Poisoning the Well--Again

Thursday, April 17

Once again the headline-writers were having a field day: "Vitamins Shorten Life," "Supplements Do More Harm than Good," and "Time to Ban Vitamins" were among the more lurid examples.

But what is this much-ballyhooed story about? Well, for one thing, it's not new information. The study cited in the Cochrane Review of Medicine is a rehash of a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that we thoroughly debunked last year.

Additionally, unlike the implication of the headlines, not all vitamins but only "antioxidants" were called into question. I put that in quotes because the tests were done on a type of synthetic vitamin E I haven't used since the 90's, a type of synthetic beta carotene I've also given up on, vitamin C, and vitamin A.

Now if I were a high school science teacher and one of my students had listed vitamin A as an antioxidant, I would have docked him or her significant points. If I were teaching a post-graduate nutrition course, I would've flunked the student.

I now use mixed tocopherol vitamin E, rich in gamma tocopherol, and in lieu of artificial beta carotene, I use natural mixed carotenoids.

By the way, the old/new supposedly "damning" study said that vitamin C had no ill effects. And selenium, zinc, lipoic acid, n-acetylcysteine, and the whole slew of antioxidants that we use in complementary medicine were not tested. Forget about the B vitamins, calcium, magnesium. And vitamin D, which is coming up HUGE in all recent studies.

Additionally, while there are hundreds of studies documenting the efficacy of antioxidants, the authors of this purportedly "unbiased" analysis cherry-picked just 67 to arrive at the conclusion that antioxidants killed people.

Were these healthy people to begin with who were done in by their vitamins? Actually, the study authors selected studies involving very sick individuals to demonstrate a slight statistical trend toward greater risk of death in vitamin takers. So this study says NOTHING about the ability of antioxidants to protect the healthy from disease or death.

Finally, the authors step over the line and reveal their hidden agenda by calling for MORE STRICT REGULATION of supplements in what is supposed to be an objective, dispassionate scientific article. This is a serious no-no in academic writing. It is tantamount to calling for a drug company to withdraw a medication if a study casts doubt on its safety--never happens!

A story like this is a great smokescreen on the very day when it is revealed that Merck deliberately covered up evidence of harm in its 2001 Vioxx trials, years before the drug was withdrawn, possibly accounting for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Merck has set aside five billion dollars for settlements.

Once again, the press, conventional medicine, and pharmaceutical companies are colluding to poison the well for well-meaning supplement consumers. They would like us to refrain from taking vitamins, and just shut up and take our drugs.