Newsletter v4n21A

DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER **EXTRA** (Vol. 4, No. 21-A, September 20, 2004)

Written and copyright 2004 by Andrew W. Saul of http://www.doctoryourself.com , which welcomes 1.5 million visitors annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

NEW! THE DOCTOR YOURSELF **MEDLINE CONTEST**

The Doctor Yourself Newsletter is soliciting your entry for the most ridiculous, unscientific, or just plain goofy article currently to be found on the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE. It's so easy to play: just go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi and start searching for any foolish topic of any kind that you wish. The weirder the better.

For example: In the "Search PubMed for" box, type in "flatulence" and you will get 1,233 indexed citations.

Honestly, this is like shooting fish in a barrel.

When you find a real doozy, cut and paste the entire citation into a plain text email (no attachments will be accepted) and send it to me (limit five submissions per reader) to doctoryourself.com/contact.html . So I find it in my non-MEDLINE indexed email Inbox, please use MEDLINE COMEDY CONTEST as your message subject heading.

The Doctor Yourself Newsletter's "Winner Selection Technical Review Committee" will then meet behind closed doors, and without telling you anything about the actual scoring process, will decide which entry is the winner.

(Did you get the joke? If not, please look at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/jsel.html or do a quick search for "Medline JOM" using the search box near the top of http://www.doctoryourself.com .)

Seriously, this really is a contest, and here is the grand prize: my last copy of "Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C: The Clinical Work of Frederick R. Klenner, M.D." by Lendon Smith, M.D. The reader submitting what we judge to be "The World's Most Absurd Medline Citation" will, if he or she resides in the US or Canada, receive this authoritative 68 page megadose vitamin C booklet absolutely free by first class mail. (If an overseas reader wins, it's coming by boat, so don't wait up.)

While there will be only one actual prizewinner, favorite runner-up entries will be published in the Newsletter. This contest ends when the next Doctor Yourself Newsletter is sent out, or when the feds shut me down, whichever comes first.

So join the fun! Search MEDLINE (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) today! After all, your taxes pay for it.

Officers, staff, review committee members and editors at the National Library of Medicine are not eligible for entry. No particular legal reason; it's just an arbitrary decision on our part.

What's that? You detect a certain sarcasm in my tone? I fail to see why. There is nothing at all funny about the world's largest medical library arbitrarily refusing to index certain scholarly information for professional and public access. For instance: the following papers by twice-Nobel-prize winning Linus Pauling are not on Medline simply because they happened to be published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.

Rath M, Pauling L. Solution To the Puzzle of Human Cardiovascular Disease: Its Primary Cause Is Ascorbate Deficiency ading to the Deposition of Lipoprotein(a) and Fibrinogen/Fibrin in the Vascular Wall. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol 6, 3&4th Quarters, 1991, p 125.

Pauling L, Rath M. An Orthomolecular Theory of Human Health and Disease. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol 6, 3&4th Quarters, 1991, p135.

Rath M, Pauling L. Apoprotein(a) Is An Adhesive Protein. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol 6, 3&4th Quarters, 1991, p139.

Rath M, Pauling L. Case Report: Lysine/Ascorbate Related Amelioration of Angina Pectoris. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol 6, 3&4th Quarters, 1991, p 144.

(If you note carefully, you will see that all four of the above Pauling articles appeared in one single volume of the Journal. We would not want word of THAT to get out, now would we. And there's more: )

Rath M, Pauling L. A Unified theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease Leading the Way To the Abolition of This Diseases As A Cause for Human Mortality. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Volume 7, First Quarter 1992, p 5.

Rath M, Pauling L. Plamin-induced Proteolysis and the Role of Apoprotein(a), Lysine and Synthetic Lysine Analogs. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Volume 7, First Quarter 1992, p 17.

Pauling L. Third Case Report on Lysine-ascorbate Amelioration of Angina Pectoris. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Volume 8, Third Quarter, 1993, p 137.

Hoffer A, Pauling L. Hardin Jones Biostatistical Analysis of Mortality Data for A Second Set of Cohorts of Cancer Patients with A Large Fraction Surviving At the Termination of the Study and A Comparison of Survival Times of Cancer Patients Receiving Large Regular Oral Doses of Vitamin C and Other Nutrients with Similar Patients Not Receiving these Doses. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol 8, Third Quarter, 1993, p 157.

Why are these papers by Linus Pauling not indexed by the amply taxpayer-funded National Library of Medicine? It is not because the subjects are uninteresting. Nor is it because Pauling coauthored them with Matthais Rath, M.D., since the following papers ARE indexed on Medline. Same authors; same topics.

Rath M, Pauling L. Immunological evidence for the accumulation of lipoprotein(a) in the atherosclerotic lesion of the hypoascorbemic guinea pig. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Dec;87(23):9388-90. PMID: 2147514 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Rath M, Pauling L. Hypothesis: lipoprotein(a) is a surrogate for ascorbate. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Aug;87(16):6204-7. Erratum in: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1991 Dec 5;88(24):11588. PMID: 2143582 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Pauling L, Herman ZS. Criteria for the validity of clinical trials of treatments of cohorts of cancer patients based on the Hardin Jones principle. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Sep;86(18):6835-7. PMID: 2780542 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Pauling L. Biostatistical analysis of mortality data for cohorts of cancer patients. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 May;86(10):3466-8. PMID: 2726729 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

I think it is absurd that Medline, which has indexed 116 papers by Linus Pauling, excludes equally valuable work of his due to where it first appeared.

For my readers who think I've harped on this issue long enough, you can unsubscribe by returning this email to me (with the headers intact, please).

For my readers who think I have just begun to fight, you are correct. The emperor has no clothes. The National Library of Medicine/MEDLINE is biased.