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Revision as of 20:00, 14 December 2004

Template:CamPassedTemplate:CamNotice It was actually me, Lumos3, who created this page but somehow I became logged off during the session and it didnt get recorded.

Preliminary review of Orthomolecular medicine

My preliminary review of Orthomolecular medicine is totally unfavorable.

The primary problem seems to be that this article is nothing but a stub article hiding behind a lot of verbiage. Major portions of the Orthomolecular medicine viewpoint are simply not documented in this article. I got absolutely nothing out of this article other than a bunch of commonly held generalities..

The article states: The substances may be administered by diet, dietary supplementation or intravenously, for example. What is that supposed to mean? I have no idea. As far as I know, diet has absolutely nothing to do with Orthomolecular medicine. Intravenous treatments would seem to require professionalized care, while dietary supplementation says self-care.

This article totally fails SQG#3. The proponent's viewpoint is largely missing. No wonder that opponents have yet to attack this article. There is nothing to prove or attack as it is presently written. -- John Gohde 23:35, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Compliance Audit of 6/01/04

This article was recently subjected to a compliance audit by the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine. We have a master list of 20 Key Questions that are designed to measure the compliance of CAM articles to our Standards of Quality Guidelines.

Overall, this article created a negative impression. The primary problem seems to be that this article is nothing but a stub article hiding behind a lot of verbiage. Major portions of the Orthomolecular medicine viewpoint are simply not documented in this article. I got absolutely nothing out of this article other than a bunch of commonly held generalities.

Orthomolecular medicine was the first article to be audited. It was also the first to pass our audit. The answers to 4 questions indicated non-compliance to our standards of quality quidelines. This resulted in a passing grade of 80%.

1. No footnote to support the health claim that RDA is inadequate.
2. No explanation of therapeutic effects.
3. No listing of effective medical conditions treated.
4. Did not recommend complementary treatment.

The Physical mode of action was determined to come from proper nutrition. -- John Gohde 05:45, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why was this article listed under "evidence of effectiveness"?:

• Creagan ET, Moertel CG, O'Fallon JR. Failure of high-dose vitamin C (ascorbic acid) therapy to benefit patients with advanced cancer. A controlled trial. N Engl J Med. 1979 Sep 27;301(13):687-90. PMID: 384241 Abstract

Read the abstract. The researcher's conclusions are:

"One hundred and fifty patients with advanced cancer participated in a controlled double-blind study to evaluate the effects of high-dose vitamin C on symptoms and survival. The two groups showed no appreciable difference in changes in symptoms, performance status, appetite or weight. the survival curves essentially overlapped. we were unable to show a therapeutic benefit of high-dose vitamin C treatment.".

I fail to see how this is evidence for effectiveness in any way -- in fact it is quite the opposite. Sheesh. Mortene 10:32, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Implying a "balanced diet" is not enough - POV?

In the section Relation to conventional medicine there's a phrase I find implies that diet isn't enough, but without citing any references etc:

However most conventional doctors have little knowledge of the concepts of orthomolecular medicine and tell patients that a balanced diet will provide all the nutrition a person needs to be healthy.

It seems to me it wouldn't hurt with either some rephrasing, or an expansion as to why diet alone isn't sufficient (and perhaps also why OM non-followers find diet is enough).

The problem here is that a basic tenet of Orthomolecular medicine is that a balanced diet does not provide enough vitamins. I would agree that the sentace is pov. It really neeeds to split into two parts one saying that many doctors have limited knowlage of orthomolecular medicine and another saying that the conventional medical view is that a blanaced diet is sufficientGeni 12:03, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, in this sentence:

Proponents point to an almost zero level of deaths caused by overdosing of vitamins compared to the significant numbers from pharmaceuticals.

What is "almost zero"? "Significant numbers"? It seems very vague.

11:42, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It has to be vague becuase exact numbers are hard to define. There have been a very small number of deaths from vitamin overdoesing but the total number probably isn't even into triple figures.Geni 12:03, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Evidence

I have just conducted a (brief) literature review, looking for randomised placebo-controlled trials. Unfortunately, there are very few. Those that I did find, I have added to the article. (None of them supported megavitamin usage.) I didn't bother to add the numerous case reports, most of which showed harm arising from megavitamin use. Axl 20:00, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)