She blinded me... with science!

Excerpt from recent email from a friend:

... we were on the way back into the big mall complex proper [at the Flatiron Mall in Denver, CO], passing by various stores in the outdoor section. We were passing by a spa that I had barely registered in my brain on the way to lunch--they had a dry erase board with a listing of their services, such as Botox and facial waxes. I forgot about it as soon as I passed it.

Well, *this* time, ____ pointed out an item midway down the board, which said, "DNA STEM CELLS".

I stared at it, racking my brain for any recollection of salon stem cell use, but came up dry. So I walked in, and asked the three women of various ages, in lab coats, for more information. The older of the trio, a middle-aged woman with wavy blonde hair, said, "You have stem cells in your skin, and as you age, those stem cells don't work as well. We replenish your stem cells using bovine stem cells from amniotic fluid to rejuvenate the skin."

"... Bovine?"

"Yes, because they are the most similar, molecularly, to our own."

"Ah. .... and, um, how do you, uh, apply, these stem cells?"

"We massage them into the skin." (Demonstrating, waving her fingers in circles around her face without quite touching the skin.)

"... So, you're saying that you ... replenish ... the stem cells ... by topical application?"

"Yes."

" ... I see. ... Yes. ... Thank you, have a nice day."

I left the spa and joined ____ outside, and walked a bit before practically collapsing with laughter and trying to keep myself from having an aneurysm. It would have been fun to delve deeper, just to see (such as: how do you keep these stem cells? Exactly how do the stem cells cross the epithelial barrier? What molecules, really, are you talking about?), but I had stuff to do.

My friend, who is a developmental biologist, subsequently sent me a link to Clinique Reneux's "CryoStem Skin Therapy™" FAQ, which contains much hilarity.

---

UPDATE: On further Googling, it appears that this scam is perpetrated by "The DNA Health Institute" (warning: odious Flash page), a company led by erstwhile homeopathic charlatan Noel Aguilar, "Ph.D.". "Dr." Aguilar has evidently gotten tired of giving talks at Rotary Clubs and writing "forwards" [sic.] for books on "magnetic healing". I would be very interested to know where Noel Aguilar got his Ph.D., and in what field, and what his thesis was. If he actually is a Ph.D., that means his doctoral thesis is on file in some university library somewhere, and you should be able to order a copy. I suspect it would be "interesting" reading --- in sociology, or English, or some other field completely unrelated to cellular biology.

Note, also, that the CryoStem literature suggests the treatment has received FDA approval. However, a search through the FDA's catalog of approved drugs for "cryostem", "cry", and "stem" reveal no hits --- even though the claims made for CryoStem definitely meet the (B) clause of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, section 201(g)(1)'s standard for drugs: "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals". If promoters of this drug are not simply lying outright, but merely stretching the truth, then the most they could have done is submit reports indicating that CryoStem meets the minimal safety requirements for cosmetics, with no evaluation of efficacy. (Drugs must be both safe and effective; cosmetics need only be safe, or carry a warning label).

Incidentally, this all serves as further evidence for my working hypothesis that only charlatans or the incredibly insecure actually write "Ph.D." after their name, or call themselves "Dr." (unless they are licensed, practicing medical doctors). Go to any top ten university department in any field, and you'll find few people who do either, except as a joke, or when they need to impress somebody especially thickheaded (e.g., Congress).

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UPDATE': In comments, Inky notes:

I looked at the Rotary Club link. It says that:

Today there is a Hahnemann Medical College of Homeopathy. Dr. Aguilar attended, and earned a degree there.

...

Also: apparently the majority of homeopathic .. erm, instituions, are either named after Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathic quarkery. Otherwise, they conveniently put in "Homeopathy", like the Canadian Academy of Homeopathy.

Thus, there is not just *one* Hahnemann Medical College of Homeopathy. Locations gleaned from the first page of Google searches include: Pennsylvania, Heikunst, New Delhi, and Bhopal. I suppose Dr. Aguilar went to PA.

Also, a correspondent helpfully writes, via email:

According to _Dissertation Abstracts_, nobody named Noel Aguilar has received a Ph.D. from an accredited North American institution --- and their records go back to some point in the 1800s. In fact there are only 140 Aguilars in their data base, which includes some European schools (I don't know since when but at least since the 1990s), and none of them have names which could plausibly be versions of Noel Aguilar, e.g., "N. Aguilar". So there are three possibilities: (1) He got his degree abroad. (2) He got his degree from a non-accredited institution. (3) He just made it up.

Therefore, I conclude that "Dr." Aguilar most likely got his "degree" from a non-accredited school specializing in homeopathy.

Pop quiz: What is the rate of mistaken paternity?

Everyone knows that men can never really know that their children are biologically their own, short of a DNA test. But most people think that, well, cases of mistaken paternity are rare freak cases, and the people we know couldn't possibly be cases of mistaken paternity; and most men figure that when they have kids, of course the woman they choose will be trustworthy and faithful, so it's a problem for freak-show losers to worry about.

Heh.

While reading Gigerenzer's Law of Indispensable Ignorance on Edge.org's Edge Annual Question (this year, "What's Your Law?"), I came across the startling sentence:

The estimated 5 to 10% of children and their fathers who falsely believe that they are related might not lead a happier life by becoming less ignorant; knowledge can destroy families.

"Holy crap! 5-10%? That's got to be a mistake," I thought. Is it? Like any lazy researcher, I did a quick Google search, which turns up a thread from the sci.anthropology newsgroup archives with the rather insensitive, albeit humorous, subject "How many bastards are there, anyway?". At first, it seems, we can breathe a sigh of relief, as Lee Rudolph writes:

Yesterday I was talking to a bioethicist who studies genetic counseling, and when the conversation turned to folklore, she brought up an issue she'd recently investigated. She told me that essentially all genetic counselors believe that there is a "false paternity" rate of about 5 percent--yet few if any counselors encounter a rate nearly that high in their own practices. This discrepancy having piqued her curiosity, my friend had tried to track down just why the rate is believed to be 5 percent. One source after another said the scientific equivalent of "it was published by a friend of a friend". Eventually the FOAF-chain terminated, in a single paper whose author does not think it supports the interpretation it is popularly given! Appendix 1, immediately below, represents the present state of her research into this possible piece of genetic folklore.

... [skipping to appendix] ...

A historical search and a conversation with Dr. James Neel, one of the deans of human genetics, led us to what may be the source for the high estimate: a 1962-65 study of blood typing in a small Michigan town (1). That study found discrepancies between biological and stated parentage in 109 of 2507 nuclear familes. Many of these may have been unacknowledged adoptions, including step-parent adoptions.

...[skipping to cite]...

(1) Sing, CF et al (1971) Studies on genetic selection in a completely ascertained Caucasian population II. Family analysis of 11 blood group systems. American Journal of Human Genetics 23(2) 164-198.

Whew! OK, so it's one small study, and it may not have counted adoptions properly. But hold on --- a few messages later in the thread, Joe Quellen writes:

The statistics are covered in a very engrossing book by Jared DIamond, called *The Third Chimpanzee*, 1992, Harper Perennial, Chapter 4, The Science of Adultery. He describes a study of blood typing and genetics which had unexected results and was quashed. It was done in the 1940s at a "highly respectable" US hospital. The study found that fully 10 percent of babies were not the biological offspring of their legal fathers.

Oh. Diamond was citing a different study. A couple of messages later, "sgf" writes:

I just picked up Timothy Taylor's _The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture_ (Bantam: 1996). Here's his summarization of the subject:

(pp 77-79)
"...In tests of genetic paternity recently conducted by Robin Baker and Mark Bellis [1], they found that around 10 percent of children had been sired by someone other than their ostensible fathers -- although the fathers consciously believed these children to be their own.

...[skipping to cite]...

[1 Baker, R. and M. Bellis. 1993 "Human sperm competition: ejaculate adjustment by males and the function of masturbation." _Animal Behaviour_ 46: 861-65]

And just to pile on a bit, the next Google hit is a working paper by anthropologist Kermyt G. Anderson titled "How well does paternity confidence match actual paternity? Evidence from worldwide nonpaternity rates" (abstract; DOI) (UPDATE 2010-02-17: fixed linkrot), wherein we learn:

The median nonpaternity rate for the high paternity confidence sample is 1.9% (range: 0.4 - 11.8), while median nonpaternity for the low paternity confidence sample is 30.2% (range: 14.3 - 55.6). The median nonpaternity rates for these two groups are significantly different (Wilcoxon sign-rank test, z = -6.112, p < 0.0001), which is not surprising since the two distributions do not even overlap. Thus, men with high paternity confidence are less likely to be incorrect in their assessment of paternity than men with low paternity confidence. In other words, men with high paternity confidence are more accurate in assessing paternity.

The median nonpaternity of men whose paternity confidence is unknown is 16.7% (range: 2 - 32). This is significantly greater than the high paternity confidence sample (Wilcoxon sign-rank test, z = -4.349, p < 0.0001), and significantly lower than the low paternity confidence sample (Wilcoxon sign- rank test, z = 3.528, p = 0.0004).

When the high and unknown paternity confidence samples are combined, the median nonpaternity is 3.9% (range: 0.4 R 32). This is significantly less than median nonpaternity for men with low paternity confidence (Wilcoxon sign-rank test, z = -6.053, p < 0.0001). Thus, men with low paternity confidence are the least accurate in assessing actual paternity.

In other words, interpreting the results rather cavalierly, if you're fairly confident that the child is yours, it is probably yours (although, interestingly, nearly 1 out of 50 such men are still mistaken). If you've got suspicions, then the probability that it's not yours is nearly one out of three. Intuitively, this makes sense: men don't just doubt for no reason. If you have reason to doubt, then it's probably with some justification.

Anyway, the 5-10% number seems to be a bit of an overestimate; the actual number from the most comprehensive survey seems to be in the 2-4% range. Still disturbingly high, in my opinion.