Concern has been expressed about the fact that cows' milk contains estrogens and could stimulate the growth of hormone-sensitive tumors. In this study, organic cows' milk and two commercial substitutes were digested in vitro and tested for their effects on the growth of cultures of prostate and breast cancer cells. Cows' milk stimulated the growth of LNCaP prostate cancer cells in each of 14 separate experiments, producing an average increase in growth rate of over 30%. In contrast, almond milk suppressed the growth of these cells by over 30%. Neither cows' milk nor almond milk affected the growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells or AsPC-1 pancreatic cancer cells significantly. Soy milk increased the growth rate of the breast cancer cells. These data indicate that prostate and breast cancer patients should be cautioned about the possible promotional effects of commercial dairy products and their substitutes.
Frequently, sociologists encounter research problems which call for assessing the extent to which two or more categories of people or events can be maximally distinguished from one another with respect to a number of common variable attributes. Unfortunately, predictive models which evidently accomplish just this, in addition to providing rules for the classification of new entities, have been conspicuously absent from the literature. Discriminant analysis, a multivariate technique extensively employed in physical anthropology, clinical psychology, and the biological sciences, has made scant headway in sociology, even though many of our most interesting substantive investigations are clearly amenable to it. The purpose of this paper, then, is first to suggest numerous research situations in which two-group and multiple discriminant analyses might be productively applied. By way of illustration, a brief example of the use of discriminant analysis for data on student politics will be presented. Second, the principal methodological problems attributed to discriminant analysis will be summarized and possible solutions suggested.
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