"Dangers of Dietary Supplement Deregulation"
The U.S. public is not well protected
by current dietary supplement recommendations.
Sometimes, there's too little of whatever's supposed to be in the bottle,
and sometimes, there's too much.
Hundreds of people suffering from acute selenium toxicity,
thanks to an employee error at one of the suppliers.
Months later, many continued to suffer.
Had the company been following good manufacturing practices,
such as testing their ingredients,
this may not have happened.
In 2007, the FDA urged companies to adhere to such guidelines,
but 7 years later, the majority of dietary
supplement facilities remained noncompliant
with current good manufacturing practices guidelines.
What are the consequences of this ineffective
regulation of dietary supplements?
50,000 Americans harmed every year.
Of course, prescription drugs don't just harm,
but kill a hundred thousand Americans every year,
and that's just in the hospital.
Drugs prescribed by doctors outside of hospital settings
may kill another 200,000 people every year.
But this doesn't make it any less tragic for the thousands
sickened by supplements.
Sometimes, the supplements may contain drugs.
Not only does a substantial proportion of dietary
supplements have quality problems, the FDA has
identified hundreds of dietary supplements that have been
adulterated with prescription medications.
Or, even worse, designer drugs that haven't been tested,
like tweaked Viagra compounds.
About half of the most serious drug recalls in the U.S.
aren't for drugs, but for supplements,
yet two-thirds were still found on store shelves 6 months later.
Then there is inadvertent contamination with potentially
hazardous contaminants, such as heavy metals and pesticides
in 90% of herbal supplements tested.
And mycotoxins, potentially carcinogenic fungal toxins
like aflatoxin, in 96% of herbal supplements.
Milk thistle supplements were the worst, with most having
more than a dozen different mycotoxins.
This is thought to be because the plant is harvested
specifically when it's wet; and so, it can get moldy easily.
And so, you have these people taking milk thistle
to support their livers, and end up getting exposed to
immunotoxic, genotoxic, and hepatotoxic-
meaning liver toxic contaminants.
How is this kind of thing even legal? It wasn't –
until 1994, with the passage of the
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
Before that, supplements were regulated like food additives –
you had to show that they were safe
before being brought to the market. What a concept!
But not anymore.
Most people are unaware that supplements no longer
have to be approved first
or that supplement ads don't have to be vetted first.
This misunderstanding may provide some patients with a
false sense of security regarding the safety and
efficacy of these products.
This deregulation led to an explosion in dietary supplements
from around 4,000 when the law came into effect
to now more than 90,000 different supplements on the market,
which are all now presumed innocent until proven guilty;
presumed safe until it hurts enough people.
In other words, consumers must suffer harm before the FDA
begins the slow process toward restricting
the product from the market.
Take ephedra, for example, hundreds of poison control
center complaints starting back in 1999,
increasing to thousands, including reports of
strokes, seizures, and deaths.
Yet, it took seven years for the FDA
to pull it off store shelves, thanks to millions
from the industry spent on lobbying.
What did the companies have to say for themselves?
Metabolife swore that they had never received a single report
of a single adverse effect from any customer.
According to the company, Metabolife had a
so-called "claims-free history."
Whereas, in fact, they had gotten 14,000 complaints
from customers, but covered them up.
Basically, dietary supplement manufacturers have no
realistic accountability for the safety of their products,
and the industry trade organizations have been
accused of responding to legitimate concerns with
bluster and denial.
Yeah, but are these criticisms of dietary supplements just a
Big Pharma conspiracy to maintain their monopoly?
No, Big Pharma loves dietary supplements, because
Big Pharma owns dietary supplement companies
to dip into the tens of billions in annual sales.