August 14 2007
Antioxidants, bad science and failure of the press to tell the truth
by Mike Adams
Following yesterday's announcement of a new study showing the phenomenal
benefits of antioxidants for preventing heart disease in women, the
mainstream media rallied behind a blatantly false distortion of the study
designed to convince the public that vitamins E and C are somehow useless.
The popular press, which maintains an incestuous relationship with the
pharmaceutical industry, once again demonstrates it is little more than a
mouthpiece for the pro-pharma propaganda machine. There is no scrutiny of
the study's findings, no critical thinking and absolutely no independent
journalism being conducted by the mainstream media on this particular topic.
It's as if these media outlets just can't wait to be spoon-fed the latest
propaganda from drug company collaborators and then parrot it out to the
public as fact.
The distortion in question concerns the assessment of women who participated
in a nine year trial measuring the effects of vitamins E and C. According to
the results published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, women who took
these vitamins on a regular basis experienced a remarkable and statistically
significant reduction in stroke risk (31 percent) and heart attack risk (22
percent). Not all the women in the study, of course, actually took the
vitamins on a regular basis, and when you count the results of those women
who never took the vitamins, the study shows no statistically significant
benefits for vitamins E and C. In other words, the vitamins didn't work on
those who didn't take them. (Is this surprising to anyone?)
The mainstream media has taken hold of this statistical distortion and
declared that antioxidants are now useless for preventing heart disease.
Utterly ignoring the fact that the vitamins worked remarkably well in those
who actually took them, the media now seems to be on a crusade to discredit
nutritional supplements by lying to its readers. Having abandoned all common
sense or scientific scrutiny, the media is now engaged in an organized
campaign of disinformation designed to boost the profits of their largest
advertisers -- the drug companies -- by spreading fear, uncertainty and
doubt about nutritional supplements.
Here are some of the headlines that appeared yesterday in the mainstream
media. As you read these, keep in mind that these are stories based on a
study that actually found significant protective benefits for those women
who took the antioxidants:
WebMD
Antioxidants Don't Lower Heart Risk
FOX News
Study: Antioxidants Do Not Protect High-Risk Women from Heart Disease
Xinhua, China
Antioxidants cut no heart disease rate in high-risk women
Scotsman, United Kingdom
Nutrients 'do not cut heart risks among vulnerable'
CTV.ca, Canada
Antioxidant pills don't prevent heart disease
Bloomberg
Antioxidants Don't Cut Heart Disease Rates in High-Risk Women
ABC News
Vitamins No Magic Bullet for Heart Health
Forbes, NY
Antioxidants No Magic Bullet for Heart Disease in Women
Natural Products Industry Insider
Antioxidants Don't Impact CVD Events in High-Risk Women
Reuters
Common vitamins no help for women's hearts - study
Turning truth upside down
Of course, the idea that antioxidants are useless for preventing disease is
as absurd as thinking the Earth is the center of the universe, or that pigs
can fly. Yet this is the position being promoted by the press today in
blatant abandonment of all rational thought. To state that vitamins don't
work on women who don't take them is classic doublespeak ripped right out of
the pages of the novel 1984. You might as well say that pharmaceuticals
don't work on people who don't take them, either.
I wonder why they even bothered to give antioxidants to the participating
women at all. If you're going to count the results of all the women who
don't take the supplements, why not simply launch the study, give vitamins
to no one, then announce the conclusion that vitamins don't work? This could
create a whole new way to conduct clinical research: Track the health
results in people who have taken nothing! Think of what we could accomplish
in medical science by following this model -- we could test thousands of
different substances by simply giving them to no one, then declaring
whatever results we wish to notice!
Ultimately, that's what's going on here anyway. Researchers are simply
declaring whatever they want with no real regard to scientific truth or
common sense. Much of medical science today has become a self-reinforcing
exercise in pro-pharma dogma. Listening to drug-company funded researchers
talk about nutritional science is a lot like listening to President Bush
talk about peace: There is simply no connection with reality.
There is no health announcement too absurd for the mainstream media to
print. If the American Medical Association declared water to be harmful to
human health, the media would run the story without asking a single
question. If the FDA declared all vitamins to be toxic and announced a
nationwide ban on all dietary supplements, the mainstream media would fall
right into step, parroting whatever scientific half-truths the FDA was
spouting at that particular moment. If the American Cancer Society declared
that sunlight caused cancer and that the citizens should avoid sunlight and
cover their skin with toxic chemical creams to block out the sun, the press
would gladly run with that story, too. Come to think of it, they already
have: That's the story on sunscreen, and just about everything you read in
the mainstream media about sunlight and sunscreen is blatantly false.
There are so many falsehoods routinely printed in the mainstream media these
days that it has become a rarity to find any piece of truth. From fudged war
casualty numbers to details about health care in America today, the media
has proven itself incapable of printing anything resembling factual truth.
Instead, it has become a pro-war, pro-corporation, pro-disease, pro-market,
profit-minded mouthpiece for the corrupt elite who now run this country.
Keeping the population distracted
As such, the media has quite literally become the enemy of the people.
Rather than informing people about things that matter in the world, the
media uses its power to fill peoples' heads with falsehoods. And when it's
not reporting falsehoods, it's keeping the people distracted with
wall-to-wall coverage of stories that really don't matter at all, such as
celebrity mishaps (does anybody really care what Paris Hilton does next?),
isolated acts of violence (always with explicit footage) and fear-mongering
campaigns (the terror alert is now orange again!).
It's all become bread and circuses. (Click here to read the Wikipedia
explanation of this phrase "bread and circuses" in case you don't already
know its historical context.)
This nation no longer has any desire to keep its people informed, educated
or healthy. The effort now is to keep people disinformed, ignorant and
diseased. This is accomplished precisely through actions like this
antioxidant study in which researchers pretending to conduct science send
fabricated stories to a press pretending to report the news. When this kind
of action is repeated a few hundred times a year, it leaves the population
distrusting all nutritional supplements and believing that only synthetic
patented chemicals (pharmaceuticals) can solve their health problems. It is
no coincidence that pharmaceuticals are allowed to be advertised everywhere,
promoted with outrageously false claims of benefits, and that such
advertising is in no way regulated by anyone. "Free speech" is granted to
pharmaceutical companies, but not to dietary supplement companies. It is my
belief that free speech is not free if it only selectively allowed.
So we have a conspiratorial trio now working in concert to keep you stupid
and diseased: The mainstream media (which takes billions of dollars each
year from drug companies), the drug companies (which earn billions of
dollars each year selling advertised drugs), and the FDA (which enforces the
monopoly and eliminates competition by censoring truthful information about
dietary supplements). It is this trio which explains why Americans now pay
the highest prices in the world for health care and yet are simultaneously
the most diseased people of any industrialized nation in the world.
** [I wanted to put a note in here reminding people that the late Nicholas
Regush, founder of Red Flags Daily (www.redflagsweekly.com), formerly An
Emmy-nominated investigative medical and science journalist, and a producer
of medical features for ABC News (World News Tonight, Nightline, etc.) for
ten years left his job with ABC because he was no longer allowed to do
serious investigative journalism but instead, was being told what to present
and how to present it. There was no hidden agenda; ABC made it very clear
that this was about advertising dollars. Regush, completely disenchanted,
resigned and went on to develop his own website that, in his words, would
be a "carefully filtered guide - separating substance from hype."; Regush
was willing to stand up for the truth just as the author of this article.
With so much to lose ($$$$$$$$$), the promoters of CONventional medicine
will not give up easily. Through hard work, courage, tenacity, and
determination, we will eventually prevail. But as each day passes, more
people are being injured and killed. We cannot afford to rest for one
moment. --Catherine]
Tyranny, Inc.
We have allowed our nation to be overrun by corporate interests. Once, we
fought for our independence from Great Britain, freeing ourselves from the
tyranny of the King who wished to impose total control over the original 13
colonies. But today, how will we free ourselves from the tyranny of the
corporations?
These corporations have taken over government, regulatory bodies and the
media. Corporations have become the power monopolists in this nation and now
pose a threat of tyranny far more dangerous than any king or dictator. Not
only are the people virtually powerless to stand up against the tyranny of
corporations, but the very channel through which the people were supposed to
be kept informed about such threats -- the mainstream media -- has actually
