FDA's dietary supplements' safety regulation: too much or not enough?.

[Guest guest]

Dietary supplements' safety regulation: too much or not enough?.

<http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-dietary-supplements-safety-20\

120126,0,423168.story>

A new proposal to toughen the Food and Drug Administration's power to

regulate the safety of dietary supplements has the makers of vitamins,

minerals and botanical extracts up in arms. But an editorial in the New

England Journal of Medicine says the drug-safety agency's proposed new

powers do not go nearly far enough.

To expand its current $28-billion-a-year market, the dietary supplements

industry is widely devising and selling formulations that use " novel "

products -- minerals, plants, or amino acids that appear newly

promising, which have not circulated widely in the United States before,

or which are offered in " mega-doses " much higher than have been

customarily used in supplements. An industry that produced and marketed

4,000 distinct products in 1994, when the regulatory framework for

dietary supplements was written into law, now markets about 55,000

products to Americans who believe them to be safe to take....

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For context in US, see:

Healthcare in America: This Is America Today, Part II

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2012/01/this-is-america-today-part-ii.html

These facts are from the CIA and they are undisputed: