Threat to Natutritional Medicine
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 8:41 AM
From Andrew Johnson - Practitioner in Glastonbury
Some of you may be aware of the recent reports in the media that have been critical of natural medicine. I have forwarded on two newsletters with this email from the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) that give good sound arguments against these recent media reports. The ANH is headed by a scientist and a medical doctor that both see the advantages of saving natural medicine from legislation that wants to severely restrict it. They use good science and good law to counteract the often unsound arguments against natural medicine.
If the legislation is passed only medical doctors will be allowed to prescribe supplements over a certain strength, and other supplements will be restricted to such low levels of active ingredients they will not be worth taking. As most doctors are untrained in nutritional therapy they are often unaware of the nutritional causes of illness or of the preventative benefits it can have. They do not use nutritional diagnosis in the same way as nutritional therapists so are unlikely to prescribe supplements you currently find helpful.
This will mean that most nutritional supplement companies will go out of business and the range of choice we have currently will disappear, and the research that is done on nutrition and health and on developing new and better supplements will also probably be greatly reduced. There are no large profits to be made from supplements or herbs and other natural remedies as they are generic substances so drug companies cannot patent them and will not be interested in funding research into there benefits - they obviously prefer to fund research for drugs that can be patented so they can make large profits and also recoup their investment. We may find in this situation that some drug companies will buy an expensive license to market a particular natural remedy but the choices available will be limited and will also probably be much more expensive than they are now due to the license costs.
Most of you already know that I am not anti conventional medicine or the use of medical drugs but I have to say that I have concluded that one of the weaknesses of modern medicine is the dominance held over it by the multinational drug companies who have as a central focus the desire to make large profits for their share holders and directors. I find this a very sad situation because the people I have met who work in the NHS are genuinely well meaning and want to do the best for their patients. I also feel that we would be much worse off without many aspects of conventional medicine, and that natural therapies cannot entirely replace the need for a lot of what the NHS currently offers. What we need is a more integrated healthcare system where natural therapies and remedies can be used along with conventional medicine for the best outcome for the patient, and there is also much more done on prevention of illness and the promotion of good health - if natural remedies are allowed to be restricted by this imminent legislation this ideal is not likely to ever become a reality.
I am not by nature a political person but in recent times I have had to become more informed about the political moves that are a serious threat to our freedom to choose the healthcare we want. The ANH are currently fighting a legal battle in Brussels to save our freedom to use natural remedies. If they do not win this battle for us the legislation will be passed by 2009 that will effectively ban or severely restrict the use of almost all effective natural remedies. If you want to preserve the right to use these remedies and freedom to choose natural healthcare please support the ANH, they have no funding and make no profit - they rely entirely upon donations to fight this expensive legal battle for us. The drug companies can afford to spend a lot of money on employing professional lobbying, media and legal consultants in Brussels and elsewhere to try and restrict our freedoms - so please support the ANH by sending them a donation if you can.
Many thanks for your help, with best wishes from Andrew
BAD SCIENCE + BAD MEDIA = CONFUSED CONSUMERS
The latest sleight of hand from the anti-vitamin lobby
16 April 2008
By Robert Verkerk PhD (Executive & Scientific Director) and Dr Damien Downing (Medical Director)
Today sees the release of yet another "study" led by Serbian scientist and "visiting researcher" at Copenhagen University Hospital, Goran Bjelakovic. His name is now synonymous with vitamin meta-analyses (studies of other studies) which appear to show that vitamin supplements either don't work or end up increasing your risk of death. Two recent bursts of negative international headlines on vitamins supplements (1 October 2004 and 28 February 2007) followed releases of previous research papers (see asterisked articles in Reference list below).
What consumers need to know and are not being told is:
1. This isn't new. This isn't a new study! This a scientific rehash of the very same data sets that led to the previous negative studies - and these methodologies tell us nothing about the way in which high quality combinations of nutrient supplements work! For a previous critique on why the methods used are irrelevant, see a detailed analysis by Dr Steve Hickey, a member of the ANH Scientific Expert Committee: http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_270.pdf
2. This isn't research. This is a re-analysis of studies that have been conducted and reported on previously, by a man at a computer. In this case a group of men with a known axe to grind, who have never produced a study favourable to supplements, which is itself statistically unlikely unless you have a bias.
3. This isn't meaningful. When you select or reject studies on criteria that only mean something to statisticians, and ignore important things like duration, how long the study ran for - which ranged from 28 days to 14 years - your findings are immediately meaningless. Even the huge difference in dose of supplements between different studies - Vitamin E ranging from 10 to 5000 units daily, for instance - they didn't deem important.
4. Two bites at the cherry. The anti-vitamin lobby has managed to benefit, yet again, from more anti-vitamin headlines, just by republishing the same study on previous studies - again! Bjelakovic's latest assault, published today through the Cochrane Review system, is more or less a dead ringer for a paper by the very same authors, published last year (28 February 2007) in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Extensive international media followed the 2007 JAMA paper, including a front page article in the Times newspaper, which told consumers that vitamin pills could cause early death. Today's Cochrane review relies on 67 studies rather than the 68 used in the JAMA paper. In evaluating studies for inclusion, the authors omitted a massive 405 potentially eligible studies BECAUSE there were no deaths in the studies!! Another 69 studies were excluded because they weren't randomised controlled trials! Most of the trials used pertain to already sick people being given very high dose, synthetic, isolated nutrients for relatively short periods - they therefore have no relevance to the vast majority of vitamin consumers!
5. These studies apply only to synthetic forms of vitamins (as produced by the pharmaceutical industry). The authors of this latest Cochrane review state: "The present review does not assess antioxidant supplements for treatment of specific diseases (tertiary prevention), antioxidant supplements for patients with demonstrated specific needs of antioxidants, or the effects of antioxidants contained in fruits or vegetables." This shows that the study has no relevance to natural sources of vitamins and minerals or antioxidants sourced from plants (e.g. flavanoids, anthocyanins, sulforaphanes, salvestrols/resveratrol, etc.), which are included in many of the leading-edge natural health supplements claiming potent antioxidant activity.
6. There is extensive scientific evidence that higher intakes of vitamins in the forms and combinations consumed in the diet substantially reduce risk of killer diseases such as cancer and heart disease. In fact, it is this research (some of which is referenced in the introduction to both the JAMA and Cochrane papers) that has stimulated pharmaceutical companies to undertake research on pharmaceutical-grade, synthetic forms of supplements, which they manufacture. There are good reasons why this pharma-sponsored research has generally yielded disappointing results. These reasons have been considered in many previous rebuttals. See also: http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_231.pdf
7. Over the top on synthetics! The studies included in the latest meta-analysis rely on very high dosages of pharmaceutical-grade, synthetic forms of supplements manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry. The dosages used are typically much greater than those recommended on the labels of food or dietary supplement products. In most countries, the dosages used in the trials would be considered 'medicinal' by regulatory authorities and therefore would not legally be allowed for food or dietary supplements.
The authors, the editorial boards of the journals that so readily accommodate the papers, as well as the media which then spin the findings, appear unable to bear the thought that consumers know what they are doing.
They forget the power of experience and observation, and that so many people taking these products have experienced startling, positive results. If you read a headline in a newspaper relaying some anti-vitamin hype from an anti-supplement research group in Denmark and you, and your friends and family around you, have all experienced positive results with supplements, would you stop taking your supplements?
Have they forgotten the significance of the countless findings of observational and epidemiological studies, which demonstrate strong correlations between high intakes of natural sources of nutrients and substantially reduced risks of chronic disease?
Do they not realise that their failure to duplicate these results with synthetic vitamins might be more down to the differences between natural and synthetic, as well as the non-applicability of their methods, rather than that their meta-analyses have now disproven what has been observed scientifically over decades?!
They forget, it seems, that most people are already, or are fast becoming, disillusioned with evidence-based medicine (EBM), which is now generally agreed, scientifically, to be the third or fourth leading cause of death in western societies.
It seems also that more and more people no longer wish to worship at the altar of EBM, the most important component of which is the randomised clinical trial (RCT). RCTs, the gold standard for EBM, fail, for reasons that are becoming increasingly clear, to amply demonstrate or help elucidate the complex responses that humans show when they choose to engage in natural systems of healthcare. Science is able to answer many questions, but not when its tools are used either by those with narrowed minds or those with an insatiable desire to control healthcare through the use of patented drugs based on new-to-nature molecules.
It has to be asked what the Cochrane Collaboration is doing, allowing, endorsing and indeed promoting unscientific, invalid rehashes such as this. Cochrane were supposed to be the only guys you really could trust.
REFERENCES
>
> **Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Mortality in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention: systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2007 Feb 28; 297(8):842-57. Review.
>
> Bjelakovic G, Nagorni A, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Bjelakovic M, Gluud C. Meta-analysis: antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention of colorectal adenoma. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2006 Jul 15;24(2):281-91. Review.
>
> Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for preventing gastrointestinal cancers. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004 Oct 18;(4):CD004183. Review.
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> *Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet. 2004 Oct 2-8;364(9441):1219-28. Review.
>
> ** Paper on which latest Cochrane review is based; negative findings created wide media interest
>
> * Paper which created extensive media interest and formed basis of Cochrane review published in the same month.
>
> ANH Press Release
> For Immediate Release
> 22 April 2008
>
> ARE WE BEING HOODWINKED BY ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE - OR BY ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS?
>
> A leading Harley Street physician, also President of the British Society for Ecological Medicine and Medical Director of the Alliance for Natural Health, claims that Professor Ernst, the UK's first professor of complementary medicine, is unscientific in his approach.
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> Dr Damien Downing, responding to a flood of media last week in advance of a new book by Professor Ernst, which slams the vast majority of complementary medicine modalities, said, "Professor Ernst must know how bad, how unscientific, is much of the literature on which he relies. After all he wrote some of it. He should speak out against the deliberate bias in many studies - but that might not boost sales of his new book."
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> Last week, Professor Edzard Ernst, the UK's first professor of Complementary Medicine, received widespread publicity for his forthcoming book 'Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial'. The book is co-authored with Simon Singh, described as a 'leading scientist and documentary maker.' The Daily Mail wrote on 8 April, "They have produced a definitive - if controversial - guide to what works, and what doesn't. It makes indispensable, if sometimes alarming, reading."
>
> In the same week, Professor Ernst published a Guest Editorial in the mainstream medical journal, BMJ Clinical Evidence. In it, Ernst says that 'patients are being continuously and seriously misled by both sides of the debate on complementary medicine'. In his editorial, he claims that sceptics often ignore the evidence for complementary medicine and despite thousands of clinical trials and hundreds of systematic reviews, mainstream journals rarely publish positive findings, giving the impression that little serious research is being done in this field, or that the findings show complementary medicine to be useless or even dangerous. Ernst concludes that patients are the real losers in this controversy.
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> The Alliance for Natural Health has released today an article By Dr Downing on its website, at www.anhcampaign.org, which exposes some of the poor science relied upon by Prof Ernst.
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> Dr Robert Verkerk, Executive and Scientific Director of the Alliance for Natural Health, said, "Evidence-based medicine was always meant to include clinical experience and the patient's view; Ernst has no current experience of either. He bases his arguments entirely on the so-called scientific literature, which he says himself is biased."
>
> ENDS.
>
> CONTACT
>
> Meleni Aldridge
> Development Manager
> Alliance for Natural Health, The Atrium, Curtis Road, Dorking, Surrey RH4 1XA, United Kingdom
> Tel: +44 (0)1306 646 600
> Fax: +44 (0)1306 646 552
> Email: info@anhcampaign.org
>
> EDITOR'S NOTES
>
> Link to Dr Damien Downing's article, entitled 'Lies, Damned Lies and .. Professor Ernst's New Book':
> http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/_docs/ANHwebsiteDoc_303.pdf
>
> About the Alliance for Natural Health
> www.anhcampaign.org
>
> The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) is a UK-based, international, non-governmental organisation, founded in 2002, which is working on behalf of consumers, medical doctors, complementary health practitioners and health-product suppliers worldwide, to protect and promote natural healthcare, using the principles of good science and good law.
>
> The ANH's main objective is to help develop an appropriate legal-scientific framework and environment for the development of sustainable approaches to healthcare, while also helping to promote natural health. Within this setting, consumers and health professionals should be able to make informed choices about a wide range of health options, and in particular those that relate to diet, lifestyle and non-drug-based or natural therapies, so that they may experience their benefits to the full while not exposing the mselves to unnecessary risks.
>
> The ANH has pioneered the concept of sustainability as applied to healthcare - a concept that is already the most acceptable long-term approach for a variety of other industries, including agriculture, energy, construction and tourism. But pharmaceutically based, orthodox western medicine has strenuously avoided associating itself with the notion of sustainability. Western healthcare is now considered to be the third leading cause of death in industrialised countries in the West, and it is increasingly threatening and continuing to replace long-established traditional systems of healthcare from Asia, southern Africa, South America and other parts of the world.
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