Conventional Med

Another Fraudulent Study Claims High Dose Vitamin D Is Useless.

October 29, 2011 by admin in Vitamins with 5 Comments

Bird flying into sun, from Morgue File, http://morguefile.com.

Again and again, we see natural health fraudulently trashed by bought-off pseudoscience. We now have yet another fake study claiming that high dose Vitamin D has no value. This time the people targeted are multiple sclerosis patients.

The Trial

The study titled “A randomized trial of high-dose vitamin D2 in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis” was published in the journal Neurology. It was a six month trial of 23 people with multiple sclerosis. About half the patients were given 1,000 IUs a day of Vitamin D2. The others received two doses of 6,000 IUs of Vitamin D2. At the end of six months, 4 patients of each group suffered relapses.

Trial Flaws

The first two obvious flaws in the trial were the small number of patients and the short timescale, only six months. Even more serious, though, is that the patients were not given real Vitamin D! They were given a second-rate version. Vitamin D2 is not the real thing. Vitamin D3 is. The subjects received D2.

The authors knew it matters what kind of Vitamin D was given. They stated:

Correlations of lower MS prevalence, activity, and mortality with high levels of vitamin D3 nutrition have led to the hypothesis that high levels of vitamin D could be beneficial for MS.

The researchers knew that they were not giving patients the same thing that they acknowledged is associated with better activity and mortality among multiple sclerosis patients. Yet, they gave them D2! These so-called researchers have no shame!

Then again, we shouldn’t be surprised. The researchers admitted that they receive funding from Big Pharma, including Sanofi-Aventis, Biogen Idec, Merck Serona, and Bayer Schering Pharma.

Naturally, the medical pseudo-news media has trotted this study out as legitimate. MedPage Today, Medscape, Science Daily, The Doctor’s Channel, CBC News, and others have all covered the story with the same attitude. None of them offer any real analysis. There’s nothing but the usual hype that accepts the study’s claim of no Vitamin D benefit and makes no investigation into its quality or potential flaws.

Just Another Fake Study

Once again, a fake study has been done to give the impression that a natural treatment doesn’t work. In spite of noting that Vitamin D3 is what’s been credited with providing benefits to multiple sclerosis patients, the authors designed a study that gave subjects Vitamin D2. It was clearly designed to give the impression that vitamin therapy doesn’t work.

The so-called scientists should be ashamed of themselves, but their egos seem to be assuaged by large injections of Big Pharma money. They clearly don’t care if their results end up harming the people who rely on their work

More Information on Vitamin D:

Tagged big pharma, conventional medicine, modern medicine, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, pseudo-science, pseudoscience, vitamin d, vitamin d2, vitamin d3, vitamins

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1429130435 Trevor Lowe

In the abstract, the funding source is given as the Myer Foundation and also, indicates that the source had no say in study design. There is no mention of funding from any of the pharmaceutical companies that you list. The chief author is based at a university.
I read the first reference that you have provided above (IOM’s support…) and note that your claims for “good research clearly demonstrating the superiority of Vitamin D3 has been done.” It would assist greatly if these studies were referenced to their primary sources.
- Anonymous
  
  The link to the study is in the first paragraph, which is far more than most reports provide.
  
  There is no claim in this article that funding for the study was provided by pharmaceutical companies. The researchers do receive money from the listed pharma companies, as documented in one of the linked news media reports. That is certainly going to have an effect on how they design a study.
  
  All references are included as links within the article. There is no separate reference section – those are clearly labeled as more information, not as article references.
  
  The authors themselves acknowledge that it was research using D3 that provided good results – there’s certainly no need to provide more documentation than that.
  
  Your comments are misleading. They misrepresent what is presented. Do you make the same demands in the comments sections of news media reports that have the spin you like?
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1429130435 Trevor Lowe
    
    The link in the first paragraph takes the reader to the Abstract….NOT the full article. There is a marked difference.
    To cut and paste from the Gaia Health article above: “Then again, we shouldn’t be surprised. The researchers admitted that they receive funding from Big Pharma, including Sanofi-Aventis, Biogen Idec, Merck Serona, and Bayer Schering Pharma.” The clear implication in the context of the article above is that the authors of the Vitamin D2 study received funding from these companies for this study. Again I reiterate that there is no evidence provided to substantiate this.
    There is nothing misleading about my comments although you may not like them and may try to infer from them more than what is plainly written.
    - Anonymous
      
      Are you so lame as to suggest that you can’t get to the full article from the abstract?
      
      There is no implication but the fact that the researchers take money from those companies, which puts their bias in focus. If you read anything else into it, it’s because you chose to.
      
      That’s enough. If you want your comments to stay, you’ll stop this nonsense. Your role as a troll hasn’t been successful here.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Absolutely right, I do agree with your
post. By the way recently I joined a newspaper as a correspondent. I need to
write a review about
Susan Lim . As far as I got to know she performed the
first successful liver transplant in Asia. Dr Susan Lim chaired a session
entitled, Organ-Specific Stem Cells. Lecturer, teacher, researcher, director,
consultant and surgeon, this talented woman wears many hats. Do you guys have
any idea or point to any resources about her.