Despite
the fact 71% of Americans take dietary supplements and 85% express
overall confidence in their safety [Council for Responsible Nutrition atCRN.org],
one would get the mistaken impression from news reports that the public
is mindless and gullible to every sales pitch made by supplement
makers.
There
is no question major news sources create news to fit political,
environmental, cultural or religious agendas. Americans’ trust and
confidence in mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and
fairly” has dropped to an all-time low says The Gallup Poll. Only 32%
of Americans polled say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust
in the news media. [Gallup.com]
News
reporters rolodex of so-called experts to contact on the topic of
supplement safety includes the “usual suspects” – Pieter Cohen at
Harvard Medical School [JAMA Internal Medicine
2013], Paul Offit MD, and six former FDA commissioners who convened to
warn the public against imagined health threats posed by dietary
supplements. [Bloomberg News July 15, 2016]
The ACSH disparages dietary supplements
A new
supplement antagonist is David Seres of The American Council on Science
& Health who says the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health & Education
Act of 1994 swept away “all regulations that vitamin, mineral and
herbal supplements to prove they are safe and effective prior to
marketing.”
Encyclopedia of Nutrit...
Best Price: $0.49
Buy New $8.99
Encyclopedia of Nutrit...
Best Price: $0.49
Buy New $8.99
Ceres writes: “Simply
because these (dietary supplements) are unregulated, do not come from
Pfizer or Merck, and are derived from plants, does not in any way
guarantee safety or efficacy.” [American Council on Science & Health, March 30, 2017]
Ceres
cites liver toxicity produced by a single brand of green tea extract.
It is reported have caused 40 cases of liver toxicity. A substance in
green tea called catechin was to blame. Doses of catechin exceeding 250
mg/day were identified as being potentially toxic to the liver. The
green tea pills that caused the cases of liver toxicity provided 135 mg
of catechins (EGCG) per capsule. The recommended daily dose was twice
daily (270 mg). [ACG Case Reports2014]
What went
unsaid is that the case involved a dieter taking the green tea
supplement to achieve weight loss. It is likely the consumers taking
the green tea extract intentionally overdosed in an attempt to crash
diet. It would be difficult to hold any drug or dietary supplement
accountable for side effects when consumed beyond the recommended daily
dose.
After fact checking, the report Ceres references says the “desirable intake” of catechin of green tea is 250 mg. [Cochrane Database System Review
July 8, 2009] Liver problems with other brands of green tea pills have
not been reported. Whatever caused the liver toxicity it wasn’t 250 mg
of catechin.
An animal
study did show an injected dose of green tea extract can result in liver
toxicity in laboratory animals but the dose required was equivalent to
14,000 milligrams in humans. [Journal Toxicology Pathology Oct 2014] Even mega-dose green tea extract has been shown to be non-toxic in recent animal studies. [Regulatory Toxicology Pharmacology April 4, 2017]
The LA Times chimes in against supplements
Consumer
reporter David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times recently penned an
article calling for greater regulation of the dietary supplement
industry. Lazarus suggests federal budget cuts might expose consumers
to more dietary supplement hazards as the FDA is forced to make cutbacks
in the enforcement office.
The Office
of Dietary Supplements is said to have ~two-dozen staffers and a paltry
$5 million budget to oversee a $37 billion industry.
Reporter
Lazarus demands supplement makers scientifically substantiate their
health claims. But that would categorically make all such products
drugs.
Lazarus
refers to ephedra, a weight loss product that was banned in 2004 by the
FDA. But ephedra was another weight loss supplement that was being
overdosed by crash dieters. [LA Times March 21, 2017]
Dr. Paul Offit says lax oversight by FDA
In a
recent article published at the Daily Beast, long-time supplement
antagonist Dr. Paul Offit, proponent and patent holder of vaccines, lays
in to the FDAs new commissioner, Dr. Tom Price, for not targeting the
dietary supplement industry in its list of regulatory priorities.
Dr. Offit,
citing a New York Times report that characterized the passage of the
Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994 the “Snake Oil
Protection Act,” says consumers “are now on their own, forced to trust a
profitable, unregulated industry.” [The Daily Beast April 8, 2017]
Vitamins, Herbs, Miner...
Best Price: $0.49
Buy New $3.00
Vitamins, Herbs, Miner...
Best Price: $0.49
Buy New $3.00
But all
the dietary supplement detractors claim the supplement industry is
unregulated when in fact it must comply with Good Manufacturing
Practices (GMP). If the dietary supplement industry isn’t regulated it
is filling out a lot of paperwork for nothing.
While the
Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act became law in 1994 it took
until 2007 for the FDA to issue final guidelines for Good Manufacturing
Practices. All the while the FDA and other critics were taking the
supplement industry to task for poor quality and mislabeling when it was
the FDA itself that was dragging its feet.
And just
why should the dietary supplement industry be targeted for alleged
non-compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices when only 1.4% of
companies failed to identify an ingredient in their products in a recent
inspection of supplement manufacturing facilities? [Natural Products InsiderJune 20, 2016]
The Atlantic joins supplement naysayers
Dr. James
Hamblin, senior editor at The Atlantic online magazine, says the dietary
supplement industry is plagued by outlandish claims that undermine
credible science. Yes, it’s certainly true, a few online purveyors of
dietary supplements go beyond mere exaggeration to outright deception in
their advertising. [The Atlantic April 10, 2017]
But Dr.
Hamblin also makes the same mistake of demanding dietary supplements
provide evidence for their efficacy, which would categorically turn them
into expensive prescription-only drugs.
Dr.
Hamblin was trained to prescribe FDA-approved prescription drugs and
like most medical doctors has little training in nutrition. The
presumption that modern medicine holds high scientific ground is tainted
by the FDA drug approval process. For some time now the FDA has been
hiding outright fabrication of data and other misconduct used to approve
drugs. [Journal American Medical Assn. Internal Medicine April 2015] No outrage by the anti-supplement critics over the FDAs egregious failure to regulate the pharmaceutical industry.
I claim
the FDA has purposefully allowed marginal or outright criminal marketers
of dietary supplements to advertise their products hoping they will
kill enough Americans to create public outrage and force a stranglehold
on the whole dietary supplement industry.
Dietary
supplements are safer than tap water, aspirin, table salt, even food.
There were no deaths from dietary supplements reported to the American
Association of Poison Control Centers in 2015. [Orthomolecular News ServiceJan 5, 2017]
News media sharpens its sword
To aid
journalists who cover the topic of dietary supplements an online site
called Journalist’s Resource has assembled several published studies for
reporters to use in their reports. Journalist’s Resource is connected
to the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics
& Public Policy. [Journalist’s Resource]
The
Journalist’s Resource cites specious reports that claim 23,000 emergency
room visits per year due to side effects allegedly caused by dietary
supplements and another study that reportedly found 59% of herbal
products contained species of plants not on their labels.
But 21% of
those reported emergency room visits included young children who got
into their parents vitamin pills. Natural stimulants used
Earl Mindell's New Vit...
Best Price: $1.35
Buy New $4.02
for weight loss or as energy boosters represented 71% of the
reported adverse events and largely involved young adults 20-34 years of
age who were likely to overdose in an effort to crash diet. Another
37.6% of adverse events that occurred among older adults involved
choking or a feeling they had a lump in their throat after taking a
dietary supplement, which had nothing to do with the quality of the
product. [New England Journal Medicine Oct 15, 2016]
Earl Mindell's New Vit...
Best Price: $1.35
Buy New $4.02
for weight loss or as energy boosters represented 71% of the
reported adverse events and largely involved young adults 20-34 years of
age who were likely to overdose in an effort to crash diet. Another
37.6% of adverse events that occurred among older adults involved
choking or a feeling they had a lump in their throat after taking a
dietary supplement, which had nothing to do with the quality of the
product. [New England Journal Medicine Oct 15, 2016]
Guilt by association
Furthermore,
while dietary supplements may be associated with various side effects
that does not necessarily mean those adverse reactions were caused by
dietary supplements any more than finding most children involved in
pedestrian accidents were also wearing tennis shoes, which were
obviously only associated with such accidents, they did not cause them.
Guilt by association is a common but contrived method of falsely
portraying dietary supplements as unsafe.
Gut barrier and dietary supplement reactions
Ambushing supplement makers
The
unknown plant species reportedly found in herbal products emanated from a
new and unproven barcoding technology that was used to ambush purveyors
of herbal products by the New York Attorney General’s office. [BMC Medicine
July 2, 2013] DNA barcoding is not an adequate method of validating
the purity of herbal supplements because it relies on the analysis of
DNA that may have been altered during extraction or processing.
An
authoritative research report concludes DNA barcoding of herbal products
“is not the most appropriate for authenticating finished products.” [Canadian Health Food Assn.] The commonly used method of liquid chromatography to validate herbal products is superior. [NutraIngredients.com April 15, 2016]
A cabal against dietary supplements
What we
have here are journalists from different quarters who are camped in
their positions against dietary supplements, not journalists who seek
the truth, scrutinize published science and recognize unfounded
criticism of dietary supplements often emanates from the fact the
supplement industry represents formidable competition to the $424
billion pharmaceutical industry. [Pharmaceutical Commerce May 11, 2016]
For
example, Harvard University is the locus from which anti-dietary
supplement information is distributed via The Journalist’s Resource that
originates from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public
Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Harvard is also reported to have
brought in $37.8 million in licensing revenues from its pharmaceutical
patent holdings. [The Crimson Oct 20, 2016]
The Encyclopedia of Na...
Best Price: $12.99
Buy New $13.27
Just how unbiased can network television news be toward dietary
supplements when 72% of the commercial breaks on CBS Evening News are
for pharmaceutical advertisements? Drug makers spent an estimated $6.4
billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in the U.S. last year. [USA TodayMarch 16, 2017]
All
this commercialization and druggifcation of America is taking place
when a recent survey showed 57% of respondents support removal of
prescription drug ads from television and 58% oppose quicker drug
approvals. [NBC NewsMay 11, 2016]
Can
anyone reading this report today name a news source that has fair and
balanced reporting when it comes to dietary supplements? This author
can’t name one.
Negative
news reports regarding dietary supplements are parroted and contrived
and are generated by news sources that don’t examine all the facts.
Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.knowledgeofhealth.com, billsardiblog.com and resveratrolnews.com.
Copyright © 2017 Bill Sardi, writing from La Verne, California. This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.
Previous article by Bill Sardi: Your Cardiologist Shoul
No comments:
Post a Comment