How To Destroy Confidence In Vitamins When You Do Not Have The Facts

[Guest guest]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 11, 2010

 

 

How To Destroy Confidence In Vitamins When You Do Not Have The Facts

 

 

(OMNS, January 11, 2010) **Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this year's

annual meeting of the World Headquarters Of Pharmaceutical Politicians,

Educators, and Reporters (WHOPPER).

 

 

**Let us get right to the point. Many of our members and affiliates have

complained about what is, for us, an alarming and dangerous segment of

health care: so-called 'orthomolecular medicine.' We wish to assure you,

although this therapeutic approach is, unfortunately, very effective in

preventing

and treating disease, that we will make sure the public will never learn

of it. We can say this with considerable confidence, since for over 50 years

we have managed to keep virtually all psychiatrists from using niacin to

treat schizophrenia; we have kept cardiologists from prescribing vitamin E

and co enzyme Q10 for heart disease; and we have kept general practitioners

from prescribing vitamin C for viral illnesses.

 

 

**Yes, it has really been a triumphant half-century. How did we do it? It

is really quite easy. Here is a summary for those of you that may have

missed the last WHOPPER meeting.

 

 

**Our guiding principle is, keep the public afraid. Any fear will do, but

we have been especially pleased with, and therefore recommend instilling,

the fear of new strains of flu viruses, fear of vaccine shortages, and most

especially, the fear of vitamin toxicity. Our success with this last one

has been nothing short of spectacular.

 

 

**Of course, you know that decades of poison control center statistics

show that there have been no deaths from vitamins. (1) You also know that

drugs, properly prescribed and taken as directed, kill at least 100,000

Americans annually. Clearly, the last thing we want is for the public to

actually

figure out that vitamin therapy is tens of thousands of times safer than

drug therapy.

 

 

**Therefore, we endorse the following tactics:

 

**1) Always demand 100% safety and 100% efficacy from nutritional therapy.

This is particularly effective when you, at the very same time,

continually remind the public that they have to expect and accept a reasonable

amount

of dangerous, even fatal, side effects with drug therapy. And, if one drug

does not work, there is always another, still more expensive drug that

might.

 

 

**2) Always give priority to publishing research that portrays vitamins as

ineffective, or as outright harmful. Select the low-dose vitamin study;

ignore the high-dose study. Our master stroke is when we criticize low-dose

nutrient studies for ineffectiveness, while discrediting effective high-dose

studies because they might be dangerous. Remember: pick the one negative

vitamin study; ignore the hundreds of positive vitamin studies.

 

 

**3) If a positive megavitamin study is actually submitted to your

department, medical society or journal, reject it on a technicality, and take a

year or two to do so. Better still, make the authors publish in the Journal

of Orthomolecular Medicine. After all, whatever is published there will not

be indexed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.(3) Therefore, the

public's annual 700 million MEDLINE searches will utterly fail to find it.

People cannot read what cannot be located.

 

 

**4) Obfuscation works. Cloud and confuse the issue. Never let the truth

stand in the way of a good press release. This we learned from the tobacco

industry: If you cannot wow 'em with wisdom, baffle them with baloney.

Remember, with vitamins, always highlight the negative; ignore the positive.

Never let the facts get in the way of as good argument. A good argument is one

that you win. This is about power, not health.

 

 

**5) While half the population takes vitamins, fewer than 1% of physicians

practice orthomolecular medicine. That is a very small minority. How hard

can it be to shut them up? After all, look what we did to Linus Pauling.

When he spoke out for vitamin C, we got the entire medical world to openly

snicker at the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel prizes. Talk

about a WHOPPER!

 

 

**6) Take heed of what behaviorist B.F. Skinner said: Education is a very

large number of very small steps. The secret is to keep plugging away,

every chance we get. Every time we tell a WHOPPER in the news media or in the

medical press, it is one additional, cumulative step towards washing the

public's mind clean as a whistle, and stamping out nutritional medicine for

good.

 

 

**Now go back to your word-processors and get to work. Wade through those

nutrition studies and latch onto the negative ones. The news media are

waiting to hear from you.**

 

 

References:

 

 

(1) The most recent annual report of the American Association of Poison

Control Centers published in the journal Clinical Toxicology shows zero

deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero

deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.

Furthermore, there were zero deaths from any dietary mineral supplement.

 

Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Heard SE;

American Association of Poison Control Centers. 2007 Annual Report of the

American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System

(NPDS): 25th Annual Report. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2008 Dec;46(10):927-1057.

Full text article available for free download at

_http://www.aapcc.org/DNN/Portals/0/NPDS%20reports/2008%20AAPCC%20Annual%20Repor\

t.pdf_

(http://www.aapcc.org/DNN/Portals/0/NPDS%20reports/2008%20AAPCC%20Annual%20Repor\

t.pdf)

Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1027-1028. Minerals

are in the same table, page 1024.

 

(2) Lazarou J, Pomeranz B, Corey P. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in

hospitalized patients. JAMA. 1998;279:1200-1205. See also: Leape LL. Error

in medicine. JAMA. 1994 Dec 21;272(23):1851-7.

 

(3) Saul AW. Medline bias: update. [Editorial] J Orthomolecular Med, 2006.

Vol 21, No 2, p 67. _http://www.doctoryourself.com/medlineup.html_

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

 

 

For Further Reading:

 

Pharmaceutical Advertising Biases Journals Against Vitamin Supplements.

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, February 5, 2009.

_http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v05n02.shtml_

(http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v05n02.shtml)

 

FDA Claims " Food Supplement " Deaths; Hides Details from the Public.

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 9, 2008.

_http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v04n13.shtml_

(http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v04n13.shtml)

 

 

Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine

 

Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight

illness. For more information: _http://www.orthomolecular.org_

(http://www.orthomolecular.org/)

 

 

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

non-commercial informational resource.

 

 

Editorial Review Board:

 

Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.

Damien Downing, M.D.

Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.

Steve Hickey, Ph.D.

James A. Jackson, PhD

Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D

Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.

Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.

Erik Paterson, M.D.

Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.

 

 

Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D.,

Editor and contact person.

Email: _omns_ (omns)

 

To Subscribe at no charge: _http://www.orthomolecular.org/.html_

(http://www.orthomolecular.org/.html)

 

 

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