WHO 'Nutrient Risk Assessment' Based On Flawed Premise

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8 Feb 2006 09:53:16 -0000

Health Supreme Update: WHO 'Nutrient Risk Assessment' Based

On Flawed Premise

sepp

 

 

 

Health Supreme Update: WHO 'Nutrient Risk Assessment' Based On Flawed

Premise

 

2006.02.08 10:53:15

 

 

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WHO 'Nutrient Risk Assessment' Based On Flawed Premise

Categories

Health

Legislation

 

The International Programme on Chemical Safety, an agency

associated with the World Health Organization has published a report

outlining a " Model for Establishing Upper Levels of Intake for

Nutrients and Related Substances " . The report follows a workshop held

in May last year in Geneva and outlines how to go about setting

permitted 'upper levels' of nutrients to prevent us from ...

overdosing on nutrients.

 

Honestly, hand on heart, how many people do you know who have died

as a consequence of an overdose of a nutrient. None? I thought so.

Cases are extremely rare. Statistics show that nutrients as supplied

in food supplements are in no way hazardous. Indeed, they may be one

of the safest categories of consumables. Ron Law has put together the

statistics to prove that contention - they are available on www.laleva.cc.

 

Apparently there are many people consuming nutrient supplements to

stay healthy, prevent and even treat disease, and someone must be

getting very nervous. Not that the vitamin pill poppers are

particularly sick - it seems most of them enjoy better-than-average

health and longevity. But they do tend to stay away from doctors,

which is very bad for pharma's business.

 

Pharmaceutical drugs and hospitalization, in contrast, are

associated with numerous unnecessary deaths, more than 700.000 a year

in the USA alone, according to Carolyn Dean, who wrote " Death by

Modern Medicine " . The statistics she and other researchers compiled

are also available in this article on Gary Null's site.

 

With something close to a hundred thousand deaths due to

malnutrition in hospitals (actually 108.000 according to this

article), would it not seem that world health authorities are shooting

at the wrong target discussing dosage limits of nutrients to " protect

our health " ?

 

- - -

 

Protecting our health?

 

Here we have the World Health Organization pushing along a program

specifically designed to provide the justification for limiting the

availability of nutrients - substances our bodies need to stay in good

shape. This links in with recent legislation in the EU, clamping down

on food supplements and with new world wide supplement 'guidelines'

finalized in July 2005 by Codex Alimentarius, a World Health

Organization-associated body charged with making rules for the

international food trade.

 

Those international supplement rules were passed, but they are

very vague on what exactly the restrictions are going to be, perhaps

by design. But then, programs such as this risk assessment model may

well provide the justification for removing some of our favorite

supplements from the marketplace. Germany has already indicated where

the process is expected to lead us - their assessment of the purported

risks of vitamins and minerals led to recommend dosages of nutrients

that by some would be considered laughably low.

 

If you think this could not affect the Anglo-saxon world with its

tradition of freely available supplements of all kinds of nutrients,

think again. The World Health Organization is working hard to provide

the " scientific justification " for just such a clamp-down.

 

The full report " A Model for Establishing Upper Levels of Intake

for Nutrients and Related Substances: Report of a Joint FAO/WHO

Technical Workshop on Nutrient Risk Assessment, 2-6 May 2005 " can be

downloaded in PDF format.

 

I will not comment in detail on the proposal - some fine legal

minds are analyzing the report as you read this and I will add their

views here as they become available.

 

Let me just make one comment, however.

 

According to the report, the first steps of risk assessment are to

identify and then to characterize the hazard.

 

Through their deliberations, the Workshop participants (the

Group) examined the extent to which existing approaches to assess risk

associated with non-nutrients could be relevant to the development of

a model for nutrient risk assessment. Classic (i.e. non nutrient)

assessment consists of four general tasks or steps: (i) hazard

identification, (ii) hazard characterization, (iii) exposure

assessment, and (iv) risk characterization. 'Problem formulation'

precedes these steps and includes a dialogue among all interested

parties, including risk assessors and risk managers. As such, it

provides the context and expectations for the assessment.

 

There is apparently no provision for examining the very basic

question whether, looking at normal, everyday risks we all run, the

consumption of nutrients is representing an appreciable danger.

Normally, in risk assessment, a 'de minimis' risk threshold of 1 death

in a million is considered unavoidable and will not give rise to

specific countermeasures. Nothing in the WHO's model suggests that

this is being taken into consideration.

 

This brings us back to the statistics compiled by Ron Law, which

show without a shadow of a doubt that there is no appreciable hazard

in the consumption of natural health products, at least not any hazard

we should be worried about, if seen in the context of other dangers we

are exposed to every day and with what is widely considered a

threshold for even considering to take action - the de-minimis risk.

 

 

 

posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday February 8 2006

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