Those amazing miracle supplements
• Miracle Cures, Health Quackery
A comment I made on an entry that has a supplement seller defending a product.
Benefits and functions attributed to something simply imply attribution, nothing more.
Patent claims are assertions made in a patent application. Asserting something doesn't make it true.
That something is essential for a function doesn't mean that more will improve functioning. Filling up your gas tank doesn't make it run any faster than when the tank is only half full.
Supplement makers can make all sorts of "structure/function" claims as long as they don't claim to treat or cure disease.
FDA approval means all sorts of things but not necessarily that a product will do what you are expecting. The DSHEA is loose and manufacturer-friendly.
A product can say that it supports the immune system as long as it doesn't say something more specific like "supports the body's anti-viral capabilities."
FDA's own Overview of Dietary Supplements
Do manufacturers or distributors of dietary supplements have to tell FDA or consumers what evidence they have about their product's safety or what evidence they have to back up the claims they are making for them?No, except for rules described above that govern "new dietary ingredients," there is no provision under any law or regulation that FDA enforces that requires a firm to disclose to FDA or consumers the information they have about the safety or purported benefits of their dietary supplement products.
I posted this elsewhere a couple of months back. I was in a mood.
I devote some of my leisure hours to the pleasures of recording the silly and fraudulent doings of born-again suckers, faith-manipulating hoaxsters, psychic flim-flams, Bigfoot believers and people waiting for flying saucers to take them to an extra-solar heaven.
One of my first weblogs* was devoted to the chicanery of supplement hucksters. Gifted masters of glib phrases, glossy presentation, and promises about as trustworthy as the men who were selling shares in dotcom's just before the invisible hand stuck a needle in that bubble.
Performance enhancement, now there's a potent, unlovely contemporary phrase favored by both the pseudo-aphrodisiacs spammers and the publishers of shiny magazines with massive hunks on their covers. One says, take my pill and your penis will pop up ready for - well ready for what you lonely sucker? Another says, take my pill and your biceps will swell and chicks (and fags) will drool.
Tell me, do you know more biochemistry than the Baptist preacher down the road? No. So you are as ready for harvesting by EAS (extremely advertised supplements) as the preachers' flock is to be terrorized into giving him a glistening new Cadillac.
The Christian sucker probably won't outgrow his "T" shaped lollipop. But you'll wise up that you've been sold an oatmeal byproduct. A cannier pitchman will sweep you off your feet with something very 'scientific' sounding. How about some amino acids? (Well how the fuck about some beef or milk?) How about just one? Do you know how well it is absorbed? Or that much of it is eaten by the intestine itself (glutamine) or the liver (carnitine) and if you want to pump it directly into your [whatever the hell you think your body is] you'll need to take about $10 / day worth?
OK, well we'll have you take a special version. Not that we'll admit that our special version gets converted back into the other version as it passes through the thumping and transmogrifying the body will subject it to.
Nor will we explain that the studies we (mis)quoted were conducted on elderly men suffering from malnutrition. We certainly aren't going to admit that our sharp looking equations and charts would get us failed if we submitted them in a post grad biochemistry program.
Oh, my Ph.D. it is really in psychology. I learned how to manipulate hope and wish fulfillment. Why do I put Dr. in front of my name? I have a Ph.D., that is what you call a doctorate. Stupid you for thinking it meant that I have a medical degree.
* Always thought I'd bring it back but haven't yet.
Comments
Posted by: puterg33k@hotmail.com | July 20, 2004 6:35 PM