There it was, in an article in black and white, on page 3129 of the June 19, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), unequivocally stating: “We recommend that all adults take one multivitamin daily. This practice is justified mainly by the known and suspected benefits of supplemental folate and vitamins … in preventing cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoproosis….” The authors of the article even included a nifty little table with an overview on vitamins and their benefits for the attention-deprived reader.

Remember, we are talking about the American Medical Association (AMA) here–doctors from the hallowed halls of mediocrity when it comes to discussing anything to do with dietary supplements. This plainly rings of some sort of endorsement since JAMA is the AMA’s official organ. Could it be someone slipped them some sort of “Sensibility Viagra” which awakened the flaccid brain cells occupying those coveted editorial chairs?

One month later JAMA created another tempest when they revealed, lo and behold, hormone replacement therapy actually carries risks (see accompanying editorial). And this, only a week or two after AMA handwringing in front of the press decrying the cost of malpractice insurance and how it is driving numerous doctors out of business. Although certainly, amputating the wrong foot, as some doctors are wont to do, will always fall under the heading of malpractice. Of course, one or two inadvertent amputations won’t get your license yanked by the “good old boy” network of state medical boards packed with AMA cronies. Bad doctors have more lives than the proverbial cat. Perhaps if that 10 percent of doctors who continually make the major mistakes truly had their licenses revoked, the malpractice insurance rates would go down. But that would be even more of a double standard, since true malpractice exists simply by ignoring what has been in front of you for years; in other words, being so shortsighted you refuse to see the value of vitamin therapy or the danger of hormone replacement. The data is all there, it always has been, it’s just not in JAMA and the other “traditional” journals. Doctors need to actually look for the relevant treatments that will benefit their patients now, not ten years later when they read the watered-down versions. Read something that will be clinically useful…. Hmmm, I can recommend a nice little journal….