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Why Regulating Nutritional Supplements Is Stupid And Why Drugs Are Over-Regulated
Written By : Melissa Clouthier

Yesterday, my esteemed co-blogger John Hawkins wrote a post stating that he agrees with John McCain about regulating nutritional supplements. They’re both wrong.

First, it’s important to examine how effective the FDA is in protecting the people when it comes to regulating drugs. Not very. Deaths from prescription drugs are “soaring“. Check out this recall list. That means that these drugs were approved as safe.

Second, an FDA approval gives a false sense of safety. Any substance designed to manipulate physiological functions is inherently dangerous. An FDA approval does not change that.

Third, unregulated nutritional supplements cause a tiny percent of deaths. See table.

Now, all sorts of claims are made about supplements, but those are already regulated. People go through trends and often spend money on “worthless” supplements. Some nutritional supplements really help a person’s health. Some supplements offer only the placebo effect.

If a dude buys a supplement to enhance his “performance” and “size”, he’s stupid, but most of the time, that’s not fatal. Viagra, on the other hand, can be.

I would suggest that regulating this industry further is just an expansion of the nanny state and another way to infantilize the consumer. More than that, it’s a push by the medical industry because they’d like to put their competition out of business. They’d like to be the only ones to make nutritional recommendations and claims even though they have far less training than chiropractors and nutritionists. This is an economic argument and a desire for market share and nothing more.

So no. I don’t want the government pushing their nose into nutritional supplements. Mind their own damn business and cut the debt. I don’t want one stupid bureaucrat telling Americans one more thing about how they should live their lives.

Also, I think the FDA is pretty much bought and paid for by drug companies. Too much to get into now..but there are many experimental drugs that could help people. My opinion is to let people try them. It’s called choice.

Too often, people die while waiting for a drug to be approved when a drug has been used for years in another country safely. The FDA process also makes bring a drug to market so expensive that it creates a monopoly for huge pharmaceutical companies.

Free up the market. Tell people they’re on their own to research it. Let freedom ring when it comes to drugs and supplements. We should be opening this market, not giving the government more control.

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  • http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

    I’m with you on this, Dr. Clouthier. Many medicines deemed “safe” by the FDA have turned out to be harmful or have unknown side effects, and that’s after a ridiculously long testing process that can take decades. The answer to the FDA doing a mediocre job on medicine approval is NOT to give them more power over other substances.

  • rjschwarz

    I don’t know if its regulation or not but there needs to be some way to evaluate and prevent some of the silly over-optimistic claims that can be made advertising these supplements.

    Two examples: (1) Before and after photos of a weight-loss pill often show a before picture of a marathon runner or other athlete after pregnancy or an injury that prevented them from doing their natural athletic lifestyle. The after is of course after they picked up their familiar patterns again and lost the weight and the supplement might have zero to do with the change. (2) It is common to advertise wacky things in Scientific American magazine (among others) and then claim in other magazines “as seen in Scientific American” which is strictly true but deceptive because it leads the reader to think the magazine covered the substance in an article.

    If we seriously went after bogus claims and fraudulent stuff like this with existing laws and such I’d be happy. If threatening FDA oversite is what it takes to get the worst offenders to toe the line a bit I support the bluff. If not the FDA can simply ban advertising this junk on TV the way they did with booze for so long and stop the worst offenders that way.

  • President_Friedman

    Bravo, Melissa. I agree 100%. And I rarely agree with anything 100%.

  • Hookset

    I love watching commercials for FDA approved drugs, and the list of side effects is a mile long and quite alarming. Rock on doc!

  • http://guardian.blogdrive.com/ CavalierX

    I love watching commercials for FDA approved drugs, and the list of side effects is a mile long and quite alarming.

    I was watching tv with a smoker friend who was talking (again) about quitting. A commercial came on for some quit-smoking drug. The list of side effects went on and on and on… both of us started cracking up, and I said “you knwo what — just keep smoking!”

  • fts

    Very good post Dr., I agree with you on this. It boils down to the INDIVIDUAL taking responsibility for his or her health & doing the research. I have no love for Big Pharma, as they are in the same statist bed with Obama.

  • Don_cos

    Posted by Hookset 2010-02-26 16:16:02

    I like the one for asthma that “may increase the chance of asthma related death.”

  • Bill_Dalasio

    Dr. Clouthier,

    Great post. I especially agree with your points that FDA approval awards a false sense of safety and the economic incentives of the medical industry. One of the major drawbacks of the nanny state is that it leads people to delegate prudence to the state.

  • http://www.superdickery.com mightysamurai

    I like the one for asthma that “may increase the chance of asthma related death.”

    My favorite is the one that warns of LYMPHOMA as a possible side effect.

  • Power_System_Oper

    OP: “I think the FDA is pretty much bought and paid for by drug companies…..Too often people die while waiting for a drug to be approved when a drug has been used for years in other countries safely….The FDA process….creates a huge monopoly for huge pharmacuetical companies.”

    Bravo Melissa. Now you are talking about “death panels” that actually exist. Funny how George W Bush and a GOP controlled Congress stood up for those huge pharmaceutical company “death panels” and stopped a liberal lead initiative to allow US citizens to purchase and import some of those life saving drugs that are being safely used in other countries.

  • http://networdblog.blogspot.com/ Christopher_Taylor

    I think using deaths as the only metric for deciding something is a bit too limited.

    And Hoggo: Canada said they wouldn’t sell their drugs to US companies because they only get a discount based on Canadian taxpayer subsidies. Oh, and President Obama and the Democrat Controlled Congress negotiated a deal where the health care plan they want to pass doesn’t get them from Canada either. Don’t let the facts hit you where the good lord split you.

  • Bill_Dalasio

    Posted by Power_System_Oper
    2010-02-27 14:45:34

    No one cares what you think, hoggo. Especially when you’re stupid enough to elipse comments to create an illusion that can be refuted simply by scrolling up.

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