This is a press release from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service from July 27th, 2017.
Media Medicine: Have You No Sense of Decency?
(OMNS July 27, 2017) They picked the wrong day to announce that a "Study finds 275,000 calls to poison control centers for dietary supplement exposures." I am just in the mood to take this on.
Why? Because the same poison control centers report zero deaths from any dietary supplement. See for yourself at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v13n02.shtml
Now take a look at the supplement-bashing article at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/318613.php . Do a quick search for the word "death." You will find it mentioned once in regard to the botanical yohimbe. But it is presented as a possibility, not as a reported occurrence. That is simply because there were no deaths from yohimbe. And no deaths from any other nutritional supplement. Again, confirmation is at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v13n02.shtml, where the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service states:
"The most recent (2015) information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System, and published in the journal Clinical Toxicology , shows no deaths whatsoever from dietary supplements. . . Additionally, there were zero deaths from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John's wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, or melatonin. There were zero deaths from any homeopathic remedy."
So where are the bodies?
In hospitals, that's where. Within the United States, every single year, 225,000 people are killed in hospitals, by hospitals. That is over 600 dead each day.
Let's recap:
- 275,000 supplement phone calls, and not one death.
- 225,000 hospital-caused deaths, and nary a ripple of concern in the media.
During the First World War, 300,000 men charged artillery and machine guns at Verdun and died in the mud. In WWII, there were 750,000 dead from the battle of Stalingrad. Just those two horrible battles add up to a horrendous one million dead. Not wounded; dead. American hospitals kill well over a million innocent civilians every five years. Not phone calls; funerals.
In the US, the 225,000 hospital-caused deaths every year make hospital care the 3rd largest killer in the US.
(Starfield B. Is US health really the best in the world? JAMA. 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5. https://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-primary-care-policy-center/Publications_PDFs/A154.pdf )
On June 9, 1954, on national television, attorney Joseph Welch said to Senator Joseph McCarthy:
"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness . . . You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
The indecency of attacking dietary supplements shows that the real problem, that hospitals are the third largest cause of death in America, is largely ignored. That dietary supplements kill no one is completely ignored. This is reckless disregard of the truth by the media. If you disagree, then ask yourself this one question: Have you once seen the mainstream media report that there are, in fact, no deaths from supplements?
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
(Abbott Joseph Liebling, The New Yorker, May 4, 1960).
For over 13 years now, the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service has been reporting how doctors safely cure disease by using nutrition-based medicine. We intend to continue. It is the decent thing to do.
To learn more:
No Deaths from Vitamins. None. Safety Confirmed by America's Largest Database. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v13n01.shtml
At the free, peer-reviewed OMNS article archive, there are a number of releases that show the well-documented history of supplement safety: http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml
OMNS free subscription link http://orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html
OMNS archive link http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml