Linus Pauling vs. Dow Jones: The Wall Street Journal Pontificates on Vitamins

[Guest guest]

" Andrew W. Saul " <drsaul

Linus Pauling vs. Dow Jones

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:31:22 -0500

 

 

Linus Pauling vs. Dow Jones

The Wall Street Journal Pontificates on Vitamins

 

 

 

 

 

DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER **EXTRA** (Vol. 6, No. 5-A, 2006)

 

" Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A. "

 

 

 

Copyright 2006 by Andrew W. Saul. Commercial use of this Newsletter is

strictly prohibited.

 

 

 

Linus Pauling in a Bear Market:

The Wall Street Journal Pontificates on Vitamins

 

 

Many readers have sent me word of a recent Wall Street Journal article

(March 20, 2006) trashing vitamins. While such propaganda is hardly

unique, this Doctor Yourself Newsletter " extra " might serve as a

5-point checkup for the open-minded.

 

1) Financial newspapers are not medical journals. I am reasonably

confident that the founders of the Wall Street Journal did not set out

to rule on nutritional matters. Neither do we expect NEJM or JAMA or

Lancet to give investment advice (although they have been shown

sufficiently interdependent with the pharmaceutical industry to do so).

 

2) There are those, especially in the

pharmaceutical-advertising-supported media, who would like you to

think that vitamins have no therapeutic value.

In fact, they'd like you to think that nutritional supplements are

downright dangerous. Advertiser money buys editorial favor. Scare

stories sell papers.

So what's the surprise? (http://www.doctoryourself.com/safety.html )

 

3) If the Wall Street Journal were to analyze stocks with the

convenient selectivity with which they choose to report on vitamins,

either they'd have the SEC on their tail or we'd be in the midst of

another stock market crash.

 

Almost all vitamin research is positive. If you search the National

Library of Medicine's MEDLINE index for " vitamin, " you will find over

174,000 papers. (And there are plenty more good studies not indexed on

Medline, such as hundreds and hundreds in the Journal of

Orthomolecular Medicine. (

http://www.doctoryourself.com/medline.html )

 

A Medline search for " vitamin therapy " yields 53,372 citations;

" vitamin therapeutics " yields 16,191. A search for " vitamin

contraindications " gets 165 responses. Vitamins are well studied, safe

and effective. Read a true sampling of the research and see for

yourself. ( http://www.doctoryourself.com/bibliography.html )

 

4) My own personal search of the medical literature has failed to find

even one death proven to be caused by the public's use of vitamin

supplementation. ( http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm ) If

you find to the contrary, please send it on to me. Remember, please,

that I am looking specifically for proven instances, not hearsay. Not

allegations, but forensic evidence.

 

5) Remember to always ask the fundamental question: " Where are the

bodies? "

 

May I suggest that you might want to use what I say when people talk

to me about all this:

 

" Show us all these people - any people - that have died from vitamins.

Where are the bodies? Now explain this: the Journal of the American

Medical Association reports that at least 106,000 Americans are killed

by pharmaceutical drugs, properly prescribed and taken as directed,

every single year. " (Journal of the American Medical Association,

1994, 272:23, p 1851. Also: JAMA. 2000 Jul 5;284(1):95-7.)

 

In the end, you have to decide for yourself whether to trust Dr. Linus

Pauling or Mr. Dow Jones. Money may make the world go 'round, but even

mega-money cannot bring you health. Megavitamins can, have, and will.

( http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_paradigm.html )

 

And, if it will help keep things in perspective, why not bear in mind

what Ward Cleaver told his son, Beaver: " A lot of people go through

life trying to prove that the things that are good for them are wrong. "

 

 

And at least some of those people likely work at the Wall Street

Journal.

 

 

Best wishes,

A. Saul

 

 

Andrew W. Saul

Assistant Editor, Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine

 

To receive the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service free of charge,

please go to

http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml

 

For a free email subscription to the DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER,

please send an email with " Subscribe " as the subject to

dy-update-

 

For reviews of my book, " DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works, "

please go to

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

 

For information about my NEW book, " FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! " , please look at

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