Vitamin-cancer scare not based on science
April 21, 2015
by JunkScience.com
You may have run across this headline yesterday or today – it is utter nonsense.
As directed by this press release, we contacted the media office for the University of Colorado Cancer Center to get a copy of the “meta-analysis” by Dr. Tim Byers allegedly showing that “a number of vitamin supplements” increased cancer risk.
But there was no study.
Instead, the media office sent us a commentary co-authored by Byers published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute from almost three years ago.
Needless to say, the commentary was a merely subjective review of available (and always dubious) epidemiological studies of dietary supplements. And a biased summary of pseudoscience does not constitute science.
We are not commenting here on the potential health benefits and/or risks of dietary supplements – just on the fact that this particular vitamin scare is based on zero.
