Women’s Multivitamin Study: Scientific Process a Joke
A new study published in a professional medical journal, the Archives of Internal Medicine, claims that multivitamins are useless at preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease in women. And as usual, mainstream media has presented it as evidence that nutrition supplements are worthless and that only drugs can keep you healthy. That claim is outrageous. Here’s the truth behind this so-called “scientific” study on multivitamins.
- It was one of the weakest possible study designs: a recall study. It simply asked people if they took multivitamins. Frequency was not measured. Even taking a vitamin pill once a year would have counted as a “yes.” No pills were given out.
- Likewise, there was no measure of the amounts of nutrients people used. Did they take cheap, synthetic discount brand vitamins? Did they take a typical one-a-day that provides amounts far below what research has shown to be protective against cancer and heart disease? We’ll never know, because these questions weren’t asked, and could never be answered from this study.
- Compliance was never questioned. The truth is that most people exaggerate their healthy habits. They say they exercise more and eat less than they actually do. This study never compared what people said they did with actual behavior. So chances are it greatly overstated actual vitamin-taking behavior, and never accounted for that in its analysis.
You may want to read a recent article in the New York Review of Books (v. 56, no. 1, Jan. 15, 2009) by Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Angell reviews three books that deal with just how cozy big medicine, especially research, is with big pharmaceutical companies. For instance, she writes about drug companies “developing” diseases to fit a drug they want to market, suppressing negative results of drug studies and paying off doctors who promote “off-label” uses of drugs.
The Anti-Aging Bottom Line: What this study really points out is how ready mainstream medicine is to find a way to bash vitamins, and how utterly clueless most health writers remain about nutrition. Most news services, including major network news, simply report verbatim practically any study published in a medical journal, even when that study is obviously based on shaky science and a “big pharmacy” agenda. Conflicts of interest abound, and should make you skeptical of just about every “scientific finding” these days, because it is more likely than not to have a pro-drug spin on it, if it’s sponsored in any way by a drug company.
The Food and Drug Administration needs a complete and thorough overhaul. Even the FDA itself reported that the agency lacks the capacity to keep up with scientific advances. If you’d like to see a complete restructuring of this obsolete federal agency you can sign a petition online at www.reformFDA.org.
