Vitamin Safety Review Panel Issues Follow-Up Report

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Vitamin Safety Review Panel Issues Follow-Up Report

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 26, 2006

 

Vitamin Safety Review Panel Issues Follow-Up Report

May 26, 2006

 

Independent Vitamin Safety Review Panelists:

 

Abram Hoffer, MD

Michael Janson, MD

Thomas Levy, MD, JD

Carolyn Dean, ND, MD

Harold Foster, PhD

Erik Paterson, MD

Woody R. McGinnis, MD

Allan N. Spreen, MD

Michael Friedman, ND

H. H. Nehrlich, PhD

Andrew Saul, Chairman

 

Vitamin-bashing articles are typically based on studies with faulty

design whose conclusions were preordained. One example is the

“meta-analysis.†A meta-analysis is not new research, but rather a

review of

existing research. It is not a clinical study, but rather a statistical

look at a collection of studies. If you analyze enough failed studies,

you will get a negative meta-analysis. If you exclude enough successful

studies, you preordain the conclusion.

 

PROVING EFFECTIVENESS

 

Low-dose vitamin studies are the ones that get negative results. Most

vitamin research is low-dose. You cannot test the effectiveness of high

doses by giving low doses. Any time nutritional research employs

inadequately low doses of vitamins, doses that hundreds of orthomolecular

physicians have already reported as too small to work, vitamin therapy

will be touted as " ineffective. "

 

You can set up any study to fail. One way to ensure failure is to make

a meaningless test. A meaningless test is assured if you make the

choice to use insufficient quantities of the substance to be

investigated.

If you shoot beans at a charging rhinoceros, you are not likely to

influence the outcome. If you give every homeless person you met on the

street 25 cents, you could easily prove that money will not help poverty.

 

PROVING SAFETY

 

One reason commonly offered to justify conducting low-dose studies is

that high doses of vitamins are somehow dangerous.

 

They are not.

 

There are those who may not believe this next statement, but it is not

a matter of belief. It is a matter of fact: There is not even one death

per year from vitamin supplements. (1)

 

However, there are at least 106,000 deaths from pharmaceutical drugs

each year in the USA, even when taken as prescribed. (2) This may be a

low estimate. Carolyn Dean, ND, MD, said, " 784,000 people are dying

annually, prematurely, due to modern medicine. " " These are statistics

from

peer-reviewed journals and government databases. " (3)

 

Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, who conducted the first double-blind placebo

controlled studies in psychiatry, has called for double-blind placebo

controlled testing of alleged vitamin side effects. He said, “Let the

opponents of vitamin therapy cite the double-blind placebo controlled

studies upon which they have based their toxicity allegations. They

can’t, because there aren’t any.â€

 

ELIMINATING BIAS

 

It is ironic that critics of vitamins preferentially cite low dose

studies in an attempt to show lack of vitamin effectiveness, yet they

cannot cite any double-blind, placebo controlled studies of high doses

that

show vitamin dangers. This is because vitamins are effective at high

doses, and vitamins are safe at high doses.

 

Health professionals and other interested persons are invited to

personally search the literature for evidence of deaths caused by vitamin

supplements. You will not find even one death per year. (4)

 

Physician reports confirm this. A panel of researchers and physicians

experienced in high-dose vitamin therapy unequivocally states,

“Vitamins are very safe for the public.†Woody R. McGinnis, MD,

writes: " In

my practice, high doses of vitamins and minerals have retrieved

hundreds of otherwise desperate patients from severe behavioral disorders

without a single severe complication. " Adds Michael Friedman, ND: “I

have

never seen any toxicity with any vitamin prescriptions in my

practice.â€

 

Michael Janson, MD, said, " In decades of people taking a wide variety

of dietary supplements, few adverse effects have been noted, and zero

deaths as a result of the dietary supplements.†Thomas Levy, JD, MD,

said assaults on the theoretical toxicity of vitamins are

“ridiculous.â€

 

It is the conclusion of the Independent Vitamin Safety Review Panel

that high dose vitamin supplementation is strikingly safe and highly

effective.

 

References:

 

1. Watson WA, Litovitz TL, Klein-Schwartz W, Rodgers GC Jr, Youniss J,

Reid N, Rouse WG, Rembert RS, Borys D. 2003 annual report of the

American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic Exposure

Surveillance

System. Am J Emerg Med. 2004 Sep;22(5):335-404.

http://www.aapcc.org/Annual%20Reports/03report/Annual%20Report%202003.pdf

 

2. Lucian Leape, Error in medicine. Journal of the American Medical

Association, 1994, 272:23, p 1851. Also: Leape LL. Institute of Medicine

medical error figures are not exaggerated. JAMA. 2000 Jul

5;284(1):95-7.)

 

3. Dean C and Tuck T. Death by modern medicine. Belleville, ON: Matrix

Verite, 2005.

 

4. Testimony before the Government of Canada, House of Commons Standing

Committee on Health, regarding nutritional supplement product safety

(Ottawa, May 12, 2005). http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm

 

What is Orthomolecular Medicine?

 

Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as " the treatment of

disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially

the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human

body. " Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy

to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

 

The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit

and non-commercial informational resource.

 

Andrew W. Saul, Editor. Email: drsaul

 

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