Antioxidant Beneficts Debunked

Antioxidants don't help you live longer
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Feb 27, 6:13 PM ET
CHICAGO - Antioxidant vitamins taken by tens of millions of people around the world won't lead to a longer life, according to an analysis of dozens of studies that adds to evidence questioning the value of the popular supplements. The large review of separate studies on thousands of people found no long-life benefit from vitamins A, E and C and beta carotene and selenium.
However, some experts said it's too early to toss out all vitamin pills — or the possibility that they may have some health benefits. Others said the study supports the theory that antioxidants work best when they are consumed in food rather than pills.
An estimated 80 million to 160 million people take antioxidants in North America and Europe, about 10 to 20 percent of adults, the study's authors said. And last year, Americans spent $2.3 billion on nutritional supplements and vitamins at grocery stores, drug stores and retail outlets, excluding Wal-Mart, according to Information Resources Inc., which tracks sales.
The new study, appearing in Wednesday's
Journal of the American Medical Association' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Journal of the American Medical Association, was led by the Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. The Cochrane organization is a respected international network of experts that does systematic reviews of scientific evidence on health interventions.
For the new report on antioxidants, the researchers first analyzed 68 studies involving 232,606 people and found no significant effect on mortality — neither good nor bad — linked to taking antioxidants.
When they eliminated the lower-quality studies and looked only at the most trustworthy ones, they actually found a higher risk of death for people taking vitamins: 4 percent for those taking vitamin E, 7 percent for beta carotene and 16 percent for vitamin A. The actual cause of death in most studies was unknown, however.
Those findings are based on an analysis of 47 studies involving 180,938 people who were randomly assigned to get real vitamins or dummy pills. Some involved superdoses far exceeding the recommended daily amount of the compounds; others involved normal doses.
Some experts who reviewed the research were dismissive of the increased death risk and the analysis overall, saying it pooled studies that were too diverse.
However, the study's senior author, Dr. Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital, said, "The main message is that prevention by beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E cannot be recommended. These three antioxidant supplements may increase mortality."
Gluud said most of the studies didn't reveal why those taking supplements died, but "in all likelihood, what they died from is what people normally die from, maybe accelerated artherosclerosis, maybe cancer."
Antioxidant supplements have been tested repeatedly by many clinical trials with no consistent clear evidence for their health effects, Gluud said.
"We have had this huge industry really wanting to demonstrate an intervention effect that has gone to lengths to do so," Gluud said. "Sadly enough for the industry, and for us as consumers, it has failed to do so."
Preliminary studies suggested antioxidants might block the heart-damaging effects of oxygen on arteries and the cell damage that might encourage some kinds of cancer.
But some researchers now believe antioxidants work only when they are in food, or that people who eat vitamin-rich food are healthier simply because they take better care of themselves. And beta carotene supplements have been found to increase lung cancer risk in smokers.
Meir Stampfer, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the new analysis hasn't discouraged him from taking his vitamins.
Stampfer said the studies were too diverse to pool together because they looked at various combinations and doses of antioxidants tested in different groups of people. The trials ranged from a three-month study of 109 elderly nursing home residents to a 12-year study of 22,071 male doctors.
"This study does not advance our understanding, and could easily lead to misinterpretation of the data," said Stampfer, who was not connected to the new report.
The complaints were echoed by Andrew Shao, a scientist at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement trade association.
"Only when they included and excluded certain trials were they able to find this alleged increase in mortality, which they themselves can't explain," Shao said. "There is plenty of data out there that show regular use of antioxidant supplements help to maintain health."
Donald Berry, chairman of the department of biostatistics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said the analysis persuades him antioxidants have no measurable health benefits, but he disagrees with the researchers' finding of an increase risk of dying.
"There are so many choices you can make when you're doing these analyses," he said.
Alice Lichtenstein, a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University who was not involved with the research, said the study's main message is: "Rely on food to get your nutrients."
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On the Net:
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.orghttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070227/ap_on_he_me/diet_antioxidant_vitamins

Alternative Analysis of Cause of High Textbook Costs -Kentucky Kernel

Column: Secondhand sales won't save students from textbook prices
Brenton Kenkel
2/14/07 Kentucky Kernel
As textbook prices continue to rise, students seem to be concerned only with blaming someone.We say the bookstores are at fault for buying books back at unconscionably low prices, but the publishers are to blame for selling them at exorbitant costs in the first place. We blame professors for assigning costly textbooks and UK for not posting ISBN numbers online.Strangely enough, we never blame ourselves for driving up textbook prices. Maybe we should. In a Feb. 2 Inside Higher Ed story, University of Texas business instructor Michael Brandl makes an intuitive argument for why used-book sales have helped drive prices so high.There are a certain number of "fixed costs" to writing a textbook - such as paying the writers, editors and designers - that are the same regardless of how many books are sold. Used sales drive down the number of books sold, meaning that each book printed must bear a higher proportion of the total fixed costs, according to Brandl. Used books may seem cost-effective, but they're part of the reason texts are so expensive in the first place.I don't mean to suggest that we should buy only new books in a collective effort to bring prices back down - it's unlikely the market would respond to the change before we graduate.But it's clear that we need something more than a simplistic solution to alleviate the pain of high book prices. Buying books online and mandating that professors assign old editions of books are not viable long-term methods of reducing textbook prices.Systemic change is necessary for textbook prices to drop - namely, the textbook industry must adopt an open-source method of writing and distribution, similar to the open-source movement in the software world.Open-source textbook publishing can take many forms - written collaboratively (like Wikipedia) or individually, for instance - but the essential feature is the absence of strong copyright protection. Books released under an open-source license can be downloaded for free online (or printed for the standard photocopy price), and instructors who use the book can redistribute it with their own modifications.K-12 education administrators in California have already started a project to use open-source textbooks to cut costs and improve educational quality there. The California Open Source Textbook Project seeks to cut the cost of making textbooks and stem the shortage of books in that state's public schools, according to its Web site (www.opensourcetext.org).Such a project needs to take place on a national level for higher education. The main problem will be getting the funding necessary to set up resources and reimburse contributors for their time. That's easier in the case of K-12 education, in which taxpayers themselves, instead of powerless college students, have to foot the textbook bill.That's why universities - collectively, not just individual institutions - need to take the initiative to promote open-source textbooks. Putting money toward these projects may increase costs in the short term, but in time they will pay off, as students will have to put less money toward unfairly priced books.The federal government would also have an interest in motivating systemic change in the textbook market. As the price of textbooks skyrockets, attending college becomes unaffordable for even more students, meaning that fewer highly educated workers are entering the economy. Keeping the cost of college low is a public good worthy of federal support - and funding open-source books will be a more effective use of money than simply subsidizing the publishing industry.It will certainly do more to bring down book prices than the current tendency toward finger-pointing does.Brenton Kenkel is a philosophy and political science junior.

E-mail bkenkel@kykernel.com

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