The "Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial" (SELECT) by the National Cancer Institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health has been ended early because the people conducting the trial were afraid that it was doing more harm than good. They were right, it was - but that's because they weren't using Vitamin E.
Vitamin E is made of 4 components called "tocopherols". These 4 tocopherols are always present when you find vitamin E in food. (The same may not be true of Vitamin C. Most animals synthesize their own vit C; their bodies make ascorbic acid, not "vit C bio-flavonoids".)
So now these researchers spend $ 114 million of our taxpayer money to do a study allegedly on vitamin E and selenium, and then they use not only one tocopherol instead of all 4 , but according to the trial's website they use dl-alpha tocopherol which is the synthetic version! Hey, idiots: a synthetic chemical copy of one of the 4 components of vitamin E is not vitamin E. This "study" was clearly designed to "prove" that vitamins are dangerous so as to scare people into taking prescription drugs instead.
Then, after all that, along comes Tara Parker-Pope, wellness columnist for The New York Times (the nation's paper of record) and says that "The SELECT study is among the most credible studies of a vitamin or supplement ever performed.", thereby identifying herself as a Stupid Crazy Liar.
P.S.
You can buy a vitamin E supplement; it should say "mixed tocopherols", be from a food source, and be in its natural form - a liquid inside a gelcap. Store it in a cool, dry, dark place.
