It is nothing short of disgraceful that publications such as The Sunday Times and The New York Times can print scaremongering scientific untruths including that vitamin C causes DNA damage and cancer, that vitamin E is associated with heart attacks and strokes or that selenium and zinc are associated with neural and other defects!!!

For ten years we have been publishing research in Positive Health and www.positivehealth.com demonstrating that all of the above protect against cancer, heart disease and a host of degenerative diseases. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in June 2002 advised all adults to take at least a multivitamin pill each day, to reduce their risk of common illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis. A study published in The Lancet (2001) showed that people with the lowest levels of vitamin C were twice as likely to die compared to those with the highest. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1996) showed that people consuming higher dose vitamin C and E supplements reduced their mortality risk by 42%. The Harvard Nurses Health study showed that long-term supplementation with folic acid reduces colon cancer risk by 75% in women! Furthermore, another study published in JAMA (1996) showed that a daily 200 ug selenium supplement reduced overall cancer mortality by 50%.

Positive Health readers wishing to acquaint, inform or update their understanding of the entire EU Directive situation are urged to read Dr Helen Fullerton's eloquent, informative, carefully referenced and scathing review about the three EU Directives (see page 33) and discover how governmental bodies such as the Food Standards Agency, which were set up to protect the consumer, have instead betrayed all of us in their likely actions to restrict, remove and even criminalize life saving nutrients from sale. Dr Fullerton revisits the sorry saga about the roles of the Medicines Control Agency, the FSA and the EU Directive in this ground-breaking feature.

"The EU Directives, agreed and impending, have tied up the EU Commission, the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency into knots of inconsistency and led them up a blind alley of outmoded policies. Their regulations fetter the science of health and abuse the citizens' rights to resources that should protect them in pregnancy, in childbirth, in old age and in their occupations from disease and a polluted world. The EU definition of a medicine is a contrived one, emanating from an all-powerful pharmaceutical industry for whom reclassification of therapeutic supplements as medicinal is now an urgent issue. The simplest way to eliminate the unwelcome competition is to have them made illegal."

The World Health Organization estimates that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption could prevent 20% or more of all cancer cases. However, the pressing problem with the UK population is under consumption of fruits and vegetables and healthful nutrients, not overdosing with too many vitamins. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey (July 2000) showed that children eat only 2 portions of fruit and vegetables per day. One in five children eat no fruit in a week and 3 in 5 eat no leafy green vegetables. Children in low-income groups are 50% less likely to eat fruit and vegetables.[1]

In an era when 40,000 people die every year in the UK due to medical mishaps – four times more deaths than from all other types of accident, with a further 280,000 people suffering from non-fatal drug- prescribing errors, overdoses and infections, who has heard of people dropping like flies from vitamin overdoses? Please see data on page 49. This is simply untrue nonsense – shame on anyone propagating such lies!

It is outrageous that governmental so-called nutrition experts are calling for the restriction or elimination of health- promoting nutritional supplements. In fact, they ought to be ensuring that people are consuming higher levels of these disease- preventing nutrients. And while it is perfectly legal to consume, purchase and gorge ourselves on unlimited quantities of crisps, chocolate, salt, alcohol, cream cakes and countless other health-endangering toxic substances, the notion that taking more than some bureaucratically defined RDA level of a vitamin may become illegal is anathema to our so-called free society.

Further information

This battle to preserve some defence for our health is not going to go away; it threatens to become an all-out war. Please support Consumers for Health Choice (CHC) Tel: 020-7222 4182 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; www.healthchoice.org.uk and Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) Tel: 01252 371275; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.alliance-natural-health.org

References

1. Lang T and Rayner G. Ecological Public Health. Holistic Health. Spring 2003.