Many people who wander into a health food store for the first time have this question on their minds. For years they have read about the purported risk of supplements produced and sold by the largely self-regulated dietary supplement industry.

The best way to answer this question is by presenting the facts; something the FDA / AMA / Big Pharma “propaganda machine” is loath to do.

First let’s look at how many people in the US died from normal vitamin usage (not intentional overdose) over the past few years:

2008 zero deaths (1)

2007 zero deaths (2)

2006 zero deaths (3)

If you have the time and desire to confirm these statistics, you can read every annual Poison Control report dating back to 1983 here: http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDS/AnnualReports/tabid/125/Default.aspx

(I must confess I stopped reading at the end of the 2006 report)

The pattern is pretty clear as to the lack of deaths involving vitamins.

So how well do prescription drugs hold up in comparison?

Answering this question is difficult… not for lack of data, but because of an avalanche of data. One 2008 study done in Sweden found “Fatal adverse drug reactions account for approximately 3% of all deaths in the general population.” (4)

According the CIA, approximately 92,500 people die each year in Sweden. 3% of that number is roughly 2,776.

Now Sweden only has a population of about 9 million, compared to the US, with 310 million. So if we divide 310 million by 9 million we get a factor of 34.4. Multiplying 34.4 times 2,776 we get roughly 95,000 as an extrapolated estimate of deaths to expect in the US from adverse drug reactions, based on the Swedish study. Let’s look at what the actual numbers from a previous US study tell us…