Talk:Transfer factor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Stub	rated as stub-Class on the assessment scale
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

Where are the citations for the "two international studies"? The allusions to anecdotal evidence should be assumed to be non-factual and irrelevant to this article unless these anecdotes can be confirmed through sources who have no vested interest in the sale or promotion of transfer factor products. The relevance of the "landmark" Social Security case is also questionable. Furthermore, has the "How Transfer Factors Work" section been reviewed by anyone who works in immunology? The section provides no outside references, which is especially alarming when it is makes a claim as bold as "transfer factors are essentially the brains of the immune system."

Resources that deal with transfer factor are mainly under the control of 4Life Research, LC, whose business is the marketing and sale of transfer factor products through a multi-level marketing model. While the article as it stands alludes to the fact that there is no peer reviewed research on the efficacy of transfer factor, it glosses over this fact much in the same way that 4Life literature does: it skips through the lack of peer-reviewed research to discuss voluminous anecdotal evidence.

As this article presents its information in a similar manner to that of 4Life's brochures (unsupported histories and definitions of transfer factor, anecdotal evidence), my guess is that this article was set up by a 4Life salesperson as an indirect shill for 4Life products. I have deleted the 3 links that were previously on the page: 2 were owned by 4Life and presented information on transfer factor much as a business looking to sell a product would, and 1 was maintained by a person who promoted and sold 4Life products on the website.

My feeling is that this article should be removed entirely or replaced with a more rigorous definition of transfer factor. I would hope that someone in the Wikipedia community is able to shed some light on transfer factor in a more equitable fashion than that of the article currently listed--someone who is hopefully not allied with 4Life and has no interest in promoting or selling transfer factor products.

[edit] Regarding previous comment

I agree with the previous comment. I am a graduate student in microbiology with a quite strong immunology background, I have been doing some research to attempt to find some references regarding the true nature of what "transfer factors" really are, but the data is still not clear. There is this person: Charles H Kirkpatrick, who seems to have plublish in the Journal of Immunology (a highly reputable journal)about this subject but the articles are quite outdated in the 80's. My impression is that many scientists were looking for these "transfer factors" and later turned out to be other things around this time people were starting to understand how the immune system works. The literature seems to be quiet about what they are. So far, based on old data they seem to be short peptides (very small proteins) "produced by T cells". However, the closest thing to these peptides that I know of are defensins which are non-specific but seem to kill pathogens by disrupting their membrane. I may post something later after I ask one of my immunology professors to get his/her opinion. I'm just a little upset that organizations try to market stuff taking advantage of the ignorance of most people by claiming to know science. My main concern is that if what 4Life sells is really that miraculous it would have been approved by the FDA immidiately!! I WANT TO BE CLEAR: THEIR PRODUCT IS NOT APPROVED BY THE FDA!!!! If anyone is interested in looking through the scientific literature go to www.pubmed.com. This is the database of research with biological relevance organized by the National Institutes of Health.

[edit] Added links to papers

Since questions have been raised above about the motives and qualifications of previous contributors to this article, I will preface my remarks with the following: I am a layman in this area of knowledge. I became aware of these products through a friend who swears by them. Although she has personal experience of some pretty amazing anecdotal results in both humans and animals, I haven't been able to prove to myself that they work for me. I found the links I added through Web searches. While most of them are to the company's Web sites, hopefully they provide enough details and references to facilitate objectively examining the evidence. I added the NIH summary on NK cell research because it relates to the company's claims that the products affect NK cell levels. As for the suggestion to delete the article, I would think that even if evidence is found proving that it is all bunk, that is useful information for people to have. It seems to me that the NPOV way to deal with it is to describe the reasons for believing it is bunk, describe the reasons for believing it isn't, and if there hasn't been enough peer-reviewed research to reach a conclusion one way or another, describe that too. Palmpilot900 20:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)