Posted on 01/26/2005 8:14:02 PM PST by neverdem
A DECADE AGO, Congress passed a law shielding makers of dietary supplements from regulatory scrutiny. The consequences of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 were entirely foreseeable: largely uncontrolled sales and marketing of vitamins and herbal remedies without advance approval of their safety and effectiveness. According to a new report by the Institute of Medicine, the foreseeable has come to pass. The report deals broadly with alternative and complementary medicine, which has become a giant industry in America, worth $27 billion a year; visits to alternative-care providers now exceed visits to primary-care doctors.
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An estimated 15 million adults in America take herbal remedies or high doses of vitamins, which are often sold with vague claims about how they affect the body. These statements can easily be taken for claims of medical benefit, even cures for specific diseases. Yet few herbal supplements are proven to work, and some may be dangerous, particularly when combined with prescription drugs with which their interactions are largely unknown. Because of the 1994 law, however, the Food and Drug Administration has no power to approve their use before they go on the market, and the burden is on the agency to show that a supplement is dangerous before it can be removed from stores. Unlike drug companies, moreover, supplement manufacturers have no obligation to...
--snip--
The report notes the supplement industry's severe "lack of quality control." Dosages vary greatly between products -- in some the active ingredient, if any, isn't even known -- and impurities appear common. One study showed that 32 percent of certain Chinese herbal medicines contained "undeclared pharmaceuticals or heavy metals," while smaller percentages contained "lead, mercury or arsenic." Another study showed that of 59 samples of echinacea purchased in Denver, 10 percent contained "no measurable echinacea" at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
BTTT
This is just their semiannual grab at getting control of all that money now not going thru them...
They've already been pretty successful with this in Europe...we cannot let it happen here.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Celebrex and the rest of the statins are still on the market.
Oversight of Alternative medicine is fine if it doesn't go too far. Trouble is, it will definitely go much too far. Read linked article about the EU and WTO banning vitamins in Europe. If you check what's behind it, you'll discover that the UN has a cutesy but definitely dangerous body called Codex Alimentarium that is setting nutritional standards for the world. Google Codex Alimentarium and you'll discover what a monster it is...It seems dedicated to making sure that Americans never get healthier than natives in mud huts in East Povertystan. It will ban virtually every nutritional supplement worldwide.
Here's article on WTO: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1292140/posts
Thanks for the link.
I suggest that you take Vioxx instead.
This is the Compost shilling for their big advertisers.
Even Chinese medicine hasn't done the damage in thousands of years done by our chemical companies called "Pharmaceutical" makers.
Out of office Dems and Reps are given high salaries by these companies until they get voted or appointed back in. Guess why the companies get whatever suits them out of our so called elected bodies?
still on the market - but the research data on them is not inspiring -
I stopped taking baycol and Vioxx both because of research - before they were taken off the market...and, hopefull, before they did much harm
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