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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Pharma's Don't-Take-Vitamins Study Diametrically Opposed by Valid Study Pharma's Don't-Take-Vitamins Study Diametrically Opposed by Valid Study Alan Goodwin foodfreedom.wordpress.com Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:17 CDT © foodfreedom.wordpress.com Have you not asked yourself why vitamins (!) are suddenly an issue and who is behind it? As food is increasingly degraded, are you not aware how crucial supplementation for vital nutrients is? Are you aware that disease is an investment industry and this is in the service of it? Huffington Post just published Women Who Take Vitamin Supplements May Have Increased Death Risk, at precisely the moment that the pharmaceutical industry is in health attack mode to limit access to nutritional supplements in the US. How coincidental! The AMA, which is heavily funded by Pharma, put out a study purporting to show that vitamins are a threat to people's lives. Bloomberg phrased it this way: "Multivitamins and some dietary supplements, used regularly by an estimated 234 million US adults, may do more harm than good, according to a study that tied their use to higher death rates among older women... We see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements." The authors suggest that multivitamins "may" increase the "risk" of death. The Alliance for Natural Health, in an article entitled Shame of the AMA Archives of Internal Medicine, criticized the blatant lack of science behind the study. "... all the data was self-reported by the study subjects only three times over the course of the 19-year-long study. To say the data is "unreliable" would be a generous description. This kind of "data" has no place in a valid scientific study. "Then the researchers looked at how many of the women had died by 2008. They reported that the number of deaths were somewhat higher for women who took copper, a little bit lower for women who took calcium, but about average for most of the women. "In the study, all of the relative risks were so low as to be statistically insignificant, and none was backed up by any medical investigation or biological plausibility study. No analysis was done on what combinations of vitamins and minerals were actually consumed, and no analysis of the cause of death was done beyond grouping for 'cancer,' 'cardiovascular disease,' or 'other' - there was certainly no causative analysis done. The interactions of potential compounding risk factors is always tremendously complex - and was ignored in this so-called study." Dr. Robert Verkerk, the Executive and Scientific Director of ANH-International went further, criticizing not only the study's methodology but the familiar commercial intent behind the study; "This study is a classic example of scientific reductionism being used to fulfill a particular need. In this case, it's supplement bashing, a well-known preoccupation of Big Pharma - and an approach that appears to be central to the protection of Big Pharma's profit margins." Read the complete article of Dr. Verkerk's criticism of the AMA's goals and scientific methodology. Here are the Key Points: The research, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine's Less is More series, was based on self-reported questionnaires completed by older women over an approximately two decade period and data from registers of death. The findings are one element, linked to vitamin and mineral supplements, taken from the Iowa Women's Health Study that looked at numerous lifestyle factors which may affect risk of death from heart disease, cancer and other causes. The study generated negative headlines about supplements around the world, yet the negative findings are mainly contentious, were only evident following data adjustment (massage) and may be anomalous. The study shows the strongest associations for calcium, which appeared to reduce the risk of death, and iron, which appeared to increase the risk of death. The study actually finds that vitamin and mineral supplement usage is associated with healthier lifestyles and the authors fail to indicate the outcome of the combined effect of healthy lifestyles and supplement usage. The study is a good example of some of the problems that can result from scientific reductionism, which can then be used, with inadequate scientific basis, to dissuade the general public from using supplements that could be vital to their health and longevity. At the ANH, we don't believe the study offers any evidence that supplement usage may be dangerous - and we are aware of copious research, and decades of clinical experience, suggesting quite the opposite. But Pharma has a big problem. Their questionable study is more than countered by a study indicating the exact opposite of the AMA/Pharma article. Block, et al., at the University of California Berkeley, published "Usage patterns, health, and nutritional status of long-term multiple dietary supplement users: a cross-sectional study," which showed that the more supplements people take, the greater their health. And the UC Berkeley study was not based on self-reports. The researchers actually tested people. "New research indicates that NOT taking supplements may be harmful to your health, and that a single daily multi-vitamin is inadequate. A study of hundreds of persons who take a number of different dietary supplements has found that the more supplements they take, the better their health is. The study authors reported that a 'greater degree of supplement use was associated with more favorable concentrations of serum homocysteine, C-reactive protein, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides, as well as lower risk of prevalent elevated blood pressure and diabetes.' Supplement use results in higher levels of nutrients in the blood serum, and produces 'optimal concentrations of chronic disease-related biomarkers.' "It is especially significant that the supplement-takers consumed a lot of tablets every day, not merely a multivitamin. More than half of them took, in addition to a multivitamin/mineral, extra 'B-complex, vitamin C, carotenoids, vitamin E, calcium with vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, flavonoids, lecithin, alfalfa, coenzyme Q10 with resveratrol, glucosamine, and an herbal immune supplement. The majority of women also consumed gamma linolenic acid and a probiotic supplement, whereas men also consumed zinc, garlic, saw palmetto, and a soy protein supplement.'" Pharma has another problem. As they now need people to fear vitamins, they are left with two glaring, uncomfortable facts: There have been no deaths from vitamins - none at all - in 27 years; and over the same 22 years of the science-less "vitamins may kill you" study, at least 2,200,000 people in the US died because of synthetic drugs (based on 100,000 deaths a year from prescription drugs). If half were women, that would be at least 1,100,000 women who actually died. Not women who, based on a scientifically worthless study of statistically insignificant (and massaged) data, might have died. Should people be worried about Pharma's synthetic drugs which are THE leading cause of death in the country or about vitamins which have zero history of killing and are crucial to health? Should people be worried that media can use a lousy study of self-reported data as the basis of stirring up fear of what are both harmless and necessities for life, so pharma can push through laws or FDA regulations to make sure people can't have them, and have access only to pharma's drugs? Is the public aware of pharma's lies and corruption? Is it aware that the pharmaceutical industry is an investment business dependent not on health but on diseases and has been doing all it can to remove access to nutritional supplements because nutritional supplements cure diseases? Excerpts from the Laws of the Pharmaceutical Industry: "It is not in the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry to prevent common diseases... "The pharmaceutical investment industry was artificially created and strategically developed over an entire century by the same investment groups that control the global petrochemical and chemical industries... "The marketplace for the pharmaceutical industry is the human body - but only for as long as the body hosts diseases. "Thus, maintaining and expanding diseases is a precondition for the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.. "A key strategy to accomplish this goal is the development of drugs that merely mask symptoms while avoiding the curing or elimination of diseases. This explains why most prescription drugs marketed today have no proven efficacy and merely target symptoms. "To further expand their pharmaceutical market, the drug companies are continuously looking for new applications (indications) for the use of drugs they already market. For example, Bayer's pain pill Aspirin is now taken by 50 million healthy US citizens under the illusion it will prevent heart attacks. "Another key strategy to expand pharmaceutical markets is to cause new diseases with drugs. While merely masking symptoms short term, most of the prescription drugs taken by millions of patients today cause a multitude of new diseases as a result of their known long-term side effects. For example, all cholesterol- lowering drugs currently on the market are known to increase the risk of developing cancer - but only after the patient has been taking the drug for several years... "Vitamins and other effective natural health therapies that optimize cellular metabolism threaten the pharmaceutical "business with disease" because they target the cellular cause of today's most common diseases - and these natural substances cannot be patented. "Throughout the more than one hundred year existence of the pharmaceutical industry, vitamins and other essential nutrients, with defined functions as cofactors in cellular metabolism, have been the fiercest competition and the greatest threat to the long-term success of the pharmaceutical investment business. "Vitamins and other effective natural health therapies that effectively prevent diseases are incompatible with the very nature of the pharmaceutical 'business with disease.'" This 60 Minutes video shows that a single vitamin dramatically cured a man just as conventional medicine was ready to pull the plug, and more - that then the same medical "experts" who had failed to help the man, did all they could stop the use of the vitamin, though the alternative was the man's death. The video went viral, and shortly afterwards, the FDA blocked one firm from mass manufacturing the IV version of the vitamin. Media, such as the Washington Post, LA Times and Huffington Post are serving as the mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry, in putting out news of this poor study and not putting it into scientific and political context. The study is designed to create a false fear in order to allow the government (on behalf of Pharma) to remove access to supplements though they are crucial to prevent diseases. Vitamins are supplements are natural, cheap to produce, non-polluting, curative. Media is doing the PR work for the "synthetic" drug industry - which is based on oil, heavy industry, is polluting, is filling our animals and water ways and population (including children) with drugs - and their drugs are the leading cause of death in the US. To give some sense of their power and lack of concern with people's lives, they have gotten all herbal remedies banned across the EU, which would include turmeric, a cure for cystic fibrosis and Chinese remedies excellent for diabetes, and vitamin C, which "overwhelming documentation proves, when one's blood levels ... are sufficiently high, prevents and cures cancer, heart disease, infectious and degenerative diseases, and can neutralize and even reverse damage from virtually all toxins, venoms, and radiation." This use of bogus studies to remove access to sufficient nutrition to be healthy is called Codex Alimentarius. Dame Judy Dench narrates a documentary explaining Codex and why it is so important for the public to be aware and even more, to inform their friends and family. For pharma's creation of disease for profit is greatest of the corporations' threats to this country. Citizens for Health and the Alliance for Natural Health are both organizations working to save access to nutritional supplements and the right to information on what supplements offer. The Canary Party is working to stop corruption in the medical industry. Take action! Tell Congress to Oppose the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act This bill targets supplements and their makers, but almost all of its provisions are already covered by existing law. There is no need for any new legislation; the only need is for existing laws to be fully enforced. Tell the FDA their Draft Guidance on NDIs is Bad for Consumers The FDA issued draft guidance for complying with the New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notification protocols. This guidance will create such huge barriers for supplement manufacturers that it will be much more difficult and expensive to produce them. That means consumer cost goes up, or the products are no longer available.
Poster Comment: go figure. anyone dumb enough to believe big pharmas nonsense should be leaving the planet soon anyway.
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#1. To: gengis gandhi, Robin, dillwads, idjits, dupes, the gullible, and I repeat myself, FreepTards, all (#0)
Big Pharma, the AMA, and their paid for whores at the FDA are frightened of the trend toward natural remedies and true preventative medicine. Why? They don't require pharmaceuticals. Big Pharma is in the business of selling pharmaceuticals not in improving health. From their perspective a sickly population taking lots of product i.e., pharmaceuticals is a good thing because it boosts profits. The FDA is staffed largely by doctors who are paid big money by Big Pharma to do "speaking" engagements i.e., they read a speech prepared for them by Big Pharma at a swank resort in the Bahamas, are paid 50K to do it and people mistakenly think that the FDA is unbiased. Then a lot of them, including administrators, leave the FDA and go to work for Big Pharma at several times what the FDA paid them. The FDA is so corrupt that their official logo should include a corkscrew. This is one of the reasons I get so frustrated with the morons, like Robin, who think that government hellthcare is a panacea which will make the world all warm and fuzzy. Note that the Obamanationcare protects Big Pharma's market share and actually increases it because Obamanationcare does not cover NATURAL health remedies or prevention. Anyone who reads this and finds the interconnections sick - thank you, as you just had an actual human reaction. Hopefully it was not dulled by Big Pharma Brand™ Dope i.e., anti-depressants and atypical anti-psychotics.
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