4) The finding that dietary restriction, compared to an ad libitum diet,
results in profound health benefits, including an increase in average AND
maximum life span, and reduced incidence of tumors and disease has been
tremendously substantiated by a wide range of independent researchers.
Scientists include gerontologists, geneticists, physiologists, cancer
specialists, veterinarians, animal husbandry experts, nutritionists, and
others, and do research in numerous countries.  The implications of this
trend are of a magnitude difficult for many nonscientists to understand.
 
Few biological or medical hypotheses have had the number of experiments,
range of animals, length of study, or close scientific scrutiny as the
dietary restriction paradigm.  For example, when Bruce Williams infected
and sacrificed ferrets in his ECE studies, the number of animals used was
actually rather limited and only a single series of experiments was
performed, yet the conclusions were accepted within both the scientific,
as well as the ferret community.  Rabies in ferrets is another example
of an extremely small number of ferrets used in a single series of
experiments, yet the conclusions were accepted with little doubt or
verification.  Niether study has been independently verified by other
researchers.  In contrast, the health and longevity benefits of dietary
restriction was been shown valid in dozens of species, independently
verified by scores of researchers from numerous countries around the
world.  Which study would you vote for being the better supported?
 
The point here is that a worldwide investigation of dietary restriction,
initiated by dozens of researchers from just as many scientific
disciplines, investigating dozens of widely separated species, has
generated a tremendous body of evidence.  Dietary restriction is an
extremely significant paradigm that, in the near future, will have a
tremendous impact on both animal and human diets.  All this research,
all this observational data suggest ad libitum diets cause extensive
health problems and shorten lives, and that dietary restriction reverses
those problems.  It could be argued that it may not be true in ferrets,
but taken with the other evidential lines offered, the chances that
ferrets are an exemption are exceedingly small.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 3961]