This article, and the U.S. Senate hearings have the dietary supplement business on the defensive. Issues of safety, validity of claims and product quality are generating a major public focus on the natural health business. This spills over borders
USA Today Editorial Blasts Dietary Supplements
Our view on pills and potions: Do you really know what's in that dietary supplement?
Bogus claims
-- Government Accountability Office investigators found these deceptive marketing claims for herbal supplements:
-- Ginseng cures diseases, including cancer.
-- Ginkgo biloba treats Alzheimer's disease, depression and impotence.
-- Garlic prevents obesity and diabetes, cures cardiovascular disease, and can be taken instead of prescribed medication for high blood pressure.
Source: GAO
USA TODAY OPINION
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Opinions expressed in USA TODAY's editorials are decided by its Editorial Board, a demographically and ideologically diverse group that is separate from USA TODAY's news staff.
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Next time you're taking a dose of your favorite dietary supplement or herbal remedy, how would you like a dash of lead on the side? Or if lead's not your taste, what about mercury? Or arsenic?
OPPOSING VIEW: Existing law works
Researchers at an accredited lab working for Congress' non-partisan Government Accountability Office recently found traces of potentially hazardous contaminants in almost all of the 40 supplement products tested.
None of the heavy metal residues appeared to exceed legal limits, but consumers should have reason for concern: Another supplement was recalled recently under government pressure because it was suspected of containing clearly hazardous levels of lead. Further, 18 of the products in the GAO investigation were found to contain residues of at least one pesticide, in 16 cases appearing to exceed safety limits.
For a nation of pill-poppers and potion-imbibers, this is not good news. It suggests an absence of quality control in the huge, loosely regulated supplement industry, which produces many products in problem-prone places such as China and Latin America?
A litany of safety and quality issues have made news in the past year:
•Fitness and muscle-building products that contain dangerous anabolic steroids.
•Diet-aid products that include substances linked to liver damage, heart problems, cancer, high blood pressure and kidney failure.
•Products that fraudulently claim to prevent, treat or diagnose swine flu.
The new GAO study also found online retailers claiming their products could treat, prevent or cure diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and other conditions. And it's not just the hustlers on the Web. GAO investigators posing as elderly customers repeatedly were told by sales clerks in stores that a given supplement would prevent or cure conditions such as high cholesterol or Alzheimer's disease.
Industry spokesmen have gotten away for years with minimizing all this as just the work of a handful of bad apples. Lobbyists say responsible makers and distributors should not be burdened with more government oversight. But the problem is big enough that another GAO study last year found nearly 1,000 reports in a 10-month period of specific health problems linked to supplements, including nine deaths, 64 life-threatening illnesses and 234 hospitalizations. Nobody knows how many other incidents never got reported.
The Senate is expected to take up a landmark food safety bill this month. Reformers are trying to include provisions mandating that supplement makers register annually with the Food and Drug Administration and allow the agency to recall supplements suspected of being dangerous, a power it does not have now. Proposals to restrict supplements to ingredients approved by the FDA have already drawn fierce opposition from the $25 billion-a-year industry.
Nearly 50% of U.S. adults consume supplements. The test for lawmakers will be whether they are more concerned with protecting the health of these constituents, or the profits of the politically potent supplement industry. The string of recent consumer-products scandals, covering everything from children's medicine to runaway cars, should leave little doubt as to which is the right remedy.
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