Medicine’s assault on Calcium: Quack Science Fuels Calcium bashing f
NewsTarget.com
Originally published February 22 2006
Medicine’s assault on calcium: Quack science fuels calcium bashing
frenzy
In the world of health news, I’m not sure who’s worse: Dishonest
researchers or illiterate science reporters. But in this case –
lucky us — we get both. The issue surrounds the reporting of a
recent study on calcium supplements in post-menopausal women
conducted by the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a U.S. government
program. According to practically everybody in the mainstream press,
the study shows little or no benefit of taking calcium supplements.
Here’s a sampling of the headlines you may have seen in the popular
press:
No broad benefit from calcium found for women
- San Jose Mercury News
Back to milk: Few benefits found from calcium pills
- International Herald Tribune
Study Shows Limited Benefits From Calcium
- Houston Chronicle
Studies Question Benefits Of Calcium, Vitamin D
- CBS (affiliate, California)
Anyone who actually reads the study, however, learns that calcium was
shown to produce a whopping 29% reduction in bone fractures for those
actually taking the pills. That’s a huge reduction in risk that would
be called a "breakthrough" if it were attributed to a drug.
So how did the mainstream media miss the boat on this one? Simple:
They just parroted the conclusions of conventional medicine, which
conveniently average in all the results of people who did NOT take
the calcium supplements during the study. Huh? Yes, they counted the
results of all the people who didn’t take the calcium supplements,
and then declared that calcium itself is useless.
It’s sort of like running a study to see whether crack is addictive,
but then basing your results on all the people who never smoked crack
and wouldn’t even if you paid them to. "Gee," you might conclude, "I
guess crack isn’t addictive after all." Similarly in this calcium
study, when you count all the people who didn’t take the calcium,
then of course the results indicate that calcium does nothing. It’s
just another clever way to lie with statistics (well, actually, not
that clever, but certainly clever enough to fool the mainstream
media).
Of course, if you only consider the people who actually took the
calcium pills (the compliant test subjects), the results are
inarguably impressive. Those who took the calcium supplements, for
example, experienced significant improvements in their overall bone
density. Over nine years, their BMD (Bone Mineral Density) increased
by a substantial 1.06 per cent (that’s a huge increase in the world
of BMD). And remember, this is for elderly women, too, who have a
very difficult time boosting bone density because, for some reason,
they simply refuse to engage in gymnastics and rugby training.
Furthermore, as almost no reporters have yet pointed out, the so-
called control group (the people with whom the pro-calcium group’s
results were to be compared) was allowed to freely take their own
calcium supplements, too. In other words, there was really no control
group at all! This makes the entire study scientifically useless.
It’s sort of like testing aspirin against placebo by giving one group
aspirin, giving the other group a placebo, and telling both groups
they can take all the aspirin they want on their own. It doesn’t take
a medical genius to figure out that the study design is seriously
flawed (what idiot comes up with these studies, anyway?).
So the positive results of the calcium group were actually suppressed
by the fact that the control group was taking calcium, too. In
reality, the reduction in bone fractures might have been something
closer to 50% — a true "medical miracle" by any standard.
The science illiteracy of the mainstream media
Of course, the facts of this study certainly did not get in the way
of the mainstream media, which published all sorts of denigrating
stories about calcium, even questioning, "Should people stop taking
calcium?" Apparently, science illiteracy is so widespread in the
mainstream media that reporters can’t even decipher the basics of a
scientific study. The very concept of a control group is completely
foreign to many reporters in the U.S. press.
If they had bothered to read the results of the study, and if they
had understood those results, they would have been asking the obvious
question: How does this possibly support the conclusion that calcium
is useless? It doesn’t. In fact, I dare say, no honest researcher or
scientist from any field could possibly agree with the absurd
conclusions reached about calcium in the mainstream media.
All of which makes you wonder why. Why were the study results so
inaccurately characterized in the press? And why was the study
designed without a control group in the first place?
The real reason why this calcium study was fraudulently designed
Like many studies on nutritional supplements, this study was designed
from the start to discredit calcium and function as a propaganda tool
in support of osteoporosis drugs. The entire effort is more about
promoting a political agenda (boosting drug sales) than genuine
health. The study was dishonestly constructed, unscrupulously
reported, and ignorantly parroted by health and science reporters
(who apparently understand neither health nor science) across the
globe. Almost nobody bothered to point out the remarkable reduction
in bone fractures demonstrated by the test subjects who actually
consumed their calcium.
It’s no surprise, of course. There are days when I wonder whether
there’s a single iota of honesty or intelligence left in the popular
press. Nearly all newspapers, magazines and TV news programs have
sold their souls to Big Pharma, it seems, and so they report whatever
they’re told to report, even if it makes absolutely no sense. Many
science writers can’t even decipher the basics of critical thinking.
They can only copy and paste. Basic math escapes them.
Here’s an interesting thought on all this. Suppose this experiment
was conducted on a prescription drug, not calcium. Let’s call this
drug "OsteoMax" (any resemblance to an actual product
named "OsteoMax" is pure coincidence, I assure you). Given the exact
same data, if this were a prescription drug, national headlines would
have screamed, "Bone health breakthrough discovered!" The reports
would have been touting the astonishing 29% reduction in bone
fractures due to OsteoMax, and television ads would have started
featuring happy elderly women power walking and yapping about how
smart their doctors are for prescribing OsteoMax.
Non-profit osteoporosis organizations would issue national press
releases, calling for the FDA to fast-track the drug so that women
everywhere could have healthier bones. Doctors would urge their
patients to start taking it by the millions. The FDA would approve
the drug in a skipped heartbeat. Or, perhaps, a stroke of enthusiasm.
Let’s face it: If calcium were a drug, these results would be
heralded as the science breakthrough of the year. But since it’s just
a common mineral that no drug company can patent, everything gets
distorted, twisted, and discredited.
And it’s the same story with every vitamin, mineral and herb
discredited in the popular press. Every single study that
says "Vitamin E has no benefit" or "Saw palmetto is useless for your
prostate" is a lie. It’s all based on utterly dishonest science
that’s carefully constructed for the sole purpose of making nutrition
look bad. And the press buys right into it, reporting information
that’s worse than merely useless; it’s downright harmful.