FDA plans to overhaul oversight of $40 billion dietary supplement market

[SidDithers]

curb 'potentially dangerous products'

The FDA aims to quickly alert the public to avoid buying products that may contain supplements with unlawful or potentially dangerous ingredients.

The agency rolls out part of its plan Monday by sending warning letters to 17 companies for "illegally selling" products that claim to treat Alzheimer's disease.

It's also creating the Botanical Safety Consortium, a partnership between the public and private sectors, to evaluate the safety of botanical ingredients and mixtures in supplements.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to strengthen its oversight of the dietary supplement market in what Commissioner Scott Gottlieb called "one of the most significant modernizations of dietary supplement regulation and oversight in more than 25 years."

The agency is developing a new "rapid-response tool" to alert the public to avoid buying products that may contain unlawful or potentially dangerous ingredients, the agency said in a press release Monday.

The dietary supplement industry is worth over $40 billion and the choices for consumers have skyrocketed from 4,000 products to 80,000 in the past 25 years, the agency said.

"As the popularity of supplements has grown, so have the number of entities marketing potentially dangerous products or making unproven or misleading claims about the health benefits they may deliver," said Gottlieb.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/fda-plans-to-strengthen-regulation-of-dietary-supplements-create-rapid-response-tool.html


Good. Supplements, besides being an almost total waste of money, are the wild west when it comes to regulation.



Sid

[Doreen]

1. I hope this does not take out my supplement for assisting a clean liver.

Or the supplement I take because of the statin the doctor prescrbed. If it works and takes anything away from pharmaceutical medicines it must go. Natural supplements can be bad also but that is why you do your homework before you use it. I really hate the FDA. All they care about is money not the safety of people.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Can't blame you for being suspicious under this admin...

Under a decent Pres with normal cabinet officers, I would applaud something like this.

I'm all for getting the snake oil salesmen off the air, but if this is just a sop to Big Pharma, count me skeptical.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Double blind random sampling

Some of these supplements do have very general health benefits, but if they had peer reviewed clinical trial results behind them they would let be called alternative medicine, they’d just be called medicine.

Dietary supplements can have some benefits, but they shouldn’t be advertised to treat specific diseases or health issues.

Now homeopathy is completely useless and the only effect they can have is the placebo effect.

[obamanut2012]

4. It is about time