FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, November 2, 2025

RCTs: The Foundational Flaw of Modern Medicine?

-Why Randomized Controlled Trials Have Become a Barrier to Real-World Health

by Richard Z. Cheng, M.D., Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

Abstract: RCTs are worshipped as the "gold standard" of medical science-the pillar of evidence-based medicine-but they were never designed to evaluate nutrition, lifestyle, or multifactorial healing. In reality, RCT-centered "evidence-based medicine" is anything but evidence-based. Built to promote drug-centered medicine rather than health-outcome-focused medicine, the RCT dogma now distorts science, silences real-world success, and protects pharmaceutical profits at the expense of public health.

1. The "Gold Standard" That Lost Its Luster

For more than half a century, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been worshipped as the gold standard of medical science [1]. If an intervention fails to pass the RCT test, it is branded "unproven." If it passes, it earns scientific legitimacy, insurance reimbursement, and regulatory blessing.

This system might sound rigorous-but it was never designed to capture the complexity of human health. RCTs were created in the mid-20th century to test drugs in controlled settings [2], not to understand nutrition, lifestyle, or environmental influences. They isolate one variable while keeping all others constant. Real life doesn't work that way.

2. The Pharmaceutical Template and Its Consequences

RCTs favor interventions that are patentable, isolatable, and profitable [3]. A single chemical compound fits neatly into a double-blind protocol and can be statistically separated from placebo effects. But nutrients, diet patterns, or detoxification programs cannot be so easily isolated. You can't "blind" a ketogenic diet, a vitamin protocol, or sunshine exposure.

As a result, nutritional and integrative medicine are systemically excluded from mainstream evidence hierarchies. If a nutrient doesn't fit the pharmaceutical template, it is dismissed as anecdotal, regardless of decades of clinical observation or biochemical logic [4]. The problem is not the nutrients; it's the model.

3. When Randomization Meets Reductionism

The RCT assumes populations are homogeneous and variables are independent. Yet human biology is anything but. Every individual differs in genetics, epigenetics, microbiome, diet, toxic exposures, and nutrient status [5]. A trial averaging these differences produces a statistical abstraction, not biological truth.

Even a "positive" RCT result tells us only that on average the intervention helped some participants more than placebo. It says nothing about who benefits, who doesn't, or why. For preventive or metabolic interventions, this reductionism is fatal [6]. It turns living systems into spreadsheet rows.

4. Statistical Significance vs. Clinical Reality

An RCT chases p < 0.05, not patient better [7]. A 5 percent statistical threshold, chosen for convenience, became a sacred rule. If a vitamin or lifestyle change shows a trend but doesn't hit that number, it's declared "ineffective." Meanwhile, a drug producing a marginal change in biomarkers-but large profits-earns approval and headlines.

Orthomolecular and functional medicine operate in the opposite direction: we care about clinical meaning, not arbitrary p-values. When thousands of physicians observe reversal of diabetes through low-carb diets, or cancer patients improving with vitamin C, those real-world outcomes deserve respect-not dismissal as "uncontrolled anecdotes" [8,9].

5. Complex Interventions Cannot Be Randomized

Health is not a single variable. An integrative protocol typically combines diet, fasting, detoxification, targeted supplements, and hormonal balance. RCT methodology demands each component be isolated, yet the therapeutic power lies in synergy-the interaction among dozens of molecular and behavioral changes [10].

Demanding an RCT for every combination is not scientific rigor; it's methodological blindness. Complex systems require causal modeling and systems biology, not reductionist isolation [11]. Modern data science, AI, and Bayesian inference can analyze multifactorial patterns far better than 20th-century randomization models [12].

This is not just a nutrition problem; it reflects a broader epistemic issue with RCT overreach. As Deaton and Cartwright argue, randomization is a tool for local identification, not a universal guarantor of truth or transportability across contexts [13].

6. Ethical and Practical Limits of RCTs

The RCT ideal of random assignment with placebo control often collides with ethics and feasibility [14]. Would you randomly deny a life-saving nutrient or diet to half your subjects? Would you keep patients on a nutrient-deficient baseline for months or years to satisfy statistical purity?

These ethical barriers make large-scale nutritional RCTs nearly impossible. Thus, absence of RCT proof becomes a self-fulfilling excuse to ignore nutrition-an elegant circular logic protecting pharmaceutical dominance [15].

7. How RCT Dogma Distorts Policy and Education

Because regulators and journals enshrine RCTs as the apex of evidence, entire medical systems are skewed [16]. Funding flows to drug trials; nutrition trials languish. Guidelines cite "lack of RCT evidence" to sideline vitamins, diet, and detoxification. Medical students learn to prescribe pills, not food or lifestyle.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed this flaw in real time. Frontline doctors using high-dose vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc saw clear clinical benefits, yet these interventions were ridiculed for lacking "large RCTs" [17,18]. Meanwhile, costly antivirals and mRNA products received emergency approval based on limited, industry-sponsored trials. Science became politics wearing a lab coat.

At a public presentation in Warsaw, vitamin D researcher Bill Grant, Ph.D. recounted a revealing episode from 2002: the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a $3.6-million Phase III randomized trial using nitroglycerin (NG) ointment to prevent postmenopausal osteoporosis. Previous studies had shown the effective dose range was narrow-below 20 mg/day, NG acted essentially as a placebo; above 50 mg/day, it stimulated osteoclasts and promoted bone loss. The optimal therapeutic range, around 40 mg/day for a 60-75 kg person, had already been established.

Despite this evidence, NIH officials mandated a dose reduction to 15 mg/day, well within the inactive range, and reportedly threatened to withdraw funding unless the investigator complied. The trial thus guaranteed a null result, ensuring no threat to patented osteoporosis drugs that at the time cost about $100 per month, compared with $5 per month for the nitroglycerin therapy-which had been FDA-approved and showed comparable benefits without bisphosphonate-related side effects.

This case illustrates how dose-selection bias within RCTs can be used to pre-determine failure, protecting commercial interests rather than advancing patient welfare.

The oncology field offers perhaps the starkest example of RCT-centric failure. In a recent analysis (Cheng R.Z., 2025 [19]), nearly 400 FDA-approved anticancer drugs over the past two decades passed randomized trials yet delivered only marginal real-world survival gains-often measured in weeks or months-while imposing enormous toxicity and cost. This gap between statistical "success" and clinical reality epitomizes how RCT-centered medicine rewards marketable molecules, not meaningful patient outcomes.

Case Studies in Real-World Evidence

8. Vitamin C - Redox Restoration Beyond Randomization

High-dose intravenous vitamin C (HDIVC) is one of the most studied orthomolecular interventions in history, yet still marginalized for lacking massive phase-III RCTs. Its mechanisms are clear: vitamin C donates electrons to neutralize reactive oxygen species, recycles other antioxidants, enhances collagen synthesis, modulates immune signaling, and can generate hydrogen peroxide selectively toxic to cancer cells.

Vitamin C works synergistically with other micronutrients and antioxidants-such as vitamins E, A, B-complex, glutathione, selenium, and magnesium-to sustain redox balance and enzymatic functions [20-25]. Therefore, deficiencies in these cofactors can profoundly reduce vitamin C's clinical effectiveness, a fact that conventional RCTs rarely control for.

In sepsis, COVID-19, and cancer, clinicians worldwide have observed rapid improvements in oxygenation, vasopressor need, fatigue, and overall survival. Yet RCTs remain "inconclusive," often underdosing or measuring the wrong endpoints [26]. The failure here is methodological: a redox-restorative nutrient cannot be tested like a static chemical. Its effectiveness depends on baseline deficiency, oxidative-stress level, and timing. HDIVC's reproducible clinical outcomes represent real-world causality that randomization routinely obscures [27].

These mechanisms and clinical findings are reviewed in detail in High-Dose Intravenous Vitamin C: From Critical Care to Cancer and Cardiovascular Health (to be published in the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service).

9. Vitamin D3 - Sunlight as an Unrandomizable Variable

Vitamin D₃ exemplifies the absurdity of demanding placebo control for lifestyle factors. It is not a drug but a hormone precursor synthesized in the skin by ultraviolet B radiation, and its levels vary with latitude, seasonality, diet, age, body composition, and skin pigmentation. Decades of observational and ecological studies show strong inverse correlations between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and outcomes such as infection, cancer incidence and mortality, autoimmune disease, and all-cause mortality [28-32]. Recent comprehensive reviews by Grant, Wimalawansa, Pludowski, and Cheng further consolidate these associations, providing evidence-based recommendations for optimal population guidelines [33].

The critics respond, "correlation is not causation," yet the causal chain is biologically well established: vitamin D binds to the vitamin D receptor (VDR), regulating transcription of more than 1,000 genes involved in immunity, inflammation, and cell differentiation [34,35]. Our recent synthesis of mechanistic and clinical data also underscores vitamin D's pivotal role in cardiovascular health and risk reduction [36]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, umbrella meta-analyses combining observational and interventional studies found that higher vitamin D status or supplementation was associated with significantly reduced mortality (ES ≈ 0.42 for RCTs; ES ≈ 1.99 for observational studies) [37-41].

9a. Why Many Vitamin D RCTs Fail: Lessons from Henry Lahore

Henry Lahore has compiled a detailed list of 19 recurring design flaws that tend to bias vitamin D trials toward null outcomes [42]. Below is a condensed and thematically organized version (with adjustments to integrate into this article's narrative):

1. Fixed dosing without personalization. Trials seldom allow dose adjustments to account for age, obesity, gut absorption issues, genetic variability (e.g. low vitamin D-binding gene function), drug interference (statins, etc.), or other comorbidities.
2. Too short trial duration. Many trials would show benefit if extended, but cost constraints force them to remain short.
3. No cofactors allowed. Trials often prohibit use of supportive nutrients (magnesium, vitamin K, etc.), which are essential for vitamin D's full effect.
4. Doses too low. Some trials use only 1,000 IU or as little as 200 IU-hardly enough to move biological markers or clinical endpoints.
5. Ethics and placebo issues. Because it's now considered unethical by many to withhold vitamin D, truly randomized placebo-controlled trials are rarer or aborted early.
6. Early termination or dropout. Participants noticing benefit or relief may drop out or control arms may suffer, making continuation ethically or logistically difficult.
7. Low "sufficiency" cutoffs. Some studies define 20 ng/mL as adequate and lump all participants above this threshold together, obscuring gradient benefits above 30-40 ng/mL.
8. Genetic variation ignored. Polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor or metabolizing genes can modulate individual response, but are rarely accounted for.
9. Infrequent dosing intervals. Long gaps (e.g. monthly or six-month dosing) reduce benefit compared to daily or weekly regimens.
10. Perverse incentives. Investigators may receive favorable recognition for negative trials (e.g. a $324,000 prize once awarded for concluding 800 IU had no bone effect).
11. Lack of loading dose. Without an initial bolus, many participants may not reach therapeutic levels during the trial period.
12. Use of vitamin D₂ instead of D₃. Some trials use vitamin D₂, which is less effective and may even lower D₃ levels.
13. Baseline sufficiency or supplementation. Many subjects already have adequate levels or take supplemental vitamin D, reducing study contrast.
14. Permitted background supplementation. Participants in both arms may take small doses of vitamin D independently.
15. Magnesium deficiency in the environment. Low magnesium in drinking water or soil impairs vitamin D metabolism.
16. Selection bias. Trial enrollees are often healthier and exclude individuals with absorption or health issues (the ones most likely to benefit).
17. Low target thresholds. Some studies aim only for 30 ng/mL, while certain disease endpoints may require much higher levels.
18. Variable lab assays. Measurement variability across laboratories (up to ~10 ng/mL) complicates inter-study comparison.
19. No post-trial level checks. Without measuring achieved 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, one cannot correlate dose to actual biological effect, especially since individual response varies widely.

Interpretation: As Lahore argues, many "negative" vitamin D RCTs fail not because the intervention is ineffective, but because the design is mismatched to nutrient biology and individual variability.

10. Niacin (B3) - Reviving NAD⁺ and Cardiovascular Truths

Niacin (vitamin B3) predates statins as a lipid-modifying agent and remains the most potent therapy for raising HDL-cholesterol and lowering triglycerides [43,44]. It also replenishes NAD⁺, the universal redox coenzyme critical for mitochondrial energy and DNA repair [43-46].

Despite decades of favorable outcomes, niacin was abandoned after two drug-industry-funded RCTs (AIM-HIGH and HPS2-THRIVE) used synthetic extended-release formulations combined with statins-introducing side effects and confounders [47,48]. These trials concluded "no benefit," effectively burying niacin in modern guidelines.

Real-world use of pure, immediate-release niacin shows consistent improvement in lipids, endothelial function, and inflammation with minimal cost. Again, the RCTs failed not the nutrient but the design: they tested a pharmaceutical distortion of a vitamin within an already-treated population. Orthomolecular physicians continue to observe life-changing benefits, from dyslipidemia to neurodegeneration, validating niacin's mechanistic logic.

10a. Historical Note - Dr. Abram Hoffer and the Birth of Orthomolecular Medicine

Niacin occupies a special place in medical history-it is the nutrient that founded the Orthomolecular Medicine movement. In the early 1950s, Dr. Abram Hoffer, a Canadian psychiatrist and biochemist, pioneered the use of high-dose niacin in the treatment of schizophrenia. Working with Dr. Humphry Osmond, he observed remarkable clinical improvements, fewer relapses, and normalization of catecholamine metabolism in patients receiving niacin and vitamin C therapy.

These groundbreaking results inspired Dr. Linus Pauling, who in 1968 published "Orthomolecular Psychiatry" in Science, coining a new paradigm: restoring mental and physical health by optimizing the concentrations of molecules naturally present in the body. Pauling later expanded this concept to Orthomolecular Medicine, recognizing Hoffer's niacin research as its prototype.

For Hoffer, niacin was far more than a vitamin-it was a metabolic regulator, replenishing NAD⁺ and NADP⁺ to restore cellular redox balance, mitochondrial energy production, and neurotransmitter stability. His decades of clinical and biochemical work laid the foundation for modern orthomolecular psychiatry and integrative metabolic medicine.

Today, niacin remains the symbolic and mechanistic cornerstone of Orthomolecular Medicine-illustrating how nutrient-based interventions, when grounded in biochemical logic and individualized application, can achieve what pharmacologic symptom management often cannot [49-53].

Historical Proof of "RCT Dogma in Action"

The 1973 American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Megavitamin and Orthomolecular Therapy became the first major institutional weaponization of RCT orthodoxy against real-world clinical success [54,55]. Dr. Hoffer's niacin therapy had decades of observational success and solid biochemical rationale, yet the APA dismissed it for "lack of controlled evidence" - even though its own counter-studies were methodologically weaker and far shorter. This episode set a precedent that still governs medical policy: if an intervention does not fit the RCT template, it is branded invalid-no matter how many patients improve.

11. Low-Carb and Ketogenic Nutrition - Metabolic Reversal Without Randomization

Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome are reversible through carbohydrate restriction and nutritional ketosis-demonstrated in thousands of patients and multiple longitudinal studies [8,56-58]. Yet mainstream medicine hesitated until recently, citing the absence of long-term RCTs.

RCTs cannot easily capture dietary adherence, metabolic adaptation, or individualized nutrient balance. Nevertheless, real-world data from Virta Health and others show sustained HbA1c reduction, weight loss, and medication discontinuation over 2-5 years - a magnitude rarely seen in drug trials [56,59].

The mechanism is direct: lowering dietary carbohydrates reduces post-prandial glucose, insulin, and oxidative stress, restoring mitochondrial flexibility. These causal pathways are measurable, predictable, and reproducible-meeting every criterion of scientific validity except randomization.

12. Functional-Medicine Detoxification - Ethics Beyond Placebo

Detoxification programs targeting heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, and xenobiotics are impossible to randomize ethically. We cannot expose volunteers deliberately to mercury, lead, or glyphosate merely to create a placebo group. Yet biomarkers such as glutathione, GGT, and urinary toxin panels repeatedly show improvement after nutritional detox with vitamin C, alpha-lipoic acid, N-acetyl-cysteine, and targeted antioxidants.

From the orthomolecular perspective, this is causal inference in action: remove upstream toxins → mitochondrial function recovers → symptoms resolve. Waiting for a randomized toxin-exposure trial is not science-it is paralysis by methodology.

13. Causal Modeling: A Better Path Forward

A causal model asks a different question: What mechanisms link intervention → biochemistry → clinical outcome? Instead of averaging away differences, it embraces individuality, using biochemical markers, mechanistic reasoning, and Bayesian probability to infer cause and effect from multiple evidence streams [60,61].

This approach mirrors how clinicians actually think. When vitamin D deficiency correlates with immune dysfunction, oxidative stress, and poor outcomes-and supplementation restores function-that is causal inference, not coincidence. When fasting improves insulin sensitivity across cultures, we don't need a 10-year RCT to believe our eyes [62,63].

14. Orthomolecular Medicine as a Model of Real-World Evidence

Orthomolecular medicine has practiced causal modeling for decades-long before the term became fashionable [64]. We observe biochemical individuality, correct measurable deficiencies, and track outcomes. The logic is transparent, reproducible, and biologically sound. High-dose vitamin C, vitamin D optimization, niacin therapy, ketogenic and low-carb nutrition-all follow mechanistic pathways that can be measured and predicted [52,65].

This is real-world evidence: root-cause based, ethically sound, and patient-centered. It values physiology over statistics, healing over hypothesis testing. Ironically, it is more scientific than the ritual of randomization divorced from biology.

15. A Call to Reclaim Science from Statistics

Science should be a method of discovery, not a priesthood of p-values. RCTs have their place-for drug approval, short-term efficacy, or toxicity screening-but not as the supreme arbiter of truth [12]. When methodology becomes ideology, medicine loses both humility and humanity.

It is time to reclaim evidence as a continuum:

• Mechanistic plausibility (biochemistry, physiology)
• Clinical observation (real patients, real outcomes)
• Statistical validation (when appropriate and ethical)

Integrative and orthomolecular medicine embody this hierarchy. We start from mechanism, confirm through experience, and refine with data-not the other way around.

16. Conclusion

The flaw is not in randomization itself but in its monopoly on truth. By enthroning RCTs as the only valid evidence, modern medicine has blinded itself to biology, nutrition, and common sense. It's time to move from randomization to reason-from control to understanding, from statistics to causality.

Health is not random. Our evidence shouldn't be either.

About the Author

Richard Z. Cheng, M.D., Ph.D. - Editor-in-Chief, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

Dr. Cheng is a U.S.-based, NIH-trained, board-certified physician specializing in integrative cancer therapy, orthomolecular medicine, functional & anti-aging medicine. He maintains active practices in both the United States and China.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and a Hall of Fame inductee of the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine, Dr. Cheng is a leading advocate for nutrition-based, root-cause health strategies. He also serves as an expert reviewer for the South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, and co-founded both the China Low Carb Medicine Alliance and the Society of International Metabolic Oncology.

Dr. Cheng offers online Integrative Orthomolecular Medicine consultation services.
📰 Follow his latest insights on Substack: https://substack.com/@rzchengmd

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