Over the past two decades any attempt to rein in the often ridiculous and sometimes unsafe health claims regarding nutritional supplements has run into a legislative brick wall.
That wall is the politically formidable Sen. Orrin Hatch.
On Monday, the New York Times ran an article focusing on the Utah Republican’s central role in protecting the multibillion-dollar supplement industry from any meaningful government regulation. It’s a story that’s been told before, but needs repeating. After all, most consumers of nutritional supplements—and that includes an astounding half of all American adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have no idea that these products are poorly regulated by the government.
In other words, that supplement you think is healthy for you may be quite the opposite.
And we have Hatch primarily to thank for that, as New York Times reporter Eric Lipton explains:
Mr. Hatch, who credits a daily regimen of nutritional supplements for his vigor at 77, has spent his career in Washington helping the $25-billion-a-year industry thrive.
He was the chief author of a federal law enacted 17 years ago that allows companies to make general health claims about their products, but exempts them from federal reviews of their safety or effectiveness before they go to market. During the Obama administration, Mr. Hatch has repeatedly intervened with his colleagues in Congress and federal regulators in Washington to fight proposed rules that industry officials consider objectionable. …
But many public health experts argue that in his advocacy, Mr. Hatch has hindered regulators from preventing dangerous products from being put on the market, including supplements that are illegally spiked with steroids or other unapproved drugs. They also say he is the person in Washington most responsible for the proliferation of products that make exaggerated claims about health benefits.
Just in the last two years, 2,292 serious illnesses, including 33 that were fatal, were reported by consumers of supposedly harmless nutritional supplements, federal records show. (These “severe adverse reaction” reports do not necessarily mean the supplements caused the illnesses, just that the consumers became ill after taking them.) And some of Mr. Hatch’s most important supporters in Utah have faced repeated accusations of falsely claiming their products can treat almost everything, including cancer and heart disease.
Follow the money
Few MinnPost readers will be surprised to learn that Hatch has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the supplement industry or that some of his family members, friends and former aides are lobbyists for the industry or have other financial connections with it.
One of the sources of those campaign contributions is the Utah-based company Xango, which markets a $40-a-bottle juice made from mangosteen, a Southeast Asian fruit. In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned the company to stop making health claims for its mangosteen supplement, but a physician-spokesman for the company repeated those claims as recently as last March in a pitch talk to the company’s salespeople, reports Lipton.
Xango told Lipton that the doctor would be disciplined “if necessary.” But you have to wonder what it would take for the company to impose such discipline, given that it has that doctor on its payroll to begin with. For, as Lipton also reports, the doctor’s medical license has “twice been suspended by the State of Utah, most recently in 2008, state records show, for charges including improperly prescribing excessive amounts of narcotics or turning over signed, blank prescription forms to a weight-loss clinic.”
Serious consequences
“Orrin Hatch certainly has a right to fight for his constituents,” Yale School of Medicine neurologist (and Neurologica blogger) Dr. Steven Novella told Lipton. “But the consequences are we have an effectively unregulated market for these products, a Wild West, and people are being abused by slick marketing, and as a result taking things that are worthless or in some cases not even safe.”
You’ll find Lipton’s article on the New York Times website. (Warning to non-Times subscribers: Clicking on the link will count as one of your free monthly articles.)
Population of Utah: ~ 2.8 million.
Population of U.S.: ~ 307 million.
Utah’s part of U.S. population: ~ .91%.
A single Utah senator’s impact on proliferation of products that make exaggerated claims about health benefits: VASTLY OUT OF PROPORTION to the number of people he represents.
Such a system we got!
It’s not economical for companies to pay for testing of a non-patentable supplement, simply for the right to print ‘Promotes digestive health’ on the front of the bottle.
This is the most frequent kind of product promotion I see. Is this the sort of thing you’re concerned about?