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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cri du canard (talk | contribs) at 21:35, 13 August 2006 (→"Evidence-based CAM"?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Material before 14 June 2006 has been archived at Talk:Orthomolecular medicine/Archive1.

"alternative medicine"

Orthomolecular medicine has conventional and nonconventional aspects. In many cases it was developed by conventional doctors in the forefront of mainstream medicine of their time, and in many cases overseas, OM products and uses *are* conventional medicine. Also the placement of OM's standing with respect to (US) conventional medicine is secondary to its description in the 1st paragraph, so 2nd or 3rd paragraph seems more appropriate if not the "relation to conventional medicine" section.

Regarding "Relation to conventional medicine", I would appreciate your review of the "relation to CM" section's development in Talk thru , with Doc Johnny so that we can discuss improvements more productively. FYI two conventional medicine oldies that come immediately to mind are coQ10 (Japan) and serrapeptase enzymes (Japan and Europe).--69.178.41.55 08:56, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

added factual accuracy and pov tag

.. as the article is written in a POV and I don't believe it + it's unsourced = ie factual accuracy for me. revert only after prior discussion

The article is heavily sourced with 7 tomes or sets of books, as well as the external links that have substantial material and, at length, incorporate thousands of biomedical references. The article is primarily descriptive, written with an eye to NPOV and SPOV in conjunction with a number of real MD and DO types. Would you like to state what beliefs that it violates? I would appreciate a specific improvement or criticism to address. I would suggest reading the entire talk page above to avoid wasteful repetition. Thank you.--69.178.41.55 07:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Why did you remove the "complementary and alternative" from the intro? ackoz 09:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
CAM's association to OM was modified and relocated to be the 7th sentence in the introductory section. Orthomed therapeutics have a presence in both CAM and conventional medicine. Often, conventional medicine conveniently forgets or overlooks who, what or when, when it accepts/absorbs something new. Not all orthomed is controversial since discoveries & treatments foundational or consistent with it substantially form the dawn of molecular medicine treatments found in conventional internal medicine texts. Because orthomed is so poorly understood by much of the population, the article first focuses on conceptualizing, defining and exemplifyng it to introduce it.--69.178.41.55 19:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, do you earn your daily bread by selling orthomed preparations? ackoz 23:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
No. Do you have any specific factual, historical or textual disputes or improvements that you can articulate?--69.178.41.55 04:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

(reset indent) I would like to incorporate information from these articles/abstracts:

I advise you, that www.quackwatch.org is listed on HONCode, and it is considered reliable among non-CAM physicians. I suggest we create a section called "Criticism", in which we summarise the majority POV on orthomolecular medicine. This will give the article a more NPOV, because there is a lot of criticism of the method, yet the article doesn't mention it sufficiently. ackoz 08:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I have added a criticism section and those of your citations which criticise the application of multivitamins. Some are however reporting on dosage of a single vitamin or the effectiveness of one particluar treatment and do not criticise orthomolcular medicine in general. OM does not claim that vitamins and minerals can be applied indisciminantly or that they can treat everything. Removing POV tag Lumos3 09:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I have reworked the criticism section. You should note, that only CAM supporters use the term "conventional medicine". I have also cited the BC Cancer Agency, which is: an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority, provides a province-wide, population-based cancer control program for the residents of British Columbia. ::i.e. government source, valid an reliable, so please don't remove the citation. ackoz 09:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

BCCA bias & errors

Sigh, we have a long week ahead. There are a *lot* of preconceptions in these statements and errors in the references that we're going to have to cover one by one to get straightened out again. Let's take that first sentence, "Some health professionals see orthomolecular medicine as an encouragement for individuals to dose themselves with large amounts of vitamins in an unsupervised way,..." So surely blaming all ob/gyns for the coathanger abortionist down the way is then appropriate. These "side effects" are somewhat exaggerated examples of generally *not* doing vitamins the orthomolecular way, at least for the last 40 years, or more. Conventional medicine likes to test *single* vitamins, often of inferior forms (another discussion), without appropriate cofactors, and without balance or broad chemical spectrum in similar vitamins, a sure prescription for failure and problems. Then blame the molecule or the competition.
In a few cases conventional doctors *do* conventionally prescribe megavitamins w/o the balancing and cofactors, over which OM types shudder. I would observe very carefully which way those other four fingers point. Regarding "conventional medicine" there have been horrific arguments at Misplaced Pages over the best label for general use and to distinguish conventional med from other schools of medical thought. So although suggestions are welcome, it is a well worn(out) subject (see also "allopathic" etc) that hasn't resolved well.
Also, although I have long accepted (or tolerated) the QW Orthomolecular article as a notable POV, fair warning that its basis is scientifically weak and contested, "experts" or not. We may get into this more later (SPOV issues). Also your QW Orthomolecular reference is redundant, please choose *one* (there is another of the exact same article linked at the bottom of the OM page (I thought it was more prominent there) that I left in 10 Jan 06 when I redid the whole Reference section and External links.--69.178.41.55 12:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies are unproven methods considered dangerous by mainstream scientists. Dangerous? Megavitamins typically have no reported deaths in a given year in the US, although conventionally recommended iron supplements will kill several, about 5-6 kids & adults in the US each year. (orthomolecular/megavitamin supplement makers are historically more careful about iron supplementation than conventional multiple vitamin makers for a number of reasons) "This compares with 59 deaths due to aspirin poisoning in 2003, 147 deaths associated with acetaminophen-containing products in 2003, and an average of 54 deaths per year due to lightning for 1990-2003."
"Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." (Cassileth) This statement is simply incorrect as presented here, by at least 20 to 50 years depending on how you count. The grand old man of orthomolecular medicine and editor-in-chief of Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, postulated & discovered the lipid lowering properties of megadose niacin (vit B3) in 1954, and along with credible conventional co-authors, published the result in 1955, the first mainstream recognized megavitamin (later orthomolecular) therapy. This lipid lowering was confirmed by Dr William Parsons, a graduate medical fellow at the Mayo Clinic in 1956, further confirmed in the early 1960s for titrated patients with individual care by Dr Edwin Boyle, a section chief in the Miami National Inst of Health for a 90% reduction in cardiovascular mortality over 10 years. Boyle then consulted on the massive Coronary Drug Project (1966-1975) & which the Canner Study's analysis (1985) showed that 6 years of niacin treatment, even underdosed, at 2 g/d (vs 3 - 6 g/d clinically recommended) plain niacin, added an average of over 2 yrs of life for six years treatment in a 15 yr observation period.--69.178.41.55 15:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Megadose vitamin therapy is believed to have started in the early 1950s when "a few psychiatrists began adding massive doses of nutrients to their treatment of severe mental problems." (Hafner) Only off about two decades. Actually several megavitamin therapies were developed and being actively used by a number of doctors, perhaps most notably including IV vitamin C in the 1940s by FR Klenner, far & away the largest megadose, and natural form RRR-tocopherols, vitamin E, by the Drs Shute in the 1930s.
Vitamin K: "Large amounts of vitamin K in pregnancy can cause jaundice in the newborn..." - Medical Letter (Anonymous). Toxic effects of vitamin overdosage. Medical Letter 1983;26 (667):72-74. This almost surely refers to the synthetics, either the vitamin K precursor, menadione aka (pro)vitamin K3, or one of the water soluble derivatives that metabolize to menadione. Human form vitamin K2 menaquinones (MK-4, MK-7, MK-9) were essentially commercially unavailable in 1983, are still expensive and not so common, and nontoxic at very high dosages. Phyto-, phylloquinone, vitamin K1, likewise has a low toxicity profile. "...menaquinones are nontoxic to animals, even when given in huge amounts." - Goodman & Gillman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (1996). Synthetic menadione, cheap to manufacture, has long been banned for human use in most countries because of neonatal (and adult) liver damage. Isoprene deficient menadione and its relatives would not be an orthomolecular choice. ...Dietary supplements high in vitamin K can block the effects of oral anticoagulants. Orthomed MDs apparently have their own algorithm for this, monitoring prothrombin times, titrating and/or using vitamin E.
I have not fully picked apart the BC-CAC page yet, but hopefully you will agree that it is a fatal trend and an unfair quote, if not source. I respectfully suggest that you note that some of this issue *was* addressed in the "Relation to conventional medicine" section (and the January talk notes!) and try to recast "Criticism" constructively. Mainstream medical POV on orthomolecular medicine is notable, and can be described, but it will be reviewed for gross inaccuracy and priority.--69.178.41.55 05:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


Come on, you are a POV yourself. Misplaced Pages should reflect the mainstream view, which is NOT that one you are presenting here - the majority of physicians simply don't believe in orthomolecular medicine. BC - CAC is a government agency, a reliable source, however unfair to you. Moreover, I revert your last edits, if you object, I will take my cecil medicine book and beat you on your head with that, so that you finally learn that vitamine overdoses are not healthy. You must have spent two hours writing this BC-CAC criticism, but it is a reliable source anyway.

ackoz 06:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


This article is describing Orthomolecular medicine and needs to describe what proponents of this field see are its benefits. Other points of view can then be fairly described alongside it. You do a diservice to your medicine books. Dangers from overdoses of some vitamins are recognised and OM does not recommend these are taken without supervision. Others such as Vitamin C are some of the least toxic substances known to man. Lumos3 10:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Wrong, per WP:NPOV, the majority viewpoint should be the backbone of the article, and the most important minority viewpoints should be represented in the article. Read the Orthomolecular_medicine#Popularity section and the appropriate sourrce given. The majority of people don't use CAM methods, and the majority of healthcare professionals don't believe in it. Therefore, according to wikipedia's central (there are 3 main policies as you probably know) policy, the article should represent the skeptic or conventional medicine viewpoint on Orthomolecular medicine. And instead of criticism, there should be a section for Advocacy. ackoz 11:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
No you are wrong , read WP:NPOV#Fairness_and_sympathetic_tone . I know of no article that follows the lines you describe . Perhaps you'd like to give an example. I agree there should be a mention in the introduction that OM is a view held by a minority of practioners , but it represents a debate within science and its proposition should be fairly set out before oppossing views and evidence is presented. Lumos3 12:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
We are probably both wrong. But the fact that you or I know no CAM article that would follow the policy of WP:NPOV is caused by inevitable presence of CAM practitioners and supporters on wikipedia. Noone else is fanatic enough to edit articles that are rewritten 5 times a week by someone with strong pro-CAM POV. ackoz 12:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ackoz, you are using WP:NPOV to drive counterfactual points and promote clearly counterfactual opinions in a brief, simply descriptive article on Orthomolecular medicine that avoids most claims and counterclaims, *not* one on "Medical politics". Please try to briefly describe your perceived physicians' group view with NPOV and some degree of SPOV. Please also consider many doctors may generally not be as familiar with high dose vitamin literature details as might be desirable for this article (I personally hear this from MDs, too). High dose therapeutic nutrition is simply not well addressed in US medical education (I am looking closely at the US med education system for a good answer). After personally discussing niacin for dyslipidemias with about 20 MDs and PAs (socially), I still haven't found one that is really conversant about its use and properties despite its many superior aspects well documented in the conventional medical literature over the last 50 years - and that is one of the cheapest, easiest orthomolecular therapies to find and verify conventionally.

Your views on vitamin safety (and efficacy) may also reflect common industrial grade vitamers & supplements rather than the preferred orthomolecular versions (usually natural isomers in the oil solubles, more absorbable or active forms), usually not especially more expensive in the US if you shop around. Often medical papers' chemical specifications would not even meet standards in other technical fields. e.g. "vitamin E" papers, which blend of 64 possible optical isomers (R/S,R/S,R/S-toco---) were you talking about and was that the natural alcohol or one of 5-6 common esters and the main cofactors (Se, ascorbate, coQ10) were controlled too? Never mind the "inerts". Often surprisingly missing in *any* detail, *some* conventional researchers finally are acknowledging exact molecular entity and specification are important in vitamin clinical trials and reporting.--69.178.41.55 12:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:NOR we are not here to discuss the education of practitioners on vitamin dosage. We are also not here to assess the credibility of clinical trials or discuss about the fact that most conventional researchers don't distinguish between different isomers of something. ackoz 12:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
from WP:NOR, "Like most Misplaced Pages policies, No original research applies to articles, not to talk pages or project pages,...". I was trying to conversationally illuminate points about orthomed data and common medical communication issues w/o being accusatory and address differences on vitamin safety, your perceptions of vitamin safety, and perhaps relieve self-imposed expectations of expertise. By the standard of your excited warning statements in "Criticism", one should hunt down almost EVERY pharmaceutical in Wiki and apply a black box as well as add a skull and crossbones for balance.--14:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ackoz, I have taken pains to address the last BC-CAC sentence in "Criticism" as a counterfactual POV statement by demonstration (the niacin/dyslipidemia example). There are more. The sentence, "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease", is factually false & disparaging, stated in a semi-authoritative manner, takes undue space and is placed for undue attention, damaging to unfamiliar readers, and, well, provacative. I will respectfully ask again, please withdraw the last BC-CAC sentence.--69.178.41.55 15:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Criticism section

This is just inadequate as a section from any point of view.

  1. The list of risks does not say to which nutrients they apply or in what dosage.
  2. The citations are only critical of some aspects of OM and not the whole field yet the reader is led to believe they condemn the whole.
Specifically
Lumos3 16:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

appropriate sources

It would be more appropriate, if you could provide us with a source outside of orthomolecular medicine, that would say that there is "scientific research" in it. I dont imply that orthomolecular medicine is a pseudoscience, but you could create any pseudoscience you could wish (for instance petrotherapy - a scientific approach to treating abdominal cancer by eating rocks), and if you had enough, say, ten thousand followers, who are easy to find because people are just crazy and hope in everything when they get sick, you could build some webpages and your followers would put up some webpages and then you could use these webpages as a source for your statements about "scientific approach and research in petrotherapy".

I can do nothing with this argumentation you are using here, but to ask you, please try to find some outer source.

--ackoz 19:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


Read on the books referenced in the article and their scientific references. Ackoz, orthomolecular medicine's scientific foundations are those of orthodox molecular medicine. The pharmas pursue synthetic, *patentable* molecules, despite their toxicity and side effect issues. This situation began to diverge with the pharmas' divestment of most of their vitamin research as of the 1950s. The various pharma positions & campaigns have become more aggressive, pervasive and acrimonious with each decade since. The slow imposition of RCTs in the early 1960's, fiercely fought by US pharmas then, has become their mantra, a perverse (mis)representation of some accounting techniques as absolute requirements of Science itself, "incidently" marginalizing individual and small group research efforts and limiting direct criticism of the pharmas' proclaimed results. A more generalized view of scientific experiments tracks and evaluates different kinds of uncertainty in the totality & priority of the evidence. Mere formalsim is no protection against bad science anymore than big Accounting's protection of Enron shareholders. Both pharmas and the tobacco companies have been shown to abruptly terminate research with potentially negative results as they approach statistical significance, as well as the simple expedient of not publishing adverse results (some authors put the number at 5 out of 6 projects).
As far as "mainstream" science, Roger J Williams (Am Chem Soc, Biochemical Institute, UTexas), Volkers (Merck research) and Pauling (Caltech) were all considered mainstream for the bulk of their work. Certain commercial interests wish to rewrite history as well as science. However, the recent NIH rehabilitation of the "IV vitamin C for cancer" topic, clearly shows that Moertel seriously "erred" on the science part of megadose vitamin C in cancer. Large institutions (and their principals) do not make sharp, major U turns for trivial reasons.--69.178.41.55 06:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Orthomolecular medicine is a science based study and represents a minority view among scientists. Its future growth and accetance will be based on evidence. Here are some centres of research and publication. Science is a debate not a doctine. Lumos3 22:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Research institutes

Journals publishing Orthomolecular research (among other nutritional research)

Report

Lumos, I am not so sure that the "conventional scientists" are the big negative majority here - e.g. witness the Vitamin D Council (Victoria conference in Hoffer's "backyard".) Looks like some of the med school scientists are (have been) in near open revolt on vitamin D "megadoses" & RDAs (was 200 IU ~1992, now 400-800iu, might be 2000+iu if they rationalize with the other oil souble vitamins, up to 50,000iu in single monthly doses. Vitamin D3 in immune function, SAD, MS, cancer.

As dangerous as a practice as categorization & grouping is, I might still consider these groups as having distinct statistical characteristics: the established conventional doctors, perhaps separately the specialists, the med school faculty, the med students (what's going on, am I being adequately informed for the future?), the PhD medical researchers. I might also pass this along. Several months ago I was briefly talking with a medical school biochem prof/researcher working on potential pharmaceuticals (on a Friday afternoon-evening). When I mentioned "therapeutic natural substances", he was instantly all over me about herbals vs pharmaceuticals. When I clarified that I was talking about "vitamin-like substances" he immediately stopped, expressed interest and a cautiously optimistic note about plausibility and potential.--69.178.41.55 04:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

quiet creepy edits by 69 64

69, you remove a link from the article because you don't like it, and you give no reason in the edit summary and neither on the talk page. Do you consider that good editing? Or are you just here to babble about the miraculous effects of orthomolecular medicine? Please stop deleting the things you don't like from the article. ackoz 08:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

As usual, the facts statements your assertions need a little sharpening. (1) I didn't remove the link, someone apparently several thousand miles away did - I suggest that you learn how Whois works. (2) It *was* a redundant link, once is enough for loose opinion pieces, as I did previously suggest. (3) I haven't babbled about miracles either, I try to describe others' actions and their rationale. Try to find out what SPOV is. (4) I've been pretty patient about the outright counterfactual part, trying to give you a chance to improve your edits. (5) IMHO, you are abusing both NPOV to develop literally counterfactual points, presented as an authoritative source about a subject that you have no real b/g, and, now the RArb, policies. You are certainly jumping the gun, bypassing RfC. (6) I think you should attempt to improve your subject background first if you are going to be effective in this article.--69.178.41.55 09:53, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't bypass the RfC. ackoz 10:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Well then, at least tell someone, like you did for RfArb, here and on the user talk page. I have been offline for over 36 hours and instead of you cooling off, I come back to an uproar.--69.178.41.55 11:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Look, I have already stated my point: the article shouldn't look like this and noone is able to change it because you and Lumos3 will be here forever. I don't want no edit wars, so let's just ask the "elders" what they think about the rules. Thats why the RfArb. No uproar. --ackoz 11:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
A *lot* of conventional medical editors have accepted my edits without the problems on simple factuality in other far more contestable articles than we are having here. You appear (to me) to misquote Wiki rules to your convienence about a subject that you display little knowledge of the basic subject references or the subject's history. I use a simple rule in editing, I try to develop an article that is coherent to the overall facts. You are injecting counterfactual POV that even if you can source it serves no additional purpose except to falsely disparge the subject. Make accurate, balanced edits, - I'll easily respect them and try my best to improve them. Just ask the conventional medical doctors & scientists like: Andrew73, InvictaHOG (oh, you already did), Jfdwolffe, DocJohnny, Gleng, Tearlach, even Midgely. I recently got off someone else's RfC, 4 weeks making peace over far more drastic issues - you, never mind the RfC stage, after a few hours, want to start RfArb over corrections that I assiduously justified but you then exploded just because you "don't believe". You are treating us very poorly. Try this, *do your homework*. May I suggest that you withdraw the RfArb as totally premature.--69.178.41.55 11:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
What I will suggest is an informal mediation with one of the conventional medical editors, perhaps like User:Gleng, an academic.--69.178.41.55 11:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
We will do that if the RfArb is rejected. Stop beating me with words like "doctors & scientists", academics etc. I am a doctor myself. I know User:Gleng. He has participated on Homeopathy for a long time. See where the article is now? Still has a NPOV tag and I didn't put it there. In fact I never edited that article. However, the main problem is that the reliable literature / sources are not defined. So the editors who are pro-Homeopathy will use homeopathic journals as a "reliable source", whereas for the rest of the world, the contents of that journals is just plain quackery. We will wait for the ArbCom, if they decide that we have to argue indefinetly about things we can't ever agree on, create extra-long articles bloating with many POVs, I will stop editing the article. If they decide that per NPOV, the article should contain the majority view (which is skeptic) as a backbone, I will start editing the article. Agree? ackoz 19:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I cite my previous edit experience with all other "conventional medical" doctors & scientists that *I am a reasonable SPOV editor* where there is an ongoing scientific debate. I have previously managed to resolve differences with them through SPOV. Your words imply that you lump Orthomed in with alternative medicine in general, or more ludicrously, homeopathy, a huge error. Orthomolecular medicine is all about biologically based science and relatively cheap (unpatented) nutritive substances or nutraceuticals if you will. In fact, in orthomolecular eyes, "conventional medicine" is literally 10x, 100x, 1000x closer to homeopathy's 10^-30 than orthomed on over two dozen vitamin-like substances, so be careful. On occasion the orthomolecular prescription is substance withdrawal to reduce supply or (over) accumulation of certain substances, e.g. for PKU & galactosemia, sometimes conventional medicine already agrees. As for science, orthomed emphasizes inexpensive test design (which frequently suffer *multiple* known or knowable design flaws in conventional medicine/pharma trials) over the expensive accounting apparatus of pharmas required to test dangerous drugs or exotic molecules of little, unknown or negative benefits.
We probably agree on many things that you don't recognize. For example, vitamin E. An orthomed probably agrees that that (all-racemic) d,l-alpha-tocopheryl acetate (the cheapest, most common esterified synthetic with only 12% R,R,R-tocopheryl acetate, that is conventionally tested so often) doesn't work too well - said so 50+ years ago (Drs Shutes). Anyone familiar with the literature and history realizes that the R,R,R gamma-tocopherol fractions and other cofactors are big issues. Read the US pharmaceutical patents, and you will find some highly paid conventional (pharma) scientists that think R,R,R-delta-tocotrienol can kill cancer cells pretty efficiently and that alpha-tocopherol is worthless killing cancer cells but that the alpha-tocopheryl succinate is useful (pharmas patented a delta-tocotrienol derivative). Orthomeds just can't figure out why conventional medicine keeps repeating the same brain dead d,l-alpha tocopheryl acetate experiment failures for decades into this millenium, unless (1) it is a smear campaign or (2) the medical curricula are so deficient that no one knows. Those resources could productively answer a lot of other questions..69.178.41.55 03:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


Vitamin E (as d-alpha tocopheryl acetate) in prevention of heart disease, and the Shutes

COMMENT:

The comments above are just unfair in light of available evidence. Recently completed is a prospective randomized placebo controlled trial of RRR alpha tocopherol (just what the Shutes liked) in 4000 people followed for 7 years. The patients had heart disease and diabetes. Basically, RRR-alpha tocopherol (d-alpha = ddd alpha) was a bust. If anything people who took it had more heart failure (though this didn't seem to be too severe a problem). But as for the idea that it clears up coronary disease or prevents heart attacks, the best data available doesn't support that.

Here's the abstract of the study, which is called HOPE-TOO (HOPE-The Ongoing Outcomes = HOPE-TOO . It's an ongoing bit of the HOPE trial (Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation). This is the biggest, longest prospective blinded and placebo-controlled prospective trial of d-alpha tocopherol acetate.

"Effects of Long-term Vitamin E Supplementation on Cardiovascular Events and Cancer: A Randomized Controlled Trial" The HOPE and HOPE-TOO Trial Investigators* JAMA, Vol. 293, pp. 1338-47 (March 15, 2005).

ABSTRACT: Context: Experimental and epidemiological data suggest that Vitamin E supplementation may prevent cancer and cardiovascular events. Clinical trials have generally failed to confirm benefits, possibly due to their relatively short duration. Objective: To evaluate whether long-term supplementation with Vitamin E decreases the risk of cancer, cancer death, and major cardiovascular events. Design, Setting, and Patients: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled international trial (the initial Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation trial conducted between December 21, 1993 and April 15, 1999) of patients at least 55 years old with vascular disease or diabetes mellitus was extended (HOPE-The Ongoing Outcomes ) between April 16, 1999 and May 26, 2003. Of the initial 267 HOPE centers that had enrolled 9,541 patients, 174 centers participated in the HOPE-TOO trial. Of 7,030 patients enrolled at these centers, 916 were deceased at the beginning of the extension, 1,382 refused participation, 3,994 continued to take the study intervention, and 738 agreed to passive follow-up. Median duration of follow-up was 7.0 years. Intervention: Daily dose of natural source Vitamin E (400 IU) [d-alpha tocopherol acetate] or matching placebo. Main Outcome Measures: Primary outcomes included cancer incidence, cancer deaths, and major cardiovascular events (myocardial infarction, stroke, and cardiovascular death). Secondary outcomes included heart failure, unstable angina, and revascularizations. Results: Among all HOPE patients, there were no significant differences in the primary analysis: for cancer incidence, there were 552 patients (11.6%) in the Vitamin E group vs 586 (12.3%) in the placebo group (relative risk , 0.94; 95% confidence interval , 0.84-1.06; P = .30); for cancer deaths, 156 (3.3%) vs 178 (3.7%), respectively (RR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.71-1.09; P = .24); and for major cardiovascular events, 1022 (21.5%) vs 985 (20.6%), respectively (RR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.96-1.14; P = .34). Patients in the Vitamin E group had a higher risk of heart failure (RR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.01-1.26; P = .03) and hospitalization for heart failure (RR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.00-1.47; P = .045). Similarly, among patients enrolled at the centers participating in the HOPE-TOO trial, there were no differences in cancer incidence, cancer deaths, and major cardiovascular events, but higher rates of heart failure and hospitalizations for heart failure. Conclusion: In patients with vascular disease or Diabetes Mellitus, long-term Vitamin E supplementation does not prevent cancer nor major cardiovascular events and may increase the risk for heart failure.

FURTHER COMMENTIn the initial shorter duration version of the HOPE trial 3 years ago (>1800 patients per group), congestive heart failure (CHF) came closest of any endpoint to being greater in the d-alpha tocopherol acetate 400 IU group, with the RR 1.21 and confidence limits 1.0 - 1.46) p = 0.05. Hospitalization for CHF didn't come close to significance at p = 0.51. With larger numbers and longer followup, both these are now significant in the HOPE-TOO.

The interesting thing is that CHF is usually a consequence of coronary disease and old MIs. But the number of MIs and other coronary events really didn't come close to being significantly altered by the vitamin E in the full study above (which is the only one I have access to, right now). The closest of anything was stroke, which had a p of 0.2. None of the cardiac stuff was much different from RR =1, so it does NOT look like it was there, but just isn't showing above the noise due to power problems.

So what's going on with the CHF? I don't know. But this kind of "congestive heart failure" is not as bad as it sounds to the layman, if if doesn't increase deaths and doesn't result from any detectable increase in coronary events. It basically means retention of fluid in feet or lungs, and hospitalization means there's enough retention in the lungs to cause problems. We have no way to know if in this study, the extra cases were due to some global weakening of cardiac function, or just some odd changes in salt handling and retention (which would of course be less worrisome). We do know from this and many other studies that blood pressure and renal function (at least, of the gross filtration sort) are not affected at all by doses of vitamin E in this range. So it's a mystery. Still, I'm not going to pretend even this non-MI-related CHF is okay, although in many practices it would simply mean an adjustment of diuretic. The bottom line is the only thing vitamin E does for cardiac patients we can really be sure of, is something (somewhat) bad.

The main value of these studies is to show that vitamin E as the d-alpha form, in doses large enough to raise blood levels by 70%, has NO effect on heart disease progression. Or on diabetes progression. Not even a hint of it, in a placebo controlled study of many thousands of people extending many years. I have a whole book (by Wilfred Shute, M.D. with Harald Taub: _Vitamin E for Ailing and Healthy Hearts_ 1969, with the 11th paperback printing I have from 1977) claiming that this very d-alpha tocopherol in similar amounts, is a veritable cure-all for all cardiac ailments. These claims by the Shute brothers go all the way back to the 1940's. Every chapter of every health book since the Shutes started blowing this horn, has had an enormous amount of junk repetition of all these claims.

Well, these Shute claims appear to be wishful thinking. The real shame is that it's taken the "medical establishment" half a century to prove it. And no, there's still no good prospective evidence that vitamin E prevents cancer in humans, either. (Frankly, I'm a little more hopeful that selenium will prove out, there. And possibly even vitamin C.) Vitamin E per se in reasonable and traditional supplemental amounts (which 400 IU is) certainly doesn't affect onset of diabetes, or progression of diabetic renal disease. We know that from the HOPE trial also. I would have wagered a modest amount of money that this wouldn't be so, from what I know of oxidative mechanisms in diabetes. But I'd have been wrong. That's why we do these studies.

And no, the HOPE trial goes beyond showing that vitamin E just doesn't heal the diseased-of-heart (though the Shutes claimed just that). Most of the HOPE enrollees were not clinically ill, though they did have coronary disease. If vitamin E even slowed progression of those with disease, it would have been seen here. It wasn't. The idea that vitamin E prevents ONSET of coronary disease in totally healthy people who don't have any at all (if such adults exist in our society), even though it doesn't at all effect progression of disease in people who already have some, is very far fetched. I think it's grasping at straws, in fact. I don't believe it, and can't imagine why anybody would.

Here's the full text of the first phase of the HOPE trial, on the vitamin E trial side (as you know, there was another side looking at preventive effects of giving the ACE inhibitor ramepril): ] Steve 16:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Dr Harris, that is a data driven view of the Hope trials, there are other trials and analyses (sigh). An orthomolecular version might have been in the long expressed therapeutic ranges of 600-3200iu of RRR-alpha tocopherol along with an additional 20-45% mixed tocopherols with provision for oil soluble vitamins(-like) (especially K2, coQ10, and D3) and the C, Se cofactors along with some medical screening & classification. I think that the vitamin E devotees are also concerned about transport & enzyme activation (de-esterification) in damaged and degraded bodies, potentially an important statistical minus for tocopheryl acetate. I would respectfully comment on a series of articles, and biographies, that I have been peripherally interested in since the mid 80s, and unanswered vitamin E hypotheses that mainstream E research & reporting just barely has begun to address (include my comment on specific molecular entity). You are absolutely right that the Shute brothers, swore by the RRR-alpha-tocopherol label (d-alpha- then, pre IUPAC). That may have been one of their blind spots, and tragedy.
Starting in the 1980s (my perspective), the discussions of the effect of the other natural R,R,R- isomers (beta, gamma, delta tocopherol and the provitamin precursors, tocotrienols) began to surface for the public. One of the issues was the varied (declining) reported successes of the Shutes, that their claimed/seeming early success was fading into the 1960s. The question raised was whether the nature of the vitamin E preparations actually consumed changed (ie. -ol becomes -yl acetate; and that by the 1950s, the much more common gamma-tocopherol isomer was being methylated & diverted into alpha-tocopherol production rather than "left in", a freebie), since beta, gamma, delta tocopherols were not allowed to be "marked & discounted" as alpha equivalents, a financial disaster for the natural producers. At the very start, the Shutes, including the father, were using wheat germ oil (ugh) for their treatment, which has lots more gamma- than alpha- (less than 10-20% alpha?). Starting around 1939 Squibb marketed a popular/common "mixed tocopherols" that should have be easier to produce than purified alpha (I would also wonder if there was unlabeled substitution of isomer "equivalents" for alpha at first ca 1940s, nascent chemical suppliers can be a little loose in their outlook). The product alpha- purity of the 1930s through 1950s for different brands/sources would be an interesting retrospective, to achieve tocopherol separation at all was the minor chemical engineering miracle of "molecular distillation" (well, they were more proud of it than that), I believe associated with vitamin E (my unresearched impression). Anyway there is conjecture that the Shutes were blindsided by various commercial changes in the supply chain and their own mental lock-in to "alpha". I think the natural/orthomolecular problem is that the mainstream has taken over 20 years to even begin to recognize the need for trials to report correct compositional labeling of the active components as manufactured much less differentiate & address the -ol & isomers issues. A waste of many -yl acetate trials.
Anyway, various industry (including the pharmas) articles, patents have mentioned/discussed the varied properties of those other isomers in bits and pieces. But it has not been a timely, incisive well thought area of research, and here I fault the meds & feds too. Gamma tocopherol is being slowly recognized/proposed for a different set of properties possibly including inflammation and angina. Here's my kicker, and it's anecdotal: a *lot* of people when you check into it use(d) mixed tocopherols, including two of the biggest proponents in the business (J.I. Rodale and Roy Erickson) because their (often debilitating) persistent angina disappeared in days, weeks, or at lower dosages, years (YMMV). Although Rodale died of heart failure under stress, it was several standard deviations later than his father and siblings with apparently a higher quality of life. Erickson, obviously came to have a vested interest too with his highly specialized, mixed tocopherol line in the early 60s but claimed satisfaction for another 40+ years. I have never seen the kind of follow up that I think incisive medical/scientific investigators should given their focus on -yl esters and it is well nigh impossible for the small operators to do it credibly. I think you will see a lot of open skepticism from both sides, of both sides, until proper -ol & isomers trials are *finally* laid on the table.--69.178.41.55 02:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Orthomolecular comments from above, continued

We would agree that the conventional medical view is briefly notable, partly as a fair warning. Conventional med does (should) not control the representation & definition of a subject (as you seek) that it studiously knows little about. There are simple, crucial orthomed experiments awaiting conventional, authoritative replication for almost 60 years that were simply ignored despite repeated confirmations - but as of 2005 things seem to be rewarming - give it another 10 years for glasnost! Use of "quackery" and "pseudoscience" on orthomed is erroneous and are violent pejoratives that will be taken to scientific task. Instead of playing the lottery, hoping for an orthomed pox, the decent thing to do is to withdraw the RfArb, which should not be there in the first place. Otherwise I am necessarily on defense, and that will be pointed.69.178.41.55 03:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Pauling's definition

Pauling defined OM as the use of any molecule normally present in the human body. This would include application of supplementary amounts of normal human metabolites, not just those found in nutrition. Should this be included more specifically in the article? Lumos3 08:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Did anybody say that "This would include application of supplementary amounts of normal human metabolites, not just those found in nutrition." or do you just assume that from the Pauling's definition? If its you assumption, then the answer is no per WP:NOR. If it's something you can find written somewhere, why not include? ackoz 08:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Here is the definition
Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." or as "the preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present in the body". He sometimes appended "and are required for health"
The key word is "optimum" -- if the optimum has to be supplied in supplements, so be it. --Michael C. Price 07:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Ackoz, a simple, accurate intrepretation of a direct statement in the English language is not WP:NOR. FYI, Linus Pauling Institute's statement on orthomed definition. Lumos, since Ackoz didn't catch it correctly, tersely improving sentences may be a good idea. But the article is starting to bloat with both pro & con, and we need to control bloat. One thing I would like to clean up is the list of orthomed docs, both for format (would like to use about 5 names per line - neatly, evenly spaced), and priority, i.e. Dettman is really an indirect link from Kalokerinos and not primary to this article (sorry, John).--69.178.41.55 11:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

RfArb

We would end up in edit warring here, so I posted the case to RfArb. ackoz 10:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Guys

I am not here to spend two hours each day polemizing with your arguments. There must be plenty of them because you love the subject so much. I really don't care (don't take it hard .. there's really no personal hatred in this) about your ideas about Orthomed .. you are not important. Please dont whine at the RfArb page about my ignorance to your comments. I don't care about your arguments. I do care about the sources you use. Governmental public health agency= valid. Orthomed central website ~ well anyone can say I'm a god and put up a website and then write something on wikipedia, right? Why are there no "external" sources for your statements? And I don't "explode", 69. ackoz 02:42, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Last time I was in Russia (90s), blind arguments for government agencies' insight and veracity did not seem to carry too authoritative weight w/o the authoritarian part. Also, some of BC CAC's assertions have been outright impeached or superceded by US Nat'l Academy of Sciences & NIH within the past 2 years (finally after 40-50 yrs of blinding bs!), provincial BC-CAC is behind the times, even in mainstream science. Every other conventional medical editor that I have corresponded with here has recognized and honored SPOV with relevant sources, sometimes a discussion. This orthomolecular article (talk) previously covered the issue that infinitely long specific argumentation in the article is counterproductive, and orthmed is not just anybody (Nobel laureates, separate MD+PhDs, large university department heads & founders, large pharma research heads, very conventionally successful lifelong researchers). InvictaHOG tacitly agreed, "...practice needs to be described as part of making an encyclopedia..." is a reasonable scope for the orthomed article as a knowledgeable description with pertinent references. In fact please reread 'HOG's answer, my interpretation was "take a deep breath, realize you won't agree with everything at Misplaced Pages, and carefully consider the optimum selection of articles for your time, expertise, contribution and enjoyment" If the orthomed article so as much as detectably, or even questionably, errs, I am sure there are at least six pairs of eyes ready, willing and eager to quickly set it straight again, HMS' InvictaHOG included (his watchlist admission & previous edit interests too).--69.178.41.55 04:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. ackoz 11:07, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Lumos3, I said two three randomized controlled trials, by different teams, different authors. Where are they? If you really understand the concepts of scientific debate, you know, that one study or a series of studies from one author or one author team does not prove anything. I can give you two three (at least) articles from various authors with studies that prove that Pauling was wrong. Plus I can give you the current valid guidelines for common cold (or better cancer) treatment, that would prove that megavitamin therapy is not accepted as a majority view. You want that here? ackoz 16:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Basically, the conventional cancer crowd's "refutation" of Pauling is based on the frequently quoted, bogus Mayo-Moertel studies (they simply failed to even replicate a low end administration of the IV ascorbate of at least 10 gram per day of ascorbate, among many problems, much less try the 30-300 grams/day regimes if they were to legitimately try to repudiate vitamin in the general sense). NIH, NCI, ACS have the money, they have been abrogating their duties to run the proper trials for decades. The two papers below, simply acknowledge that as an "oversight" when in reality the conventional medical "expert" critics have been pummeled.
Ultimately, science is a process with varying degrees of evidence. Never mind the double blind RCT, conventional critcs have had nothing, zilch, nada to factually contest with on high dose intravenous vitamin C for years, and now they do. Guess what? - Pauling et al seem to be plausible again despite the smear campaign, can't dodge it any more, IV vitamin C needs more testing. Oh, dear!
As for the mainstream view, the primary statement is that mainstream medicine does not accept orthomolecular medicine (already stated at length in "Relationship to conventional medicine"). Perhaps minor elaboration, perhaps including the orthodoxy defenders' absolute dearth of relevant test data could extend a sentence. Your presupposed test data just are not there, the mainstream view happens to be truly baseless opinion or superstition. (show me *any* published conventional medical test using 50-100 grams of oral vitamin C much less closely titrated bowel tolerance or IV vitamin C) Orthomed's data may not always be multiple, fully bought and paid for dbRCT but there is real scientific evidence (often classed at a lower priority), more than you have. The article is a simple description of orthomolecular medicine, quit trying to hijack it and malign it with the fatuous, counterfactual dogma parts. That there are scientific disputes is long noted and described, laid out at length in talk for the morbidly curious but is totally non encyclopedic for ordinary readers.--69.178.41.55 21:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I think I heard about vit. C in this context, but what has IV Ascorbic acid to do with optimum nutrition aka orthomolecular medicine? Are you familiar with the meaning of IV'?? If the orthomolecular medicine is what the intro paragraph of the article says, this study has nothing to do with orthomolecular medicine. ackoz 15:55, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Once again you are showing how little you know about the main subject, orthomolecular medicine. Please READ the bibliographic references, several are by the generally known authors that DEFINE this subject, not your opinion or desires. One of orthomolecular medicine's longest and greatest unresolved controversies IS intravenous vitamin C, simply because no conventional authority has deigned to repeat or test IV vit C for over 57 years!!!!!--69.178.41.55 21:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Plus, before you start beating me with "intravenous nutrition", you can have a nutritient and use him as a drug. Ascorbic acid is a simple chemical, and the articles you provided clearly state that in this case, the vitamin is used as a medicament, not a nutrition component. ackoz 16:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Your point here is about the range of "optimum nutrition" as to whether to include therapeutic nutrition in life's time varying optima as synonymous with OM, *not* limiting orthomolecular medicine. Even if you were to restrict "optimum nutrition" to a "preventative nutrition" role, the sentence affected would be the first, "OM or optimum nutrition..." would become "OM and optimum...". Although the article doesn't emphasize it, rectal feeding and transdermal delivery are included...in conventional medicine, too.--69.178.41.55 21:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

69

Read WP:NPOV, please. Orthomolecular medicine is a minority viewpoint. There is no reason why the articles about vitamins should be filled with orthomolecular theories. If you want, you can surely add a small section to the article, describing the orthomed POV, but don't add pieces of this to every section of an article, pretty please, respect the NPOV policy. ackoz 16:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

We are only talking here about OM not all articles on vitamins. Please keep to the subject.Lumos3 21:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Ackoz, you repeatedly twist WP:NPOV to badger me. I write conventional subjects too. Orthomolecular medicine has conventional and alternative (unsettled science, not moonbeams) components. When I write, I often use conventional literature (e.g. Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, Krause's on nutrition, or Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine), just not all of it was in this week's pharma sales literature. I do write for conventional encyclopedic interest. Like at niacin, the conventional medicine, gold standard stuff that you cut out - ordinary prescription bounds & a maximum use amount warning - you are starting to border on physiologically dangerous, doctor. And so then you added in valuable text about ancient, small studies with unflinching praises for inositol hexanicotinate that have multiple questions about cholesterol treatment failures from *both* naturopathic & conventional doctors in the US, as well as your re-adding the less documented part about niacin for THC & bad LSD trips that Dr Wolffe previously criticized as "food for drugheads"??? Puhleeeeezzze.
Why don't you just stop harrassing me or is that part of your gratuitous, superquickie RfArb plan, too.--69.178.41.55 22:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I see the withdrawal, thank you. Going forward, the BC-CAC line really has factual conflicts. It might be better to either find a better informed, more precise source to portray the conventional medical view or just write it yourselves. As an example of improved factual balance, I give this as an example: "BC Cancer Agency of Canada has said of orthomolecular treatments: Many/most "Megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies are not authoritately proven methods; some are considered dangerous by some/many mainstream scientists. "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." (Cassileth) (that last sentence needs some kind of rewrite. Also suggest that we slow down a few days, or perhaps just concentrate on the "Criticism" part. I would like to get back toward a svelte article. Also this is a little duplicative on QW & part of the negative statements in "Relationship..." & "Criticsim"--69.178.41.55 00:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Criticism: "scientific research..."

"Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." Perhaps Cassileth meant something closer to "alternative medicine is no longer alternative when it is accepted conventionally". The statement, as is, is simply false. Since orthomolecular is a discipline that is not exclusive of conventional medicine, the same is not true for orthomolecular medicine. *Some* orthomolecular/megavitamin (and sometime conventional medicine) therapies with scientific research and clinical or epidemiologically demonstrated benefits:

B1 - neurological and alcohol related
B3 - anticholesterolemic
B9 - (folate) tissue issues
B6, B9, B12 - homocysteinuria
B12 - various neurological conditions and pernicious anemia
C - no official research (no find either) see previous above sections on developments at NIH, NAS
D - see vitamin D Council", immunity, SAD, cancer
K2 - Japanese research on osteoporosis and liver cancer with the menaquinone-4 vitamer
coQ10 - CHF

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.178.41.55 (talk • contribs)

RFC:Stop deleting the POV tag

This article is utterly biased, pushes the minority POV that this pseudoscience has any legitimacy, and fails to fully identify the severe criticisms of this terribly dangerous quackery. For examploe, the American Psychiatric Association called orthomolecular medicine a misnomer and "deplorable." "The Research Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health reviewed pertinent scientific data through 1979 and agreed that megavitamin therapy was ineffective and could be harmful." -- 70.232.110.230 19:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't be absurd, the mainsteam POV is mentioned many times. --Michael C. Price 21:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The article focuses on the minority viewpoint, and critical information about the degree to which mainstream science rejects OM has been repeatedly deleted. WP:LEAD and WP:NPOV are violated. -- Cri du canard 23:29, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Since OM is the subject of the article and it is a minority viewpoint then of course it "focuses on the minority viewpoint". What is your problem with that?? And as I said earlier there are plenty of mentions of the mainstream view in the article as well. --Michael C. Price 23:55, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

My problem with that is that you're arguing that this article should be a POV-fork, which would violate WP:NPOV. Per WP:LEAD, the lead paragraph should emphasize the mainstream view that this is unsubstantiated pseudoscience, and then the minority viewpoint. Instead, the entire article is centered around the minority viewpoint. "Mentions" of the mainstream viewpoint are insufficient. There should be balance. Instead, all mainstream views are summarily deleted from the article. -- Cri du canard 01:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting a POV-fork, and if you'd stop listening to just the sound of your own voice you'd realise I'm not suggesting this either. Your use of the term "unsubstantiated pseudoscience" indicates that you are not capable of a NPOV. --Michael C. Price 12:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
"...unsubstantiated pseudoscience..." That "pseudoscience" bit is a naked pejorative and provocation. Several editors, gratifyingly new to me, have attempted to make several serious points with your misusage. Adequate substantiation has been an ongoing scientific debate for decades, prejudically contaminated by literally trillion dollar ( p.a.) conflicts of interest. The material that you are quoting is polemical, limited and dated. Scientific and clinical substantiation is being addressed molecule by specific molecule in orthomed circles despite literal persecution and very limited resources. More recently, even the "mainstream" is *starting* to reduce the competitve hijinks in testing and analyses but the anti-scientific attitude parading as "Science" only slowly disappears, mostly at the cemetery. You are proving your POV to us alright.--69.178.41.55 02:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
btw, even this very critical, conventionally oriented editor recognized the merit in orthomed's structure & presentation "...(like the approach at Orthomolecular medicine#Relation to conventional medicine)...Tearlach" and I promise you, we are not special friends.--69.178.41.55 02:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
see also this discussion at Talk:Megavitamin therapy & List_of_ps...

Sir: I have a POV, albeit one that corresponds to what major medical organizations say about OM. The problem here is that you have a POV, and won't let anyone implement NPOV policy by correcting the POV bias of the page as it currently exists. -- 70.232.110.230 11:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC) / User:Cri du canard

No, the problem here is that you do not understand what is meant by OM, as indicated by your dismissal of supportive dietary studies which indicate a near fivefold reduction of colon cancer at long term intakes above the RDA of folic acid. --Michael C. Price 12:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
BTW User:Cri du canard the refs for the above claim are here. --Michael C. Price 20:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually I am pretty easy when shown some hard facts to analyze. Perhaps 70.232... could link a few of those "major medical organization" quotes here for a quick review. Unfortunately I have to deal with various forms of hearsay from people who often confuse factually unfounded criticisms, various terms and practices like altmed, CAM, homeopathy, naturopathy, ad infinitum with orthomed, served with a large helping of various 'tudes and a total dearth of familiarity of the orthomed literature.--69.178.41.55 14:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I left the references already. They keep getting deleted. -- Cri du canard 16:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
(1) You are billboarding a polemical position (QW) that is relatively lengthy to the OM summary, (2) this particular ref & debate actually belongs more at Orthomolecular psych where the mental measurement part is also part of the issue, (3) the particular study has similar problems of strong bias (e.g. specific defects conveniently ignored) that certainly fails the replication part - where the much higher profile and better documentable, higher stature Pauling situation with conventional medicine's multiple mishandling of vitamin C test has taken a generation to float to surface (the APA reference you have shown was noted as scientifically defective but "wins" on a "consenus" basis - a form of lynching but Orthomolecular continues to accrue favorable fundamental studies simlar to the way IV vitamin C for cancer has for 20+ yrs, but slower).
I would honestly suggest taking this part to orthomed psych in the body, the APA debacle doesn't do anything for traditionally "non mental" ailments more conceived by this article (and readers) even though theoretically orthomed psych is certainly part of OM, they cover topical ground fairly independently and the OM article is a brief *general* overview. Our approach since January is to largely cover detailed material in the specific relevant article. Your discussion would have more "room" there as well as a better fit to the body of the article. I think the APA report is a "good" (ahem, I disagree with its methodology as biased), notable reference there but not here. Other notable scientists have long noted their dissatifaction with conv'l psych, too. Hoffer's situation is really a protoscience flying into a political maelstorm, and is much earlier in the learning / demonstration curve whereas OM is actually getting a lot of scientific confirmation starting to overturn the conventional RDA "wisdom". Note that I am trying not to bludgeon you on these issues, you are new to the thought that OM is a serious science approach and I would prefer that you try to analyze it again with the information here at talk and the article links/refs given. So the part you consider factual I will recommend Orthomolecular psych, and I think you will find that has more space accomodation although fair warning it is not just a free shot, the nature on the contest could be better aired. So I will ask you to honor the sect POV sign in "controversy..." and remove the banner (disputed) sign. You are still treating us as lightweights, delusional or worse, - I hope that you will take time to study the prior discussions here at Talk to formulate questions that we might answer usefully. I am moving your insertion to the intro to "Orthomolecular Psychiatry" article. Hopefully you will find this a reasonable, more favorable approach. Thank you.--69.178.41.55 18:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

List of pseudoscientific theories

Some ignorant folks are trying to restore OM to the the List of pseudoscientific theories. Please help to prevent this. --Michael C. Price 19:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It belongs there. It's Pauling's folly. -- Fyslee 19:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see the above discussion with a former Misplaced Pages editor. Notice the links to 2005-2006 articles by the National Inst of Health and Proc of the National Academy of Sciences. Or try this Hemilä H., "Do vitamins C and E affect respiratory infections?" Univ. of Helsinki, Dissertation, Faculty of Medicine, Dept. of Public Health. 2006.. "uuhhhh, gee Mr. Pauling, gosh, we honestly didn't notice..." comes to mind.--69.178.41.55 22:52, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
OM is more than Pauling's beliefs. Do you really think that no micronutrient (e.g. selenium, magnesium, etc) can be of benefit? --Michael C. Price 19:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Of course not. There are situations where they can be necessary. There just isn't any good evidence for the more extravagant claims made by OM. It's fringe science at best, and usually quackery. It is nearly always accompanied by belief in and the pushing of weird and unscientific ideas and practices by the doctors who practice it. Being fringe doctors, they fall for weird ideas. -- Fyslee 20:35, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Are these claims (from OM page) so extravagent or "fringe science at best":
Orthomolecular medicine focuses on the role of proper nutrition in relation to health. Optimum nutrition asserts that many typical diets are insufficient for long term health.
--Michael C. Price 20:46, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
No, not really. The use of the word "assertion" makes the quote accurate. It's an assertion, and properly understood ("typical" being junk food) it's also true. The solution is proper nutrition, not pandering to the pharmaceutical industry's nutritional supplements. While supplementation has its role in the treatment of severe cases, it's not the best solution for normal people or for fringe cases. A varied and balanced diet provides more than enough for good health. Pills and potions may have their role in rare cases, but they shouldn't be considered the source of health, as many orthomolecular physicians' method of practice gets people to believe. I'm always suspicious when a practitioner just "happens" to sell the remedy they diagnose as necessary. Fortunately MDs aren't normally allowed to do this, and they don't get a percentage of all prescriptions for the medicines they prescribe. -- Fyslee 20:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Your assertion that "A varied and balanced diet provides more than enough for good health." is contradicted by many studies. --Michael C. Price 21:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
If that is all Orthomolecular medicine claims, then how is it different then normal nutritional science? Why does it need a seperate name? If that's all you believe, become a nutritionalist, certainly you won't find any opposition to your beliefs. Orthomolecular medicine makes itself distinct by making claims like "Nutrition should be the first step to finding a cure to any disease" or "1000% vitamin C intake can help cure cancer" Claims not based on any scientific studies. When a field claims to be science but isn't backed up by any scientific evidence, we call these fields "pseudo-scientific". Making SOME accurate claims is a typical technique of pseudoscience, cults, ect. CaptainManacles 20:58, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
I find your claim that "become a nutritionalist, certainly you won't find any opposition to your beliefs." detached from reality. --Michael C. Price 21:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


OK, that's enough. I don't see any evidence whatsoever presented that this topic is pseudoscience. It was intitated by a two-time Nobel prize-winner, and is subscribed by by a variety of MD's and nutritionists. There's a long track-record of publications in premier journals such as Science and Nature. None of this is the hallmark of pseudoscience, which are usually wacky theories advanced by individuals who have no formal education or training in science, theoreies that lack published articles in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, much less the leading journals. linas 22:36, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Many pseudo-sciences are practiced by a variety of otherwise profesional people. Tellington touch is a prime example. Many many hospitals have a variety of alternative care options, as long as they do no harm, they figure it couldn't hurt. Regardless, these still remain pseudo-science, as they have not been scientifically shown to work, and many have been shown to quite clearly not work. Make me eat my hat, show me replicated scientific double-blind studies. Right now, the "references" provided to prove Orthomolecular medicine is a science is two links to a commercial Orthomolecular page that doesn't cite any studies. CaptainManacles 06:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
A few notes: (1) the orthomed & megavitamin articles are brief overviews constructed to describe, to provide quality orthomed sources, and *to try* to make comprehensible what the subject is generally about because so few even know what orthomed is basically about, not to "prove" the individual therapies; (2) if you drill into to the reference links you can find thousands of scientific references ( e.g.RJ Williams, U Tx Biochemical Institute founder, L Pauling, of course) and hundreds of peer reviewed orthomed articles JOM. Except for his two books, the Saul site is studiously noncommercial, and almost all of what is in the books is on the site, so no commercial pressure. (3) The decision back in back in January was to dump endless argumentation about specific therapies as a hopeless article approach (~100 items???) and leave such detail to more specific, individual articles as they occur in Misplaced Pages. (4) the situation about dbRCT is laid out earlier in the OM talk page, way above in several places.--69.178.41.55 09:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

See relevant talk onTalk:List_of_pseudoscientific_theories#Orthomolecular_Medicine which I reproduce below:

Even the JAMA has come round on this:

Vitamins for chronic disease prevention in adults: clinical applications. Fletcher RH, Fairfield KM in JAMA 2002 Jun 19;287(23):3127-9 PMID: 12069676 “Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. Pending strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized trials, it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements..... We recommend that all adults take one multivitamin daily..... It is reasonable to consider a dose of 2 ordinary multivitamins daily in the elderly”

Vitamins for chronic disease prevention in adults: scientific review. Fairfield KM, Fletcher RH in JAMA 2002 Jun 19;287(23):3116-26 PMID: 12069675 “Although the clinical syndromes of vitamin deficiencies are unusual in Western societies, suboptimal vitamin status is not .”

--Michael C. Price 19:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Here're three studies on folic acid and colon cancer:

Multivitamin use, folate, and colon cancer in women in the Nurses' Health Study. Giovannucci E, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA, Hunter DJ, Fuchs C, Rosner BA, Speizer FE, Willett WC in Ann Intern Med 1998 Oct 1;129(7):517-24 PMID: 9758570 Long-term use (>15 years) of folate-containing multivitamin supplements produced an almost 5-fold reduction in the incidence of colon cancer. Other cancers not analysed. The protective effect (relative to age-matched controls) increased with the duration of supplementation. The relative risk of colon cancer over the period 1980-1994 (against folate intake in 1980, without adjusting for other vitamins) was: 1.0 (<= 200 ug/d), 0.92 (201-300 ug/d), 0.79 (301-400 ug/d) & 0.69 (>400 ug/d). This risk declined with time: comparing the >400 with the <=200 folate ug/d group the risk declined from 0.85 (1980-mid1988) to 0.56 (mid1988-1994). Amongst multivitamin users (pooling all folate categories) the risk declined with duration of use: 1.02 (4 years use), 0.83 (5-9yrs), 0.80 (10-14 yrs) & 0.25 (15+ yrs). Women who had 15+ years of multivitamin use and >300 ug/d energy-adjusted folate (in 1980) had a RR of only 0.22 compared with users with <15 years multivitamin use and 201-300 ug/d (>RDA) of energy-adjusted folate. FDA regulations forbad the use of 400ug of folate in multivitamin supplements prior to 1973, which limited the ability for a longer -term follow-up. The study abstract concludes: “Long-term use of multivitamins may substantially reduce risk for colon cancer. This effect may be related to the folic acid contained in multivitamins.”

Are dietary factors involved in DNA methylation associated with colon cancer? Slattery ML, Schaffer D, Edwards SL, Ma KN, Potter JD in Nutr Cancer 1997;28(1):52-62 PMID: 9200151 “We did not observe strong independent associations between folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, methionine, or alcohol and risk of colon cancer after adjusting for body size, physical activity, cigarette smoking patterns, energy intake, and dietary intake of fiber and calcium. However, when assessing the associations between colon cancer and a composite dietary profile based on alcohol intake, methionine, folate, vitamin B12, and vitamin B6, we observed a trend of increasing risk as one moved from a low- to a high-risk group”

Dietary intake of folic acid and colorectal cancer risk in a cohort of women. Terry P, Jain M, Miller AB, Howe GR, Rohan TE in Int J Cancer 2002 Feb 20;97(6):864-7 PMID: 11857369 “Folate is crucial for normal DNA methylation, synthesis and repair, and deficiency of this nutrient is hypothesized to lead to cancer through disruption of these processes. There is some evidence to suggest that relatively high dietary folate intake might be associated with reduced colorectal cancer risk, especially among individuals with low methionine intake. Folate intake was inversely associated with colorectal cancer risk (IRR = 0.6, 95% CI = 0.4-1.1, p for trend = 0.25). The inverse association was essentially similar among individuals with low and high methionine intake, and was similar for colon and rectal cancers when those endpoints were analyzed separately. Among individuals with low methionine intake, folate intake did not appear to lower the risk of rectal cancer, a finding that may be due, in part, to the low number of cases in the subgroup analysis. Overall, our data lend some support to the hypothesis that high folate intake is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer. Copyright 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.” --Michael C. Price 19:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


"It's good to take the USRDA of vitamins" (which I agree with) is not ortho's claim that "Vitamins can cure almost every disease." I don't agree with your attempt to bait and switch legitimate medicine with the claims of orthomolecular medicine.
Hardly bait and switch. BTW the nurses were getting more than the RDA. OM does not claim that "Vitamins can cure almost every disease." It is about prevention much more than cure. Reread the opening of OM:
Optimum nutrition and, most broadly, orthomolecular medicine emphasize the use of natural substances found in a healthy diet such as vitamins, dietary minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, amino acids, essential fatty acids, dietary fiber and intestinal short chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the prevention and treatment of diseases. Orthomolecular medicine focuses on the role of proper nutrition in relation to health. Optimum nutrition asserts that many typical diets are insufficient for long term health. Nutrition comes first in orthomolecular medical diagnoses and treatment, drug treatment is used only for specific indications.
Sadly, I'm not surpised that being presented with evidence doesn't change your POV. --Michael C. Price 20:35, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
This isn't just "my" POV. It's the POV of the NIMH, the APA, the AAP, the AMA, etc., etc. Citing mainstream articles on vitamin research doesn't move the quackery that orthomolecular medicine espouses out of the pseudoscience category. Fletcher and Fairfield are not orthomolecular scientists. The people who are identified as orthomolecular scientists on the orthomolecular science page are known for pushing unsubstantiated claims. You haven't refuted a single sentence from a single one of the multiple sources I identified. Instead, you're burying the talk page in irrelevancies that have nothing to do with why orthomolecular medicine is considered pseudoscience. -- Cri du canard 23:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Your approach is twisted. If I cite orthomolecular sources they are derided as self-serving. If I quote mainstream sources I'm told they "doesn't move the quackery that orthomolecular medicine espouses". So what sort of "evidence" are you after? Sounds like the stuff that you agree with and nothing else. As for "burying the talk page in irrelevancies" the OM article starts by stating that optimum nutrition is a subset of OM, therefore any nutritional studies are relevant by definition. --Michael C. Price 23:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Violation of WP:NPOV

From the Misplaced Pages FAQ:

Pseudoscience
How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?
If we're going to represent the sum total of human knowledge, then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
Pseudoscience can be seen as a social phenomenon and therefore significant. However, pseudoscience should not obfuscate the description of the main views, and any mention should be proportional to the rest of the article.

The article as it currently stands fails to comply with NPOV. This is why I've added the tag, and why it should remain until the problem is fixed. -- Cri du canard 18:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

You simply don't get it, do you? OM was removed from the pseudoscience list because it isn't pseudoscience. OM is a minority viewpoint and as such it should be described without having your POV pushed all over it. It already has plenty of NPOV references to the medical mainstream in it. --Michael C. Price 19:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Holy cow. You removed OM from the pseudoscience list. That's why it was removed. -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
While we are on fact checking, I (69.178) performed the first removal of OM, at least on that week. & --69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Bullshit. It was removed by Linas and locked to protect from vandals like you. Thanks for that.  :-) --Michael C. Price 20:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I object to your violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF, since including well-sourced text that was improperly deleted is not "vandalism." I also object to your attempting to mislead people. Here is MichaelCPrice removing OM from the pseudoscience article, even though its inclusion was documented by multiple sources. He falsely labeled the reversion as "restore vandalized text." Mediators: see the problem I have to deal with here? -- Cri du canard 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Ever heard of the "whole truth"? That would also include Linas' statement that he removed it and the list was subsequently protected (by the powers that be) to prevent its non-consensual reinsertion. --Michael C. Price 20:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
The whole truth would also involve pointing out that you used the same edit summary text that you found so objectionable when I used it. Some people would call that hypocrisy. --Michael C. Price 20:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I have tried to create initiatives for discussing & including any notable, proportionate parts in Orthomed psych & Multivitamin. I highly recommend that Cri du canard read my edits and talk discussions carefully, and consider his responses for editorial balance carefully. The "pseudoscience" part has been shown to be unaccepted with the most minimal effort, since it doesn't have a leg to stand on. So far, I have avoided hammering it which is a patience item where such unfounded disparagement is a naked provocation. Even the casual readers without much effort have clearly agreed, OM is NOT p*s*. Time to move forward.--69.178.41.55 19:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
BTW 69.178.41.55, I need to discuss strategy with you. Please create a user account and a talk page.... --Michael C. Price 20:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
69 repeatedly refuses to acknowledge the multiple sources calling OM pseudoscience. Not much I can do about that. He doesn't get to monopolize this article through persistently deleting legitimate points of view that identify OM as pseudoscience. Rather than adopt 69 and MCP's edit-war tactics, I'll wait for the mediation cabal to get to this in a couple of weeks. -- Cri du canard 19:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I have hung back on instant deletion of your edits trying to allow growth & sculpt. Misplaced Pages is an attempt to present encyclopedic, scholarly material. At some points in these articles, facts collide with opinions, and sometimes scurrilous bilge. Now I've tolerated your tirade about pseudoscience to give you a chance to readjust to the light (the prime attack-on-orthomed examples usually center around Pauling and vitamin C, where science ca 2005-2006 is beginning to home to roost...for Pauling, which obsoletes most of your references), QW's "niacin for schizo" attack has its problems but is far less "rapid" in recovery, it is a slow climb back from being pilloried by economic competitors. As far as your sweeping "pseudo-" epitets they are meant as disparaging distraction rather than accurate stmts about a subject. You are simply billboarding ignorant negative 'tudes in a destructive manner rather than any kind of scholarly or respectful treatment. Again I'm extending an approach (especially at orthomolecular psych) to try to properly develop your point, but you need to watch the omnipotent feeling when your references are so thin (dated, inaccurate POV pushing of groups with economic conflicts of interest).--69.178.41.55 21:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Your opinion is that OM has any basis in reality. I disagree with this POV, but I acknowledge that NPOV requires that your minority viewpoint be included in the article. However, as your preceding paragraph demonstrates, you have no intention of permitting the article to adhere to NPOV. I will thus wait for the mediators to help resolve this problem, as I see several people before me have attempted to reason with you about NPOV and have failed to get you to compromise. -- Cri du canard 22:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I have tackled the worst of the error contained in that massive, unlabeled broadside with extensive notes to explain each part. I have repeatedly tried to point out that much of your material pertains to Orthomolecular psychiatry. The effect of what you are doing is overburdening the article and reader with largely argumentative detail that should go to more specific articles.--TheNautilus 03:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Now I am going to take a breather on that broadside and let others comment on the ad hominen aspects of "cult" in that old AAP quote (what do they say now?).--TheNautilus 03:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmmmm, I see I made an error on the "repetitious" edit note where material was moved from Intro to History, as a new section, so I apologize about that and ask for comments/suggestions about this change in format. Anyone else?--TheNautilus 03:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Orthomolecular "cure" for autism

Here's a quack claiming an orthomolecular cure for autism, notwithstanding Nautilis's claim that OM doesn't make these claims because of FDA regulations. I'm restoring the text. -- Cri du canard 05:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, read the article. He says "...As a homeopathic physician...". So he has co-opted some orthomed protocols, good - maybe he perceives that his practice needs some orthomed reinforcement but that is somewhat different than a pure orthomed. You are just itching to slather vitriol and abuse on these poor pages.--TheNautilus 05:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Can you try to discuss your changes first? You are dumping POV, casting blame where there is *plenty* to share conventionally and misattributing positions at warp speed and, frankly, trashing the page. Oh, I guess that's the point.--TheNautilus 06:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I did discuss my changes. As the talk page shows, discussing changes hasn't stopped you from unilaterally removing POV tags or reverting edits. Your repeated violations of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF mean that I do not wish to discuss this further without a mediator. -- Cri du canard 12:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Your double-standard is exhibited by the fact that TheNautilus is the one who deleted the Linus Pauling discussion (without discussing it on the talk page), and then MichaelCPrice reverted several editors' edits (including new information and cites) without discussing it on the talk page. -- Cri du canard 12:30, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I have a lot of relevant discussions on the Talk page. You are apparently not reading or understanding them. Your edits & actions are perceived as hopeless, counterfactual POV and tiresome vandalism.--TheNautilus 17:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, this is a content dispute about how best to achieve a NPOV. Describing other editors as hopeless or vandals isn't very constructive. Addhoc 18:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree that my edits are counterfactual, but it's pointless to have a debate about whose view of OM is accurate because the standard for Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth. The WP:NPOV rules permit you to include a variety of propositions in the article that I view as counterfactual. They do not permit you to persistently delete verifiable NPOV information that you disagree with, nor do they permit you to section-fork the mainstream-medical viewpoint into a side section (see WP:LEAD and WP:NPOVFAQ; see also WP:V). -- Cri du canard 18:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
This gets back to the SPOV priority issues which I have discussed a little at your talk page. Other editors, MD & DO, have been more amenable to reason and current science basis to order or even (how to or not) mention various obsolete positions in the articles if they are no longer current facts rather than media drilled opinions (literally for decades). Lawyering over the edits has usually been avoided by informed, scientifically literate editors surfacing issues and resolving them in a fairminded way as an informal SPOV in the spirit of building an encyclopedia with better information content. You are busy chopping out the references to information that verifies the introductory description of orthomed - chopping out definitional self-statements of orthomed, and I don't see conventional medical literature that accurately describes orthomed. In fact the strawman ploy has worked on vitamin C to various degrees for 70 years (Jungeblut 1935, 1937 - 400mg/kg C is interesting for polio treatment, Sabin (wannabe vaccine hero) - 100 mg/kg with even more virulent innoculation methods - C doesn't work, therefore vitamin C doesn't work ever. (uhhhhh, wait isn't there something missing?) And Dr Klenner is quack because he reports his IM / IV use, 1000 - 2400 mg/kg vit C per day, for 60 cases is successful but will never be officially tested, ever, despite trying for two decades) You still need to improve your edits here, the article has made slight progress on a few sentences but is going seriously retrograde in paragraphs. There are cites where needed unless you already chopped them out. You still fail to recognize the priority and POV issues where your "authority" is a persecutorial, economically competing if not domineering POV, with in a number cases, demonstrably anti-scientific (deliberately ignoring pertinent evidence and false or misrepresented tests).--TheNautilus 02:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

counterfactual POV, article trashing

Since orthomolecular medicine was summarily removed from "Pseudo..." and *not* allowed to return there, courtesy of multiple editors, the orthomolecular medicine related pages (e.g. Megavitamin therapy too) have been under determined attack by individuals bent on poisoning the orthomed article, removing scientific current & accurate treatment of issues and injecting them with the seriously dated & unbalanced POV of a notorious & scurrilous series of sites that appeal to the prejudices of certain groups & individuals that also involve documented conflicts of interest. Some issues & history that are specific to orthomolecular psychiatry are being debated here and should be there, but are being dumped in as long one sided POV to a more general article. The refusal to examine current scientific evidence is literally unscientific and is a form of trying to avoid verification. Other longtime Wiki editors, uninvolved here or in orthomed or even alt med, have referred to these "new" individuals' actions as "crankiness". I respectfully request those individuals to temper their edits.--TheNautilus 17:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:AGF and abide by it. All I want is for the page to conform to WP:NPOV. I recognize that you find a neutral view of orthomolecular medicine problematic, but that's because the majority of doctors disagree with your claims. Your persistent attacks on Quackwatch are ironic, given the fact that Quackwatch is relying on the statements and publications of major medical societies, and the main source for your version of the article is the far-from-credible or neutral or unbiased "orthomed.org". -- Cri du canard 18:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
A number of editors, including non-orthomeds, don't exactly agree with your view of WP:NPOV. Pls see also our conversation at about POV and reference priority. You POV contains a subset of "allopathic" POV that has other strident anti-anything elements in it. As long as you keep trotting that "ps" abuse & other confuted or scurrilous labels out when you have had the science part & background explained, as well as you've encountered a similar consensus elsewhere, AGF becomes delicate situation by demonstration. I don't feel you have treated the orthomed supporters with AGF. Nor do you honor the fairness or sensationalism parts in NPOV either. Orthomed is a relevant source that describes itself and does contain a large number of direct, appropriate scientific references. In other places, I have hammered "alt med" misused scientific sources hard, so pls re-examine WP:AGF yourself, too. Let me be clear, some of the edits I am unhappy with are likely to be considered disruptive or disparaging upon any careful retrospective review. Your use of the rules is pretty impressive for a newcomer, about good enough to rise to wikilawyering. Me? I aim for a quality, encyclopedic article.--TheNautilus 22:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
You have yet to identify anything I've said or did that contradicts the official NPOV policy, so I fail to see why it matters whether others agree with my "view of NPOV." The record will reflect that your edits consistently violated NPOV, and that you've repeatedly attempted to prevent others from evaluating the POV of the page by deleting the POV tag when the identified POV problems with this page have not been resolved. -- Cri du canard 22:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Tyrell Dueck text deleted?

The deleted text read as follows:

In one notorious Canadian case, 13-year-old cancer patient Tyrell Dueck's chemotherapy treatment was delayed, perhaps fatally, because his parents were swayed by claims of orthomolecular cures for cancer.

The case got a lot of publicity in Canada, and is an example of the dangers of orthomolecular claims. The text meets WP:V and WP:CITE standards. Nautilus disagrees with the conclusions, but that's not a reason to delete the text from the criticism section of the article. The Dueck case is an example of criticism of orthomolecular medicine. Deletions such as this are an example of the problems with the POV of this page, and the difficulties I and other editors have in attempting to get the page to conform to WP:NPOV. --Cri du canard 18:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Could I suggest... "In a highly publicized Canadian case, the chemotherapy treatment of a 13-year-old cancer patient, Tyrell Dueck, was delayed, possibly fatally, because his parents were influenced by claims of orthomolecular cures for cancer." Addhoc 18:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I am alright with this compromise edit. -- Cri du canard 18:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
This case only reflects on the judgement of the parents, not on the validity of OM itself. Do we reject the validity of surgery because someone loses their life after delaying some other, non-surgical course of action? --Michael C. Price 19:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
If the surgery were rejected by every mainstream doctor as ineffective, but a persuasive charlatan snookered someone into undergoing the surgery, then the two cases would be analogous. Here, no legitimate doctor thought Dueck should have OM treatments instead of chemotherapy. It was because of pseudoscientific claims that had no basis in fact and misled the parents that Dueck's parents pursued OM treatment instead of legitimate treatment.
More importantly, your argument is misdirected. You don't dispute the underlying facts, or the fact that critics point to Dueck as an example of orthomolecular fraud, merely the validity of the criticism. That's not a reason to exclude the text, which meets Misplaced Pages standards as verifiable and notable. -- Cri du canard 19:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Michael, we are not members of a committee tasked with determining whether OM is a viable treatment method. We are merely reporting notable opinions in accord with WP:V and WP:NPOV. Addhoc 19:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
No problem with your last 2 paragraphs, but it's still a bad analogy. Not every mainstream doctor rejects all orthomolecular ideas. --Michael C. Price 19:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
The example is hopelessly one sided. This is not a good, pure case for any field or anything, other than deadlocked wrangling itself may be deadly. "...herbs, vitamins, laetrile..." doesn't sound exactly orthomolecular either - this would be "alt med" perhaps including *some* claimed orthomed related dosages of some (known?) vitamins. Whoop dee doo. Alt med would probably say the kid was denied / delayed full alt med treatments and mercilessly poisoned to boot as well. Also the article's scope is too brief and broad to even consider anything but the clearest cases (this is not even close) but any such example would really be excessive detail (how to balance, how many examples to allow, ad nauseum). There *are* megavitamin "miracle cases" too - just look at the Nat'l Academy of Sciences articles that are well documented.
The general sentence, "Many physicians express concern that megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies used solely as alternative treatments, if unsuccessful, may create dangerous delays in obtaining their conventional treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy for cancer." already attempts to cover this point in a neutral and balanced fashion. There are several vitamers *known* (described by the pharmas themselves) to kill cancer cells or stimulate the body's immune system/cancer defense. The pharmas are spending millions of dollars if not billions to attempt to derive new, patentable molecules that copy the natural strcutures & mechanism of action w/o adding *too much* systemic toxicity (I see a lot of patent activity). There has been no rush to do FDA style testing on these natural, relatively cheap (less than $10/day, perhaps $2-$3), non toxic vitamers as even adjuvant treatments either. Your tax dollars at work.--TheNautilus 19:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually the current sentence "Many physicians express concern that megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies used solely as alternative treatments, if unsuccessful, may create dangerous delays in obtaining their conventional treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy for cancer." is inaccurate, since that's not what physicians express concern over. It implies that "many physicians" think these treatments have a chance at success. Moreover, concrete examples showing that this is more than a hypothetical problem, are better than abstract vagueness, because it shows the real-world effects of orthomolecular claims.
As for your first paragraph, we are not members of a committee tasked with determining whether OM is a viable treatment method. We are merely reporting notable opinions in accord with WP:V and WP:NPOV. -- Cri du canard 19:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Individual concrete examples? Oh, you mean practical or dramatic orthomolecular examples, like the little old lady who takes mega B vitamins (e.g. B50, B100 with 11 components) so her functions improve and the persistent, "idiopathic" bloat of serious edema miraculously resolves in 1-2 weeks (say $0.40), after a hard year, *after* including an angiogram ($$$$), liver function tests ($$$) and kidney evaluations ($$$) stretching over many months by umpteen MD/specialists. Btw the useful cite came out of the 11th or 12th ed of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (ca 1980s-90), listed right after the preceeding organ descriptions (& tortures) - all in one page, but has since mysteriously disappeared in the 16th ed. The observers all thought it was idio- somebody alright! This is precisely what was factored out in January, it's endless and non-encyclopedic.--TheNautilus 22:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Could you give your opinion on the compromise edit... Addhoc 19:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I see the links provided state that the parents were infected with "right-wing, fundamentalist, faith-healing" views. Is it too much to suggest that this is what killed Tyrell, rather than Orthomolecular medicine. --Michael C. Price 20:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree the sentence could be clarified. Perhaps "Many physicians express concern that megavitamin and orthomolecular therapies used solely as alternative treatments by other practitioners, if unsuccessful, may create dangerous delays in obtaining their conventional treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy for cancer."--TheNautilus 22:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Mortality vs incidence material restored

I have just added some new, mainstream sourced material discriminating between the effects of various OM treatments on over-all mortality and cancer prevention; Cri du canard immediately deleted the discrimination and objected to the phrase "point out" as POV. Any medical scientist will tell you the importance of establishing that any treatment works on a specific condition AND lowers over-all mortality, to avoid situations where a treatment treats one condition at the cost of creating another adverse reaction. Please do not delete such relevant information. Further deletion of such basic facts will be regarded as vandalism which the mediators he has to appealed to here to will find interesting. Use of "point out" is not POV when the mainstream literature is being refered to. --Michael C. Price 12:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

"Some aspects of the discipline have support in scientific research" remains POV: (1) the claims are not orthomolecular claims, but are being claimed by the community; (2) the claims are far from universally accepted, and indeed, the majority viewpoint is that the matter remains unproven. -- Cri du canard 12:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
(1)Your claim of not "universally accepted" is rendered irrelevant by the use of "some". (2)The claims are OM since optimal nutrition is a subset of OM, as has been pointed out numerous times. Your edits are in bad faith and will be treated as such. --Michael C. Price 12:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Please do not threaten me. I'm citing legitimate sources. "Some" modifies "aspects" and doesn't solve the problem I describe. Michael, I'm tired of these wild goose chases. You keep citing papers to me, and they turn out to have nothing to do with orthomolecular medicine or "optimal nutrition"; the papers do not subscribe to or support the central principle that distinguishes ortho from legitimate medicine. -- Cri du canard 13:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Michael, accusations of bad faith aren't very helpful, this a content dispute and Cri du canard was clearly acting in good faith. Addhoc 13:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Look at what Cri du canard has just written: that my cites "have nothing to do with" optimal nutrition. Do you really believe that? Simply look at the study titles! How can someone continue to make statements that are simply contrary to the facts and not be regarded as editting in bad faith? --Michael C. Price 13:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but basicaly are we saying that where OM converges with traditional medicine it is well supported? If so is it even accurate to call that OM? Jefffire 13:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for phrasing that much better than I did. Though even the conventional claims about niacin and selenium remain controversial. -- Cri du canard 13:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Jefffire, you have it the wrong way around. OM has made claims for the benefits of greater than RDA amounts of various micronutrients for decades. Now traditional medicine is confirming some of those claims (and falsifying others). It's still OM, but now traditional medicine has expanded to overlap with some parts of it. --Michael C. Price 13:35, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
A typical pseudoscientific approach is for pseudoscientists to claim {wild claim A, wild claim B, wild claim C, minor claim D, not-E, not-F}, point to a paper that claims {weak D,E,F}, and then argue that the paper supports their pseudoscience. This is what's happening here--and "D" is far from unanimously agreed upon. (And the recommendation that maybe twice the amount of selenium may be beneficial when part of an everyday diet is far from the OM claim that 200x doses are needed.) The paper cites remain in the article, both viewpoints about what the papers mean are expressed, and readers can decide for themselves. That's all that NPOV is about. --Cri du canard 13:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Your claims of pseudoscience have been rejected at list of pseudosciences. You seem to to be the one making wild claims. I am simply trying to get studies cited in context of mortality vs incidence. Do you really claim that my cites have nothing to do with optimal nutrition? --Michael C. Price 13:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Citing to yourself doesn't persuade me that you're correct. Four other editors thought OM was pseudoscience, and the page-protection just happened to go up when your edit-war version was the most recent. The Canadian government says OM is pseudoscience, and so does the former head of NIH-OAM. -- Cri du canard 14:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
"just happened to go up" :-) --Michael C. Price 14:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Can we just clarify what is being discussed?

1. What exactly are the OM claims which are being made? 2. What exactly do these cites claim to show?

If 1 and 2 are not the same, then the cites are not valid. If the cites do not even mention OM, then the link is even more dubious. Jefffire 13:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

1. OM claims that all disease is the result of imbalanced biochemical processes from imperfect nutrition, and that nutritional supplements (sometimes several hundred times USRDA) are all that is needed to treat disease.
2. The cites from legitimate medical journals that I've looked at so far are studies showing reduced mortality and cancer for use of niacin, selenium, and folic acid within the range of normal diets, and don't mention OM.

-- Cri du canard 14:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

OM claims a number of things (see article). One is the claim that the incidence of some (not all as claimed by Cri du canard} diseases or degrees of ill-health can be avoided by optimising concentrations of some molecules (usually naturally occuring molecules derived from our diet). The cites show that our levels of some molecules/atoms (e.g. selenium, zinc, folate, NAD+ (derived from niacin)) are sub-optimal under today's present conditions/environment. The studies show that optimising these concentrations leads to lower rates of many cancers and over all mortality. Whether the studies mention OM is utterly irrelevant. No doubt if they did mention OM they would be derided as biased! --Michael C. Price 14:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that a bit like claiming that needing vitamin C to avoid scurvy is a part of OM? Jefffire 14:20, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

If most people suffered from scurvy, yes. But they don't. OM claims most people probably have sub-optimal levels of vitamin C, that's all. --Michael C. Price 14:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

This strikes me as a matter of semantics. I think my initial analysis was right, some areas of OM are identical to conventional medicine and it is these which are supported by evidence. Jefffire 14:27, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Your original contention was that such overlaps should not be considered OM. Why do you believe that? Or rather, can your provide a source for that statement? --Michael C. Price 14:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Again, this is just semantics. Is it astrology that moon and tides are correllated? Pehaps a better wording for the sentence in question would be "Some areas of OM are in agreement with conventional medicine" or some such. Jefffire 14:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Blatently false statements

This article currently contains a statement that is utterly, totally false. I am not deleting it because I'm already sick of the lunacy of this dispute.

"Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease."

Any disease? Really? Scurvy, anyone? We are now denying that vitamin C cures scurvy? Please put an end to this insanity. This will result in bans and blocks if it continues. linas 14:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Surely that's part of conventional medicine, rather than OM? Jefffire 14:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
That still doesn't address the any disease aspect. Also see my response at end of last section. --Michael C. Price 14:28, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Based on the very definition of OM, I would say that any statement along the lines of "Vitamins cure vitamin deficiency diseases" is a part of OM. In particular, this implies that many OM statements are in complete agreement with "conventional medicine", and vice-versa. linas 15:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The article starts with "Optimum nutrition and, most broadly, orthomolecular medicine is the term used by proponents to describe the controversial proposition that nutrition should be the primary means of prevention and treatment of diseases". If this isn't correct instead of threatening everyone with bans and blocks, could you alter this. In the context of the opening sentence, Jefffire's comments are reasonable. Addhoc 15:34, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll replace that POV statement with Pauling's original definition. Anyone object? --Michael C. Price 20:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey, this opening sentence was modified in the last few days. I beleive this opening sentence misrepresents what ortho med is. See new section below. linas 23:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Forgive me for not being an expert on this subject, what was Pauling's original definition? Addhoc 21:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's how it's going to be defined:
Linus Pauling, in 1968, first defined "orthomolecular" to express the "idea of the right molecules in the right amounts" and subsequently defined "orthomolecular medicine" as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." or as "the preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present in the body and are required for health."

(updated) --Michael C. Price 00:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The definition is not especially helpful. I'm replacing it with a much more concise dictionary definition, and moving the Pauling material (which is far too detailed for the lead paragraph, see WP:LEAD) to the Origins section. -- Cri du canard 07:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Woah! Orthomolecular medicine is not the same as alternative medicine

Rather, there's a big overlap between them. Alternative medicine is where, by definition, when something is proven scientifically, it gets coopted by orthodox medicine and is no longer alternative. That's not necessarily true for orthomolecular medicine. As for example treatment of scurvy with oranges and treatment of pernicious anemia with raw liver juice and treatment of pelegra with niacin and so on. It would extend to treatment of hypertriglyceridemia with pharmacological doses of nicotinic acid, even.

It seems to me that by definition, orthomolecular medicine is bound to contain many overlapping claims with orthodox medicine, particular claims relating to optimal nutrition and its impact on disease. In this sense, there's a great deal of overlap between OM and naturopathy, which isn't entirely an "alternative medicine". Some disciplines, like (say) homeopathy ARE entirely alternative, with no overlap between them and orthodox medicine (unless you count the placebo effect). But for both naturopathy and orthomolecular medicine, this is not the case, so we should be careful.

When I look at the ICU studies of critically ill patients, I see them supplemented with commerical formulas containing fish and borage oil, extra arginine, extra glutamate, lots of antioxidant vitamins at way over RDA/RDI, and all of it is supported by randomized studies of mortality and survival. All of this was alternative medicine 20 years go. Today it's orthodox medicine. But it continues to be now, and was when it started, orthomolecular medicine and naturopathy. See the difference? SBHarris 15:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Steve, for that injection of sanity. From the resounding silence that followed I think we can presume that many of the critics of OM were confusing (and no doubt will continue to confuse) OM with alternative medicine in general -- which does contain many pseudoscientific subcategories. See the list of pseudosciences for more details. --Michael C. Price 18:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I like the list! It is indeed a list of garbage. However, when it comes to orthomolecular and naturopathic hypotheses (which are generally not on here, I'm happy to see), there is nothing unphysical about them, a great deal that makes sense about them and which we DO accept in our normal lives (do we not put Miracle-Gro on our gardens??), and many of them which I've seen in my lifetime pass from alternative to mainstream, with further study. I mentioned fish-eating, and blueberries and so forth are close behind. So I look at naturopathy and orthomolecular as not garbage, but kind of a garage sale of junk hypotheses combined with undiscovered gems ala Antique Roadshow. It all deserves MUCH more respect from orthodoxy than the Energy Field quacks and the homeopaths and so on and so on. <g> Of course my own views are conditioned by years of feeding rodents different diets and watching them age at different rates. (Try doing THAT with an existent pharmaceutical). So I got a strong sense from that of how much there was we don't know, and the direction in which it probably lies. SBHarris 19:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Intro sentence appears to be false and incorrect.

The opening sentence of the article has been changed in the last few days to state that:

Optimum nutrition and, most broadly, orthomolecular medicine is the term used by proponents to describe the controversial proposition that nutrition should be the primary means of prevention and treatment of diseases. (ref) Orthomed.org Kunin Principles That Identify Orthormolecular Medicine: A Unique Medical Specialty - Richard A. Kunin, M.D. Accessed June 2006.

However, the reference given fails to support this claim of "primary means of prevention and treatment of diseases". I just could find no such claim, or even anything resembling it, in that reference. In fact, everything I've read so far about this topic has made no such claim. Indeed, if such a claim was made, I, too, would agree it was controversial, and I would dismiss this field of medicine as crackpottery and pseudoscience. However, I do not beleive this sentence is an accurate depiction of what orthomolecular medicine is about. linas 23:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, another piece of misinformation being spread around, especially the word "primary". I'll updating the article shortly. See the definition I've posted above. --Michael C. Price 00:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I am disturbed that the guy who is trying to paint the theory as pseudoscience later edits this article to make is sound like a nutty theory, and then claims, "ah ha, its a nutty theory". I don't think its rude or incivil to say that such an edit is a subtle form of vandalism.linas 00:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the detective work. I've placed a vandalism warning on his talk page. Let's hope he mends his ways. --Michael C. Price 01:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Everyone's accusation is false, and a violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. My edit consolidated several redundant statements of the definition of OM. The Kunin page says, and I quote, Orthomolecules come first in medical diagnosis and treatment, Nutrition comes first in medical diagnosis and treatment and our rallying point and badge-word must be "Orthomolecular", a landmark concept that conveys the genius of Dr. Pauling, who saw the need to resurrect nutrition and put it first, not last, in our science of health and disease. Oh, and how can I miss Hippocrates first rule was: "Primum non nocere," i.e. "first, do no harm". We in orthomolecular practice have less need for the primacy of that rule, for it is already implicit in the essence of Orthomolecular practice, which is: "put nutrition first". How is my edit a misrepresentation of that? Please look up the definition of vandalism: a content dispute is not vandalism. -- Cri du canard 03:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Cri du canard is making a basic category error. The existence of orthomolecular quacks does not make orthomolecular medicine quackery. Any more than the existence of quack medics (and there are plentry of course) makes mainstream medicine quackery. This has all been explained before, of course. A content dispute becomes vandalism when someone repeats again and again the same "mistakes" after being corrected and warned, again and again. --Michael C. Price 06:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
You're changing the subject and not addressing anything I said rebutting your accusation against me. Which I'll take to be a concession that your claim that I committed "vandalism" because I used the word "primary" instead of "first" was utterly unwarranted. -- Cri du canard 07:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I assumed that you accept Kunin as an "orthomolecular quack". Now go back and reread what I wrote and you'll see that I have addressed your repeated claims that the presence of orthomolecular quack medics implies that orthomolecular medicine is all pseudoscience. It isn't for the reasons I stated. --Michael C. Price 08:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
You and Linas claimed that I misrepresented Kunin. I accurately quoted Kunin. I was not the person who added the Kunin cite to the page; I think it was Nautilus, but, in any event, it comes from your favorite website, orthomed.org. The point remains that you continue to falsely accuse me of vandalism when it's not even the case that my edits are inaccurate. Whether Kunin's explicit rejection of science means that OM is pseudoscientific is irrelevant to whether your accusation of vandalism has any basis in reality. -- Cri du canard 07:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Orthomolecular medicine and pseudoscience

The funny thing about this Kunin page on "Orthomed.org", and I should have pointed this out sooner, is how is revels in its opposition to science, including criticizing double-blind tests and "germ theory," and calling conventional medicine "cut burn and poison." And I'm accused of citing "nutty" sources because I quoted the Canadian government? -- Cri du canard 05:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

That BCCA link is dated, biased, POV filled with so many errors that I had only *started* to dissect earlier, too numerous to bother with more.--TheNautilus 09:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Please don't split my comments, as it makes the talk page hard to read.
Nautilus, can you make a complete list of who's in the conspiracy that you think shouldn't be cited in the article? So far we have you criticizing the highly-regarded Quackwatch, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Research Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and now the Canadian government, and claiming that all of these sources should be put aside for orthomed.org. It's a bit frustrating to keep coming up with new sources and learning all too late that they're part of the conspiracy, too, and thus aren't considered to be credible by you. (Perhaps my mistake is to be restricting my research to reputable organizations.) -- Cri du canard 10:12, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's the "Orthomolecular Medicine News Service," claiming AIDS is a "disease of nutritional deficiencies." This isn't an outlier; the editorial board includes Abram Hoffer, who one of the pro-OM people called a prominent OM practitioner. -- Cri du canard 04:30, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's an entertaining link, courtesy of Eliot Spitzer: Charles Gant, getting his license suspended five years for quackery. Check in particular page 4, where Gant argues, and I quote, " a practitioner of orthomolecular medicine ... cannot be held to the same standards of care which are traditionally used to evaluate medical care rendered by practitioners of conventional medicine." It's the orthomolecular doctors who are arguing that they're not to be held to the standards of science. -- Cri du canard 05:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. When these guys shoot themselves in the foot like this, it's hard to have any sympathy for them. But you know, to the man with hammer, the world looks like a nail (and this includes where the hammer is the latest new pharmaceutical from the nice good looking Rep). Some of these Orthomolecular people really believe that all disease is either caused by, or at least is curable by, enough nutrients. Naturally, this is a nutty view.

But suppose it's toned down: How about simply saying that there's hardly a disease process which isn't modified by, and probably made worse by, imperfect nutrition? That's quite daring enough, for it suggests that the nutritionist should be consultant in just about every case of anything, and who's gunna pay for THAT?

But think of nutrition in medicine as like money in life. Money will not cure all of life's problems, and it won't buy happiness. But there are hardly any of life's problems that aren't exacerbated, sometimes to the point of unbearability, by lack of money.

I'm gunna start the Journal of Socioeconomicorthicomolecular Medicine. Gunna argue that understanding of all pathology begins with study of the wallet. And probably get banned as a quack. But there is truth there. SBHarris 05:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Cri du canard is making a basic category error. The existence of orthomolecular quacks does not make orthomolecular medicine quackery. Any more than the existence of quack medics (and there are plentry of course) makes mainstream medicine quackery. This has all been explained before, of course. --Michael C. Price 06:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Orthomed.org has been the preferred source for this article for some time. Abram Hoffer is Linus Pauling's co-author. If you're conceding they're quacks, and the "Orthomolecular Medicine News Service" is propounding quackery, then what's left of "legitimate" orthomolecular medicine? -- Cri du canard 07:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
All work cited in mainstream journals that falls into the scope of Pauling's definition, such as Bruce Ames' work for example. PS Just for the record, I am not conceding that Pauling or Hoffer are quacks -- but this issue is actually irrelevant to whether the field itself is pseudoscience quackery. --Michael C. Price 08:43, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Ongoing attacks & vandalism of radical skeptic(s) to disparge & discredit the subject of a rival. In addition to 'Canard's recruiting efforts, there is offsite skeptic activity. The complaints on kidney stones & dirrhea are really low blows, one largely mythological, the other so minor & what people pay good money for Ex-lax. 'Canard continues to evade the scientific priority issues with wikilawyering, to refuse to honor basic definition & observation on "pseudosci", and to refuse to acknowledge orthomed.org as a proper source on a subject about its self described practices and rationale. Also WP:NPA. Basically trashing the article with POV, disproportionate statements, counterfactual/obsolete stmts, & negative sensationalism.--TheNautilus 09:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
For the record, what do you contend is the specific violation of WP:NPA? So far, you've called me a vandal, a crank, a bad-faith editor, a "wikilawyer", and completely lacking in reason, but you seem to think you're the one who's aggrieved. (NB that criticizing the subject of an article is not a "personal attack.") I repeat to you the same thing I said to MichaelCPrice: either stop cluttering talk pages with bogus claims of vandalism, or make your vandalism case to WP:RFC/USER or WP:ANI, and let administrators evaluate what's happening here. -- Cri du canard 10:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
(I'll further note that you seem to be upset that I've accurately quoted orthomed.org. I wasn't the one who wrote that orthomolecular medicine supplanted the Hippocratic Oath, that was them.) -- Cri du canard 10:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
This is another example Canard's bad faith twisting of words to slander OM and poisoning the well. The cited author did not say that the "orthomolecular medicine supplanted the Hippocratic Oath". They actually said "Hippocrates first rule was: "Primum non nocere," i.e. "first, do no harm". We in orthomolecular practice have less need for the primacy of that rule, for it is already implicit in the essence of Orthomolecular practice, which is: "put nutrition first"." i.e. they regarded the Hippocrate Oath as already subsumed within the basic tenets of OM. Less need <> supplanted. So wrong on both counts. How long is this going to continue? --Michael C. Price 11:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
In other words, it was supplanted. Mainstream medical doctors put "do no harm" first. OM quacks "put nutrition first" (and reject the scientific principle of the null hypothesis). Do no harm was supplanted by the worship of nutrition. supplant, v, take the place or move into the position of. Nutrition has supplanted the principle of doing no harm. We can add the phrase "twisting of words to slander" to the repeated WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF problems here. -- Cri du canard 21:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
More misinformation = sneaky vandalism. As I said "less need" <> "supplanted". --Michael C. Price 22:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
1. I'm right. Before: First, do no harm. After: First comes nutrition. Nutrition has supplanted the do-no-harm principle in the first position. Basic English. Nothing inaccurate about the term "supplant" in this context.
2. I'll note that this thread has progressed all the way to the right-hand side of the page, and MichaelCPrice and Nautilus still can't substantiate their accusation that I've violated WP:NPA.
3. You seem to be defining "vandalism" as "disagreeing with MichaelCPrice." How does one "vandalize" a talk page by simply making an argument? This text about the Hippocratic Oath has never been added to the main page! Michael, please stop making bad-faith accusations of vandalism. If you are making the accusation in good faith, I, for the fourth time, invite you to report my "vandalism" to WP:ANI and/or WP:RFC/USER so we can have an administrator decide whether I'm committing vandalism, or whether you're repeatedly violating WP:CIVIL and otherwise being abusive. -- Cri du canard 07:23, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Quackwatch is a reliable source

JAMA listed Quackwatch as one of nine "select sites that provide reliable health information and resources." Journal of the American Medical Association 280:1380, 1998. -- Cri du canard 05:28, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

* Ah, JAMA now an explict QW ally. JAMA, descendant of long time Editor Morris Fishbein, the notorious tabacco shill and other faux paus. Still might not be able walk a straight line. Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former NEJM editor said, "It sounds like they're being sloppy," when JAMA contravened its own, just announced conflict of interest policy after only a few days.JAMA: Misled again by authors, Chicago Trib. JAMA is just circling the with fellow w travellers but diluting the brand. Thanks for the heads up warning to everyone.--TheNautilus 08:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Just so it's clear to third parties who has the credible sources on their side, you now think JAMA is part of the conspiracy, and therefore isn't credible either? -- Cri du canard 09:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Separately, I'm curious why you manipulated the section title on the talk page. -- Cri du canard 09:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Although JAMA is considered a reliable source in Wiki, it has a checkered career, has had less stature amongst many MDs (wrt to other certain jounals), and at times has been considered weak, lighterweight. This is a historical reminder. As for the asterisk - a qualifying footnote. And yes, I see much of conventional medicine's actions in terms of defensive, self-serving economics & politics, pretty much an outgrowth of normal human behavior when too much power and money are involved w/o true freedom of choice (including competition). Many will maintain that Science can be much different than the institutional creature spawned by regulated (less competitive) medicine. I am not favorable to monolithic conspiracy theories. You continue to ignore the effect of the most recent SCIENTIFIC work i.e. BCCA's execrable little piss piece filled with misrepresention & error out the ying yang in preference to the PNAS, NIH and Finnish Public Health dissertation 2005-6. Your statements of "no benefit" & "ps" are simply counterfactual, and confutes less than authoritatively proven with unscientific, when conventional medicine often has NO (zero) corresponding data (level or amount), and when it does, the tests frequently have multiple errors that suggest a pattern. Your unfair POV warring needs to stop. You simply have the benefit of the residual of trillions of dollars expenditures & then demand equal resources from orthomed in a POV war of attrition.--TheNautilus 11:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Sir, I solely seek NPOV on the page. The "war of attrition" line strikes me as ironic, because, as I read through the archive and edit history, for the last several months you've treated the page as your personal fiefdom (back in your anonymous 69.... identity), blizzarding anyone who attempted to address what used to be some pretty awful POV problems with article through edit-warring and wikistalking people who dared to suggest that the page had POV problems. As with other pseudoscience pages, public-choice theory comes into play; skeptics don't have the same interest in watchdogging a page that the proponents do, so the proponents have the benefit of staking out a page near and dear to them and bullying away casual editors through persistence. The snake-oil sellers have the incentive to create thousands of web pages trumpeting false claims, while mainstream medical personnel are busy treating real patients, so the number of full-time skeptics taking on the unrewarding task of playing Whack-A-Mole refutation games is small.
You say Your statements of "no benefit" & "ps" are simply counterfactual But I say that your statements of benefit and science for orthomolecular medicine qua orthomolecular medicine are counterfactual. Fortunately, the miracle of NPOV is that the standard for inclusion in the article is verifiability, rather than platonic truth, so we need not resolve the question conclusively on this talk page. Proponents get to make their claims and cite their evidence, and mainstream medicine supporters get to make their claims and cite their evidence, and the readership can decide whether JAMA and QuackWatch and the Canadian government and the NIMH or orthomed.org better approximates reality. -- Cri du canard 11:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thought experiment

The fictional pseudoscience of fromagalogy argues that the moon is made of cheese, and states that their theory predicts that there will be lots of craters on the moon through analogy to the pock-marks on Muenster cheese or holes in Swiss cheese. Samantha Scurvy, a prominent mainstream astronomer, publishes a paper observing the heights and depths of numerous moon craters. Can we say that Professor Scurvy's paper provides support for fromagalogy because it acknowledges the existence of moon craters? (Just asking.) -- Cri du canard 11:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Bad analogy. --Michael C. Price 11:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Progress

I'm glad see that a tag has been used instead of a mindless revert. Perhaps we can start making progress. --Michael C. Price 12:28, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Please help me! Probably it is my fault, but after reading the whole article, fixing some references, I can't see why the neutrality is disputed so much. Nearly every statement is referenced. NCurse work 15:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Exactly, but some editors think they're on a crusade to cleanse Misplaced Pages of all things orthomolecular and that the ends justify the means. --Michael C. Price 16:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi NCurse, the lead paragraph was disputed and has recently been significantly altered. Presently, I am not sure whether the current version is going to be an acceptable compromise, so I wasn't planning to remove the tag just yet. Addhoc 17:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Addhoc is correct. I added the tag to this version of the page, which failed to note the full extent of mainstream opposition to orthomolecular medicine. The page is considerably better now than it was a week ago, but because it's still in flux, we're keeping the tag to highlight to other editors that there is a dispute. I frankly worry that there will be reversions if I leave the page alone for a week; Nautilus has repeatedly restored POV bias and removed the POV tag when he thought no one was watching. -- Cri du canard 22:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I really would like to help. It seems I'm neutral here in the dispute. Please tell me which parts you disapprove and we'll see. NCurse work 17:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The discussion foccussed on the paragraph containing the phrase "a minority view held by a small number of medical practitioners" and whether according to WP:LEAD and WP:NPOV, this should be the second paragraph. Addhoc 17:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

It also focussed on the blantly false but apparently sourced statement "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." --Michael C. Price 18:52, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think skeptics would prefer to define OM as the pseudoscientific belief that food nutrients have the capability to cure all disease. While proponents want to present OM as partially in the mainstream, linking to research showing that vitamin levels above minimum amounts can have some beneficial effects for example. Addhoc 19:01, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Bruce Ames claim

The sentence It is this broader use of the term orthomolecular, as originally defined, that defines its usage by mainstream researchers such as Bruce Ames is not supported by the cited reference, which does not use the term orthomolecular at all. -- Cri du canard 21:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Weasel wording issues

MichaelCPrice protested the weasel wording, so I made the following sentence quite concrete:

The orthomolecular field, although viewed by its supporters as science-based, remains controversial among every mainstream medical organization that has opined on the issue, including the American Cancer Society, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, CHAMPUS, and the Canadian Paediatric Society, because of unsubstantiated claims, lack of proven benefits, and serious toxic effects.

I believe to the best of my knowledge that this statement is correct. But the statement is certainly falsifiable: if the claim is incorrect, then I have no doubt that MichaelCPrice or Nautilus can find a mainstream medical organization that has studied OM with a task force and released a statement endorsing it. Until an OM supporter finds such a statement, then this should be the NPOV text, because it is a statement of verified fact, whereas the insertion of the qualifier "some" creates a false POV impression that violates WP:AWW.

Are there other claims of weasel wording? If not, I'll remove the tag. -- Cri du canard 07:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Your use of the "every" is unsupported and misleading: "some" is more neutral and verifiable; "every" is not verifiable or verified. To pretend that it is is just twisting the meaning of words for your own ends. You know it to be misinformation. It is therefore sneaky vandalism and will be reported unless you stop pushing it into the article. --Michael C. Price 07:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but I can't see why: "every mainstream medical organization that has opined on the issue" - it's correct like that. Or how else would you say the same? NCurse work 07:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
It's like seeing some black swans and assuming all swans are black. Basic logic. Should I post some positive studies (as I have) and assume that all studies are positive? --Michael C. Price 08:00, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Canard's edit summary comment "WP:AWW: If both critics and supporters note this, then there's no need to qualify the statement" is another example of his double standards and weasel words. Canard inserted the comment about OM citations from the mainstream literature with the "Critics note" appelation. I changed this to "Both critics and supporters " since supporters see this as a strength of OM (that it is backed up by mainstream studies). Canard, realising that his attempt to poison the well has spectacularly backfired attempts to remove it -- too late, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. --Michael C. Price 08:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It makes no sense to have a sentence that begins "Critics and supporters both say X." If it's not controversial, and everyone agrees that it's correct, then just have a sentence that says X. That's just good writing, no conspiracy there. Where's the problem, much less the need for these personal attacks? -- Cri du canard 13:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, then, what do you think about : "many mainstream medical organizations including..."? NCurse work 08:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
"Many" is fine with me. --Michael C. Price 09:06, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
"Many" is a weasel word that falsely implies that there are others who feel otherwise. I'll concede to "Many" when MichaelCPrice cites a reliable source that "all" is incorrect. I've left the text at "many" as a place-holder to stop Price's edit-warring, but "every mainstream medical organization that has opined on the issue" is a verified and absolutely correct statement of fact, rather than a characterization. I don't think I'm wrong, but all it takes is one counterexample to prove me wrong. Where is it? -- Cri du canard 13:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

My opinion:

I show my opinion with these statements:

  • Orthomolecular medicine is a minority view held by under one percent of medical practitioners. The citation doesn't show any statistics for example, it is about OM only. Even if it is true, it's more than brave to write something like that in an encyclopedia. Like that (in case of any citation) it will never be neutral.
  • The majority are often dismissive: "Scientific research has found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease." I think there is no problem. This is not the article that says this statement, this is the majority (an other uncitable word) and there are plenty of references.
  • Sometimes proponents claim partisan politics, pharmaceutical industry influence, and competitive considerations to be significant factors; on the other hand, prominent orthomolecular proponents sell lines of orthomolecular products, orthomolecular practitioners sell expensive tests of questionable benefit such as hair analysis, It says proponents and the citation shows a Quackwatch article written by only one doctor. There is no pubmed research paper, publication... And Weasel :sometimes...

Anyway what is the reason for Criticism and relation to mainstream medicine not being neutral? Sorry for not giving specific solutions, I'm thinking. NCurse work 07:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

OM proponents, in an effort to keep the main page from being POV-tagged, kept moving the tag to the criticism section, reflecting a misunderstanding of what the tag means. (One editor told me that, because he didn't think the page had a POV problem, he was entitled to unilaterally remove the POV-tag.) The old page did have a problem in that the "criticism" section was really a polemic against the critics, but the page as a whole is balanced now. -- Cri du canard 21:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Lead paragraphs

The lead paragraphs were overstuffed with too much information. Per WP:NPOV, they should be a short summary highlighting what the article is about, and noting the major controversies. I have done that. No substantive information from the previous version has been deleted. Rather, the detailed material (both pro and con) has been moved to the appropriate sections within the article. I think we're approaching something NPOV now. -- Cri du canard 13:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Fish-oil

I don't think the fish-oil studies are "clearly" orthomolecular. Again, this is a fromagalogy problem, where orthomolecular medicine tries to claim legitimate nutritional science as their own, and then leverage the unproven orthomolecular-specific claims on the backs of legitimate medicine.Cri du canard 13:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, what YOU believe about what orthomolecular people believe, is irrelevant. The most narcissisitic thing in the world is to try to define other people's beliefs for them. If you want to find out what scientologists consider scientology, ask THEM, not their critics. The same for Mormons, Roman Catholics, and whatever. Do not tell the AMA what it believes. Do not tell the AHA what it believes. To find out what orthomolecular practitioners believe, read their publications. Here's an orthomolecular archive which contains many reviews of omega-3 therapy , which is certainly consistant with the definitions of orthomolecular medicine given in the Wiki. These long chain w-3 are naturally found in the body.SBHarris 20:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

None of these studies mention "orthomolecular." I've kept the cite and moved it in with the niacin materials. The commentary that Cassileth is "wrong" was uncited original research, and was not retained. -- Cri du canard 13:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Again it's irrelevant whether or not the studies supporting an orthomolecular POV call themselves orthomolecular or not. Mass fortification of flour with folate to prevent birth defect is an orthomolecular solution to a problem, even if nobody wants to say the word.

Don't be a wikilawyer regarding WP:NOR, or you won't have any article left, or any Misplaced Pages left, either. Putting two sentences with referenced statements together constitute OR, since a point of view is thereby advanced. Alas, it's also inescapable, since if you separate conflicting facts so the contradiction is not noticed, this also advances a POV and is OR. In writing where there are multiple POV, we do POV summation. In a field with multiple POVs to summarize, it's impossible to avoid NOR on a small scale, if you want to summarize larger works. Thus, we break NOR in doing original summaries (which is what encylopedia writing is all about), in order to uphold NPOV globally. You can keep Cassileth's statement, and I'll just copy it and quote him later, alongside the research showing he's wrong, and the reader can draw their own conclusions. One problem is you quote Cassileth, but you don't know what HE means when he says "orthomolecular." So he might not EVEN be wrong, but just beating a straw man.SBHarris 20:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Origin of Othomolecular views on efficacy

The article made it sound as if practioners of orthomolecular medicine had just thought up a list of ailments and offered these to the public. Everything I have read suggests claims are based on clinical experience. Lumos3 10:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Then find a cite for that claim and add it, rather than deleting information. The original text was a verified statement from reliable sources. Your claim appears nowhere in the cited references. -- Cri du canard 12:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I've restored the text, and added the Lumos3 claim with a tag. -- Cri du canard 13:43, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I have added references showing general practise experience of orthomolecular medicine has existed for 50 to 60 years. Lumos3 17:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Personal experience is nice, but it doesn't justify making claims in the medical arena. (There happens to be a phenomenon known as a "confounder" .....;-) See below: Evidence-based CAM?

"Evidence-based CAM"?

This bit of not very original thinking (extremely common among believers in sCAM) is a gem:

"Much of the criticism stemes from two reasons : (1) much of it has a factual basis but has not been thoroughly and scientifically researched, (2) Many physicians are not familiar with it."

How can one really be certain that something is a fact without the research? One can certainly experience "something" and believe in that anecdotal moment, but when it comes to medicine, treatment methods for others, and the selling of products, the bar is set much higher. Without good evidence the claims may end up amounting to quackery.

Evidence-based CAM?

All this begs the question - is there such a thing as "evidence-based CAM?"

You see, to me and other skeptics, the idea that there is such a thing as evidence-based CAM is an oxymoron.

Following are some of the thoughts and quotes that reveal and influence my thinking. I'll start with something from here at Misplaced Pages:

Alternative Definition
The terms "alternative medicine", "complementary medicine" and "CAM" are generally understood in terms of their relationship to mainstream Western medicine, as described above. Richard Dawkins, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, argues for a different definition of alternative medicine, based not on sphere of usage but on evidence: "alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply...becomes medicine." He also states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."
Well-known proponents of evidence-based medicine who study CAM, such as the Cochrane Collaboration and Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, have retained CAM's generally-accepted definition and do not define CAM as Dawkins does. In their view, there can be "good CAM" or "bad CAM" based on evidentiary support.

This touches on what I call a "dividing line" and definitional problem as to what we should label as CAM (indeed a problematic term!), and what we should label as EBM. Strictly speaking, from the skeptic viewpoint, "evidence-based CAM" is an oxymoron.....

According to skeptics and physicians like Dawkins, Sagan, Randi, Angell, Fontanarosa, Lundberg, and Barrett, the concept of "alternative" is often being misused in a misleading form of marketing, implying something that is far from the case. Barrett puts it this way:

"Alternative has two possible meanings. Correctly employed, it refers to methods that have equal value for a particular purpose. (An example would be two antibiotics capable of killing a particular organism.) When applied to unproven methods, however, the term can be misleading because methods that are unsafe or ineffective are not reasonable alternatives to proven treatment. To emphasize this fact, we place the word "alternative" in quotation marks throughout this book whenever it is applied to methods that are not based on established scientific knowledge." - Stephen Barrett, MD

Although NCCAM funds research, I don't see it proclaiming any "alternative" method as disproven. This situation needs to stop. How many years should a nonsensical method divert funds into wasteful and pointless research, after multiple quality experiments have shown no promise, and proven that the emperor has no clothes? At what point does one proclaim that (for example) homeopathy is dead?

Some relevant quotes:

  • "There cannot be two kinds of medicine - conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted." - Angell M, Kassirer JP, "Alternative medicine--the risks of untested and unregulated remedies." N Engl J Med 1998;339:839.
  • "There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. Whether a therapeutic practice is 'Eastern' or 'Western,' is unconventional or mainstream, or involves mind-body techniques or molecular genetics is largely irrelevant except for historical purposes and cultural interest. As believers in science and evidence, we must focus on fundamental issues-namely, the patient, the target disease or condition, the proposed or practiced treatment, and the need for convincing data on safety and therapeutic efficacy." - Fontanarosa P.B., and Lundberg G.D. "Alternative medicine meets science" JAMA. 1998; 280: 1618-1619.
  • "The "alternative" folks have had their way with the language. Treatments are "alternative" and "complementary" and "integrative" but the fact is that they're not a legitimate alternative if they don't do anything, they're not "complementary" if they don't add to anything but expense and they don't need to be "integrated" if they're just a waste of time and money." - David Ramey, DVM

I see it as problematic that while the established health care system is actively trying to weed out ineffective methods, the CAM system is searching through the garbage heap of discarded and disproven methods, in an attempt to revive and invent methods for which proof is not only lacking, but for which there is often adequate proof of lack of effect.

Here are a few of my articles that directly address these issues:

From "Is CAM a UFO?":

Evidence-based methods are effective, and effective methods should be evidence-based. If a method appears to be effective, then it should be possible to prove it. If the research has not been done yet, it should be. We must remember that "Absence of proof is not the same as the absence of fact; it simply demonstrates the lack of adequate research. - Robert Sydenham. "Lack of evidence in the literature is not evidence of lack of effectiveness."
This is often misunderstood, since it contains two poorly understood elements. The first is that effectiveness exists, in and of itself, regardless of proof, or rather, "before" proof is provided by proper research. The second is that lack of proof doesn't justify the marketing of methods based solely on claims of effectiveness, which are hoped to be proven in the future.
It is one thing to say: "I believe it's effective, but have no proof as yet." It's quite another to say: "I believe it's effective, and my experience with it is enough proof for me and my customers."


I don't know if you are familiar with this book (I am not), but the book review title deserves a comment:

> Is Evidence-Based Medicine Evidence Based?

> http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/24/2/562

It's a straw man argument, because it's asking the wrong question. I assume it means something like this:

"Is Modern Medicine Evidence Based?"

Well, I'd say it's on its way....;-) The EBM "movement" or paradigm is an attempt to take what the medical system has developed through experimentation, what it has gained from experience, and what it has inherited from its pretty much quackery-filled past, and sort through it to weed out the junk. The idea is quality control, and the job is far from finished. It's a battle fought on several fronts, and not always very well:

  1. Weeding out the junk that is in what we have inherited;
  2. Constantly reevaluating earlier findings in light of newer findings;
  3. Seeking to measure the difference between real effects and the placebo illusion;
  4. Attempting to ensure that laboratory results are relevant to clinical practice;
  5. Preventing junk from sneaking in the back door. (NCCAM is doing a great job - to sneak it in.)
  6. other points?

Shouldn't scientists and Misplaced Pages editors attempt to alert the public to the problem regarding the misuse of the term "alternative" medicine, and shouldn't they openly adopt Dawkins' (and other skeptics') interpretation regarding the decisive difference between alt med and EBM - evidence of effect? If it's proven to be effective, then it ceases to be alternative medicine, and becomes EBM. Thus, based on the evidence, it is possible for a method to change categories in either direction, based on increased knowledge of its effectiveness or lack thereof.

Just a few thoughts to ponder....IMHO. -- Fyslee 17:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree in principle, but it's a semantic and political battle that has already been lost. "Alternative" is a misnomer, but it's also the standard term. The place for that discussion is in the alternative medicine article to the extent the cited sources meet WP:RS. -- Cri du canard 21:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Bruce Ames

The Bruce Ames section appears to be a secondary, instead of tertiary source of information. Addhoc 18:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what's meant by "secondary" and "tertiary" in this comment. The section needs a lot of work. I agree that the Ames paper is a questionable source of "support" for OM, but we need to find better sources than Misplaced Pages articles, per WP:RS. Just as we should not include the original-research opinion "Cassileth is wrong," we should not include the original-research opinion "Ames does not support OM" unless we find an explicit rejection. Of course, we should not include the opinion "Ames supports OM" unless we find a cite of Ames supporting OM, and the AmJClinNutr cite doesn't do that, as you correctly point out. And it doesn't merit its own section; perhaps move it into the "relation" section. -- Cri du canard 21:32, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
  1. What is Orthomolecular Medicine?, Linus Pauling Inst.
  2. Multivitamin use, folate, and colon cancer in women in the Nurses' Health Study. Giovannucci E, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA, Hunter DJ, Fuchs C, Rosner BA, Speizer FE, Willett WC; Ann Intern Med" 1998 Oct 1;129(7):517-24 PMID: 9758570 Long-term use (>15 years) of folate-containing multivitamin supplements produced an almost 5-fold reduction in the incidence of colon cancer.
  3. Are dietary factors involved in DNA methylation associated with colon cancer? Slattery ML, Schaffer D, Edwards SL, Ma KN, Potter JD in Nutr Cancer 1997;28(1):52-62 PMID: 9200151
  4. Dietary intake of folic acid and colorectal cancer risk in a cohort of women. Terry P, Jain M, Miller AB, Howe GR, Rohan TE in Int J Cancer 2002 Feb 20;97(6):864-7 PMID: 11857369
  5. Effects of selenium supplementation for cancer prevention in patients with carcinoma of the skin. A randomized controlled trial. Nutritional Prevention of Cancer Study Group. Clark LC, Combs GF Jr, Turnbull BW, Slate EH, Chalker DK, Chow J, Davis LS, Glover RA, Graham GF, Gross EG, Krongrad A, Lesher JL Jr, Park HK, Sanders BB Jr, Smith CL, Taylor JR. JAMA 1996 Dec 25;276(24):1957-63 PMID: 8971064 200ug/d of selenium for 4.5 years resulted in a 17% reduction of totality mortality by over 11 years (in total), due to a 50% reduction of (all) cancer mortality, 37% reduction in (all) cancer occurrence
  6. Reduction of cancer mortality and incidence by selenium supplementation. Combs GF Jr, Clark LC, Turnbull BW in Med Klin 1997 Sep 15;92 Suppl 3:42-5. PMID: 9342915
  7. Reduction of cancer risk with an oral supplement of selenium. Combs GF Jr, Clark LC, Turnbull BW in Biomed Environ Sci 1997 Sep;10(2-3):227-34 PMID: 9315315
  8. Fifteen year mortality in Coronary Drug Project patients: long-term benefit with niacin. Canner PL, Berge KG, Wenger NK, Stamler J, Friedman L, Prineas RJ, Friedewald W in J Am Coll Cardiol 1986 Dec;8(6):1245-55 PMID: 3782631 “With a mean follow-up of 15 years, nearly 9 years after termination of the trial, mortality from all causes in each of the drug groups, except for niacin, was similar to that in the placebo group. Mortality in the niacin group was 11% lower than in the placebo group (52.0 versus 58.2%; p = 0.0004).” Dose used = 2g – 3g/day for 6 years. The drop in mortality was only evident after 6-8 years.
  9. Associations of Mortality With Ocular Disorders and an Intervention of High-Dose Antioxidants and Zinc in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study: AREDS Report No. 13. AREDS Research Group (Authors: Traci E. Clemons, PhD; Natalie Kurinij, PhD; Robert D. Sperduto, MD.) in Arch Ophthalmol. 2004 May;122(5):716-26. PMID: 15136320 “Participants randomly assigned to receive zinc had lower mortality than those not taking zinc (RR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.61-0.89).”
  10. Orthomolecular psychiatry. Varying the concentrations of substances normally present in the human body may control mental disease,Science 1968 Apr 19;160(825):265-71.(PMID 5641253)
  11. Definition of Orthomolecular medicine at www.orthomed.org Accessed June 2006 and What is Orthomolecular Medicine?, Linus Pauling Inst.
  12. Cite error: The named reference qw was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. Cite error: The named reference bccancer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. Cite error: The named reference cassileth was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. American Cancer Society 2006 "Orthomolecular Medicine has not been scientifically proven to help most of the conditions for which it is promoted. However, vitamins, minerals, and other supplements have been and continue to be studied to see if they can help or prevent many types of illness."
  16. Nutrition Committee, Canadian Paediatric Society. Megavitamin and megamineral therapy in childhood. Canadian Medical Association Journal 143:1009 1013, 1990, reaffirmed April 2000.