FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, July 11, 2006

DOCTORS SAY VITAMINS ARE SAFE

(OMNS July 11, 2006) More and more practicing physicians are coming forward in support of vitamins. Drawing on decades of actual experience with many thousands of patients, family doctors and specialists assert that vitamin supplements are safe and effective even in high doses.

Peter H. Lauda, M.D., of Vienna, Austria writes:
"Over all the years I have prescribed vitamins for prevention and treatment, for a huge number of patients including both adults and children. I have never seen any serious problems or dangerous side effects caused by vitamin supplements. Furthermore, routinely performed lab analyses did not show any impairments or objective signs of liver, renal and other organ damage caused by vitamin supplements."

Robert F. Cathcart, M.D., of California says:
"Vitamin supplements are safe. I have never seen a serious reaction to vitamin supplements. Since 1969 I have taken over 2 tons of ascorbic acid myself. I have put over 20,000 patients on bowel tolerance doses of ascorbic acid without any serious problems, and with great benefit."

Allan N. Spreen, M.D., of Arizona, says:
"I can certainly state that, after many years of both hands-on practice and personal research, vitamin supplementation is extraordinarily safe, even in doses far higher than published daily recommendations. They are also infinitely safer than any prescription medications."

Richard P. Huemer, M.D., of California, writes:
"Reports of vitamin toxicity, rare as they are, are sometimes based on flimsy evidence. Such fallacious reports may appear in medical journals. In one, it was asserted that a rather unimpressive chronic dose of vitamin A had caused liver failure, but certain histologic features of vitamin A toxicity were not described, nor was any attempt made to quantify vitamin A in the liver or even in the blood."

Jerry Green, M.D., Canada, says:
"After practicing orthomolecular medicine for over 35 years, I have seen that vitamins are extremely safe particularly when one compares them to other patient choices such as drugs, surgery, or doing nothing and thereby suffering from vitamin deficiency from our modern devitalized foods."

Erik Paterson, M.D., also of Canada:
"As a family doctor, I often see serious adverse effects in my patients from conventional drugs. I have yet to see any such thing from megadoses of vitamins. I believe myself to be alive because of the large doses of vitamins which I take on a daily basis."

Klaus Wenzel, M.D., Germany, writes:
"For more then 20 years I have used vitamin supplements for an increasing number of patients and medical problems. And from all these years of medical practice, I can state that vitamin supplements are very safe."

Chris M. Reading, M.D., in Australia, says:
"I have had measurement done of serum vitamin levels in over ten thousand patients since 1978, and have safely corrected low levels with supplements in amounts far higher than the RDA. Vitamin supplements are safe and essential to correct low vitamin levels and to correct ill health. In my experience, vitamin supplements can save people from premature death, depression, suicide, dementia, psychosis, and heart failure."

Karin Munsterhjelm-Ahumada, M.D., from Finland, writes:
"After nearly 20 years using only conventional medicine, I have an additional 10 years experience working with high dose vitamins. I can assure you that not only have they been very safe, but vitamins are also very helpful in my work with all kinds of very ill patients."

From Sweden, Bo H. Jonsson, M.D., Ph.D., writes:
"Vitamin supplements are very safe, especially when compared to xenobiotic drugs. Used with knowledge, vitamins are enormously important for prevention and treatment of disease."

The educators and physicians of the Independent Vitamin Safety Review Panel assert that:

1. There is not even one death per year from vitamins. (Watson WA et al. 2003 annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic Exposure Surveillance System. Am J Emerg Med. 2004 Sep;22(5):335-404.) http://www.aapcc.org/annual-reports/
2. Consumers are not getting a fair picture of vitamin safety and efficacy from government-sponsored sources, particularly the National Institutes of Health. (http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v02n05.shtml and http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v02n06.shtml)
3. When they do have all the information, consumers see that vitamin supplements are safe, far safer than drugs. (Lucian Leape, Error in medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1994, 272:23, p 1851. Also: Leape LL. Institute of Medicine medical error figures are not exaggerated. JAMA. 2000 Jul 5;284(1):95-7.)
4. Public access to vitamins should not be restricted. (Testimony before the Government of Canada, House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, regarding nutritional supplement product safety. Ottawa, May 12, 2005). http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm
5. Vitamin supplementation is not the problem. It is under-nutrition and over-medication that are the problems. Vitamins are the solution.

INDEPENDENT VITAMIN SAFETY REVIEW PANELISTS: