Welcome to my Science Blog
Why Orthopedics?
Hello All! My name is Matthew Dumbroff and I am a freshman at the university of Miami. While many students are unsure about which occupation they are interested in, it became unambiguously clear to me what I want to do with my life after my junior year of high school. When I visited an orthopedist…
My First Blog Post
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde. This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Blog Post 2
Paul Offit’s “The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements” is an expository piece which discusses the history of supplements and their effectiveness. Through focusing on the past scientific discoveries and advancements regarding vitamins, Offit effectively illustrates why contemporary people believe they need vitamins. Although there is limited research proving the effectiveness of many commercial vitamins on the market today, people continue to buy them, and this can be traced back to scientists’ throughout history. Offit begins by discussing a scientist named Linus Pauling who was active beginning in the 1930’s. Although Pauling accomplished some amazing things in his lifetime, his great blunder began in 1966, and in 1970 Pauling became known for one thing — his claims regarding vitamin C. Pauling made the claim that vitamin C can prevent the common cold. What stands out to me about this is that offit writes, “By the mid 1970’s more than 50 million Americans were following Pauling’s advice” (Offit, 2013). I find this interesting because I think it relates to everything we have been learning throughout this year. The fact that although no scientific evidence or trials backed up this claim, since a man of science claimed it to be true, people blindly followed his advice. I feel that this is an idea still prevalent today and could be expanded upon.
The above illustrates the results from a study designed to test the impact of vitamin C on incidence of the common cold. While at a first glance, it may seem as though those receiving vitamin C in high doses reported lower incidence of the alement, the graph follows sporadic trends and, with a significance test, ultimately concludes that vitamin C does nothing to prevent the common cold. This shocked me, as even I believed that vitamin C could prevent the common cold because since childhood my mother has forced me to take some source of vitamin C such as “Emergen-C” every time there was a cold being passed around in school. The truth which research has uncovered in that vitamin C can play a role in reducing both the severity and length of symptoms caused by the common cold; however, throughout childhood, I, like the majority of the public in the 1970’s believed that it could prevent a common cold. After scientists of his generation proved that vitamin C did not prevent the common cold, Linus Pauling “upped the ante” and claimed that vitamin C could cure cancer. This, again, illustrates the way in which humans blindly follow the advice of a man in a lab coat. This still impacts our society today as while people might think Pauling was crazy to believe that vitamin C could prevent cancer, years from now it could hypothetically be discovered that sun screen does not prevent skin cancer. Moving past history, Offit talks about recent studies in the later parts of his exposition. Offit writes, “In 2008, a review of all existing studies involving more than 230,000 people who did or did not receive supplemental antioxidants found that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease” (Offit, 2013). This statistic blew me away. I simply cannot believe that studies show that taking vitamins increases the likelihood of someone getting heart disease or cancer which are both very lethal. I feel that this again goes to show the lack of information provided to the general public and how they are misled by the scientific community. This idea is one which applies to everything we have learned thus far during the school year as we have focused on the way that scientific writing is adapted for public viewing, or in this case, how scientific knowledge is hidden from the public. Overall, I feel as though the points which Offit presents are extremely relevant, and apply to more than just vitamins. I feel that this exposition highlights merely one example of how easily the public can be misled by one man wearing a lab coat whether it be Linus Pauling, or people making profits selling vitamins without telling people of their risks, something must be done to change this.
References
Offit, P. (2013) The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements. Retrieved from
Sasazuki, S. (2000). Incidence of The Common Cold with and Without High Doses of Vitamin
C. Retrieved from: https://www.nature.com/articles/1602261
Matt's Blog 