An Essay
Preface
Before We Begin
The same molecule in your morning vitamin D supplement is the active ingredient in rat poison.
Not a similar compound. Not a chemical cousin. The exact same molecule: cholecalciferol. At 0.075% concentration, it kills rats. In your supplement bottle, it's supposed to make you healthier.
This should be a simple story of dosage – but the more I investigated, the stranger it became. The vitamin D in supplements isn't extracted from fish or produced by sunlight. It's manufactured from sheep's wool using benzene and chloroform in Chinese chemical factories. The same factories that produce industrial solvents.
Meanwhile, studies show vitamin D supplements reduce multiple sclerosis progression by 34%. They lower cancer mortality. They help ICU patients recover faster. How does rat poison mixed with industrial chemicals improve health outcomes?
This essay is my attempt to reconcile what shouldn't be reconcilable. To understand how we arrived at a place where medicine and poison share the same molecule, the same manufacturer, the same mechanism of action – but somehow produce opposite results.
What you're about to read might challenge everything you believe about supplements, nutrition, and how we decide what's "healthy." That's the point. Sometimes the most important questions are the ones that make us uncomfortable.
Ready?
One more thing: this isn't meant to frighten you. If you're taking vitamin D and feeling better, I'm not saying you're poisoning yourself. The truth is more complex - some people probably benefit, others might be harmed, and many are likely wasting money on unnecessary supplements. The goal is to help you make informed decisions, not to create panic.
Some people do have genuine, severe deficiencies that need medical attention. This essay isn't about them – it's about the rest of us being told we're all deficient based on questionable tests and ever-shifting standards.
1. The Paradox That Shouldn't Exist
Here's a puzzle that keeps me awake at night: Multiple studies claim vitamin D supplementation produces measurable health benefits. A 2025 trial in France reported that high-dose vitamin D reduced multiple sclerosis progression by 34%. A meta-analysis found 15% lower cancer mortality. ICU patients allegedly had better survival rates. These studies exist, complete with control groups and statistical analyses, circulating through the medical establishment's usual channels.
Same substance, different context: Rampage rat poison. Active ingredient: 0.075% cholecalciferol. That's vitamin D3. Not mixed with vitamin D3, not containing vitamin D3 as one of many ingredients. The only active ingredient that kills rats is the exact same molecule we're told to supplement for our health. The remaining 99.925%? Seeds and grain – rat food. The vitamin D is what makes it lethal.
Something doesn't add up here.
Now, I don't trust the medical publishing complex. After watching them gatekeep dissenting voices, rubber-stamp fraudulent studies during the pandemic, and memory-hole inconvenient data, I know they're captured by industrial medicine. But here's what makes this paradox interesting: even if these vitamin D studies are manipulated, even if the benefits are manufactured, even if the whole thing is pharmaceutical propaganda – we still have the other side of the equation. The rat poison. The safety data sheets. The "fatal if swallowed" warnings from the actual manufacturers.
Either we're witnessing one of the most successful examples of "the dose makes the poison" in human history, or we're missing something fundamental about what's actually happening when people swallow these supplements. Because when Merck's own safety documents classify their pharmaceutical-grade vitamin D3 as "Category 1 and 2 hazardous," I pay attention. Not because I trust Merck – but because liability lawyers make them document actual hazards.
This isn't a simple story of Big Pharma deception or natural health enlightenment. It's messier than that. More confusing. And I'm trying to figure out how both realities can exist simultaneously. (Good for you and Bad for rats)
2. The Case Against - When the Evidence is Undeniable
Let me start with what Agent131711 gets absolutely right, because some of this evidence is impossible to dismiss.
The safety data sheets are damning. Not from some blogger's interpretation, but from Merck and Spectrum's own legal documentation for pharmaceutical-grade vitamin D3. "Fatal if swallowed." "Category 1 and 2 hazardous substance." "Not for use as food or drug." These aren't typos. These are legally required hazard classifications that companies must provide to protect themselves from liability. The same cholecalciferol molecule sold in your local pharmacy carries skull-and-crossbones pictograms in its industrial documentation.
Then there's the mechanism of death – identical in rats and humans. Cholecalciferol kills through hypercalcemia: calcium floods the bloodstream, calcifies soft tissues, damages kidneys, causes heart failure. When rats eat those poison pellets, this is how they die. When humans overdose on vitamin D, this is exactly what happens to them. Same molecule, same biological pathway, same organ damage. The only difference is the dose and the timeline.
Here's a paradox within the paradox: vitamin D supposedly helps us absorb calcium for strong bones, yet it kills through calcium overload. We're told the poison's mechanism of death is somehow also its mechanism of healing. How can flooding the body with calcium simultaneously strengthen bones and destroy organs? It's like claiming drowning prevents dehydration.
- The mechanism gets worse when you understand the magnesium connection. Excess vitamin D doesn't just flood your body with calcium -- it actively depletes magnesium in the process. The hormone form of D signals your intestines to preferentially absorb calcium over magnesium. Your kidneys need magnesium to dump the excess calcium, but the very substance causing the calcium overload is simultaneously blocking your ability to get the magnesium needed to fix it.
- It's a biochemical trap: the more vitamin D you take to "fix" your deficiency, the more you deplete the magnesium that would protect you from its toxicity. Magnesium is anti-inflammatory; calcium is inflammatory. We're systematically tilting everyone's mineral balance toward inflammation while calling it preventive healthcare. Some practitioners have observed this and recommend topical magnesium to bypass the compromised intestinal absorption -- essentially admitting that oral vitamin D supplementation breaks normal mineral metabolism so badly that you need to absorb minerals through your skin to compensate.
The manufacturing process should give anyone pause. This isn't sunshine captured in a bottle. It's sheep's wool grease (lanolin) irradiated with UV light, then extracted using chloroform – a known carcinogen that the safety sheets warn "may damage the unborn child." Industrial chemistry masquerading as a vitamin. Whatever your body produces when sunlight hits your skin, this isn't it.
The conflation of all forms of vitamin D also deserves scrutiny. The cholecalciferol your skin produces from sunlight, the vitamin D2 from mushrooms, the synthetic D3 from supplements – Agent131711 treats them as interchangeable villains. But even Agent131711 admits being unable to find natural vitamin D isolated under a microscope, only synthetic versions. This suggests we might be dealing with different substances entirely, despite similar names.
Still, those rat poison labels don't lie. Quintox: 0.075% vitamin D3, 99.925% seeds. Agrid3: same ratio. TeraD3 BLOX: marketed as the only EPA-approved organic rodenticide, killing through vitamin D toxicity. These aren't obscure products – they're commercially available, professionally manufactured, and they work by exploiting vitamin D's toxicity at tiny concentrations.
The question isn't whether vitamin D3 can be toxic. It clearly can. The question is whether taking it at supplement doses is slowly building toward that same toxicity, just stretched over decades instead of days.
Where Agent131711's argument becomes more debatable is the dismissal of dose-response. "Poison is poison," they say, but this oversimplifies how biology works. The difference between rat poison concentration (0.075%) and typical supplement doses is often 1000-fold or more. Pharmacology exists as a discipline because dose-response relationships are real and measurable.
It's worth noting that vitamin D toxicity from supplementation at recommended doses is genuinely rare. The Endocrine Society reports that toxicity typically requires doses above 10,000 IU daily for months. Millions supplement daily without acute poisoning. The question isn't whether massive overdoses are dangerous - they clearly are. The question is whether decades of daily supplementation at "normal" doses leads to subtle, cumulative harm that we're not adequately tracking.
The half-life of 25-hydroxyvitamin D is only 15-30 days, and our bodies do have mechanisms to break down excess. But this doesn't tell the whole story. Tissue calcification and cellular disruption may occur through different mechanisms than simple blood level accumulation. We need to distinguish between acute toxicity (rare) and potential long-term effects (unstudied).
3. The Manufacturing Horror
Before we examine the studies claiming benefits, we need to understand what exactly people are swallowing. The manufacturing process of vitamin D3 isn't just industrial -- it's a chemical nightmare that would horrify anyone who saw it.
The manufacturing process reveals the truth more starkly than any academic paper could. Agent131711 traced the journey from slaughterhouse to supplement bottle, and it reads like a horror story dressed up as science.
It starts with sheep destined for slaughter. Their wool, coated in lanolin (sebaceous gland secretions), gets washed with industrial detergents. The extracted lanolin then undergoes a "dehydrobromination reaction" using either 2,4,6-trimethylpyridine (derived from coal tar) or a cocktail of sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, N-Bromosuccinimide, and chloroform. Yes, chloroform -- the same substance used to knock people unconscious in old movies, now being used to create your "essential nutrient."
The mixture gets heated to 248°F, creating what the patent documents charmingly call a "soup" -- melted lanolin swimming in industrial chemicals. To speed dissolution, they add methanol and benzene. Benzene, for context, is what causes leukemia in factory workers. It's so toxic that OSHA strictly regulates workplace exposure, yet it's a standard ingredient in vitamin D production.
Next comes "purification" through a Diels-Alder cycloaddition, followed by irradiation in what's essentially an industrial X-ray machine. The base for this irradiation can be aluminum oxide (linked to Alzheimer's) mixed with more benzene. The irradiation supposedly "activates" the vitamin -- though what it's really doing is bombarding sheep grease with radiation after it's been dissolved in carcinogens.
The process continues: separation, filtration, heating until only crystals remain, then pulverizing into powder. These crystals, born from wool wax and baptized in benzene, dried and crushed into dust, are what we're told is identical to what our skin produces in sunshine. The same substance that, when mixed with flour and sugar, becomes D-Con rat poison. When cut with soy oil, becomes your doctor-recommended supplement.
The factories producing this are primarily in China and India, where environmental regulations are suggestions rather than rules. The powder ships worldwide in industrial drums, the same shipping infrastructure that moves industrial chemicals, because that's what this is -- an industrial chemical with a marketing department.
Now, defenders of supplementation will argue that many life-saving medications use similar industrial processes. Insulin involves genetically modified E. coli. Antibiotics require complex fermentation. Even "natural" supplements undergo extensive processing. They'll say the manufacturing process is a red herring – what matters is the final molecule, not how it's made.
This would be a fair point if we were talking about acute, life-saving medications given to sick people under medical supervision. But we're not. We're talking about something added to the milk supply, mandated in infant formula, recommended for daily consumption by healthy people for their entire lives. The standards should be different. When you're mass-medicating entire populations, the origin and purity matter enormously.
Moreover, the manufacturing process reveals something crucial: this isn't a nutrient we're extracting from food. It's an industrial chemical we're creating through industrial processes, then retroactively calling it identical to what our bodies produce. Would we accept this logic for other hormones? If we synthesized testosterone from coal tar and chloroform, would we add it to the milk supply and call it essential nutrition?
This is what we're being told to give our infants. This is what's mandated in milk. This is what your doctor measures in your blood and declares you deficient without. Not sunshine captured in a bottle, but sheep's wool dissolved in chloroform, irradiated like nuclear waste, crystallized through benzene, and packaged as health.
4. The Case For - When Studies Show Benefits
Now for the other side of this maddening equation – the studies claiming benefits. Even if we're skeptical of medical journals, even if we know they're captured by pharmaceutical interests, we still need to grapple with what these trials report.
The multiple sclerosis trial from France followed 303 patients for two years. Half received 100,000 IU of cholecalciferol every two weeks – a massive dose by any standard. The primary outcome (relapses plus MRI lesions) occurred in 60.3% of the vitamin D group versus 74.1% of placebo. That's not a subtle difference. That's a third fewer people experiencing disease progression. How does rat poison slow MS?
The cancer mortality data is equally puzzling. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found approximately 15% lower cancer mortality with vitamin D supplementation. Not cancer incidence – people still got cancer at the same rates – but fewer died from it. The reduction was consistent across different types of cancer. If cholecalciferol is purely toxic, why would poisoning people slightly improve their survival from an entirely different disease process?
In intensive care units, a meta-analysis of 16 trials involving 2,449 critically ill patients showed a mortality risk ratio of 0.78 with vitamin D supplementation. Shorter ICU stays, less time on ventilators. These are people whose bodies are already under extreme stress, yet adding a known toxin apparently helps them recover faster.
The COPD findings add another wrinkle. Benefits appeared only in patients with severe deficiency – baseline levels below 25 nmol/L. No benefit for anyone else. This suggests something more complex than simple supplementation. Perhaps in states of severe deficiency, the body's response to even a toxic form of the compound triggers beneficial adaptations?
Then there's the prediabetes data. Individual trials showed borderline or no effect, but pooled analysis across eight trials found an 11% reduction in progression to diabetes. Modest, but measurable. More interesting: the effect was stronger in non-obese participants. Why would body composition affect how a poison influences blood sugar regulation?
These aren't all industry-funded shams. Some are investigator-initiated trials, some are from countries with nationalized healthcare systems that have no incentive to promote unnecessary supplements. The geographic spread – France, various meta-analyses pulling from global data – makes coordinated fraud less likely.
But here's what bothers me: the benefits cluster around specific conditions and deficiency states. We don't see across-the-board improvements in general health. We see targeted effects – MS progression, cancer mortality, ICU outcomes in the severely ill. It's almost as if the body, when pushed to extremes by disease or deficiency, can utilize even a toxic substance in beneficial ways.
Or maybe we're measuring the wrong thing entirely. What if these improvements aren't from vitamin D itself but from what the body does in response to chronic, low-level poisoning? The hormesis hypothesis again – could these benefits be the body's adaptive response to a toxin rather than the direct effect of a nutrient?
The fact remains: people taking rat poison in measured doses show measurable improvements in specific health outcomes. That's not a sentence that should make sense, yet here we are, staring at the data.
These benefits aren't entirely mysterious. Vitamin D - or more accurately, the hormone it converts to - does have biological effects beyond calcium absorption. It appears to modulate immune function and affect cell differentiation. The MS benefits could come from immune suppression. The cancer mortality reduction might relate to effects on cell proliferation. The ICU benefits could stem from anti-inflammatory properties.
But here's what should give us pause: we're seeing benefits primarily in disease states, not general health improvement. It's acting more like a pharmaceutical intervention than a nutritional supplement. The question isn't whether synthetic cholecalciferol has biological effects - it clearly does. The question is whether we should be taking a substance that functions like a steroid hormone on a daily basis, especially when its "benefits" mainly appear when the body is already in crisis.
5. The Shaky Foundation
Perhaps the answer to our paradox lies not in what vitamin D does, but in what it actually is. The origin stories of both vitamin D and vitamin A read like scientific fairy tales when you examine them closely.
Agent131711 spent hours trying to find a simple photograph of natural, isolated vitamin D under a microscope. Not synthetic D3, not a computer rendering, but actual vitamin D extracted from fish or mushrooms or human blood. It doesn't exist. Every image, every molecular structure diagram, every "photograph" – they're all of synthetic cholecalciferol. The natural compound we supposedly need for survival has never been properly isolated and photographed in its natural state.
The discovery story itself is suspect. In the 1920s, researchers were trying to understand rickets. They knew sunlight prevented it, and certain foods seemed to help. But here's where it gets murky: they "isolated" vitamin D by irradiating ergosterol (from yeast) with UV light. Think about that. They didn't extract vitamin D from a natural source – they created something by bombarding yeast derivatives with radiation and called it a vitamin. That's like shooting electricity through nitrogen gas, creating nitrogen dioxide, and declaring you've discovered the essential nutrient in air.
Grant Genereux's investigation into vitamin A reveals an even more damning pattern. The researchers who "proved" vitamin A was essential were using heated casein in their supposedly vitamin-A-free diets. Except casein contains vitamin A, and heating it converts it to retinoic acid – the most toxic form. They thought they were proving deficiency; they were actually documenting toxicity. Their "vitamin-free" diet was a high-dose poison diet. Yet this became the foundation for declaring vitamin A essential.
The pattern repeats: industrial processes creating industrial compounds, then retroactively declaring them identical to what exists in nature. It's the supplementation tail wagging the nutritional dog. We didn't discover vitamins and then learn to synthesize them – we created compounds through industrial processes and then went looking for justifications to call them essential.
Consider the testing itself. When you get your vitamin D levels checked, they're not looking for some natural compound your body produces or extracts from food. They're testing for the presence of synthetic markers – specifically, they're measuring 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is what your liver creates from cholecalciferol. But if you're supplementing, you're not measuring natural vitamin D status; you're measuring how much synthetic compound has accumulated in your system.
Here's the real kicker: the entire "deficiency epidemic" might be a testing artifact. The blood test measures synthetic markers – 25-hydroxyvitamin D – which is what your liver makes from supplements. How would we even know if someone has sufficient natural vitamin D when the test is designed to detect industrial chemicals? We've created a test that guarantees everyone appears deficient unless they're taking the product being sold.
The whole edifice starts to look like an industrial construct. Chemical companies needed markets for their byproducts. Sheep's wool processing created lanolin waste. Instead of disposal costs, they irradiate it, extract with chloroform, and sell it as a health product. The "science" followed the industrial opportunity, not the other way around.
This might explain why traditional populations thrived without supplementation. The Inuit, living in darkness for months, eating a diet of seal and whale – no rickets, no vitamin D deficiency. Traditional cultures worldwide, no access to supplements, no fortified foods, yet no epidemic of bone diseases. It's only when industrial food systems take over that suddenly everyone becomes "deficient" in compounds that require industrial processes to produce.
The timeline tells its own story. Mass fortification of milk with vitamin D began in the 1930s. By the 1950s, osteoporosis emerged as a major health concern. Autoimmune diseases exploded from rare curiosities to commonplace diagnoses through the same decades. Agent131711 documented this correlation, but mainstream medicine refuses to connect these dots. We added rat poison to the food supply, and somehow we're surprised that people got sicker.
Now, critics will rightly point out that correlation isn't causation. The rise in osteoporosis could be explained by numerous factors: the fortification generation reaching old age when bone problems manifest, better diagnostic tools detecting what always existed, longer lifespans revealing age-related conditions, the shift from physical labor to sedentary office work. All valid points.
But here's what's suspicious: we were told fortification would prevent bone disease. Instead, we got an epidemic of bone disease in the first generation raised on fortified foods. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe it's the hundred other environmental toxins introduced in the same era. Or maybe – just maybe – flooding everyone's system with a fat-soluble synthetic hormone that affects calcium metabolism had unintended consequences that took decades to manifest. The fact that we can't definitively prove causation doesn't mean we should ignore the correlation, especially when the mechanism of toxicity (calcium dysregulation) perfectly matches the disease we're seeing (bones losing calcium).
To be fair, vitamin D fortification seems to have solved a real problem. Rickets was endemic in industrial cities before fortification programs. Children in Victorian London developed severe bone deformities. Women in purdah suffered from osteomalacia. The apparent success of fortification in eliminating rickets seems to have saved children from disability.
But here's the nuance we're missing: these populations developed problems when they moved away from traditional lifestyles. Industrial work kept people indoors. Smog blocked sunlight. Traditional foods were replaced with processed alternatives. Instead of addressing these root causes - the industrial conditions creating the deficiency - we applied an industrial solution. It worked for acute deficiency diseases. Whether it's optimal for long-term health is a different question entirely.
Even more insidious: most livestock now receive vitamin D supplements in their feed. That "natural" egg, that grass-fed beef, that organic milk – they're all contaminated with synthetic D3 from supplemented animals. We're being dosed even when we try to eat clean. There's no control group left in this experiment.
What if we've been asking the wrong question all along? Instead of "How much vitamin D do we need?" perhaps we should ask "Why do industrial societies create conditions that supposedly require industrial chemicals to fix?"
The very concept of isolating single compounds and declaring them essential might be the flaw. Traditional foods don't deliver isolated chemicals – they provide complex matrices of compounds that work synergistically. A piece of salmon isn't just "vitamin D" – it's thousands of compounds working together. The reductionist approach of supplementation assumes we can improve on this with sheep grease and chloroform.
6. The Third Perspective - What If We're Asking the Wrong Question?
Dr. Paul Mason offers a perspective that might resolve our paradox by reframing it entirely. What if vitamin D isn't a nutrient at all, but a marker of something else?
His observation is elegantly simple: your body produces vitamin D as sunscreen. The same UV-B rays that trigger vitamin D synthesis also damage DNA. The vitamin D production isn't the goal – it's the protective response. Even simple phytoplankton produce vitamin D when exposed to UV radiation – not for bones (they don't have bones), but as protection from radiation damage. We've mistaken the bandage for the medicine.
This explains something that never made sense: why would humans fundamentally require sun exposure for an essential nutrient when entire populations thrived in regions with minimal sunlight? The Inuit lived in near-permanent darkness. Northern Europeans spent winters in deep forest shadows. These populations didn't develop mass deficiency diseases until industrial foods replaced their traditional diets. Perhaps because the "deficiency" is actually something else entirely.
Mason's data about cholesterol is particularly intriguing. People with more sun exposure have lower cholesterol levels. Not because vitamin D is improving their health, but because vitamin D synthesis consumes cholesterol. Your body literally burns through cholesterol to create this protective compound. High vitamin D levels might simply indicate that someone's body is successfully defending against UV damage, which correlates with being outdoors, active, and generally healthier.
Then there's the seed oil connection. Mason notes that people eliminating seed oils report dramatic improvements in sun tolerance. No more burning, even with extended exposure. The theory: plant sterols from industrial seed oils interfere with vitamin D synthesis in the skin. If your body can't produce its natural sunscreen, you burn. This isn't about vitamin D deficiency – it's about industrial foods disrupting our natural protective mechanisms.
This reframing explains the winter blues better than deficiency theory. If vitamin D is just sunscreen, not a mood nutrient, why do people feel worse in winter? Light therapy works without producing vitamin D – it's about light exposure, not the chemical. Seasonal depression might be about lack of sunlight on our retinas and skin, lack of outdoor movement, not lack of a sheep-wool extract. We've confused the marker for the cause.
The metabolic health marker hypothesis makes more sense than the nutrient theory. Vitamin D is fat-soluble, stored in fat tissue. Obese individuals show lower circulating levels not because they need more supplements, but because their fat cells are sequestering it. The correlation between low vitamin D and poor health outcomes might be entirely backwards – it's not that low D causes disease, but that metabolic dysfunction causes both disease and altered vitamin D metabolism.
This would explain why supplementation studies show such mixed results. You're not fixing a deficiency; you're artificially elevating a marker. It's like taking aspirin to lower a fever caused by infection – the number on the thermometer goes down, but the underlying problem remains. Sometimes that might help (the hormesis effect of mild poisoning triggering beneficial adaptations), sometimes it might hurt (accumulating synthetic compounds that interfere with natural processes), and sometimes it might do nothing at all.
Consider the profound implications: we've identified a protective response to environmental damage, synthesized it in a lab using industrial processes, and convinced ourselves that swallowing it will replicate the benefits of outdoor activity, whole foods, and metabolic health. It's the supplementation mindset taken to its logical absurdity – trying to bottle sunshine, but ending up with sheep grease processed with chloroform.
Mason's perspective also explains why traditional diets work without supplementation. Animal fats from pasture-raised animals contain natural vitamin D complexes integrated into the fat matrix. This isn't isolated cholecalciferol – it's a complete package of fat-soluble compounds working in concert. The Inuit weren't deficient because seal blubber provided everything they needed, in the form their bodies expected.
What if the entire paradigm is backwards? Instead of asking "How can we supplement our way to health?" we should ask "What about modern life creates these apparent deficiencies?" The answer might be that industrial foods, indoor living, and metabolic dysfunction create a state where our bodies can't properly produce or utilize natural protective compounds. Then we try to fix it with industrial versions of those same compounds, created through processes that would horrify anyone who saw them.
There's another industrial chemical that may be driving this supposed deficiency epidemic: glyphosate. Jennifer Depew and other researchers have identified that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, inhibits CYP enzymes -- the very enzymes we need to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight and cholesterol. Think about the elegant circularity of this: we spray our food with chemicals that prevent our bodies from making vitamin D naturally, then declare everyone deficient and sell them synthetic replacements made from sheep's wool and chloroform.
This isn't just speculation. Glyphosate is now ubiquitous in the food supply, showing up in everything from breakfast cereals to organic wines. The timeline aligns perfectly: glyphosate use exploded in the 1990s with GMO crops, and suddenly everyone became vitamin D deficient. We broke the natural synthesis pathway with one industrial chemical, then "fixed" it with another.
It's the agricultural equivalent of breaking your legs and selling you crutches. Except the crutches are made of rat poison.
7. The Warfarin Parallel
Critics of this essay might point out that warfarin is also rat poison, yet it saves lives as a blood thinner. Iron supplements can kill in overdose but prevent anemia. Perhaps vitamin D belongs in this category - substances that are both poison and medicine depending on context.
This is a fair point. Medicine is full of such paradoxes. The difference with vitamin D is the scale of exposure. Warfarin is prescribed to specific patients with careful monitoring. Iron is given to those with documented deficiency. But vitamin D is added to the milk supply, fortified in foods, recommended universally, with ever-increasing "optimal" levels. We're not treating sick people; we're mass-medicating entire populations based on a test that might be measuring the wrong thing.
8. Reconciling the Irreconcilable
So here I sit, staring at this paradox. Rat poison that reduces cancer mortality. A hazardous industrial chemical that prevents MS relapses. A compound that kills through calcium toxicity, yet somehow helps ICU patients survive. How do we make sense of this?
Maybe the answer is that we're dealing with multiple truths simultaneously.
Truth one: Synthetic cholecalciferol is unquestionably toxic. The safety sheets don't lie, the rat poison works, and the mechanism of toxicity is identical in all mammals. Taking any substance that bioaccumulates and causes hypercalcemia is inherently risky. Agent131711 is right about this.
Truth two: Many people supplementing with vitamin D experience measurable benefits in specific conditions. The studies exist, the effects are sometimes substantial, and even accounting for publication bias and pharmaceutical influence, something is happening. The medical establishment isn't wrong about everything.
Truth three: What our bodies produce in response to sunlight and what comes in a bottle are not the same thing, despite sharing a name. One is part of a complex biological response to environmental stress. The other is sheep grease processed with industrial chemicals. We've conflated them because they share certain molecular similarities, but that's like saying carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are interchangeable because they both contain carbon.
The hormesis hypothesis might bridge these truths. Perhaps synthetic vitamin D acts as a controlled poison that triggers beneficial stress responses in certain disease states. Cancer cells might be more vulnerable to calcium disruption than healthy cells. MS inflammation might be dampened by the immune suppression that comes from mild, chronic poisoning. ICU patients might benefit from the anti-inflammatory effects of what is, essentially, a steroid hormone.
But this raises an uncomfortable question: if the benefits come from controlled poisoning, shouldn't we be looking for safer ways to trigger the same responses? Exercise is hormetic stress without the bioaccumulation. Fasting triggers cellular repair without permanent calcium deposits. Even controlled sun exposure provides the stress response without the chloroform extraction.
Grant Genereux's vitamin A research suggests another possibility: we're seeing benefits because we're accidentally treating a different toxicity. If modern diets are overloaded with synthetic vitamins, perhaps vitamin D supplementation interferes with vitamin A absorption or metabolism. The "benefit" might be reducing the impact of a different poison. It's like taking one drug to counteract the side effects of another – sometimes it works, but you're not addressing the root problem.
The most disturbing possibility is that we're watching a massive experiment in real-time, and we won't know the true results for decades. Fat-soluble compounds that bioaccumulate don't show their full effects immediately. The generation raised on fortified foods and daily supplements hasn't reached old age yet. When Agent131711 points out the parallel rise in osteoporosis despite decades of vitamin D fortification, are we seeing the early signs of a failed experiment?
I don't have clean answers. What I have is deep skepticism about any simple narrative – whether it's "vitamin D is essential" or "vitamin D is pure poison." The truth seems messier: an industrial chemical that can trigger beneficial responses in specific circumstances while potentially causing long-term harm through accumulation. A marker we've mistaken for a medicine. A band-aid we've convinced ourselves is nutrition.
What I'm certain of is this: no traditional culture ever needed to extract cholecalciferol from sheep's wool using chloroform to be healthy. Whatever our ancestors did to maintain strong bones and immune systems, it wasn't this. Maybe instead of asking "How much synthetic D3 should I take?" we should be asking "What were they doing that we're not?"
I'm throwing this out to you, the readers, because I believe in crowd-sourced wisdom. If you've had experiences with vitamin D – positive or negative – I want to hear them. If you've found research that reconciles this paradox, share it. If you think I'm missing something crucial, tell me.
Because either we're mass-medicating with rat poison and occasionally getting lucky with hormetic effects, or there's something fundamental about human biochemistry that nobody fully understands yet. Neither option is particularly comforting.
The one thing I'm sure of? The conventional narrative – that synthetic vitamin D is an unqualified good that most people need more of – is definitely wrong. The full truth is more complex, more disturbing, and more uncertain than any of us would like to admit.
9. The Perfect Business Model
Step back and look at the architecture of this system. It's breathtaking in its completeness.
First, create the problem: Develop a test that measures synthetic markers, then declare anyone below arbitrary thresholds "deficient." The test doesn't measure natural vitamin D status – it can't, because we've never properly isolated natural vitamin D. It measures whether you're taking supplements. Circular logic perfected.
Second, ensure no escape: Fortify the milk supply. Add it to breakfast cereals. Mandate it in infant formula. Supplement the livestock feed so even "natural" foods are contaminated. Make it impossible to avoid the experiment. There's no control group when everyone's being dosed.
Third, expand the market: Keep raising the "optimal" levels. What was considered adequate in 1990 is now severely deficient. The reference ranges creep higher, capturing more people in the deficiency net. Pregnant women need more. Children need more. The elderly need more. Everyone needs more.
Now they're even engineering nanoemulsions to enhance bioavailability - essentially admitting that the synthetic compound is so poorly absorbed that it needs to be wrapped in nanotechnology to work. We've gone from claiming this is an essential nutrient to needing particle physics to deliver it effectively. A 2025 study touted vitamin D3-loaded nanoemulsion as superior for autistic children. Think about that: we need cutting-edge drug delivery systems to make a supposedly essential nutrient work. When did our ancestors need nanotechnology to absorb sunshine?
Fourth, multiply the revenue streams: Test manufacturers sell the diagnostics. Supplement companies sell the cure. When bioaccumulation causes problems – osteoporosis, kidney stones, cardiovascular calcification – pharmaceutical companies sell those treatments too. It's vertical integration that would make Rockefeller proud.
The synergy with agricultural chemicals is particularly elegant. Glyphosate manufacturers profit from herbicide sales while simultaneously creating vitamin D deficiency by inhibiting the CYP enzymes needed for natural synthesis. This manufactured deficiency drives supplement sales. The supplements deplete magnesium, driving sales of magnesium products and treatments for magnesium deficiency symptoms. Each "solution" creates new problems requiring new products. It's not a conspiracy -- it's just capitalism optimizing for profit across multiple industries that happen to feed each other's growth.
Fifth, capture the critics: Anyone questioning this system is "anti-science" or wants children to develop rickets. Create nonprofit organizations to promote awareness. Fund studies that ask "how much?" never "should we?" Make supplementation synonymous with responsible health behavior.
The genius is that each component reinforces the others. The tests create demand for supplements. The supplements validate the tests. The fortification ensures baseline exposure. The side effects create new markets. The whole system becomes self-sustaining, generating its own evidence for its necessity.
Consider the numbers: The global vitamin D testing market exceeds $2 billion annually. The supplement market is over $1.5 billion. Osteoporosis drugs: $12 billion. Kidney disease treatment: $95 billion. We're not talking about health; we're talking about GDP-scale wealth transfer.
But here's the darkest part: even if you see through it, you can't entirely escape it. Your food is fortified. Your meat comes from supplemented animals. Your doctor will test your levels and recommend supplements. Your insurance might even penalize you for "non-compliance" with preventive care guidelines. You're trapped in a system where refusing to take rat poison is considered irresponsible.
They've monetized the sun itself. Convinced us that what our bodies produce naturally in response to sunlight is insufficient, that we need their industrial version instead. It's the enclosure of the commons extended to human biochemistry. They've privatized vitamin D.
The question isn't whether this is intentional conspiracy or emergent market behavior. The question is: how do we escape a system that profits from making us sick while claiming to keep us healthy? When the test creates the disease, the cure causes new problems, and the whole cycle generates wealth for the same entities that created it, what do we call this?
I call it the perfect business model. Perpetual customers who can never be cured, only managed. A subscription service for survival. Rat poison rebranded as preventive medicine.
And we're all enrolled, whether we signed up or not.
Conclusion
Where Do We Go From Here?
After everything you've just read, you might be wondering: "So what do I actually do?"
I can't answer that for you. But I can tell you what questions I'm now asking myself:
Why did my grandparents have strong bones without supplements? What were they doing that I'm not? They got morning sunlight. They ate whole foods. They didn't consume glyphosate-soaked grains or seed oils. They moved their bodies. Simple things, but maybe that's the point.
The real lesson here isn't just about vitamin D. It's about how we think about health.
We've been trained to believe that every problem has a pill-shaped solution. That we can isolate single molecules from complex systems and improve on nature. That if something is sold in a pharmacy, it must be safe. That if a test says we're deficient, we must supplement.
But what if the tests are measuring the wrong things? What if the "deficiencies" are manufactured to sell solutions? What if the solutions create new problems that need more solutions?
This isn't conspiracy thinking. It's pattern recognition.
Here's what I've learned: When someone profits from both defining the problem and selling the solution, scrutinize everything. When an industry tells you to ignore what your ancestors did for millennia and buy their product instead, ask why. When the "cure" requires increasingly complex technology to work – from fortification to supplements to nanoemulsions – maybe the cure isn't working.
I'm not suggesting everyone stop taking vitamin D tomorrow. For some people - those with MS, severe deficiency, specific conditions - supplementation might be genuinely helpful. The studies showing benefits aren't all fraudulent, and dismissing them entirely would be as foolish as accepting them uncritically.
What I'm suggesting is that we stop treating supplementation as universally beneficial and risk-free. That we question whether mass fortification makes sense. That we investigate why traditional solutions (sunlight, whole foods, addressing root causes) have been replaced with industrial chemicals. That we demand better research on long-term effects, not just acute toxicity.Reconciling
Your health is your responsibility. Not your doctor's, not the FDA's, not the supplement industry's. Yours.
That means asking uncomfortable questions. Reading boring safety sheets. Following the money. Trusting your experience over marketing claims. And sometimes, it means admitting we don't have all the answers.
I don't know if synthetic vitamin D helps some people through hormesis. I don't know if the benefits in those studies are real or statistical manipulation. I don't know if we're in the middle of a massive public health experiment that won't reveal its true cost for decades.
But I do know this: No traditional culture needed sheep's wool dissolved in chloroform and irradiated to be healthy.
Maybe it's time we asked why we think we do.
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References
Primary Source Materials
- Agent131711. (2024, February 2). "Vitamin D is Rat Poison: The Fraudulent World of Synthetic Vitamins." Agent131711's Substack.
- Agent131711. (2024, April 17). "Dr. Lee Merritt is Lying About Me. Vitamin D IS Rat Poison. It's Hazardous. Let Me Show You Again." Agent131711's Substack.
- Agent131711. (2025, January 17). “How Vitamin D is Made: From Slaughterhouse to Bottle, a famous supplement's journey.”
- Genereux, Grant. (2024, June 18). Interview: "Vitamin A Toxicity." Lies are Unbekoming Substack.
- Genereux, Grant. "Poisoning for Profits" [eBook]. Available at: https://ggenereux.blog
- Genereux, Grant. Additional free eBooks and research available at: https://ggenereux.blog
- Depew, Jennifer. (2024, June 23). “Cholecalciferol - 'vitamin' D3 - yes, it can kill rats, dogs, and people.”
- Mason, Paul. (Date not specified). Presentation on Vitamin D as sunscreen and metabolic marker. [Transcript provided].
Scientific Studies Referenced in the Essay
Multiple Sclerosis
- D-Lay MS RCT. (2025, April). "High-dose vitamin D in early MS (clinically isolated syndrome)." JAMA. 100,000 IU cholecalciferol every 2 weeks vs placebo in 303 CIS patients. Primary outcome: 60.3% vitamin D vs 74.1% placebo; HR 0.66.
Cancer Mortality
- Meta-analysis. (2019). "Vitamin D supplementation and cancer mortality: Large RCT meta-analysis." BMJ. Found ~15% lower cancer mortality with vitamin D (RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.74–0.97).
ICU/Critical Care
- Meta-analysis. (Year not specified). "Vitamin D supplementation in critically ill adults." 16 RCTs (n=2,449). Mortality RR 0.78 (95% CI 0.62–0.97); shorter ICU stay (−3.13 days) and ventilation duration (−5.07 days).
Acute Respiratory Infections
- Updated meta-analysis. (2025). "Vitamin D and acute respiratory infections." Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Adding six new RCTs, found no significant protection against ARIs overall.
COPD
- Individual-participant-data meta-analysis. (2019). "Vitamin D and COPD exacerbations." Thorax. Substantially reduced moderate/severe exacerbations only in patients with baseline 25(OH)D < 25 nmol/L.
- Multicenter RCT. (2022). "Weekly vitamin D supplementation in deficient COPD patients." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 16,800 IU weekly did not reduce exacerbation rate.
Prediabetes/Type 2 Diabetes
- D2d Trial. (2019). "Vitamin D and type 2 diabetes." New England Journal of Medicine. No significant reduction in progression (HR 0.88, 95% CI 0.75–1.04) with 4,000 IU/day.
- Pooled analysis. (2020). "Vitamin D in prediabetes: Meta-analysis of 8 trials." Diabetes Care. ~11% reduced diabetes risk (RR 0.89, 95% CI 0.80–0.99), larger effects in non-obese participants.
Manufacturer Documentation
Safety Data Sheets (MSDS/SDS)
- Merck/Sigma Aldrich/Millipore Sigma. Pharmaceutical grade Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol) Safety Data Sheet. CAS Number: 67-97-0.
- Spectrum Chemical. Pharmaceutical grade Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol) Safety Data Sheet. CAS Number: 67-97-0.
- DuPont. Avicel (Microcrystalline Cellulose) product documentation.
Rat Poison Product Labels and MSDS
- Rampage Rat and Mouse Bait. Product label and MSDS. Active ingredient: 0.075% Cholecalciferol.
- Agrid3 Rodenticide. Product label and MSDS. Active ingredient: 0.075% Vitamin D3.
- Quintox Rat Poison. Product label and MSDS. Active ingredient: 0.075% Cholecalciferol.
- TeraD3 BLOX. EPA-approved organic rodenticide. Product label and MSDS. Active ingredient: 0.075% Vitamin D3.
- D-Con Bait Pellets. Product label and patent documentation.
Historical and Contextual References
Vitamin A Research
- Latham, Michael. "The Great Vitamin A Fiasco." [PDF provided in interview materials].
- Mawson, Anthony. Multiple papers on vitamin A toxicity over 30 years. [Referenced by Genereux].
Historical Studies
- Keys, Ansel. Seven Countries Study. Analysis of cholesterol levels versus sun exposure.
- Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Observations of Inuit populations and vitamin D deficiency.
Government and Regulatory Sources
- NIH (National Institutes of Health). Vitamin D fact sheets and dietary sources.
- FDA. GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) designations for vitamin compounds.
- OSHA.gov. Regulations on vitamin and supplement oversight.
- CDC. Statistics on vitamin D deficiency rates (2006 vs 2021).
- WHO (World Health Organization). Prevalence thresholds for public health concerns (20% threshold).
- Australian Government. Schedule 7 Poison classification system.
- United Nations Codex Alimentarius. Food fortification guidelines.
Industry and Market Data
- Global vitamin D testing market: >$2 billion annually
- Vitamin D supplement market: >$1.5 billion annually
- Osteoporosis drug market: ~$12 billion annually
- Kidney disease treatment market: ~$95 billion annually
Additional Resources
- MedlinePlus.gov. Vitamin D blood test information.
- Pet Poison Helpline (24/7). Cholecalciferol toxicity in animals.
- Various pharmacy websites discussing vitamin D as "poison in tolerable doses."
Media Articles
- The New Yorker. Article on "Organic" labeling fraud.
- NPR. "How Bone Disease Grew to Fit the Prescription" - Pfizer osteoporosis drug sales.
Note on Sources
Many of the industrial/manufacturing sources are from Indian and Chinese chemical companies whose specific names were shown in screenshots but not always explicitly named in the original materials. Safety data sheets can be accessed through chemical supplier websites using CAS Number 67-97-0 for cholecalciferol.
-Before We Begin
The same molecule in your morning vitamin D supplement is the active ingredient in rat poison.
Not a similar compound. Not a chemical cousin. The exact same molecule: cholecalciferol. At 0.075% concentration, it kills rats. In your supplement bottle, it's supposed to make you healthier.
This should be a simple story of dosage – but the more I investigated, the stranger it became
Where I am
I (Andy) stopped taking the synthetic vitamin D, and I try to get the real stuff made from under my epidermis when the sunlight hits my skin... that's how you make vitamin D
Vitamin D3, also known as cholecalciferol is not what your body makes when exposed to bright sunlight.
In a pill, that’s synthetic stuff…
Everybody when they don't take that stuff in pills is lacking the stuff in pills called cholecalciferol.
Amazing - everyone is told to take it (as cholecalciferol) as a vitamin supplement. I stopped and get mine from the sun - when the son finally comes out again. And from Food.
It is not that stuff
The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D—set at 600 IU per day for most adults—was based on a misinterpretation of population-level data.
Ok last one. 👆
Vitamin D is often called a vitamin, but functionally, it behaves more like a hormone.
Here is more
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