The Alliance for Natural Health — a Washington DC-based national consumer group fighting for all-things natural — has collected nearly 50,000 signatures on a petition urging Congress to appoint a new scientific panel to review vitamin D after last November’s Institute of Medicine panel failed to consider thousands of studies on the non-bone benefits of ‘The Sunshine Vitamin.’

The group is also calling for an investigation into dubious circumstances around the creation of the IOM’s report, including the fat that IOM has refused to release questions and comments it collected from vitamin D researchers before publishing its report.

IOM says vitamin D levels of 20 ng/ml are sufficient, despite the fact that 40 ng/ml is naturally consistent with outdoor living and the fact that thousands of studies now support those levels. It is widely believed that since average vitamin D levels in the United States have fallen from around 30 ng/ml in 1990 to around 23 ng/ml today due to widespread over-use of chemical sunscreen (which blocks vitamin D production), the IOM’s report was more about vindicating those who have driven vitamin D levels down in the past generation than it was about answering real questions about vitamin D.

“The Institute of Medicine released a report recently that says few people are vitamin D deficient, despite the scientific research that says otherwise. This is especially troubling now, in the thick of flu season, when people need more vitamin D, not less,” the ANH said in its petition.” “A number of prominent doctors have advised vitamin D supplementation for a wide variety of illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases. But the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition board was unfairly selective in which trials it used for its report, and dismissed more than a dozen studies from respected experts in the field. Moreover, one of the panelists has a major conflict of interest: he serves as an adviser to a pharmaceutical company that is working on a synthetic vitamin D drug, which can be patented.”

Sign the ANH petition by clicking here.

Visit the ANH web site by clicking here.