Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10730
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Bell W, Cassels A.
So how come we didn't know about vitamin D?
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 2007 Jun 27
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070626.wcomment0627/BNStory/National/home
Full text:
Think health policy-makers make decisions about what’s in the public’s best interest and based on the best science? Think again.
While it may seem that decisions about health policy are made by people driven by concern with the public good, it’s clear they get lots of help, encouragement and advice from corporate CEOs whose key concern is not the public good, per se, but keeping shareholders happy.
A recent news story underscores why an unsuitable marriage of health policy-maker and businessman may not be so good for our health. The story was about a scientific study, small but quite dramatic in its findings, that revealed that a humble, neglected substance – vitamin D – reduced cancer incidence quite unequivocally over four years if people took “extra” vitamin D.
So what’s “extra”?
Every mother knows that the “proper” dose of vitamin D for her family is 400 units a day. What she won’t likely know is that this number comes neither from careful study nor meticulous observation. It was born of haphazard science done in the 1920s when rickets was shown to be end-stage vitamin D deficiency. “Experts” at the time calculated the “recommended daily allowance” by taking the smallest amount needed to prevent gross deficiency – in this case, about 40 units a day – and multiplying it by 10. Presto, 400 units is all you need. And the number stuck. The thinking, as usually happens with vitamins, is that any more than that might make you sick.
Yet, for decades, the data have been building, showing that larger amounts of vitamin D are good for you. Animal studies and large human studies have shown that taking a lot more vitamin D than 400 units is both safe and beneficial.
You don’t have to dig too deeply to find evidence that the drug companies habitually wield science in a way that benefits, above all, their investors. Spinning the science has shaped the minds of regulators, members of the medical profession and, of course, the consumer against this simple, cheap and remarkably effective vitamin.
But how might the thinking unroll in the executive suite of a large company manufacturing patented drugs?
First: You know vitamin D is good, but you can’t make any money out of it because you can’t patent the damn stuff. No promise of sizable profits means unhappy shareholders. Can’t have that.
Second: If vitamin D actually stops people from getting sick, it can take a serious chunk out of the market for the patented medicines we currently make. Can’t have that, either.
Third: If people increase their production or intake of vitamin D (and a host of other key nutrients, through diet and lifestyle, or supplements), they might stop worrying so much about their health. So, the market for fear-based products -drugs that lower “nasty” cholesterol, alter blood pressure and improve blood sugar – could well shrink. This is definitely not good for shareholders.
Given this fact pattern, how have the leaders in corporate medicine responded to this potentially difficult competitor?
First: They’ve worked on promoting the message with regulators and doctors (and you, dear reader) saying too much vitamin D could be bad for you. Reinforcing the “recommended daily allowance” message (despite being based on outdated and unscientific assertions) prevents people from taking vitamins in doses large enough to compete with patented products. Despite scant evidence to this effect, they’ve suggested that a host of micro-nutrients will make people sick if taken in too large amounts.
Second: They’ve played down the dangers associated with patented products with the message that prescribed drugs must be “safe” because they are rigorously studied by our companies, approved by Health Canada, prescribed by competent physicians and dispensed by helpful pharmacists. You can’t say the same about vitamin D, right?
Third: They’ve used their giant drug studies (which the regulator requires them to do, in order to license their patented medicine) and flooded medical journals, inserted themselves into physician education and made sure the media got the right spin on those products. The punchline: Drug good, vitamin bad.
Are we then surprised that prescription drugs seem like the only game in town and that lowly unpatented substances, such as vitamin D, languish in obscurity? Remember this the next time you read a study about taking vitamins in larger amounts. In fact, you may want to ask your doctor if he or she knows anything about vitamin therapy that hasn’t been put there by the ones keeping the shareholders happy.
And if you are told that prescribed drugs and surgery are your only options, you may want to take some time to fortify yourself with some second opinions.
Dr. Warren Bell is president of the Association of Complementary and Integrative Physicians of British Columbia. Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria, is co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients.
