Now, thanks to Congress in general and former Sen. Orrin Hatch in particular, the FDA's power over supplements is limited, but it sounds like it plans to fully use the powers it has, at least on the new claims that supplements can fight Alzheimer's
About time.
I'm sure this will piss off many (other) Greens who think supplements are pure and pristine and natural (they're not, and you're committing the naturalistic fallacy) or else less capitalistic than Big Pharma (also not true; why do you think Orrin Hatch got the industry such a regulatory pass?)
On the capitalism side, the NY Times reported 3 years ago, based on government research, that Merika spends $30 billion a year on supplements. Note to FDA Commish Scott Gottlieb: I partially blame the gummint, including Orrin Hatch, with the founding of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — i.e., the alt-med wing of the National Institutes of Health.
It's true that this is only about 1 percent of what we collectively spend on pharmaceuticals. That said, allowing for research replication viability and related issues, pharmaceuticals are prescribed to actually do something that they normally do. Supplements are self-prescribed by people for things they have not been proven to do and, on the deregulation, don't have to try to prove they can do.
And, because they're not regulated, supplements have a lot less overhead than pharmaceuticals.
The NYT piece also adds this. The biggest supplements users are generally the healthiest people already. In short, the supplements world feeds off of, and further feeds, a low-level hypochondria.
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