Neil Levin - response to ABC News

[Guest guest]

ABC News did a nasty piece on vitamins.

 

Here is a comment - in two parts - by Neil Levin.

 

There is a link at the end to go and see other comments as well, if

you're interested.

 

Kind regards

Sepp

 

 

 

My response to ABC News

Fri, 5 May 2006 10:49:34 -0500

" Neil Levin " <neil.levin

 

 

Dear ABC News:

 

Your series seems curiously unbalanced. One comment made was that

there is no real evidence that vitamins are effective. Perhaps your

reporters are unaware of the hundreds of thousands of published

research papers available? There are about 20,000 papers just on

Vitamin E alone!

 

Your series stresses that 'Dietary supplements do not have to prove

that they are safe or even work! " So what? They are classified as

food, not drugs, and are perhaps the safest form of food.

 

Dietary supplements have been defined (by a vote of Congress, with no

opposition) as a category of food that is regulated more closely than

most other food categories. Please tell me whether anyone ever gets

sick from eating food? Of course they do. There are hundreds of

deaths every year from allergic reactions and food poisonings;

thousands of hospitalizations. There are virtually no annual deaths

from taking vitamins. In fact, it is far safer to take a dietary

supplement than to eat a meal, according to data in official reports

from the American Association of Poison Control Centers!

 

Since when do we have to prove that Vitamin C is safe or that it

works? And aren't there already hundreds of studies that do exactly

that? It prevents a deficiency disease, for Pete's sake, and an

overdose merely causes diarrhea that goes away when you stop taking

so much. No dead bodies; just a relatively mild, temporarily side

effect. It has never been accused of killing anyone, so lighten up!

This also applies to many other vitamins.

 

Another comment was that " vitamins are unregulated " (perhaps you said

dietary supplements, I heard it once on your broadcast and am not

certain of the exact words used). In any case, that is nonsense. You

are repeating propaganda issued by medical/pharmaceutical special

interests seeking to have us regulate vitamins just like drugs. FDA

Commissioners have repeatedly testified to Congress that they have

all the power needed to regulate dietary supplements under current

law. Only staffing issues, budget constraints and priorities to more

closely regulate more dangerous substances (almost everything else is

more dangerous than vitamins!) have stood in the way of more forceful

regulation. This is a reasonable triage considering that drugs kill

over a hundred thousand people a year from side effects when used as

directed under a physician's supervision, according to the medical

journal JAMA. Would you rather that the FDA take its eye off the ball

and lessen regulation of the most dangerous products that they

regulate in order to pay more attention to the least dangerous?

 

The FDA and FTC regulate label claims and advertising. All label

claims must be sent to the FDA for the agency to review before a

product is sold. Disapproved label claims are not allowed to be used.

No claims to prevent, reduce or cure any disease are allowed without

specific FDA approval. This has been strongly enforced, especially in

the area of diet products.

 

The FDA has asserted the authority to ban any substance based on a

theory that it may cause harm. No actual harm to a person would need

to be caused for a substance to be banned, at this time. Does all of

this honestly sound " unregulated " to you?

 

In fact, the same law that critics falsely claim " deregulated "

supplements actually added to the FDA's authority to control new

product introductions (requiring a New Dietary Ingredient pre-market

approval). This 1994 law also stipulated that FDA establish mandatory

Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), a process that may be completed

this year. Vitamin manufacturers have asked for these rules for

several years, having establishing their own voluntary GMP program

using former FDA inspectors to audit their operations.

 

A Senate committee is working to establish guidelines for a new law

to require Adverse Event Reporting (AERs) for dietary supplements,

with general industry approval of a system IF it is fair (previous

proposals would have allowed the banning of a supplement based on one

reported adverse effect, even if it was not proven to be caused by

the supplement).

 

Why does this not sound like supplements are " unregulated " ? How many

other foods have this level of government control and regulation?

 

Fear of natural products is not science based. I wrote a report,

reviewed and published by the cancer journal of the American Cancer

Society (available on their web site), rebutting an earlier article

that warned people not to use antioxidants along with cancer

therapies. Unfortunately, the author of the earlier piece had no good

references to support her case; my article had dozens that looked at

specific studies combining antioxidants with cancer therapies, to

good effect. Since 40% of cancer patients die of malnutrition, it is

unthinkable for physicians to practice medicine based on one poorly

referenced 'review' instead of looking at the medical literature and

choosing therapies scientifically. Yet that has actually happened.

 

A physician informed me that local oncologists were telling patients

to stop taking vitamins during their cancer treatments, contrary to

the real science. This ill-advised action is likely to increase the

toxic effects of cancer treatments and withdraw essential nutrients

that have sometimes been shown to improve patient survival, resulting

in increased pain, suffering and death. All in the name of fearing

vitamins and ignoring applicable studies.

 

I am a clinical nutritionist with a diplomate in advanced nutritional

laboratory assessment. I serve on the scientific council of the

Clinical Nutrition Certification Board and as a nutrition educator.

 

 

I posted the above on 5/4/06, but here is some additional information

I submitted on 5/5:

 

 

Your use of since-discredited studies to make points against

vitamins, a practice echoed by many media sources, is evidence of the

intellectual bankruptcy and bias of your series.

 

Mentioning one study that Vitamin E may increase rates of congestive

heart failure ignores hundreds of better studies showing benefits. A

major review published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

in April 2005 concluded that Vitamin E was safe in doses up to 1,600

IU daily. (1)

 

The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine has set an

upper tolerable intake level (UL) for vitamin E at 1,000 mg (1,500

IU), with the main concern being the possibility of 'blood-thinning'

activity of the vitamin in very high doses, which might then

interfere with anticoagulant medications.

 

Two large observational studies (the Nurses' Health Study and the

Health Professionals Follow-up Study) have found that people taking

Vitamin E supplements containing at least 400 IU for at least two

years had between 20-40 per cent reduction in coronary heart disease.

In the GISSI Prevention Trial of 11,000 heart attack survivors,

Vitamin E reduced the number both of sudden deaths and deaths due to

cardiovascular disease.

 

A 10-year study - the Survey in Europe on Nutrition and the Elderly,

a Concerted Action (SENECA) reported that blood levels of Vitamin E

were not associated with all-cause or cause-specific mortality. In

other words, no increased deaths.

 

The NIH's Office of Dietary Supplements reports that a study of

approximately 90,000 nurses suggested that the incidence of heart

disease was 30% to 40% lower among nurses with the highest intake of

vitamin E from diet and supplements. (2)

 

Reports of possible increased death rates mostly occur in

meta-analysis reports, combining different studies and often

generating apparent problems due to faulty statistical models or by

increasing the number of variables.

 

Beta-carotene was singled out as putting smokers at greater risk of

lung cancer in one study. A more thorough follow-up analysis of the

same study's data- looking at the smokers' diet plus other dietary

supplements taken - revealed that the smokers' actual danger was due

to low total antioxidant levels, exonerating beta-carotene. What this

means is that supplementing one antioxidant may not be enough to

compensate for a low dietary intake of antioxidants. This is a far

cry from the ABC News claim of beta-carotene being dangerous, which

relies on an outdated study from 1994 (3) while ignoring the more

complete review of the data done in 2004. (4)

 

As you see, there are numerous errors and omissions in the ABC

Nightly News reporting that implies a bias against dietary

supplements and a lack of follow-up, as when referring to previous

stories that have been disproved. Asserting that a single study

negates all other studies is just ignorant. It is far more likely

that the rogue study is flawed, especially when it is a review of

previous studies that relies on an arbitrary statistical model or a

subsequently criticized study design that produces errant conclusions.

 

Believing that dietary supplements are " unregulated " is also

ignorant, and isn't even believed by the FDA. Pre-approval of all new

dietary ingredients, requiring submission of all label claims before

marketing and the setting of new manufacturing guidelines for dietary

supplement manufacturers are only some of the regulatory authority

that exists for dietary supplements, but is not required for other

foods.

 

Neil E. Levin

 

Certified Clinical Nutritionist

Diplomate in Advanced Nutritional Laboratory Assessment

Nutrition Educator

 

 

 

REFERENCES:

 

1. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 81, No. 4, 736-745,

April 2005 REVIEW ARTICLE

Vitamins E and C are safe across a broad range of intakes

 

2. Stampfer MJ, et al. Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary

disease in women. N Engl J Med 1993;328:1444-9

 

3. The Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study Group.

The effect of vitamin E and beta carotene on the incidence of lung

cancer and other cancers in male smokers. N Engl J Med

1994;330:1029-35.

 

4. Wright ME et al. Development of a Comprehensive Dietary

Antioxidant Index and Application to Lung Cancer Risk in a Cohort of

Male Smokers. July 2004 American Journal of Epidemiology

 

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--

 

 

The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition.

 

Sepp Hasslberger

 

 

Critical perspective on Health: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/

 

My blog on physics, new energy, economy: http://blog.hasslberger.com/