Response to Attack on Evidenced Based Medicine for Vitamin D

June 1, 2014

Dr. Phillip Autier
Research Director at IPRI
International Prevention Research Institute
Cours Lafayette 95
69006 Lyon, France
Dear Dr. Autier,

I keep stewing over your quote in the Daily Mail and am indeed insulted at your allegations. You were quoted by Jonathan Gornall “The ‘sunshine supplement’ is hyped as a miracle cure, but experts say don’t waste your money on vitamin D pills” Daily Mail, 24 March 2014 as saying: “The vitamin D fad, he says, is just ‘a commercial promotion campaign’ in which sellers of supplements, UV lamps, fortified foods and blood tests are ‘taking advantage of disease-mongering around so-called vitamin D deficiency.’”

Sir, I suffered for almost three decades from what cannot be any other way categorized as other than vitamin D deficiency. I had back pain all during this period as well as much incapacitation. In addition to the suffering from the pain, I had sleep apnea as well as other health issues. After taking vitamin D and other supplements, I avoided more back surgery, after two failed surgeries, and am healed from severe sleep apnea. I no longer need pain meds and take no pharmaceuticals at the blessed age of sixty-three. To insult organizations like GrassRoots Health with its many dedicated life-long expert researchers of vitamin D is an atrocity as millions around the world suffer from the diseases created by vitamin D deficiency.

After reviewing the consortium of IPRI that includes, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and Eli Lilly, I can believe nothing else than your sponsors have confused the reasoning of your well educated scientific mind.  I can only state that you are nothing more than a shill for the pharmaceutical companies. I do expect a new paper soon, after your review of the more than forty controlled clinical trials, that refute your original findings. You sir, have shamed the scientific approach of evidence based medicine.

Sincerely,

Mark Pegram
Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor

Vitamin D and the Press

This is a real tough nut to crack.  When a truly amazing story breaks on health, it is like the news people do not want to touch it.   When I first became aware of all the chronic disease that vitamin D deficiency was responsible for I was a bit hesitant.  Even though I had significant healing of cartilage and bone, I could not believe the science I was reading about all the metabolic effects.  Just like everyone else we had been up and down the road of claims about various nutrients and their effectiveness.  The science is so far reaching that no one can separate their common beliefs from the reality that society has done itself a huge disservice in the last fifty years by not following where the science has lead.

News people can be lazy in chasing down the latest on a story.  And there is this thing about having to keep the institutions that are buying the majority of the ads happy.  Ben Franklin did not have this problem as the advertising world was almost none existent in his day and he made his income from the paper by selling the paper.

We have heard about the toxicity of vitamin D over the years and this in combination of the ‘fear of the sun’ has driven the health of America into the toilet.  Not only are we paying unheard of amounts of money to fund the science, we are not being shown what the science has discovered because the largest economic sector, health care, would move from 16-18 percent of the economy to less than 10% of the economy.  This would still be a large percentage of the economy but not the glory days when large houses and yachts could be purchased off the backs of sick people.

The toxicity issue is there but not nearly as drastic as it was made out to be because we were putting a substance in our bodies that was not natural to our bodies and screaming about toxicity – vitamin D2.  The medical profession has always claimed that D3 and D2 are equal and they are not.  I have reported at length on this toxicity in the past and how much more D3 is effective than D2 and will not bore you with it now.

The experts are hesitant to move very fast because no one is willing to take the responsibility of bringing the largest segment of the economy down.  This really seems odd because by not moving they are taking responsibility for the sick and dying from vitamin D deficiency.  So which is the largest crime; theft by taking people’s jobs away or murder by withholding information about what causes chronic disease?  I am allowed to use language like this because I was personally tortured for 25 years because no one who had understanding of the science would come forward.  I had to discover it on my own by reading the science and acting.  My doctor, bless his heart, was telling me that I was going to damage myself and now he takes 8,000 IU’s of D3 per day.

And the press, well we have at least one paper that has got it right and that is the Financial Times.  I had a previous post on this – Major Newspaper Gets It This was a real surprise to me to see this article.  The rest of the world’s press have been playing it real safe and the Financial Times just comes right out and says vitamin D is not going mainstream because governments do not know what to do about the economic impact.

The Financial Times is based in London, England a country whose economic segment for health is already half of America’s segment.  So maybe they are just trying to get the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the same economic neighborhood in which they live.  Our ‘sick care’ is about $8,000 per capita and in the UK it is about $4,000 per capita.  So let’s see:  $4000 x 300,000,000 people in the US is 1.2 trillion dollars.  Now that will buy a lot of houses and yachts for news corporation owners, medical insurance managers, pharmaceutical CEO’s, hospital directors, politicians filling their freezers with money, and doctors doing unnecessary procedures.  Is there a grand conspiracy or is our trusted professionals just ignoring the facts for profit otherwise known as murder.

The thing that should have got your attention was that the UK’s segment for health care is half of America’s and their sick rate is about the same.  The US has created a huge sick economy out of medical insurance so that our politicians can continue to fill their freezers with money.  If the US got the insurance thing right and had a healthy population from better nutrition, the segment could move from $8,000 per capita to $3,000 per capita freeing up funds to stimulate our economy in other segments.

Is there at least one good investigative reported left that is willing to tell the truth and not some theory of relative speculation?  We know there are no politicians left with morals.

Physically surviving, emotionally distraught.  – Pandemic Survivor