Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: NobodySavedMe on 22/04/2008 11:02:27
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You may have noticed the massive media propaganda initiated by the Copanhagan University study.This was on all day.This was very peculiar as the study was clearly designeed to push an agenda which was to eliminate vitamins or reduce or regulate them to such an extent that their beneficial effects were nullified.
A background check of Goran Bjelakovic, the head of this study and the results show him to either be on a crusade AGAINST vitamins or merely a useful reference in various health scare news topics about vitamins and minerals.He appears to be a tool for corporate interests who profit from illness.
This was never mentioned by the dumbhead "journalists" who never bothered to research it in any way.
Have you noticed how this corporate propaganda was on all the media during the day worldwide?
When examining the study, a number of key points exposed come to light. The study itself is a meta-analysis, which means that the results of several studies in related fields are combined using statistics to draw an overall conclusion. By their very nature, meta-analyses require a selection process to decide which studies to include in their review.
This meta-analysis only evaluated what are called randomised controlled trials, where patients are put in 2 monitored groups and given either a tablet or a dummy-pill. The study failed to include any of the vast body of long term observational studies that also exist, so the evidence base is very limited.
In addition, the researchers identified 748 studies that met their criteria but they excluded 681 of them, so their results are based on less than nine per cent of the available evidence. What’s more, they specifically excluded any trials in which no deaths were reported (405 articles). This raises the question, how one can properly evaluate whether a substance can prevent mortality when studies that demonstrate no harm are automatically excluded?
The authors also chose not to eliminate deaths due to other circumstances such as accidents, medical conditions and suicides. They chose instead to assume that all the deaths that occurred in any of the studies were attributable to the antioxidant supplements. This is particularly ironic since many of the studies involved groups of people with a variety of health issues, not just those who were healthy. In fact, if a true mortality risk were to have become apparent in any of the original studies, they would have been halted. Interestingly, none were.
In addition, the studies they did select covered a vast range of different nutrients, doses, populations, and durations. This makes it very difficult to effectively combine the evidence and draw proper conclusions. As the saying goes, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.
Some of the studies also included extremely high doses of supplements, far in excess of the Tolerable Upper Limit specified by the Institute of Medicine and many used synthetic forms of nutrients. This may have significantly skewed the overall results.
Overall, it would seem that the negative results found by this review occurred because ALL the positive studies using safe levels of supplements were excluded. Consequently, the basis for exclusion proves that this is a vested interest study designed to benefit the paymaster.
The authors appear to be using their study as a campaign for greater regulation of supplements, yet their study makes no references to any of the regulatory procedures already in place.Very odd.
I think they should be investigated for fraud.
Let's us follow the money trail...
Who funded the study?
Who are these people and how much did they get?
What big companies are they consultants for?
How much stock do they hold they hold in these companies.
What does a 16 % increased risk in dying means?
Why are they not researching hundreds of thousands of people killed by the side effects of prescription drugs?
Why are they NOT publicizing and researching hundreds of thousands of people killed by the side effects of prescription drugs?
Why was this story picked and who was pushing it?
Who was responsible?
To you jackass "journalists" and "editors" why don't you boneheads start doing doing your job instead of copy/pasting corporate propaganda?
They even type it out for you now and give you a free beer and sandwich as a bribe.
None of you bothered to dissect the study.
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I haven't seen the original report.
Do you have a reference to it?
In particular I'd like to see the bit where "The authors also chose not to eliminate deaths due to other circumstances such as accidents, medical conditions and suicides. They chose instead to assume that all the deaths that occurred in any of the studies were attributable to the antioxidant supplements."
If it was published in a reasonably reputable journal a lot of the questions you asked will be answerwed. For example, authors are generally asked to give their affiliations and the sources of their income/ funding.
There's probably the raw data there somewhere to answer the question "What does a 16 % increased risk in dying means?"
I'm puzzled about the ideas like
"Why are they not researching hundreds of thousands of people killed by the side effects of prescription drugs?
Why are they NOT publicizing and researching hundreds of thousands of people killed by the side effects of prescription drugs?"
If they didn't publicise things like that how come you and I know about them?
"Why was this story picked and who was pushing it?"
The story was interesting to a lot of poeple- sales of vitamins are big business. Editors of newspapers are generally well documented.
"Who was responsible?"
Have a look at the byline.
Incidentally, are you sure you are not just parroting the propaganda of the sellers of vitamin pills?
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I haven't seen the original report.
Why not?
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Because it's not likely to be widespread on the net like the annual Merck shareholders figures will be.