A thinking man’s approach to racialized health disparities

So long as we’re beating up on Tom Maguire today, I thought I’d draw your attention to yesterday’s avid defense of the vitamin D hype. As most readers are probably aware, seemingly everyone over the past several years has been promoting vitamin D as a magical prophylaxis against cancer, cardiovascular disease, influenza, depression, hot dog fingers and masturbatory insanity among numerous other afflictions. Not only have vitamin D supplements — in quite large doses — been promoted by a lot of ordinary physicians and health professionals, but vitamin D has figured with special prominence in the “alternative medicine” community, especially among opponents of the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines.

Yesterday, however, the Institute of Medicine released a thorough examination of the evidence on vitamin D and calcium in order to update its recommendations on Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI). The long and the short of it is that (a) there’s no good evidence that vitamin D serves any useful purpose beyond promoting bone growth, strength and repair; (b) humans don’t need quite so much of the stuff as previously believed; (c) most of what we need can be gained from dietary sources; and (d) there’s no good reason to believe that widespread vitamin D deficiencies actually exist, barring the discovery of a previously undetected outbreak of rickets across the northern latitudes.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Nutritional hypes come and go, in saecula saeculorum, and so it goes. But Tom Maguire, along with the natural health crowd, is not having it. And here’s part of his uniquely powerful, common-sensitized rationale:

I am applying a bit of common sense here (often risky when science is involved, but away we go). The first humans to leave Africa were dark-skinned. In the higher latitudes and reduced sunlight of Northern Europe, selective evolutionary pressure favored white skin. Was that exclusively about bone health? And more importantly, could modern urban blacks in northern latitudes really be getting enough Vitamin D strictly from food supplements? And is it just poverty that explains the many grim health statistics for the black community?

Why it would be irresponsible not to speculate! Too bad the American Colonization Society didn’t have access to Tom Maguire’s brain way back when….