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More than half of Americans have taken a dietary supplement, and it's easy to see why. Popping a pill is painless. Supplements don't require a prescription from a doctor. And there's always some hale bloke out there who will vouch for the miraculous health improvements he experienced while taking this or that herbal remedy.
Plus, herbals often seem safer than drugs and other treatments. If a supplement can be found on stores' shelves alongside healthy foods, it must be wholesome, right?
Wrong. Of the 30,000 products rated by the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, an independent research and publishing organization, less than one percent earned a top score for safety, effectiveness, and quality.
Unlike prescription medications, dietary supplements aren't reviewed or approved by the FDA before they go on sale. And, although manufacturers have been required to prove that new supplements are "reasonably expected to be safe" since 1994, a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this law is largely unenforced.
"Consumers have the idea that the people who are selling herbal remedies are doing it out the goodness of their hearts," says Lauren Streicher, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. But supplement makers are even more profit-driven than pharmaceutical companies, which are subject to FDA review, she says. "Does the FDA make mistakes? Yes. But they're the only protection we've got to make sure greed doesn't get in the way of science."
While most supplements will do more harm to your wallet than to your body, others are downright dangerous. From Anna Miller at U.S. News, here are four herbal supplements doctors love to hate.
CBS should have omitted this "puff piece" about FDA regulation, or at least consulted with a few alternative medicine spokesmen about the FDA before rendering judgment. Instead, we readers are handed a simple-minded logical exercise-- "regulated drugs are safer than unregulated herbs and vitamins".
As it stands, this statement is false on two counts-- there is not nearly enough FDA regulation of drugs, and herbs and vitamins pose little hazard to public health. The facts easily establish the FDA does not regulate safely or effectively in a shocking number of instances. By far, more people die from FDA-approved drugs than by any vitamins and herbs. In fact, no solid case against vitamin supplements or herbs has been made after years of attempts by both FDA and drug industry.
FDA performance, however, remains a public menace, and its recommendations are generally unsafe for public consumption. The facts of FDA performance stand in complete contradiction to its mission. Instead of protecting the American public by insistence on sound research, the FDA functions uncritically as a front for the drug industry.
Within the FDA and CDC, the "revolving door" (industry hiring former federal officials to purchase influence on federal policy) is only marginally less obvious than the Pentagon door, as former CDC chief Dr. Julie Gerberding demonstrated by moving quickly to pharmaceutical giant Merck after securing sale to the federal government of a profitable flu vaccine made by her new employer.
Full scientific rigor is politically incorrect at the FDA, since its decisions in far too many instances are based on insider and/or political considerations. In fact, FDA employee Dr. David Graham was told essentially to shut up, rather than criticize the drug makers. Said Dr. Graham, "I would argue that the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx. We are virtually defenseless."
See the CBS story on 60 Minutes-- www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/15/60II/main674293.shtml
Perhaps the CBS staffer should have watched the 60 Minutes segment before writing the piece-- unfortunately, there is no evidence of much research at all. Aside from 60 Minutes, there are legions of documented instances in which the FDA has swallowed industry claims whole, without doing its own research.
Standard FDA operating procedure is to "review" industry research, but not (as would a scientist) to replicate the research findings. Yet, only replication can establish whether a drug maker is telling the truth about its multi-billion investment in a new drug. Without replication, the drug approval process is seriously flawed, since industry has a huge incentive to minimize adverse evidence and accentuate supportive data. And without closer FDA scrutiny, drug makers can render research mistakes invisible.
Of course, the FDA should function as an independent regulator, and certainly regulate by scientific standards-based research in the interest of the American people. But it does not. The FDA has made clear repeatedly, as it did to Dr. Graham, that it serves a select clientele of very profitable drug makers.
Those who want to research this issue more thoroughly should check www.LEF.org, and search onsite with the term "FDA". While LEF is not without warts, its general case about FDA incompetence and corruption is well-founded.
The FDA is not the regulator it once was when Frances O. Kelsey blew the whistle on thalidomide in 1961, despite pharmaceutical industry protest. By awful contrast, today's FDA is gutted and politicized by years of pharmaceutical patronage, especially under the eight years of Bush. If the agency corpse accomplishes anything, it has proven the enduring and vital necessity of proper government regulation of industry.
You're a fool to take stuff like this.
This one statement (lie) tells the whole story of who actually wrote this piece of garbage. Which herbal supplement is produced for pennies and sold for $20 - $30 per pill? There are hundreds of prescription medications that fit that description.
Add to that the fact that prescription drugs kill far more people than street drugs, and that big pharma is second in profits only to big oil.
So why is big pharma trying to kill the OTC herb market? Only answer is that it might be costing them a few bucks.
The uninformed public puts their lives and their trust in the medical community to use all those SAFE prescribed medicines, and yet, you constantly see death and injury from their use, with legal action taken against the drug companies.
This is just an opinionated report meant to cast doubt on natural supplement/vitamins usage in order to make them controlled via prescription/doctors.