Naproxen : Rheumatic Drug

I reported to you last week that sinister things are afoot in US medicine, including medical studies simply being “dropped” from the archives of medicine if they prove something contrary to Big Pharma. (If you didn’t see this issue, visit Sinister Things Afoot at the website and read the story). I also reminded you that CODEX is coming, and it will be the end of public access to anything except the most minuscule doses of nutritional supplements. In order to make this restriction on our health freedom palatable, conventional medicine is “priming” us with pseudo-studies like the new one we see this week proclaiming that “Vitamins Raise Death Risk.” Before I explain the sleight-of-hand that accomplished this outrageous “finding,” let me remind you who is behind these “results.” Consider the Source

Have you ever read a copy of JAMA? (Perhaps not, unless you are an inquisitive doctor or you suffer from extreme insomnia). JAMA is funded by millions of dollars worth of drug company advertising. The articles are on thin paper printed in black and white. The drug ads — most averaging 8-12 pages long — are on heavy paper with bright colors, cutouts, glitter, holograms, pop-ups and other eye-catching artwork. Because the drug ads are on heavier weight paper and are cut slightly smaller that article pages, every time you open a copy of JAMA, you open to a drug ad. EVERY time. (I’ve done my own research on this)! These ads are truly amazing, far more spectacular than anything seen in lay magazines. About the only thing I haven’t yet seen in a drug ad is scratch-and-sniff, but I’ll bet it’s coming. OK, so we know who funds JAMA. It’s Big Pharma. Now let’s talk about the American Medical Association.

For years, The American Medical Association has worked hard to discredit natural medicine. As evidence, they were found guilty in US federal court of engaging in a conspiracy to destroy chiropractic medicine. The AMA would do anything in its power to bring down natural medicine while at the same time strengthening ties to the source of their funding and their entire existence: Big Pharma.

So, the vitamin story is supposed to be “big news”? For all their conflicts of interest, JAMA published a dubious retrospective study stating that vitamins are at best worthless and at worst, lethal. Can we really rely on JAMA for honest, scientific reporting where alternative and natural medicine is concerned? Consider the source of this spurious reporting.

Figures Lie and Liars Figure: How to “Prove” That Supplements are Dangerous It’s not difficult to fake a medical study, or set up a study guaranteed to “prove” the results you want to prove. Heck, Big Pharma has been doing this for years, “proving” that many lethal drugs are “safe and effective”! They’ve simply done it again, this time in reverse and this time with vitamins. Here’s how easy it is to “prove” that vitamin supplements are dangerous or at least worthless, and how this current “pseudo research” was accomplished. You, too, can be a medical researcher if you follow these simple guidelines.

First, set up a study using synthetic forms of vitamins instead of naturally-occurring forms. This guarantees that the substances used in the studies are not the same as those found in nature, and hence, unlikely to work like those found in nature. In the last two decades, for example, studies that “prove” vitamin E is harmful all used synthetic forms of the vitamin. Remember the older study which “proved” that beta carotene increased lung cancer risk in smokers? You guessed it — synthetic beta carotene. The only thing these studies are proving is that synthetic vitamins, which do not have the same chemical makeup as their natural counter-parts, do not function the same in the body and can be harmful. But these studies do NOT prove that natural vitamins are dangerous. Of course, the public isn’t given benefit of this important piece of information.

Why don’t any of these conventional medical researchers use the natural forms of vitamins for their studies? I’ll give you three guesses, the first two don’t count. Because studies using natural vitamins would show what thousands of other studies have shown: vitamins (the same as found in nature) are not only safe, they prevent a multitude of diseases and delay aging.

Second, it is important to hand-pick the results to include in your analysis. Throw out all positive results that would conflict with what you are trying to prove. In this case, toss out 405 studies showing the benefit of vitamins. Next, include any study you can find which suggests a negative effect. Finally, be sure to pick studies where vitamins were used in patients who had only a few weeks to live (as was done in the vitamin E studies). Better yet, do as these “researchers” did and use only the studies where people died. Though no drug or feat of modern medicine would be expected to “save” such patients, you can never-the-less “prove” that vitamins don’t either, and are therefore worthless. In fact, since these patients in the study died, you can claim that vitamins are actually lethal. Are you getting the feel for how to be a medical “researcher” yet? Third, be sure to report results using statistical obfuscation. Since most laymen don’t know the difference between relative risk and absolute risk, use whichever method of reporting provides the results you are after.

In the case of vitamins, if 1 person in 1,000 dies without taking vitamins and 1.16 people (0.16 of a person?) in 1,000 dies who did take vitamins, report that the risk was increased by 16% when in fact not a single additional person died from taking synthetic vitamins. On the other hand, if 2 people in 1,000 die of high cholesterol without taking drugs and 1 person in 1,000 dies while all 1,000 are on a Big Pharma offering, report that your drug “slashes the death rate by 100%.” Heck, few people understand statistical significance anyway, and these two methods of reporting — relative and absolute — will give you a lot of “flexibility” when trying to prove a point.

Are you catching on? Here is a summary in case you want to undertake a study yourself:

• Report drug risks as absolute numbers to make the risks appear smaller. This will minimize public concern over side-effects. (Can you say “heart attack, stroke, and Vioxx”? Or “breast cancer and Premarin”? Or “fatal rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown) and Baycol”? All FDA-approved drugs, by the way).

• Report vitamin risks as relative numbers to make the risks appear bigger. And be SURE not to tell people that synthetic vitamins were used in the studies, just in case some genius figures out that “natural” and “synthetic” are not the same and makes a nasty stink over it.

•Remember, in a retrospective study (one which chooses other previously-conducted studies and
includes them in a report), you can pick and choose which studies to include and which to toss out. If you pick studies which used synthetic vitamins on hopeless patients and make sure you don’t include any of the numerous positive studies, your results will be much more convincing. They will also be a total bunch of scientific rubbish, a downright lie and an embarrassment to any true scientist, too. But hey — this isn’t about good science. It’s about money. Keep your end result in mind and you won’t let the actual scientific facts confuse you.

There IS One Important Take-Home Message About Vitamin Supplements Every cloud has a silver lining. These studies should remind savvy consumers of one important point: synthetic vitamins are NOT the same as natural vitamins if the molecular structure isn’t identical. Synthetic vitamins not identical to the naturally-occurring vitamins. They do NOT have the same health benefits of natural vitamins. Studies have shown this for years, and that’s really all this “new” look at old information has “proven.” Cheap supplements sold by the pharmaceutical companies and marketed in grocery stores, discount warehouses and your local pharmacy aren’t worth their weight in dirt. It is the synthetic offerings of the Big Drug Companies that these studies have shown to be worthless or worse. Taking this kind of junk is worse than not taking anything at all, which is why I recommend only the highest quality natural-source supplements.

Conduct Your Own Study on Vitamin Safety Here is a way to conduct your own study of vitamins. Survey your friends and find 10 people who are taking Big Pharma’s junk vitamins — you know, the “one little bitty, shellacked, once-per-day” stuff. Take a good look at them. How healthy are they? Not. Studies show that the minuscule doses in these once-per-day supplements are too small to do anything. Besides, most people’s digestive systems don’t even make it through the shellacked coating! Next, find 10 of your friends who are taking one or more prescription drugs. How healthy are these folks? Leaping tall buildings with a single bound? In the ranks of the super-healthy? Hahaha. Finally, find 10 people who are taking quality supplements regularly and see how they compare to the other two groups. I’m confident you’ll discover they are healthier and require a lot less doctoring than their drug and “one-per-day” taking counterparts. Most of them probably CAN leap over tall buildings, or at least large puddles, without breaking a hip, pulling a muscle or losing their balance and being knocked into a coma.

One other thing to consider. How many people do you personally know that have died while being treated for disease with conventional medicine? How many people do you know who have died from taking vitamin supplements?

As long as conventional medicine is funded by Big Pharma, and conflicts of interest run rampant, don’t expect to get honest medical and scientific reporting from JAMA, the American Medical Association, the FDA or any other multi-alphabetical group that depends on pharmaceutical company money for their very existence.

A Parting Thought Okie-dokie then. Vitamins are dangerous and even lethal, and drugs make people healthy. It must be true, it was published in JAMA and reported by the American media. Of course, we all know lots of really healthy people who take drugs and lots of people who have died taking vitamins. I hope I don’t bust a gut laughing and require something that conventional medicine does fairly well — emergency surgery for a ruptured organ!