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One question I have...
Hi @tim-2,
RE: Yes that makes sense to me, do you have a link to that, 17x is so high?
I discuss this finding (with source page references) in my P4P eBook, it’s in the chapter titled: Vitamin-A supplementation in SE Asia, and South America.
See my Figure 12 Relative mortality rates with vitamin-A supplementation and the follow-up analysis I provide of it.
There’s another excellent analysis of this phenomenon in Michael Latham’s paper titled: The Great Vitamin-A Fiasco
“The findings that high doses of vitamin-A, especially in well-nourished children, have adverse impacts on respiratory infections, should surely be grounds for serious concern.”
Source: World Nutrition Volume 1, Number 1, May 2010 Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association
How can a “vitamin” be responsible for killing so many children?
Grant
Hi Grant,
I referenced page 39 of Vitamin A Deficiency: Health, Survival, and Vision directly. I believe the graph is incorrectly labeled in that book. A log scale is a scale like the example below, a log scale is not a linear scale with log derived numbers on it. The relative mortality was 1.2 not 17. This is in line with other data in the chapter.
Hi @tim-2
No, that chart in Sommer's Fig 2-14 is not incorrectly labeled. I did discuss that data with another prominent vA researcher. It’s real data.
I fully understand log scales. I have a very strong background in engineering and scientific math.
I think Sommer’s deliberately used a log scale on that chart in an attempt to conceal the real magnitude of the killing. And, it's reflected in his follow-on weasel words of: “the recipients fared less well”, that really means they died.
You can’t go trying to change the data to fit your views. That’s what Wolbach & Howe did.
Grant
Hi Grant,
I don't accept the 17x figure, VA is bad but it doesn't increase mortality by 1600%. If it had been that bad they never would have published the chart or would have fudged the data. It also doesn't match with other mortality data on VA.
This is an interesting article (I think it's from 1992) where the author (S. Rajagopalan) discusses suspicions of corruption in third world VA supplementation. "The author, a senior statistician, is the former head of the Tamil Nadu Nutrition Project."
He discusses the Nepal study.
He says:
The important point to note in Table 1 is that while risks of mortality from the first four causes were less in the vitamin A supplemented group, risks of mortality from the other two causes were higher. In particular, it is important to note that risk of death from respiratory diseases was 29 percent higher in children receiving the supplement! This alarming finding indicating that vitamin A supplementation substantially increases the risk of mortality from respiratory disease, is disturbing, considering that among all diseases that afflict children of poor communities in developing countries, respiratory diseases are ranked as the leading "Captain of Death", occupying an even higher place in this regard than gastrointestinal diseases. This alarming finding that the group receiving vitamin A supplement suffered a risk of mortality from respiratory diseases, 29 percent higher than that of the unsupplemented "control" groups, has been dismissed with the statement that vitamin A has no effect on mortality attributed to lower respiratory infections and other miscellaneous causes. The glaring fact that it has had a positively adverse effect has been glossed over!
http://www.nutritionfoundationofindia.org/pdfs/BulletinArticle/Pages_from_nfi_01_92_2.pdf
Hi @tim-2,
I agree, that 17x figure does sound remarkably high. But, it is the number that Sommer’s did put in his book. And, it only sounds remarkably high because it is easy to get these big multipliers when the starting number is very low. And, in this age group, and a smaller dataset of the better-nourished children, child deaths would not have been very common. In other words, normal and healthy children don’t just spontaneously die.
The numbers you’ve cited by S. Rajagopalan are in line with those from Michael Latham.
Michael Latham was one of the few honest people in this “supplementation” business, and he was clearly trying to sound the alarm on it. But, it appears no one wanted to hear his message. Michael Latham was directly involved with these programs and conducted some of the field studies. He ultimately came to the conclusion that the capsule programs were doing far more harm than good (killing more children than they “saved”). Michael Latham died a few years ago.
None-the-less, even if the increased death rate of being given a “vitamin” is just 20%, or 27%, etc higher than placebo, it should have cast serious doubts on the claim of it being a vitamin at all. I mean, seriously, what good is a “vitamin” that routinely kills children?
And what we now know is the actual causal mechanism of how and why it happens. We know that vitamin A attacks the basal membrane throughout the body, including in the lungs. It’s also proven to slowly destroy the mitochondria, the cell membranes, the bones, eyes, pancreatic stem cells, the endothelium, and on and on. It’s also now being revealed that vitamin A also causes the immune system to stall out leading to chronic infections. Getting too much of it on your skin causes cancer. Getting even a tiny bit too much of it during pregnancy can destroy a human fetus. It’s also a proven reproductive toxin. So, in no way can this be an essential nutrient. Nature is not that foolish. Are we really supposed to believe that a cancer-causing, fetus destroying, and a reproductive toxic chemical is a “vitamin too?” I’m not buying it for a second.
And there are 100s of other serious adverse results of its long-term exposure. Doesn’t that all just sound like a bizarre set of consequences of a so-called “vitamin?”
Anyhow, let’s get back on track here. I think we have at least proven that the very original “vitamin” defining studies weren’t valid. And, there’s now been massive amounts of studies proving the incredible toxicity of this chemical in the human body. Therefore, I see no basis to continue to blindly tip the scales in accepting the claim of it being a “vitamin.”
The only last-ditch defense of it is that it is somehow needed for fetal development. But, here’s a good study showing that it actually damages the brain of rats during fetal development in (using normal human equivalent low RDA doses).
Vitamin A supplementation in rats under pregnancy and nursing induces behavioral changes and oxidative stress upon striatum and hippocampus of dams and their offspring
Carlos Eduardo Schnorr⁎, Maurílio da Silva Morrone, André Simões-Pires,
Ricardo Fagundes da Rocha, Guilherme Antônio Behr, José Cláudio Fonseca Moreira
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092734
This has been a good discussion. But, I really don’t want to debate this point. Attempting to solve science problems using debates is a completely foreign concept to engineers. Debates are for politicians. Science is never solved in debates. It almost always solved with math and experiments.
Wishing you all the best in health, and the new year,
Grant
Hi Grant, yes thanks for the discussion and best wishes for the new year.
I was really enjoying this thread...