The latest round in conventional medicine's ongoing attempts to discredit (and ultimately outlaw) nutritional supplements is found in a highly questionable study published this week in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, which claims that vitamins actually increase the risk of death.
The study claims to have analyzed a collection of previous studies on Vitamin A, beta carotene, Vitamin C, Vitamin E and selenium, concluding that most of the nutrients are actually dangerous to human
health. Of course, this is research from
conventional medicine – an industry that promotes patented
chemicals as perfectly safe, even though FDA-approved
pharmaceuticals are killing 100,000 Americans each year. (Imagine the uproar if
vitamins killed even a fraction of that number…)
To avoid getting hoodwinked by questionable
research on "vitamins," you have to strongly consider the financial interests of the source of this research.
JAMA accepts millions of dollars in advertising from drug
companies each year, and its pages are absolutely packed with drug ads. The
American Medical Association, for its part, has long worked to discredit alternative
medicine and has even been found guilty by U.S. federal courts of engaging in a conspiracy to destroy chiropractic medicine. The
AMA, which is largely considered a joke by anyone familiar with
natural health, is hardly a credible source for publishing scientific findings on
nutrition. To protect the multi-billion dollar drug
industry, the AMA would say practically anything, I believe.
How to fake a vitamin study
Faking a vitamin study to show
supplements as harmful is extremely easy to pull off, by the way. All you have to do is
use synthetic forms of the vitamins and avoid using natural, food-sourced vitamins. These
synthetic vitamins – which are really just industrial chemicals – may be called "Vitamin E" or "Vitamin A" or even "Vitamin C" but they have no functional resemblance to the real vitamins that occur in
nature. Every single study over the past two decades that has sought to discredit Vitamin E, for example, focused on using
synthetic Vitamin E in order to show harm. It is curious that no researcher from the world of conventional medicine will ever test the natural, full-spectrum vitamins,
nutrients and phytochemicals that appear in nature. You know why? Because they would discover a universe of natural medicine that makes patented
prescription drugs obsolete.
A second way to fake a vitamin meta-data study is to simply cherry-pick the
results you want to include in your meta-data analysis. This is a routine trick used by dishonest researchers who have an agenda of discrediting
nutritional supplements. To pull this one off, they simply eliminate all previous
studies that showed positive results for vitamins, and include only previous studies that showed negative results. Then they run a statistical analysis on all the studies they hand-picked and declare – surprise! – those vitamins are dangerous! Many of the studies on
vitamin E, by the way, were conducted on dying heart
patients who were only expected to live two weeks, regardless of what they took.
A third way to distort the
science is to confuse people with statistical obfuscation. The reporting on this particular study, for example, confuses
absolute risk with
relative risk. Vitamin A, according to the reports on this study, increased mortality
risk by 16 percent. But that is a
relative risk number, meaning that if 1 person out of 100 normally died, then 1.16 people out of 100 would die when taking these synthetic Vitamin A supplements. In other words, it might not even be one additional person out of 100, or even out of 1000.
And yet, it is curious that when conventional
medical researchers report the results of mortality risks for their prescription
drugs, they always use
absolute risk. They say things like, "Well, this
drug only increased the risk by one percent." But what they are not saying is that it may be a 200% relative increase in mortality risk, depending on the baseline absolute mortality numbers. So if only 0.5 people out of 100 normally died from heart disease during a particular study, but 1.5 people died when taking a drug during that study, the relative risk increase is 200%. But the medical journals and the mainstream media will report is at a "one percent increase."
You see how the game is played? Here's the con:
• All
statistics on the dangers of prescription drugs are reported as
absolute risk to make the numbers seem smaller (and make drugs seem safe).
• All statistics on the dangers of synthetic vitamins are reported as
relative risk to make the numbers seem larger (and vitamins seem dangerous).
And this is how conventional medicine lies with statistics. It's only one of the many tricks used to disinform the American public about the dangers of pharmaceuticals or the benefits of nutrition.
This research published in JAMA does remind us of one important point, however:
synthetic chemicals are harmful to human health. If you take cheap "vitamins" made of these synthetic chemicals, you are doing yourself more harm than good. These cheap vitamin manufacturers, by the way, are usually owned by pharmaceutical firms. I would personally never take vitamins purchased at common retailers such as Wal-Mart or Walgreens. I only recommend and consume vitamins from high-end
nutritional supplement companies.
Blurring the line to scare consumers
But conventional medicine researchers try to blur the line between "junk vitamins" and "quality vitamins" by classifying all nutritional supplements as "vitamins," regardless of what they're really made from. By discrediting a few synthetic chemicals, they can effectively dissuade the masses from taking ANY vitamins, including the good ones. And that is, of course, their goal: to use FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to scare consumers away from nutritional supplements so that patients will flock to the patented, synthetic chemicals that earn drug companies billions of dollars in profits. Drugs make
money for Big Pharma, and vitamins compete with drug sales. Once you understand the economics and the motives of the parties involved here, the
junk science con becomes quite obvious:
Pushers of pharmaceuticals will always use dirty tricks to discredit nutritional supplements because it is in their financial interests to do so.My own financial interests, by the way, are squeaky clean. I sell no supplements, I earn no money from
supplement companies, and in fact I am not even paid by NaturalNews for my work on these articles. In terms of potential
conflicts of interest, I have far more credibility than
the AMA, a shady organization that remains mired in blatant conflicts of interest and a frightening agenda of pushing drugs,
surgery and radiation onto as many Americans as possible.
Now, here's a common sense way to quickly realize the JAMA research is complete nonsense. Round up 100 people who are taking multiple pharmaceuticals, and compare their health to 100 people who are taking vitamins and nutritional supplements. Guess who's healthier? The supplement crowd will be healthier every time. It's the obvious question: If vitamins are so dangerous, where are all the dead vitamin takers? And if pharmaceuticals are so safe, where are all the super-healthy
prescription drug patients? They are nowhere to be found.
The healthiest people, by far, are those who take supplements, who engage in regular exercise, and who avoid taking prescription drugs.
Why conventional medical researchers remain nutritionally illiterate
Western medicine still doesn't "get" nutrition. They think all health effects are achieved by single, isolated chemical constituents. But nutrition doesn't work that way. In nature, for example, Vitamin C is not a single chemical, but rather a symphony of complementary phytonutrients that work in concert. Conventional medical researchers almost never test plant medicine using full-spectrum nutrients. Why? Because they don't understand the concept of nutritional synergy.
The bottom line? Only fools believe research about nutrition that comes from the American Medical Association or its journal. Conventional medical researchers declaring that vitamins are worthless is about as credible as Bush Administration climatologists claiming there's no such thing as global warming.
With the publication of this research, the distortion of health reality is now complete. According to the Americal Medical Association, vitamins will kill you but pharmaceuticals will make you
healthy.
Someone help me stop laughing before I blow out a lung and require surgery.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body.
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