Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Medical Journals
This week the British Medical Journal published a study which reported that older people don’t benefit from taking a nutritional supplement. A few months ago, the same journal published another study that reported Multivitamins Won’t Ward Off Infection in Elderly – Senior Health, Aging and Elder Care Health Conditions Show No Decrease in Infection among the elderly who took supplements. Another articles in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal trumpets supplements don’t reduce the risk of fracture in the elderly. And David Bender graced the pages of the British Medical Journal with an editorial incorrectly asserting that we have no biomarkers for optimal health and that there is no point to a daily multivitamin for the elderly.
Years ago someone who knew a lot about a lot said, “The answer has to make sense”. So does this make sense? Nope! No sense at all. Well, then, what’s wrong with this picture? These are reputable journals, right? Peer reviewed, right? So the articles must be real science, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Here’s what’s wrong. The study on infection used a vitamin pill with values so low that they match what we can expect in Codex’s standards. And they had, as they are designed to have, no effect on keeping people healthy as they were intended not to have. Here are the nutrient contents of the supplement in the infection study with the amount that I take of each substance on a health-promotion basis in bold for comparison:
800 µg vitamin A (acetate) REL: 50,000 µg , 60 mg vitamin C REL:6,000 mg, 5 µg vitamin D3 REL:6,000 µg, 10 mg vitamin E (D, L-{alpha} tocopheryl acetate) REL:1,200 IU mixed tocopherols, 1.4 mg thiamin (mononitrate)REL:100 mg, 1.6 mg riboflavinREL:100 mg, 18 mg niacin (nicotinamide)REL:1000 mg, 6 mg pantothenic acid (calcium D-pantothenate)REL:400 mg, 2 mg pyridoxine (hydrochloride)REL:50 mg, 1 µg vitamin B12, REL:1000 µg , 200 µg folic acidREL:25,000 µg, 14 mg iron (fumurate) REL:0 mg, 150 µg iodine (potassium iodide)REL:150 µg, 0.75 mg copper (gluconate)REL:1 mg, 15 mg zinc (oxide)REL:25 mg, and 1 mg manganese (sulphate)REL:10 mg. The doses I take are those that I typically recommend for a health adult who wants to stay that way. I take 100 times as much Vitamin C, 1200 times the Vitamin D, 55.5 times as much niacin, and 25,000 times as much folic acid as test subjects recieved. So what the authors are actually testing is pretty close to the the Risk Assessment values which Coydex wants make the universal standard. Risk Assessment, you will remember, is a branch of toxicology and the Risk Assessment values of Vitamins and Minerals are those which are chosen because they have no effect on any human being! So of course they did not show an impact. DUH!
So guess what, here it is, hot off the press: Ultra low dose nutrients actually don’t work! But wait: what’s this? Buried deep in the study is the following fascinating set of statements: “Our participants were similar in age and place of residence to those studied in a previous, disputed trial that reported beneficial effects from supplementation…. Unlike our trial, the supplement used in the previous trial had four times the levels of vitamin E and vitamin B12 and also contained selenium, magnesium, calcium, and {beta} carotene. (emphasis added) ….Supplementation, especially of trace elements, has been shown to reduce infections in older people in nursing care with higher levels of nutritional deficiency….We cannot exclude the possibility that the intakes provided in the supplement were inadequate to affect the immune system.
These nutrient levels were either carefully chosen to show no impact (which is highly unethical considering the impact on human health and well-being if therapeutic dosages of these nutrients had been given) or the authors are astonishingly incompetence scientists who committed a large number of subjects, scientist hours, journal pages, etc., to experiments designed by nincompoops. If the latter is the case, then the peer reviewers and all the department chairmen involved were nincompoops, too. And while I have seen my share of academic nincompoops, I don’t think that is the explanation here. Remember, the answer has to make sense.
No, I believe these articles are part of the poison press against safe, simple, effective and non toxic health choices.
So I have a couple of questions about these studies (which are questions I always ask): Who funded these studies? Who wrote the articles? The principle author or a ghost writer? What are the financial interests of the authors in the outcomes of the studies? Who chose the level of nutrients to be tested and upon what basis?
And, most important, why did these well educated people want to perform studies that “show” nutrients have no value so badly that they shamed themselves in front of anyone who understands biochemistry, scientific methodology or medical ethics?
I guess I would feel better if they were nincompoops.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
