Today's post from "Sham vs. Wham: The Health Insider":

The American Media's Anti-Supplement Slant

As my readers know, I am over in Europe right now and what a
difference we have in the reporting of facts about herbs, or about
dietary supplements on this side of the water compared to the States.
I truly believe that we are seeing an agenda playing out here, driven
by pharmaceutical companies and the huge money that they throw into
the media with their advertising campaigns for drugs.

Here's an example . . . Both today's BBC news, and the local news in
Lisbon, Portugal, carried the story of new, large Echinacea clinical
trials which show strong results from the herb for keeping colds at
bay, and also for knocking out colds early. Here are some of the facts
of this story about the research done by researchers from the USA and
reported in The Lancet (one of the most important medical publications
in the world):

"Taking the herbal remedy echinacea can more than halve the risk of
catching a common cold, US researchers say. They found it decreased
the odds of developing a cold by 58% and the duration of colds by a
day-and-a-half. The results in The Lancet Infectious Diseases conflict
with other studies that show no beneficial effect.

Experts believe echinacea, a collection of nine related plant species
indigenous to North America, may work by boosting the body's immune
system. Researchers, led by Dr Craig Coleman from the University of
Connecticut School of Pharmacy, combined the results of 14 different
studies on Echinacea's anti-cold properties.

In one of the 14 studies the researchers reviewed, echinacea was taken
alongside vitamin C. This combination reduced cold incidence by 86%.
When echinacea was used alone it reduced cold incidence by 65%."

As you might imagine, seeing this as front page headlines locally and
on the BBC, and seeing that it was an American research team, I
thought for sure that it would be repeated either on CNN or on the
various USA networks or print media. Apparently, I was mistaken. It
seems that the same news media outlets which prominently featured the
NEGATIVE trials on this herb simply took this positive news and swept
it under the rug.

I am beginning to sense a serious MD/Pharma Company coalition working
against the dietary supplement industry. Does anyone else have another
explanation for this? See the news story from BBC linked to this
headline.

D.