December, 2013
Yet another study from a medical journal that has a history of producing poorly-constructed anti-vitamin studies just made headlines in anti-vitamin publications, such as the New York Times, causing confusion for the public and their doctors.
The Annals of Internal Medicine follows the pattern of other medical journals that are funded by pharmaceutical companies.
One study showed that the more drug advertisements a journal has the more anti-vitamin studies they publish.
When you go to the front page of Annals of Internal Medicine and click on an article, a drug ad pops up.
It's easy to see why that journal publishes negative studies on nutrients. Drugs fund their every action and nutrients are competition to drugs.
Rather than me spending time debunking this study, I refer you to well-written rebuttals that show consensus among a number of credible sources.
Harvard University, the most conservative bastion of nutritional science in the world, dismissed this study. Click here to read their statement.
Life Extension Foundation provided a thorough, fully-referenced article tearing the study apart. You can view it by clicking here.
The venerable Council For Responsible Nutrition (CRN) responded to this study and several other misguided attempts at slamming good nutrition.
Steve Meistner, CEO of CRN, also made this statement, which you can read by clicking here.
Michael Murray, ND, a long-time source of good information about nutrition wrote a solid analysis of this study on Centrum multivitamins, saying that "Garbage in equals garbage out."
The Natural Products Association's response is worth reading.
NewHope 360, an industry publication, provided good counterpoint to the poorly-designed study.
Orthomolecular.org produced a scientifically sound humorous take on the study.
Finally, Lee Swanson, of swansonvitamins.com makes some excellent common-sensical points, viewable by clicking here.
As usual, we have the medical/pharmaceutical industry trying to trick people into not taking vitamins because they know that people who take vitamins have less health problems as they grow older and thus, need to take less drugs and use less medical services.
Once our disease-care, for-profit medical system is converted to a single-payer non-profit system (as is happening in Vermont this year), the incentive will be to keep people well because it costs less and so medicine will embrace the use of natural health care tools, such as dietary supplements, because they save money.
As it is now, the medical system's incentive is to keep people just sick enough that we spend money on dangerous drugs, such as statins and questionable medical procedures, like lap band surgeries.
With the successful rollout of the American single-payer system, such as Vermont is creating, other states will soon copy them and eventually we will have the best healthcare system in the world, a non-profit system that rewards doctors for making their patients healthier, and, of course, good nutrition and natural health care techniques will become primary tools in this ideal system.
To your health,