About half of the population of the United States and Canada takes vitamin supplements, even though the press often publishes some rather lurid accounts of how “dangerous” they can be. Note they do not write “will be,” because there are no dead bodies strewn all over the landscape, as one might expect from such irresponsible news releases.
Negative vitamin reporting is too often based on shoddy and almost fraudulent reports in medical journals, which are heavily subsidized by the pharmaceutical industry. It has been said that 80 percent of the studies in medical journals are wrong. Is this an underestimate? What about negative medical journal vitamin studies? No mere estimates are involved here—there is clear evidence that the major medical journals are heavily influenced by their advertisers.
A 2008 study showed that journals with the most pharmaceutical ads have the most negative reports about vitamins. The authors wrote that:
“In major medical journals, more pharmaceutical advertising is associated with publishing fewer articles about dietary supplements. And journals with more pharmaceutical advertising had more articles with negative conclusions about dietary supplement safety."
The following journals were specifically named as having the most pharmaceutical ads and the most negative articles about vitamins: Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Pediatrics and Pediatric Research, and American Family Physician.
The results were statistically significant. Medical journals with the most pharmaceutical ads published no clinical trials or cohort studies about supplements. The percentage of major articles concluding that supplements were unsafe was higher in journals that had the most pharmaceutical ads. The impact of advertising on publications is real, and a matter of great public concern.
The flip side of this problem is that medical research and the very data it generates is biased by pharmaceutical advertising cash. The American Journal of Psychiatry said: “In 90.0% of [drug] studies, the reported overall outcome was in favor of the sponsor’s drug. Even the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine agrees. Dr. Marcia Angell says:
“Is there some way [drug] companies can rig clinical trials to make their drugs look better than they are?Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Trials can be rigged in a dozen ways, and it happens all the time."
This bias extends deeply into the medical schools themselves. Too many of tomorrow’s doctors are bought and paid for with drug company money. Dr. Angell writes:
“Columbia University, which patented the technology used in the manufacture of Epogen and Cerezyme, collected nearly $300 million in royalties in 17 years. The patent was based on NIH-funded research.”
And, Dr. Angell adds:
“In Harvard Medical School’s Dean’s Report for 2003-4, the list of benefactors included about a dozen of the largest drug companies. The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together.”
The Washington Post said:
“When the federal government recently compared a broader range of drugs in typical schizophrenia patients in a lengthy trial, the two medications that stood out were cheaper drugs not under patent.”
Vitamins are cheap, safe and effective. Modern "wonder drugs" are none of those. But they do make money. Especially when the drug makers control the research, the advertising, and the doctors.
There is a recurrent problem with vitamins being perceived as “too useful.” Frederick R. Klenner, M.D., found vitamin C to be an effective and nearly all-purpose antitoxin, antibiotic, and antiviral. One vitamin curing polio, pneumonia, measles, strep, snakebite, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever? Laypeople and professionals alike certainly struggle with that, and more so with the fact that Klenner also reported success with nearly four dozen other diseases. How did he do it? The explanation may be as simple as this: the reason that one nutrient can cure so many different illnesses is because a deficiency of one nutrient can cause many different illnesses.
This has led to something of a vitamin public relations problem. When pharmaceuticals are versatile, they are called “broad spectrum” and “wonder drugs.” When vitamins are versatile, they are called “faddish” and “cures in search of a disease.” Such a double standard needs to be exposed and opposed at every turn.
Edited by osris, 24 November 2023 - 05:30 PM.
