News BUZZ not worth the words: Vitamins & Breast Cancer

I just heard Wolf Blitzer report on this story, and I heard it on the noon news today, as well as in an email sent to me yesterday.

Knowing this infinitesimal bit of BUZZ, I am sure this will be all over the evening network news, and regular news for days. Sanjay Gupta is just about to reply on this "headliner". Gupta says it is an association that something in a multi-vitamin may lead to this 19% reported increased risk.  He also gives that tired and  biased caveat about being able to get all you nutrition from your diet. Not a chance if you eat like those people Jaime Oliver is trying to educate.

If you are a thinking person, please to not fall prey to this BUZZ glut.

And please take the time to review the following commentary I developed at the request of a major news director who is interested in reporting fact, not BUZZ. It is a well known fact that the more times you hear sound bites, the faster you tend to believe them.

Don't become a sheeple...and please read this excerpt from my comments - it is your best insurance against propaganda spread via mainstream media, talking heads, and Big PhRMA. (for the complete article, request it by contacting me)
  
A Word to the Wise By Gayle Eversole, DHom, PhD, MH, NP, ND

In an article recently published on the web site eFitnessNow. a group of people provide you with what they believe to be useful health oriented information.I looked over this entire website and no where could I find any information about the staff and their qualifications as editors, or any information about their backgrounds in health or related health professions.

This may appear cynical on the surface, but it is important to understand today’s way of providing “news” and the way in which it can affect your beliefs.

Recently I listened to an interview on NPR addressing MRSA.I have an interest in this topic as it is something I have been working on with natural and creative approaches since 1993.

I realized that all the journalist-author really did in her book was to compile an amount of data that had already been reported in the news. She also spoke with “researchers” about whom these news articles had been written. There are a lot of reports of findings, yet no constructive outcome or effective treatment has been discovered.

The author and interviewer also avoided looking at other options that the accepted standard mainstream models.

This brings me to an article I posted on my blog, Natural Health News, in February 2009, titled ‘How Mainstream Media Distorts Health Information”. 

We know that there is, and has been, a directed effort to limit you access to vitamins and supplements, and an effort also to try to sway your opinion to the ideas that you can get all the needed nutrients from food and supplements do not help prevent or heal disease.

These concepts have been proven, over and over again, to be false.

But, you must consider that this article reports only a ‘meta-anlysis’.

A meta-analysis is a statistical method attributed to Gene Glass, as defined in the following synopsis -
http://www.bii.a-star.edu.sg/docs/mig/MetaAnalysis.pdf
•In 1976, Glass coined the term meta-analysis
http://glass.ed.asu.edu/gene/papers/meta25.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_V._Glass
statistical analysis of a large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings.(Glass, 1976, p3)
•Meta-analysis techniques are needed because only summary statistics are typically available in the literature.
•Often used in medical and psychological studies.

Now that you have the background information, let’s move on to the article in question, as reported by eFitnessNow.

A startling connection between multi-vitamins and breast cancer occurrence has prompted doctors to caution older women against a daily multi-vitamin, unless absolutely needed. According to the results of a Swedish study, the vitamins may be linked to breast cancer.
The authors of the study cannot outright confirm the correlation between the two but suggest the matter needs further research. The study was led by Dr. Susanna C. Larsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The study followed 35,000 Swedish women between the ages of 49 and 83 over a ten year period. All the women were cancer free at the onset, with 974 developing breast cancer throughout the course of the study.
Women who took daily vitamins were 19 percent more likely to develop breast cancer. 9,000 women in the study were vitamin users with 293 developing the often fatal disease. Only 681 of the remaining 26,000 women developed breast cancer. A relatively small number of women who took the daily vitamins were diagnosed with breast cancer, which lends to the suggestion that if there is a risk, it is very modest.
Larsson advises that women who are eating a well-balanced diet do not need a multi-vitamin.
The study has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

When you analyze this statement, “The study followed 35,000 Swedish women between the ages of 49 and 83 over a ten year period. All the women were cancer free at the onset, with 974 developing breast cancer throughout the course of the study.”, you find that the statistical impact is 0.02%.
 
If you analyze this statement, “Women who took daily vitamins were 19 percent more likely to develop breast cancer. 9,000 women in the study were vitamin users with 293 developing the often fatal disease.” , you find that the statistical impact is 0.03%.
 
And if you analyze this statement, “Only 681 of the remaining 26,000 women developed breast cancer.” , you find that the statistical impact is 0.02%.
 
And in conclusion, the report says, “A relatively small number of women who took the daily vitamins were diagnosed with breast cancer, which lends to the suggestion that if there is a risk, it is very modest.”

The moral of this story is don’t be fooled by headlines, and yes, digest what you read.

If you do a search for Dr. Susanna C. Larrson you can locate over one hundred articles based on meta-analysis of existing research. She has yet to respond to the inquiry I sent.  Also note that there is no definition of exactly what multi-vitamins were used in the studies.

This is a critical concern, as most vitamin studies done in the mainstream use low quality, synthetic or too low dose products.

Complete article posted here

Sanjay for Surgeon General? Absolutely a Resounding NO!

I listen to news mainly to get the weather report. I've had a fascination with weather ever since I was about in the second grade.

Along with waiting for weather to come up in the schedule I listen sort of inattentively to the background chatter which is called "news".

I try to stop and listen to the health news or read health related articles. Some days I wish I didn't.

Because I am so incensed about bias in health news reporting I was floored when I heard the Obama gang suggesting Sanjay Gupta for US Surgeon General.

Hey, Barack, just in case you aren't paying attention, we citizens deserve much better. But then it appears you keeps selecting those who will do the bidding of others as told, not unlike the outgoing administration. So much for change, eh?

Be that as it may, Gupta is just another example of a status quo administration coming down the pike.

And now for some other views on the selection.

Alan Graham

Troubling TV Health News Trends Created at HealthNewsReview, 03/14/07

In the February issue of Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Trudy Lieberman writes about TV news stations accepting pre-packaged new stories created by health care behemoths such as the Cleveland Clinic or the Mayo Clinic, creating stories that are "a hybrid of news and marketing, the likes of which has spread to local TV newsrooms all across the country in a variety of forms, almost like an epidemic. It’s the product of a marriage of the hospitals’ desperate need to compete for lucrative lines of business in our current health system and of TV’s hunger for cheap and easy stories. In some cases the hospitals pay for airtime, a sponsorship, and in others, they don’t but still provide expertise and story ideas. Either way, the result is that too often the hospitals control the story. Viewers who think they are getting news are really getting a form of advertising. And critical stories—hospital infection rates, for example, or medical mistakes or poor care—tend not to be covered in such a cozy atmosphere. The public, which could use real health reporting these days, gets something far less than quality, arms-length journalism."

Some recent network TV segments point to an unquestioning – almost cheerleading – approach to health news coverage.

On March 10, Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s HouseCall program on CNN featured a story on anxiety disorders, and offered one of those handy self-assessments that allows you to diagnose yourself with almost anything under the sun. Gupta said only one in five people with anxiety disorders get help. Then he offered a self-assessment from the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA). He said if you answered yes to any of the questions, you could seek help from your doctor or from ADAA.

He did not mention that the ADAA’s corporate advisory council is made up of drug companies Eli Lilly & Company, Forest Laboratories, Pfizer, Inc. and Wyeth.

On February 6, CNN reported on "ArteFill, billed as the first permanent filler." CNN said "known side effects are minimal."

But it's easy to find the following on the FDA website:


Side effects of ArteFill® include:
* Lumpiness at injection area more than one month after injection
* Persistent swelling or redness
* Increased sensitivity
* Rash, itching more than 48 hours after injection

Let's let consumers decide if those sound "minimal" or not. The story never mentioned that one of the conditions of FDA approval last fall was that a five-year study for safety be done after approval, a clear sign that reviewers were not convinced that all the evidence on safety was yet in.

And NBC hit the trifecta with three recent stories:


NBC’s Mike Taibbi getting his lungs scanned for cancer, then personally endorsing the scans. (The benefits of such scans were questioned in a study in JAMA in March.)

NBC’s Josh Mankiewicz reporting on the “benefits” from GlaxoSmithKline ads for a restless leg syndrome drug – ads they featured during the NBC Nightly News.
NBC using some of its tight 22-minutes of airtime to report on a “laser hair comb” showing a graphic - “Hair breakthrough?”.
Lieberman concludes her CJR article: “…stories about profitable, high-tech, yet often unproven procedures stimulate demand for them, fueling ever-rising health care costs. Local TV health journalism doesn’t often discuss those big issues, or even often take on the smaller stories that together weave a tale of a health care system in trouble.”

And, as you can see, sometimes network TV news isn't much better. This is a growing concern, one we will continue to analyze on this site.