Mainstream Studies on Natural Health Flawed

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Mainstream Studies on Natural Health Flawed

 

by Tony Isaacs

 

Recent headlines from an Oregon State University study asserted

" Vitamin E trials 'fatally flawed " and the following story detailed

how most studies on Vitamin E have been flawed to the point of being

essentially worthless. Here are some excerpts:

 

" CORVALLIS, Ore. – Generations of studies on vitamin E may be largely

meaningless, scientists say, because new research has demonstrated

that the levels of this micronutrient necessary to reduce oxidative

stress are far higher than those that have been commonly used in

clinical trials.

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/osu-vet092107.php

 

In a new study and commentary in Free Radical Biology and Medicine,

researchers concluded that the levels of vitamin E necessary to reduce

oxidative stress are four to eight times higher than those used in

almost all past clinical trials.

 

This could help explain the inconsistent results of many vitamin E

trials for its value in preventing or treating cardiovascular disease,

said Balz Frei, professor and director of the Linus Pauling Institute

at Oregon State University, and co-author of the new commentary along

with Jeffrey Blumberg, at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research

Center on Aging at Tufts University.

 

'The methodology used in almost all past clinical trials of vitamin E

has been fatally flawed,' said Frei, one of the world's leading

experts on antioxidants and disease. "

 

Such news comes as no surprise to natural health advocates, but the

public announcement of the results is surprising because it spotlights

a common failure of testing natural alternatives that has gone on for

decades: namely, testing dosage amounts well below the therapeutic level.

 

Many believe that testing such low dosage amounts, along with other

flaws such as testing inferior or incorrect forms of the item being

studied, studying only an isolated vitamin, mineral or compound

without the supporting compounds found in nature are the result of

looking at the minimum RDA amounts recommended to maintain good health

instead of the therapeutic amounts needed to address illness and

disease - as well as the fact that only synthetic creations, altered

natural compounds and uniquely isolated compounds are patentable.

 

There is no economic incentive for industry to fund expensive studies

and trials of something they cannot patent, have a good chance of

recovering their study and trial costs, and then going on to reap

large profits that can run into the billions of dollars. On a darker

side, there are many who suggest that such profits are behind a great

number of flawed industry funded studies on vitamins, minerals, &

botanicals - in other words, the studies are purposely designed to

show poor results in order to ward off natural competition that might

be safer, more effective and/or much less expensive.

 

The public and our doctors have been told over and over again that

natural alternative such as vitamins, minerals and botanical compounds

provided by nature are inferior to what man creates in our labs and

such flawed studies are what are often pointed to for justification.

If the studies are flawed, by design or not, it becomes a self

fulfilling prophecy. Such suspicions of the motives behind flawed

studies are magnified when one looks at the apparent agenda of the FDA

and those behind the push for adoption of a North American Union kind

of agreement modeled after the European Union model, which limits

access to only a select group of natural vitamins, minerals and

supplements at dosage levels far below what is effective.

 

It is this author's opinion that we should never fail to keep in mind

that the people behind these studies have a vested stake in a trillion

dollar plus annual industry and a track record of taking no prisoners

when it comes to competition. These are, after all, the same people

who trotted doctors and scientists before congress for four decades to

testify that vitamins had no benefit and were even harmful, before

finally giving in to a mountain of evidence they could not hide.

 

These are also the same people who assured us of the safety of Vioxx,

Bextra, Allieve, Avandia, Gardasil, Fosamax, mercury vaccines, mercury

amalgam fillings, and a long, long line of past and present drugs

associated with dangerous side effects, including large numbers of deaths.

 

The same group of vested interest, despite over half a century of

abject failure in the war on cancer, still maintain that cutting out,

burning out and poisoning out symptoms is superior to addressing the

underlying causes and natural prevention. And, when you get down to

it, it was pretty much the same group that assured us for generations

that cigarettes were harmless.

 

It was a welcome surprise to many to see a mainstream study point out

the failures of how vitamins and other natural therapeutics have been

tested. Too bad we don't see such information constantly paraded

before the masses on television and in journals, popular magazines and

newspapers instead of the barrage of " Ask Your Doctor " ads clearly

designed to condition the viewers into entering the wonderful world of

managed illness.

 

Live long, live healthy, live happy!

 

Tony Isaacs