Recommendation comes on heels of U.S. study suggesting supplement slashes risk of disease by as much as 60 per cent.

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

From Friday's Globe and Mail

June 8, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT

TORONTO — The Canadian Cancer Society plans to announce Friday that all adults should start taking vitamin D, coinciding with the release of a groundbreaking U.S. study indicating the supplement cuts the risk of cancer by an astounding 60 per cent. The move is believed to be the first time a major public-health organization has endorsed daily use of the sunshine vitamin as a cancer-prevention therapy for an entire population. It follows a flurry of research suggesting the low-cost vitamin confers a high degree of protection against a wide variety of cancers. There are also striking study results suggesting that people who develop the disease often have low blood levels of vitamin D. Although it is not known how many of the approximately 160,000 cancer cases diagnosed annually in Canada might be avoided by regular popping of a vitamin D pill, the cancer society said these findings are so compelling it felt it had to start urging people to act on them. 25233711