Medicine's assault on Calcium: Quack Science Fuels Calcium bashing frenzy

[Guest guest]

NewsTarget.com

Originally published February 22 2006

Medicine's assault on calcium: Quack science fuels calcium bashing

frenzy

In the world of health news, I'm not sure who's worse: Dishonest

researchers or illiterate science reporters. But in this case --

lucky us -- we get both. The issue surrounds the reporting of a

recent study on calcium supplements in post-menopausal women

conducted by the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), a U.S. government

program. According to practically everybody in the mainstream press,

the study shows little or no benefit of taking calcium supplements.

Here's a sampling of the headlines you may have seen in the popular

press:

No broad benefit from calcium found for women

- San Jose Mercury News

 

Back to milk: Few benefits found from calcium pills

- International Herald Tribune

 

Study Shows Limited Benefits From Calcium

- Houston Chronicle

 

Studies Question Benefits Of Calcium, Vitamin D

- CBS (affiliate, California)

 

Anyone who actually reads the study, however, learns that calcium was

shown to produce a whopping 29% reduction in bone fractures for those

actually taking the pills. That's a huge reduction in risk that would

be called a " breakthrough " if it were attributed to a drug.

 

So how did the mainstream media miss the boat on this one? Simple:

They just parroted the conclusions of conventional medicine, which

conveniently average in all the results of people who did NOT take

the calcium supplements during the study. Huh? Yes, they counted the

results of all the people who didn't take the calcium supplements,

and then declared that calcium itself is useless.

 

It's sort of like running a study to see whether crack is addictive,

but then basing your results on all the people who never smoked crack

and wouldn't even if you paid them to. " Gee, " you might conclude, " I

guess crack isn't addictive after all. " Similarly in this calcium

study, when you count all the people who didn't take the calcium,

then of course the results indicate that calcium does nothing. It's

just another clever way to lie with statistics (well, actually, not

that clever, but certainly clever enough to fool the mainstream

media).

 

Of course, if you only consider the people who actually took the

calcium pills (the compliant test subjects), the results are

inarguably impressive. Those who took the calcium supplements, for

example, experienced significant improvements in their overall bone

density. Over nine years, their BMD (Bone Mineral Density) increased

by a substantial 1.06 per cent (that's a huge increase in the world

of BMD). And remember, this is for elderly women, too, who have a

very difficult time boosting bone density because, for some reason,

they simply refuse to engage in gymnastics and rugby training.

 

Furthermore, as almost no reporters have yet pointed out, the so-

called control group (the people with whom the pro-calcium group's

results were to be compared) was allowed to freely take their own

calcium supplements, too. In other words, there was really no control

group at all! This makes the entire study scientifically useless.

It's sort of like testing aspirin against placebo by giving one group

aspirin, giving the other group a placebo, and telling both groups

they can take all the aspirin they want on their own. It doesn't take

a medical genius to figure out that the study design is seriously

flawed (what idiot comes up with these studies, anyway?).

 

So the positive results of the calcium group were actually suppressed

by the fact that the control group was taking calcium, too. In

reality, the reduction in bone fractures might have been something

closer to 50% -- a true " medical miracle " by any standard.

 

 

The science illiteracy of the mainstream media

Of course, the facts of this study certainly did not get in the way

of the mainstream media, which published all sorts of denigrating

stories about calcium, even questioning, " Should people stop taking

calcium? " Apparently, science illiteracy is so widespread in the

mainstream media that reporters can't even decipher the basics of a

scientific study. The very concept of a control group is completely

foreign to many reporters in the U.S. press.

If they had bothered to read the results of the study, and if they

had understood those results, they would have been asking the obvious

question: How does this possibly support the conclusion that calcium

is useless? It doesn't. In fact, I dare say, no honest researcher or

scientist from any field could possibly agree with the absurd

conclusions reached about calcium in the mainstream media.

 

All of which makes you wonder why. Why were the study results so

inaccurately characterized in the press? And why was the study

designed without a control group in the first place?

 

 

The real reason why this calcium study was fraudulently designed

Like many studies on nutritional supplements, this study was designed

from the start to discredit calcium and function as a propaganda tool

in support of osteoporosis drugs. The entire effort is more about

promoting a political agenda (boosting drug sales) than genuine

health. The study was dishonestly constructed, unscrupulously

reported, and ignorantly parroted by health and science reporters

(who apparently understand neither health nor science) across the

globe. Almost nobody bothered to point out the remarkable reduction

in bone fractures demonstrated by the test subjects who actually

consumed their calcium.

It's no surprise, of course. There are days when I wonder whether

there's a single iota of honesty or intelligence left in the popular

press. Nearly all newspapers, magazines and TV news programs have

sold their souls to Big Pharma, it seems, and so they report whatever

they're told to report, even if it makes absolutely no sense. Many

science writers can't even decipher the basics of critical thinking.

They can only copy and paste. Basic math escapes them.

 

Here's an interesting thought on all this. Suppose this experiment

was conducted on a prescription drug, not calcium. Let's call this

drug " OsteoMax " (any resemblance to an actual product

named " OsteoMax " is pure coincidence, I assure you). Given the exact

same data, if this were a prescription drug, national headlines would

have screamed, " Bone health breakthrough discovered! " The reports

would have been touting the astonishing 29% reduction in bone

fractures due to OsteoMax, and television ads would have started

featuring happy elderly women power walking and yapping about how

smart their doctors are for prescribing OsteoMax.

 

Non-profit osteoporosis organizations would issue national press

releases, calling for the FDA to fast-track the drug so that women

everywhere could have healthier bones. Doctors would urge their

patients to start taking it by the millions. The FDA would approve

the drug in a skipped heartbeat. Or, perhaps, a stroke of enthusiasm.

 

Let's face it: If calcium were a drug, these results would be

heralded as the science breakthrough of the year. But since it's just

a common mineral that no drug company can patent, everything gets

distorted, twisted, and discredited.

 

And it's the same story with every vitamin, mineral and herb

discredited in the popular press. Every single study that

says " Vitamin E has no benefit " or " Saw palmetto is useless for your

prostate " is a lie. It's all based on utterly dishonest science

that's carefully constructed for the sole purpose of making nutrition

look bad. And the press buys right into it, reporting information

that's worse than merely useless; it's downright harmful.

 

http://www.newstarget.com/z018744.html