I have to admit, I stole this catchy heading from NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. As you may guess from the title, he is talking about the mark that the Baby Boomers (how I despise that term–it sounds like a bunch of cartoon characters) left on the U.S.

Among his observations were some interesting stats on health and wealth, when it came to the extremes of our society–the oldest versus the youngest.

Traditionally in America, the people most likely to be poor were the elderly. As recently as 1966, for example, 29 percent of Americans over 65 were below the poverty line, compared with only 18 percent of American children.

But that same year, Medicare took effect to provide medical care for the elderly, and Social Security adjustments steadily reduced poverty among them. We were suitably embarrassed that old people were eating cat food or scavenging garbage cans for food, so we reallocated resources to the elderly.

So thanks to a helping hand from the government, the elderly began to fare better. Kristof notes that in 2003, the number of elderly living below the poverty line had fallen dramatically since 1966, to 10%. So we did make progress.

On the other hand, the proportion of children below the poverty line is still 18 percent, the same as it was in 1966. And while almost all the elderly now have health insurance under Medicare, about 29 percent of children had no health insurance at all at some point in the last 12 months.

One measure of how children have tumbled as a priority in America is that in 1960 we ranked 12th in infant mortality among nations in the world, while now 40 nations have infant mortality rates better than ours or equal to it.

When it comes to children, however, we have failed. Do we need to exchange children for the elderly? Isn’t there enough money, enough resources, to make sure that both ends of the spectrum are taken care of?

Two new studies have found that vitamin D and calcium supplements do not protect mobile, high-risk, persons over the age of 70 seniors against future bone fractures.

And, as it tends to go with these studies, they contradict earlier research that demonstrated that vitamin D and calcium supplements reduced the risks of fractures in elderly women.

So who do you believe? Should you snatch those supplements out of grandma’s hands? Or if you are over 70, should you just flush them down the toilet?

Many of the newspapers that published this story didn’t go further than just the “reporting.” That Vitamin D and calcium didn’t prevent fracture. So if you read about this from a watered down Reuter’s story, for example, the true picture would be very unclear.

Fortunately, there still do appear to be journalists and news services interested in delivering more than blips and snips of news items.

Basically, the two studies looked at a total of 8500 adults over the age of 70, who were living in their own homes, and maintaining an active life style. All of them had already suffered from at least one bone fracture. They were randomly divided into two groups–half received the supplements, half placebos. At the end of 2-5 years, the researchers found no difference between the two groups.

So do we conclude that supplements can’t prevent fractures from this?

Hardly. Both studies are full of flaws. One glaring problem is the low compliance rate of the people in the study. Like, if you’re part of this study, then you’re supposed to take your pills. But only about 60%, and even lower in many cases, took their pills on any sort of regular basis. Obviously, that is going to have a huge impact on results.

In an accompanying editorial to The Lancet study, Philip Sambrook, M.D., of the University of Sydney in Australia, wrote, “It is difficult to see how the authors can be sure there was ‘no evidence that the true differences may have been obscured by poor compliance,’” based on the fact compliance declined to 63% after two years.

Another problem may have been the dosage. Acording to CTV.ca Reinhold Vieth, a leading vitamin D expert who works in the pathology department at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, thought that the dose of vitamin D used in both studies may have been too low.

Also, the populations may not have been large enough to demonstrate the benefit of supplements. Earlier studies show the reduction in fractures to be in the 30% to 40% range. The smaller study (about 3,000 people) did not have enough participants to detect a reduction in fractures of less than 30%. The second study may well have missed the effect as well.

Finally, another glaring problem was that the “vitamin D status of the trial population at baseline remains largely unknown.” In other words, it was largely unknown if any of these patients were deficient in vitamin D and calcium to begin with. Supplementation is not going to help those who are getting adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals through their diet. To see if supplements really make a difference, then you need to look at a population who is deficient at the beginning of the study—and almost no testing was done to check levels of vitamin D and calcium at the start of either study.

What poor reporting does is merely add to confusion. Even if there were no flaws to either study, the results still don’t mean that an older adult should stop using supplements, especially vitamin D. Many people are deficient in vitamin D, primarily because of the lack of time spent outside. Even the researchers have said that this doesn’t mean the older individuals should stop taking calcium and vitamin D supplements. Their results don’t show that the supplements prevented fractures, and that in some cases, bone building medications may be needed. However, calcium and vitamin D are necessary for overall health, including bones.