DSSA, making healthcare unafordable for everyone.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Dont-Give-FDA-More-Power-to-Ban-Our-Supplements.htm

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act will give the FDA discretionary authority to ban any supplement it chooses. What some have yet to comprehend is the horrific way the FDA has historically abused powers Congress bestows them.

By way of example, we at Life Extension were subjected to a rigorous inspection by the FDA in year 2003. The FDA investigator spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing our eye drop products. When we asked why out of all our products the eye drops were being so heavily scrutinized, the response was “because I can.”

What this FDA agent was telling us was that since the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), the FDA’s power to regulate dietary supplements was limited. This act did not apply to eye drops. The result was that our statements about eye drop products could be censored, and since the FDA had the power to do it, they used it.

Until you’ve been on the front line, it is difficult to imagine the egregious ways that government agencies abuse their powers.

I was in a Walgreens last week picking up some pictures, when a recorded voice came on to the store’s speaker system announcing the heart healthy benefits of fish oil and CoQ10.

This brought a flashback to the year 1987 when FDA agents stormed Life Extension’s premises and seized these supplements, along with a brochure that described how they could help protect against heart attack.

Accompanied by armed US marshals, I vividly recall FDA agents ridiculing me about the concept that fish oil had any relationship to cardiac disorders. The sad fact in this story is the millions of heart attacks suffered by Americans because the FDA had the power for so long to censor the truth about omega-3 supplements.

Before DSHEA was passed in 1994, the FDA routinely seized dietary supplements when a health claim was made. Some individuals have apparently forgotten the past and are determined to relive it by not understanding the unintended consequences of the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010.

[semillama]

1. I don't know, I think I'd like to know two things about a supplement:

A. it actually does what it claims

and

B. What exactly is in it, and that there is no significant variation in efficacy between bottles or even individual doses.

Seems like a good idea to me.

[HuckleB]

2. +1

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. It's what it may do to the prices and the availability that scares

the heck out of me.

[semillama]

5. How would it be any different than for any other OTC medication, though?

Seems like a fear-mongering argument pushed by Big Herbal, similar to the "Dem'crats gonna take our GUNS!" BS the NRA and gun manufacturers pass, to boost sales ("stock up before them dem'crats take your guns/supplements!") and to avoid safety regulations that they would then be accountable to.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Uhuh. n/'t

[Quantess]

4. I don't like this...