Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine (Vitamins, Supplements, and All Things Natural: A Look Behind the Curtain)

by Paul A. Offit

The vitamin and supplement industry had successfully created a false dichotomy. On one side are natural products: vitamins, minerals, dietary supplements, plants, and herbs. Because they’re natural, they’re safe. On the other side are drugs. Because drugs are man-made, they’re supposedly more dangerous. However, many drugs are derived from nature, including antibiotics. Furthermore, the notion that natural products aren’t dangerous is fanciful. Fava beans (Vicia faba) can cause severe anemia; castor beans contain ricin, the most potent neurotoxin known to man; jimsonweed contains hallucinogenic alkaloids; berries from the coyotillo plant (Karwinskia humboldtiana) cause paralysis; and the ackee fruit (Blighia sapida) causes a severe lowering of blood sugar (“Jamaican vomiting sickness”). Mother Nature can kill you. “Just because something is natural it does not mean that it is good,” write Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst in Trick or Treatment, “and just because something is unnatural it does not mean that it is bad. Arsenic, cobra poison, nuclear radiation, earthquakes, and the ebola virus can all be found in nature, whereas vaccines, spectacles, and artificial hips are all man-made.”