Vitamin D Reduces Cancer Risk: Why Scientists Accept It but Physicians Do Not
(OMNS Feb 6 2019) The UVB-vitamin D-cancer hypothesis is nearly 40 years old [Garland, 1980]. There are 5293 publications with cancer and vitamin D or 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] in the title or abstract listed at pubmed.gov as of January 30, 2019. Nonetheless, this hypothesis has not been widely accepted; in fact, since the publication of the results for vitamin D supplementation for cancer in the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) [Manson, 2019], support has been eroded further. As will be discussed here, the problem does not seem to be lack of evidence but, instead, the difference in how two cultures, the 'scientific' and the 'medical' communities, evaluate evidence.