Website review: Antioxidant Misinformation | Citize...
sc74 discovered this in Alternative Health
•1 reviews since May 13, 2008
medical-despotism
•citizens.org/healthy-news/antioxidant-supplem...
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sc74 discovered 2 months ago- From the page: "Lately we've heard quite a lot about how nutritional supplements, including antioxidant vitamins, are regarded by a few scientists as a great danger-or so we might gather from recent media coverage that has treated us to such fear-mongering headlines as "Potential for harm in dietary supplements"(1), "Vitamin pills may do more harm than good" (2) and "Why some popular pills might kill you" (3). The scientific review to which these sensationalistic stories refer was a meta-analysis in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (4). A meta-analysis is supposed to be careful re-review of many studies whose results are pooled together. The Cochrane Database meta-analysis, authored by Goran Bjelakovic and others, is an updated version of a review that originally appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (5) that had been roundly criticized by scientists. While 67 clinical trials were included in this new review, most people are not aware that 748 trials were excluded for a number of reasons, including 405 studies that failed to show anybody died (6). One could persuasively argue that the authors of this review only included studies which could be molded to support the viewpoint that antioxidant vitamins are dangerous. Dr. Bjelakovic has made no bones about his skeptical attitude towards dietary supplements. In 2007, he co-authored an article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute entitled: "Surviving Antioxidant Supplements" (7) and has posted an article on a newspaper syndicate entitled "Do antioxidant supplements work?" (8). While meta-analyses, when properly conducted, can be an insightful tool; when ill used they are subject to bias by those who hold pre-determined conclusions and are seeking a way to force studies into them. A wide body of scientific evidence has established that taking antioxidant supplements-including vitamins C and E, beta carotene, selenium and zinc-can help reduce the risk of chronic disease."
