The GAO is so awesome. It's an arm of Congress that completes investigative reports about the things that various companies or even our own government might be doing wrong. Then they publish a report about it. The GAO also has a Twitter account, in case you're a nerd like me and you really want to know what they're saying.
And last week they busted a bunch of snake oil salesman, ahem, dietary supplement companies. See here. It seems like they were looking for supplement companies who came close to skirting the regulations in the Dietary Supplement Education Act (DSHEA). Per DSHEA, dietary supplements are exempt from FDA regulation. In fact, if a supplement company comes up with an ingredient that didn't exist prior to 1994, the FDA doesn't test it, but they do have to be notified.
Per DSHEA, the FDA can only intervene if they receive a complaint. These complaints would be limited to things like contamination, the supplement containing an illegal ingredient or an ingredient other than what is stated in the bottle. More often than not, the complaints are due to mislabeling.
It seems like the supplement companies got a really sweet deal by keeping their products away from FDA scrutiny. For this privilege, they have to play by one really simple rule : They cannot claim that any product treats or cures any disease or illness. This is the basis for statements like "calcium builds strong bones" on vitamin bottles. They cannot, by law, claim that calcium will alter the "structure or function" of the human body. They also have to include a disclaimer that the claims were not evaluated by the FDA. This very muddled language you see on your vitamin levels is actually meant to get your attention and make you consider if the product is worth the risk. But who reads the fine print?
No one, apparently.
Enter the GAO. During the course of their investigation, they not only uncovered products with labels that violated the law and are blatantly erroneous, such as "Garlic prevents obesity and cures cardiovascular disease" but they also called the companies and received potentially deadly medical advice from customer service. One investigator was told that a supplement could replace a medication prescribed by a doctor. Others were told that certain supplements were safe to take with medications for which known interactions exist.
As if this wasn't enough, the GAO also found that 37 of the 40 supplements they tested contained trace amounts of heavy metals. Below the legal limit, but scary nonetheless. Makes me wonder about the whole "more is better" mentality. What if someone decided that taking the whole bottle would be better. Mmm... arsenic poisoning. Sounds fun. Not really.
At the end of the day, the GAO can't cite anyone or close them down. All it can do is testify to the facts it uncovered. Remember that when we push for limited government oversight in the name of personal freedoms, corporations get these freedoms too. And yet, when something goes wrong people always ask why their government didn't protect them. Well, they tried to warn us. The dietary supplement industry is huge, it has a lot of money, power and influence. Supplement companies are in business to do one thing, sell a product. We'd like to think we've come a long way from the man with the waxed mustache selling bottles from the back of a wagon, but have we really?
Recent Comments