Vitamin Therapy and the Media: Pro and Con

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http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_editorial.html

 

Vitamin Therapy and the Media: Pro and Con

Megavitamin News

 

 

The Megavitamin Revolution

An Editorial by Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

(in The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine

Vol. 7, No. 1, 1995)

 

The test to determine whether a treatment has become

popular within the medical profession is to measure

the relative strength of the positive and negative

assertions made about the treatment. The use of

antibiotics is so well-entrenched in medicine that

side effects and toxicities are recognized but are

accepted as the price one must pay for their positive

therapeutic properties. There are no physicians who

have made it their life's work merely to attack

antibiotics as a crusade. In sharp contrast, vitamins

which are safe even in large doses have not been

acceptable to the profession, and their negative side

effects have been consistently exaggerated and

over-emphasized, to the point that many of these

so-called toxicities have been invented, without there

being any scientific evidence that these side effects

are real. This pervasive negative attitude has spilled

over to the news media, who have consistently followed

the official line and have ignored all the claims made

about the benefits of vitamins used in optimum

amounts. But over the past year or so there has been a

significant change in media attitude reflecting a

significant change in medical opinion.

 

March 12, 1992, Natalie Angier wrote an article

entitled " Vitamins Revitalized as Health Agents " ,

International Herald Tribune, which appeared in the

New York Times and in the Globe and Mail March 14th.

What is interesting in this report is not what it

said, but the fact that it was said. The use of

vitamins in megadoses was described without the usual

massive attention to toxicity and a major warning to

the readers to avoid these things as much as possible

since they could get all they needed from food alone.

Scientists have lost their fear of these high dosages.

For example, Dr. S. N. Meydani of the Human Nutrition

Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University in

Boston said, " Now we are starting to think about what

is the optimal level of vitamins for lifelong diseases

and to prevent age-associated diseases. " This

university has been headed by a nutrition scientist

who at every opportunity had derided the use of

vitamins in his popular columns of advice to the

American public. I assume that Dr. Meydani will not be

fired. The impressive results achieved by the use of

vitamins is gradually overcoming the reluctance of

physicians to use them, even though they might be

reluctant to advise patients to take them. Thus, Dr. I

Jialal of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical

Center in Dallas, is " ... not yet willing to advise

that the public start taking vitamin tablets, and he,

like so many researchers, emphasizes the need for more

studies. But he did admit that given his preliminary

results and the relative harmlessness of Vitamin E, he

himself planned to start a supplement of the nutrient

daily. " I have some good news for Dr. Jialal. Up to

60% of the population are already taking vitamin

supplements and have been doing so for years.

Contributors to this journal have been describing the

use of optimum amounts of nutrients including vitamins

ever since this journal was first published. Readers

are not surprised by the information in the public

media, and they may well wonder why it has taken so

long. Angier opened her story with the following

statement, " Long consigned to the fringes of medicine

and accorded scarcely more credibility than

crystal-rubbing or homeopathy, the study of how

vitamins affect the body and help prevent chronic

diseases is now winning broad attention and respect

among mainstream medical researchers. " She added,

" They are gathering provocative evidence that vitamins

influence nearly every organ, and that these enigmatic

chemicals may help forestall or even reverse many

diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease,

osteoporosis, a flagging immune system,

neurodegeneration and other chronic disorders. "

 

Equally interesting is the prominent attention given

to these vitamins in the New York Times. This

prestigious national newspaper has, since at least

1966, consistently ignored or criticized the use of

megavitamins. This was the policy of their editorial

board. Many years ago at a meeting of the Huxley

Institute of Biosocial Research in New York, I was

approached by a writer who had been commissioned by

the New York Times to attend our meeting and to

prepare a report. He did attend for the day and

one-half. This was the meeting which was greeted by

Mayor Koch. At the end of the meeting this reporter

approached me and asked whether I would spend some

time answering his questions. I replied that I saw no

point in doing so, since if he wrote anything

favorable the New York Times would not publish it. He

was astounded at my statement, and reassured me that

so far he had not had any of the articles, which they

had asked him to write, rejected. I agreed to see him

on Monday at my hotel. He came to my room

mid-afternoon and stayed until 7 p.m., until my wife

and I had to leave to attend the opera. He assured me

that his report would appear in the Sunday Supplement

within two weeks. After several months had passed I

called him to find out what had happened and would his

article ever appear. He said that the editorial board

had wanted a few points clarified and could we meet

again next time I was there. I agreed. Again I spent

several hours with him. The story never appeared. I

assumed it was favorable, although the writer did not

tell me what the tenor of his report would be like. I

assumed that a senior editor who had been writing

major articles against the use of vitamins had killed

the story. It is possible the writer was a fraud and

had nothing whatever to do with the New York Times,

but I considered this highly unlikely after getting to

know him so well. This little episode merely

illustrates the entrenched opposition of the Times to

orthomolecular nutrition. They had shown similar

opposition to articles written by my friend, Dr.

Walter Alvarez. After a particularly critical article

against psychoanalysis appeared in his column in the

New York Times, the newspaper concealed his column. It

looks as if the New York Times has undergone a

conversion experience.

 

Almost every modern, acceptable treatment needed forty

or more years before that treatment became acceptable.

I have for many years predicted that it would take

about forty years before megavitamin therapy would

become widely accepted. I had started the clock at

1957 when we first published our paper describing the

use of large doses of Vitamin B3 for the treatment of

acute schizophrenia. I assumed that by the year 1997

this would become the recognized best treatment.

Orthomolecular treatment originated from that

particular study as one of the main roots. The other

was the work by Linus Pauling who defined the term

orthomolecular and placed his immense scientific

prestige and knowledge behind the concept. His seminal

work on Vitamin C and the cold and flu, and more

recently on the use of this vitamin in the treatment

of cancer, and very recently on the role Vitamin C

plays in preventing hardening of the arteries, has

been the most potent factor in swaying public opinion

and, sometime after that, scientific opinion. But I

now think that general medicine will be ahead of

psychiatry, which requires much more effort to be

persuaded to look at different findings and treatment

philosophies.

 

A. Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

#3A - 2727 Quadra Street

Victoria, B.C. V8T 4E5