After two recent studies have shown that there’s little merit in taking Vitamin B, folic acid, Vitamin D and calcium supplements as prophylactic measures against cancer, U.S. researchers are now saying vitamins C and E supplements apparently won’t help much either.

The same team that delivered this latest bleak report recently found that the latter two supplements aren’t good for protecting one from heart disease. We eagerly anticipate their next groundbreaking studies telling us what else Vitamin C and E supplements do not save us from.

But on a more serious note, we quote one of the study’s authors Dr. Howard Sesso, assistant professor of medicine in the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. According to the good doctor, ''at least in the context of two very common outcomes -- cardioprotection and chemoprevention -- we see no compelling evidence to take vitamin E or C supplements."

Dr. Sesso presented his team’s findings Sunday at a meeting of the American Academy of Cancer Research in Washington, D.C.

The study was conducted on 15,000 male medical doctors – ‘Physician, heal thyself!’ – who were randomly asked to take either a 500 milligram vitamin C supplement daily and 400 international units of Vitamin E every other day or placebo pills for the ten years the study ran. On a personal note while this author understands to importance of ruling out wrong avenues of treatment so doctors don’t bark up the wrong tree so to speak, must one spend 10 years of research and grant money to tell us Vitamin C doesn’t fight cancer?

Back to the matter at hand: the participants, who were all over 50 at the time the study started, experienced 1,929 cases of cancer, of which 1,013 were prostate cancers. Overall, 490 of men who took Vitamin E got prostate cancer, as opposed to 523 in the placebo group. The difference is not statistically significant, at least Sesso says so. The overall risk of cancer between the two groups was not significantly different either.

''This is a very large, long-term clinical trial, and it was determined there was no effect from E or C,'' concluded Dr. Sesso.

Shockingly enough, an expert unrelated to the study was certainly not surprised by this:

''This is preliminary data, but it is pretty consistent with what we're seeing in other research with individual nutrients. When you take the nutrient out of its natural environment, it may not be protective,'' according aptly-named nutritionist Jennifer Crum, hailing from New York University's Cancer Institute. Dr. Crum added that it’s much better to take vitamins and other nutrients in foods, where they will work together to provide protection against cancer. Word to wise: by foods she means something reasonably healthy, like say, a lemon instead of the Vitamin C pill. Do not expect a hamburger to offer much protection against colon cancer, oh indeed quite the contrary.

''People are starting to realize the importance of the overall picture,'' says Crum whose advice is far from crummy. She recommends that people make small changes at first, a little bit more exercise, eating a vegetable or two every day. You know, it’s the sort of advice your nana used to give you without ten years of medical studies.

''When people make small changes for their health -- exercising for 20 to 30 minutes a day, eating better -- we see lower rates of cancer recurrence,'' she said in a comment characterized by common sense, something that this author muses would not hurt physicians to rely upon in a slightly greater proportion. After all, as our wonderful writer Mark Twain oftentimes said: 'there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'