has been the most rapidly growing economic area of the world: China, Russia, and Iran.
So what are countries in the middle going to do? Are they going to tie their economic fortunes to the United States, which itself is a shrinking market because of its deindustrialisation and financialisation? Or are they going to say: we see the world’s growth occurring in East Asia. We are going to try to be part of that growth and mutually benefit.
That is the choice. There is no assurance that countries are going to follow their own economic interest. So a materialist approach to history does not help very much here, because countries are not following their own interests. It is all political.
CRANSTOUN: That brings us back to the question of the issue: what is to be done? If the West wanted to restore productive capacity rather than preserve creditor claims, what would that actually require?
HUDSON: There is only one way to restore economic and industrial growth to Britain, Europe, and the United States. That is to write down the debts that have built up, especially in the United States, and I understand in Britain also, with student debts.
How on earth can graduates pay their student debts, and their mortgage debts, if they have their own home, and the rising rents to the absentee landlord class? This is just what the classical economists fought against. How can they break even unless they are paid a high enough salary to pay all of these debts?
If employees in Britain have to be paid enough money to pay their student debts, their mortgage debts, their rents, and their medical debts, then British labour will be as high-priced as American labour is. Twenty per cent of America’s national income now goes to medical insurance, because privatised medical care is incredibly expensive compared to public medical care.
So, in order to restore industrial growth, you would have to deprivatise the financial sector and the natural monopolies. The government would not be charging for water what Thames Water is charging. You would have to have a responsible bureaucracy, so there is no monopoly rent.
Essentially, you would have to do what John Stuart Mill urged: increase the tax on rising land prices so that landlords do not make money and capital gains in their sleep. You have to stop all of the tax advantages that you give to running into debt by treating interest payments as if they are a cost of production. They are not a cost of production. They are the cost of how industries are financed.
If a corporation says, well, we can borrow money to buy our own stocks, that is not a cost of production. That is a choice of financing, and it should not be treated as a tax-deductible expense. Because if the government does not collect the land rent, as I brought up with the Jubilee Line and with the Second Avenue line in New York City, then the rest of the population is going to pay it as an income tax.
That is almost like the kind of tribute payments that the classical economists wanted to free industrial Britain from on its way to becoming the workshop of the world, and as competitive as it was. It is the same thing in America: free the economy by preventing monopolists, and by using the government.
Everybody called this socialism at the time. Socialism was not a bad word. It was the natural evolution of industrial capitalism. The natural evolution was to socialise the natural monopolies and socialise the land rent, so that there was no longer any privatisation of rent, interest, and monopoly rent.
CRANSTOUN: The implication is bleak: the remedy is not technically mysterious, but politically almost impossible.
HUDSON: That is what it looks like.