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Sadly, the editors of the Scientific American – long captured by the pharmaceutical industry and the medical cartel – have recently published an editorial calling for even greater regulation of nutraceuticals. This editorial displays their ignorance of both the safety record of nutraceuticals as well as their efficacy. It also fails to compare the safety record of “underregulated” nutraceuticals with that of regulated pharmaceuticals. By any measure, the regulated pharmaceutical industry churns out killer drugs, for which it has been fined millions, and even billions of dollars time after time, while the supplement industry, including nutraceuticals, has a pristine safety record by comparison.
Still, the Scientific American – which itself eleven years ago pointed out how drug-company money was undermining science – forgets the pharmaceutical industry’s corrupt and serial criminal career of death and mayhem despite being highly regulated. Instead, the editors call for the same failed and corrupt regime to be imposed upon the dietary-supplement industry, which includes nutraceuticals. Because, despite the editors’ focus upon “nutraceuticals,” the solutions called for by the Scientific American’s editorial team would adversely impact all high-quality supplements.
In particular, the magazine’s editorial board opines that supplements make wild, unsupported claims of safety and efficacy, which have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are therefore suspect. The editors further argue that “some items in this market could pose a threat to human health and safety, and Congress should empower the Food and Drug Administration to start treating these products (as well as vitamins and mineral supplements) more like drugs.” (emphasis added)
Their solution for this imaginary problem? Heap even more paperwork on an industry that is already night-and-day safer than the pharmaceutical industry with all of the regulations that it follows. In particular, the Scientific American editors unscientifically push for mandatory dietary-supplement product listing that “would require supplement makers to register their product with the FDA and list all its ingredients, along with an explanation of how the nutrients in the supplement relate to its health claims.”
The Same Old Song
Of course, this is the same old song we have heard for decades. “No supplement is safe unless it is regulated by the FDA exactly as drugs are,” the authoritarian Pharma naysayers cry. Like the highly regulated drug Vioxx (500,000 heart attacks). Or Baycol (100,000 deaths). Or – dare we even mention it? – COVID-19 vaccine deaths (for the year 2022 alone, and in the U.S. only: estimated human damages were 26.6 million injuries, 1.36 million disabilities, and 300,000 excess deaths with estimated economic costs totaling $147.8 billion). |
