Will Vitamin E be the death of you?

A recent "meta-study" which pooled the results of many other vitamin E studies claims that people taking the highest doses of vitamin E had a 10% greater risk of death. Before we go soft at the knees and throw out our vitamin E supplements and multivitamins, let's review some other studies about vitamin E.

Pearson & Shaw's classic book Life Extension reports several facts:

• Fruit flies' average life span was extended by 8-15% by feeding a diet containing 0.25% vitamin E.

• Vitamin E is able to reduce the rate of spontaneous deaths from cancer in Irish Wolfhounds from virtually 100% to zero.
  

• Animals given injections of cancer cells live longer when given large vitamin E doses.

The authors write, "Large doses of vitamin E have been shown to increase resistance to cancer, bacterial and viral infections, stroke, arthritis, heart attack, and even smog."

When there are hundreds of studies showing benefits of vitamin E supplementation, and one study showing harm, perhaps it would be prudent for news media to report that fact for the sake of context when reporting the results of this new meta-study. Why should you have to learn that from a blog? Apparently, since reporters won't do their jobs, bloggers have to.