Why are news reporters slamming vitamin pills while overlooking unsafe drugs?

[Guest guest]

Why are news reporters slamming vitamin pills while overlooking unsafe drugs?

By Bill Sardi

Recent news reports from the Wall Street Journal and ABC-TV news claim vitamin

supplements are unsafe, the public should be wary of these pills, especially in

high doses, and the dietary supplement industry is unregulated, so it is caveat

emptor (buyer beware).

Funny thing, in the past year or two, Vioxx, the pain-relieving

anti-inflammatory drug, which could be acquired by doctor’s prescription only,

was reported to have killed up to 20,000-50,000 Americans due to blood clots and

subsequent heart attacks. But recent news reports are making it sound like

vitamin pills pose mortal side effects, and as long as Vioxx has a block-box

warning, it’s back on the prescription list after being voluntarily recalled by

its manufacturer.

Why no black box warning for vitamin pills? Why of course not, dietary

supplements are safer than food (millions of cases of food poisoning annually),

safer than table salt (raises blood pressure in some individuals) and safer than

aspirin (causes bleeding ulcers, irreversible asthma, and thousands of deaths).

Never proven safe

The revelation that Vioxx is unsafe was more than a statistical discovery.

Vioxx’s potential to kill unsuspecting consumers exposed the fact that many

FDA-approved prescription drugs pose serious health problems even when used in

the proper dosages. The FDA approves drugs based on limited studies and cannot

fully determine if a drug increases mortality or morbidity until larger groups

use the medication. This means most new prescription medications are of unknown

risk till long after their approval. The shocking problem is that the FDA has

not required post-approval safety testing for hundreds of drugs in use today.

Sixty-five percent of the 1,231 so-called “post-marketing” drug studies that

companies had pledged to carry out were still pending. Dr. Jerry Avorn, a

Harvard Medical School professor and author of “Powerful Medicines,” says the

numbers show the system is broken and calls the situation “scandalous” and

“appalling.”

What we end up with are drugs that are just slightly more effective than an

inactive placebo tablet, but pose unknown risks, some which may be mortal, that

could outweigh any proposed health benefits.

But wait a moment, I thought it was the dietary supplement industry, not the

prescription drug industry, that was escaping the watchful eye of the FDA? Why

have news reporters inappropriately pointed their fingers at innocent vitamin

pills?

Pseudoscience

The answer to that question is pseudoscience, now proliferating medical journals

at a rapid pace. Misleading studies are being planted into peer-reviewed medical

journals.

Like the study that concluded high-dose vitamin E increases the risk for heart

failure. No previous study ever came to this conclusion, but the recent study

claimed there is a 40% increased relative risk for heart failure among adults

taking 400 milligram vitamin E pills. These studies should be scrutinized by

trained reporters, such as Dr. of ABC News or Tara -Pope

of the Wall Street Journal, who recently aired and published negative reports

about vitamin pills. Instead, reporters parrot press releases sent to them from

medical journals and public health organizations.

The study in question showed 12.1 percent in the inactive placebo group and 13.5

percent in the vitamin E group were more likely to be hospitalized for heart

failure. In hard numbers (not relative figures) that’s a 1.4% difference.

Careful examination of the study shows that the study participants were, in

addition to vitamin E, taking three drugs that can cause heart failure: beta

blockers which slows the heart rate, statin cholesterol drugs that depletes

heart muscle of a necessary antioxidant – coenzyme Q10, and diuretics (water

pills) that wash out vitamin B1 (thiamine) in the urinary flow which can result

in heart failure. But not one of these drugs were cited by the vitamin police.

Instead, vitamin E pills got ticketed.

Another example of the pseudoscience is the claim that high-dose vitamin A may

induce birth defects. Vitamin A has been found to induce birth defects in

animals, but at daily intake levels that would never likely be achieved by

humans. A study with cats found it would take 2 million units of vitamin A to

induce birth defects. [Journal Animal Physiology Animal Nutrition 87: 42-51,

2003]

A report published over 15 years ago by Scientists with the Center for Food

Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, claimed that 25,000

units of vitamin A may be the threshold for birth defects among pregnant women,

but noted that the toxicity occurs among women with compromised liver function

who take drugs or who have viral hepatitis or other liver problems. Was this

sufficient reason to warn all fertile women away from vitamin A supplements?

[American Journal Clinical Nutrition 52: 183-202, 1990]

A more recent study found that multivitamin use protects against cleft palate, a

common birth defect, and that vitamin A protects against this occurrence. Higher

intake levels of vitamin A were more, not less, protective. [American Journal

Epidemiology 158: 69-76, 2003]

If Tara- Pope and Dr. had done their homework, they might

have found that birth defects caused by high-dose vitamin A may be induced by

deficiencies of other essential nutrients, like folic acid and vitamin E.

In a study conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health,

vitamin A toxicity was observed among rabbits only when they were deficient

another essential nutrient. Rabbits experienced birth defects in their offspring

when they were given high-dose vitamin A and their diets were deficient in

vitamin E. Vitamin E is actually a treatment for vitamin A overdose.

[Contemporary Topics: Laboratory Animal Science 43: 26-30, 2004]

How many American women are deficient in vitamin E? Most of them. But no action

is taken by health authorities. Recommended daily intake is 15 milligrams and

most Americans consume 8-10 milligrams.

Another compelling study with mice showed that a deficiency of essential

nutrients, folic acid, choline and methionine, did not induce birth defects

(spina bifida). Researchers wondered why. They then added high doses of vitamin

A to the diets of the pregnant mice that were deficient in the other

aforementioned nutrients. The birth defects were produced.

What this means is that if pregnant women take high-dose vitamin A along with

sufficient amounts of folic acid, choline and methionine, they are not likely to

produce birth defects in their offspring. [Journal Nutrition 133: 3561-70, 2003]

Why this information isn’t being shared with fertile women goes unexplained.

This is what Tara- Pope and Dr. should be reporting in

their news broadcasts.

Why the negative spin on vitamin pills?

So why all the negative spin about vitamin supplements? It’s clear that drug

makers don’t want consumers discovering they can take dietary supplements with

far greater safety and effectiveness and at far less cost. In the wake of the

Vioxx scandal, consumers are backing away from prescription drugs. In the third

quarter of 2005, United States sales of prescription drugs fell 3 percent at

Bristol-Myers Squibb, 4.5 percent at & , 2 percent at Merck and

15 percent at Pfizer. A 2005 poll shows that only 9 percent of Americans believe

drug companies are generally honest, down from 14 percent in 2004. [New York

Times November 14, 2005]

The only way the drug companies are going to be able to prop up their stock

value is to increase prices, prompt retirees to sign up for the new Medicare

prescription program, and conduct television and other advertising directly to

consumers, which is precisely what is underway. –Copyright 2006 Bill Sardi,

Knowledge of Health, Inc.

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