A Public Health Threat: The Fallacy of the FDA’s Regulation of Natural Nutritional Supplements

This process of postulating reasons always undermines the otherwise positive and legitimate activities of the government agency at issue. So it is continues to be with the government’s seeming war on nutritional supplements derived from natural vitamins, minerals and extracts. The hope here is that a critical mass will rise, the more discussion there is about the problem. Currently the status quo is the government advertently or inadvertently (depending on who you ask) blocking access to preventative and curative remedies that have no negative safety record.

Keith Morey of Super Good Stuff, based in L.A specializes in providing natural dietary supplement options for people suffering from basically every chronic problem that plagues us. His business and thousands of others like it nationwide operate under strict guidelines that do not even allow them to make claims that something natural effectively treats an ailment. Rather sellers of remedies comprised of fully natural vitamins, minerals, and extracts are forced to use clumsy wording about how their things might “aid the body” even if they work spot on 100 out of 100 times.

Mr. Morey had this to say about the climate that his business operates under and who clearly benefits.

"In 1994, Congress passed a law prohibiting the FDA to ban popular nutrients. The FDA has since found a loophole in the law and is trying to gain authority to regulate ingredients, which were introduced AFTER 1994. The FDA believes that “new dietary supplements” must undergo the same testing as synthetic food preservatives! The tests that the FDA will require would be exorbitantly expensive and would use extremely high doses. Most supplement manufacturers will not be able to afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars required for testing just one supplement. This would cause the price of supplements to skyrocket or take them off the market entirely!"

From there Morey talked frankly about what a lot of people are likely thinking and in the process gives a poignant example of the credibility problem for the FDA in the over-regulation of natural supplements.

"Who profits from this? The large pharmaceutical companies! By limiting the availability of supplements that could help against degenerating diseases or by taking many supplements off the market, aging Americans will have to rely on prescription drugs that are laden with harmful side effects."

Here’s what everyone knows about the pharmaceutical industry: they make their money by obscure closely guarded concoction science. Meaning they have a vested interested in complex solutions over simple less expensive solutions that might be readily available to the general public. When the FDA treats natural supplements the same as the obscure closely guarded concoctions for no seemingly legitimate reason, they create availability based on who has the biggest war chest. The superior funding war chest will always be possessed by big pharma. The question to be asked is are we getting the best health care options our money can buy, or the best the pharmaceutical industry chooses to let us buy at their chosen price?

Positive advancement at this point for businesses like Keith Morey’s would be greater dialogue through more coverage of what amounts to a nonsense regulatory framework being applied by the appointed guardians of the public health. With the direct result being decreased access to viable affordable treatments. If you have stories or observations that further the discussion towards common sense reforms, please share them on http://www.ceo-watch.com