The food supplement pill industry ...

[Braggi]

"The food supplement pill industry is phenomenally powerful, extremely lucrative and incredibly influential, but it has shown itself to be philosophically and commercially incapable of critical self-appraisal."



With their money, myopia and abuses, these pill makers match big pharma
The food supplement industry likes to style itself as people's medicine, but the way it stifles debate is far from democratic

Ben Goldacre
guardian.co.uk, Friday September 12 2008 19.00 BST

Article history

Matthias Rath today pulled out of a legal case against the Guardian which has cost the organisation £500,000 to defend. I am proud that we fought it. Rath is an example of the worst excesses of the alternative therapy industry; UK nutritionists make foolish claims on poor evidence – they can make your child a genius with fish oils, or prevent heart attacks in the distant future – but Rath transplanted these practices into the world of HIV/Aids, where evidence really matters.

The potential consequences of his actions are outrageous, but he is by no means untypical. This sector has engineered a beneficent public image for itself, a warm and friendly cottage industry; but that fantasy is not borne out by the facts.

First, despite claims about the true evils of "big pharma", presented as if they were evidence that vitamin pills are effective, there is little difference between the vitamin and pharmaceutical industries. Key players in both include multinationals such as Roche and Aventis; BioCare, the vitamin pill producer that media nutritionist Patrick Holford works for, is part-owned by Elder Pharmaceuticals, and so on.

The food supplement market, comprising products like vitamin pills and herbal supplements, is worth $50bn worldwide (against $600bn for pharmaceuticals). It has lobbied angrily and successfully against safety regulation, and the vitamin industry is also legendary in the world of economics as the setting of the most outrageous price-fixing cartel ever documented: during the 1990s the main offenders pleaded guilty and had to pay $1.5bn, the largest criminal fine levied in legal history.

That's quite some cottage industry, and it is tightly linked to the "nutritional therapists" community. Bant, their UK membership organisation, recently changed its code of conduct in accordance with the wishes of pill manufacturers, so that members can now take undisclosed financial kickbacks for the pills they prescribe to patients. Doctors are struck off the GMC register for this activity, and rightly so.

Last year I went to a public meeting hosted by Matthias Rath in east London. He spoke for three gruelling hours, and every time he mentioned the side-effects of a treatment prescribed by doctors, the people in the seats behind me growled the word "murderers" in a venomous tone. Their hatred was intense, and it was unnerving to sit near them.

How do people become so extreme in their views? How have they been isolated from the realities of the miracle cure industries? A combination of wishful thinking, successful PR, and legal muscle.

When I attempted simply to write that the Dore miracle cure for dyslexia had not cured three people, we received several legal warning letters, delaying the piece by a month. An academic who dared to criticise the evidence base for the programme received a threatening legal letter delivered by hand to her home address.

Gillian McKeith has made repeated legal threats against websites who have dared to discuss her work, and her lawyer husband has threatened an academic who suggested testing her ideas. She also has a legal case hanging over the Sun that has seen little movement in three years.

When chiropractors had their practices challenged in the New Zealand Medical Journal they simply sent a threatening legal letter ("Let's hear your evidence," said the editorial in response, "not your legal muscle"). A herbal pill entrepreneur – and academic – had Professor David Colquhoun's website removed from UCL servers after he dared to question her evidence. The Society of Homeopaths had a blogger silenced by threatening his web host.

I could go on. And of course, deterring dissent goes wider than the use of libel law. There is also the bizarre smear operation against critics of the food supplement industry, and an elaborate campaign conducted by homeopaths against Professor Edzard Ernst, an academic who has simply dared to examine the evidence for their claims, which ended up with his employers at Exeter University being harassed to silence him.

Meanwhile the alternative therapists who run university BSc courses refuse to release their lecture notes, or let anyone see their exam papers, in a desperate attempt not to engage with critical appraisal from the worlds of scientific evidence of which they purport to be a part.

This is not just unpleasant, it is also unhealthy. Ideas improve when they are challenged and questioned. I am a doctor, journalist and academic. I criticise the activities of doctors, journalists and academics in each of my jobs, and I welcome other people criticising my ideas.

Nothing could be more anti-democratic or stifling to debate than using money, law and power to regulate what can be discussed, and yet those who do it have the gall to represent themselves as the outsider, the little man, concerned with the medicine of the people. In reality they behave like nothing more than commercial entities.

The food supplement pill industry is phenomenally powerful, extremely lucrative and incredibly influential, but it has shown itself to be philosophically and commercially incapable of critical self-appraisal. Rath is its product. It is inconceivable that any individual within that industry would be brave enough to stand up and criticise his activities – and for that, more than anything else, it should be condemned.

Ben Goldacre, a medical doctor and author of the book Bad Science, writes the Bad Science column in the Guardian
[email protected]

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...thiasrath.aids

Click the link to view reader comments.

-Jeff

[decterlove]

Yeah, yeah, yeah....you sure have a bug up your butt about vitamins, Jeff....must be some pharmaceutical you could take for that....steroids, perhaps?

Whatever the excesses are in the supplement industry, and however inextricably linked they are to large pharmaceutical suppliers like Roche, comparing the damage vitamins do with the over prescribed medical drugs is like comparing damage done by Schwinn bicycles on local roads to Mack Trucks. And yes, Mack trucks are sometimes necessary.

Here's a sample item regarding the industry you so love to defend. I'd like to see something remotely comparable in the supplement industry. I know you're a really bright guy, Jeff, with good values, but I guess we're all a bit twisted in one way or another. Too bad the Progressive Community can't even agree on a simple issue like this. If all the Republican Reptiles died off tomorrow from some Weird Brain Mold (I hate to denigrate reptiles in this way but the phrase has become part of the American Vernacular..) we on the Left would find lots of issues to disagree about, sadly.

Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill

Older Medication, Considered Equally Effective,
Can Be as Much as $600 a Month Cheaper, Study Finds By ALEX BERENSON

The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. The documents, given to The Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa’s links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar — both known risk factors for diabetes.

Lilly’s own published data, which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa’s sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents, which cover the period 1995 to 2004.

Zyprexa has become by far Lilly’s best-selling product, with sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about two million people worldwide took the drug.
Critics, including the American Diabetes Association, have argued that Zyprexa, introduced in 1996, is more likely to cause diabetes than other widely used schizophrenia drugs. Lilly has consistently denied such a link, and did so again on Friday in a written response to questions about the documents. The company defended Zyprexa’s safety, and said the documents had been taken out of context.

But as early as 1999, the documents show that Lilly worried that side effects from Zyprexa, whose chemical name is olanzapine, would hurt sales.
“Olanzapine-associated weight gain and possible hyperglycemia is a major threat to the long-term success of this critically important molecule,” Dr. Alan Breier wrote in a November 1999 e-mail message to two-dozen Lilly employees that announced the formation of an “executive steering committee for olanzapine-associated weight changes and hyperglycemia.” Hyperglycemia is high blood sugar.

At the time Dr. Breier, who is now Lilly’s chief medical officer, was the chief scientist on the Zyprexa program.

In 2000, a group of diabetes doctors that Lilly had retained to consider potential links between Zyprexa and diabetes warned the company that “unless we come clean on this, it could get much more serious than we might anticipate,” according to an e-mail message from one Lilly manager to another.

And in that year and 2001, the documents show, Lilly’s own marketing research found that psychiatrists were consistently saying that many more of their patients developed high blood sugar or diabetes while taking Zyprexa than other antipsychotic drugs.

The documents were collected as part of lawsuits on behalf of mentally ill patients against the company. Last year, Lilly agreed to pay $750 million to settle suits by 8,000 people who claimed they developed diabetes or other medical problems after taking Zyprexa. Thousands more suits against the company are pending.

On Friday, in its written response, Lilly said that it believed that Zyprexa remained an important treatment for patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The company said it had given the Food and Drug Administration all its data from clinical trials and reports of adverse events, as it is legally required to do. Lilly also said it shared data from literature reviews and large studies of Zyprexa’s real-world use. “In summary, there is no scientific evidence establishing that Zyprexa causes diabetes,” the company said.
Lilly also said the documents should not have been made public because they might “cause unwarranted fear among patients that will cause them to stop taking their medication.”

As did similar documents disclosed by the drug maker Merck last year in response to lawsuits over its painkiller Vioxx, the Lilly documents offer an inside look at how a company marketed a drug while seeking to play down its side effects. Lilly, based in Indianapolis, is the sixth-largest American drug maker, with $14 billion in revenue last year.

The documents — which include e-mail, marketing material, sales projections and scientific reports — are replete with references to Zyprexa’s importance to Lilly’s future and the need to keep concerns about diabetes and obesity from hurting sales. But that effort became increasingly difficult as doctors saw Zyprexa’s side effects, the documents show.
In 2002, for example, Lilly rejected plans to give psychiatrists guidance about how to treat diabetes, worrying that doing so would tarnish Zyprexa’s reputation. “Although M.D.’s like objective, educational materials, having our reps provide some with diabetes would further build its association to Zyprexa,” a Lilly manager wrote in a March 2002 e-mail message.

But Lilly did expand its marketing to primary care physicians, who its internal studies showed were less aware of Zyprexa’s side effects. Lilly sales material encouraged representatives to promote Zyprexa as a “safe, gentle psychotropic” suitable for people with mild mental illness.
Some top psychiatrists say that Zyprexa will continue to be widely used despite its side effects, because it works better than most other antipsychotic medicines in severely ill patients. But others say that Zyprexa appears no more effective overall than other medicines.

And some doctors who specialize in diabetes care dispute Lilly’s assertion that Zyprexa does not cause more cases of diabetes than other psychiatric drugs. “When somebody gains weight, they need more insulin, they become more insulin resistant,” Dr. Joel Zonszein, the director of the clinical diabetes center at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said when asked about the drug.

In 2003, after reviewing data provided by Lilly and other drug makers, the F.D.A. said that the current class of antipsychotic drugs may cause high blood sugar. It did not specifically single out Zyprexa, nor did it say that the drugs had been proven to cause diabetes.

The drugs are known as atypical antipsychotics and include Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal and AstraZeneca’s Seroquel. When they were introduced in the mid-1990s, psychiatrists hoped they would relieve mental illness without the tremors and facial twitches associated with older drugs. But the new drugs have not proven significantly better and have their own side effects, said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the lead investigator on a federally sponsored clinical trial that compared Zyprexa and other new drugs with one older one.

The Zyprexa documents were provided to the Times by James B. Gottstein, a lawyer who represents mentally ill patients and has sued the state of Alaska over its efforts to force patients to take psychiatric medicines against their will. Mr. Gottstein said the information in the documents raised public health issues.

“Patients should be told the truth about drugs like Zyprexa,” Mr. Gottstein said.

Lilly originally provided the documents, under seal, to plaintiffs lawyers who sued the company claiming their clients developed diabetes from taking Zyprexa. Mr. Gottstein, who is not subject to the confidentiality agreement that covers the product liability suits, subpoenaed the documents in early December from a person involved in the suits.

In its statement, Lilly called the release of the documents “illegal.” The company said it could not comment on specific documents because of the continuing product liability suits.

In some ways, the Zyprexa documents are reminiscent of those produced in litigation over Vioxx, which Merck stopped selling in 2004 after a clinical trial proved it caused heart problems. They treat very different conditions, but Zyprexa and Vioxx are not entirely dissimilar. Both were thought to be safer than older and cheaper drugs, becoming bestsellers as a result, but turned out to have serious side effects.

After being pressed by doctors and regulators, Merck eventually did test Vioxx’s cardiovascular risks and withdrew the drug after finding that Vioxx increased heart attacks and strokes.

Lilly has never conducted a clinical trial to determine exactly how much Zyprexa raises patients’ diabetes risks. But scientists say conducting such a study would be exceedingly difficult, because diabetes takes years to develop, and it can be hard to keep mentally ill patients enrolled in a clinical trial.


When it was introduced, Zyprexa was the third and most heralded of the atypical antipsychotics. With psychiatrists eager for new treatments for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and dementia, Zyprexa’s sales soared.
But as sales grew, reports rolled in to Lilly and drug regulators that the medicine caused massive weight gain in many patients and was associated with diabetes. For example, a California doctor reported that 8 of his 35 patients on Zyprexa had developed high blood sugar, including two who required hospitalization.

The documents show that Lilly encouraged its sales representatives to play down those effects when talking to doctors. In one 1998 presentation, for example, Lilly said its salespeople should be told, “Don’t introduce the issue!!!” Meanwhile, the company researched combinations of Zyprexa with several other drugs, hoping to alleviate the weight gain. But the combinations failed.

To reassure doctors, Lilly also publicly said that when it followed up with patients who had taken Zyprexa in a clinical trial for three years, it found that weight gain appeared to plateau after about nine months. But the company did not discuss a far less reassuring finding in early 1999, disclosed in the documents, that blood sugar levels in the patients increased steadily for three years.

In 2000 and 2001, more warning signs emerged, the documents show. In four surveys conducted by Lilly’s marketing department, the company found that 70 percent of psychiatrists polled had seen at least one of their patients develop high blood sugar or diabetes while taking Zyprexa, compared with about 20 percent for Risperdal or Seroquel. Lilly never disclosed those findings.

By mid-2003, Lilly began to change its stance somewhat, publicly acknowledging that Zyprexa can cause severe obesity. Marketing documents make clear that by then Lilly believed it had no choice. On June 23, 2003, an internal committee reported that Zyprexa sales were “below plan” and that doctors were “switching/avoiding Zyprexa.”

Since then, Lilly has acknowledged Zyprexa’s effect on weight but has argued that it does not necessarily correlate to diabetes. But Zyprexa’s share of antipsychotic drug prescriptions is falling, and some psychiatrists say they no longer believe the information Lilly offers.

“From my personal experience, at first my concerns about weight gain with this drug were very significantly downplayed by their field representatives,” said Dr. James Phelps, a psychiatrist in Corvallis, Or. ‘Their continued efforts to downplay that, I think in retrospect, was an embarrassment to the company.”

Dr. Phelps says that he tries to avoid Zyprexa because of its side effects but sometimes still prescribes it, especially when patients are acutely psychotic and considering suicide, because it works faster than other medicines.

“I wind up using it as an emergency medicine, where it’s superb,” he said. “But I’m trying to get my patients off of Zyprexa, not put them on.”

[Sylph]

I think the point is that the big supplement industry can be just as greedy and devious as the big pharma industry, only big pharma has more oversight.
Here's something from England about a store called Julian Graves that is selling potentially toxic apricot pit supplements!
https://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/10/julian-graves-not-just-nuts-dangerously.html
Not Just Nuts - Dangerously Irresponsible
So. Today. I had a quite jaw dropping conversation in my local branch of Julian Graves. For my American readers, Julian Graves is a shop that sells large bags of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, food ingredients and confectionery. I quite like them. Low on packaging, low on branding, and excellent value for money for kitchen basics. And they are not too puritanical in their outlook. You can buy enough liquorice allsorts, for a couple of pounds, to make a family of six sick.

But passing their window, I see a big stack of jars (click on link) on offer at half price for £3.49, containing a quarter of a kilogram of bitter apricot kernels. The label contains a dire warning not to eat more than 2 in 24 hours. How odd! Now, some spices are not good for you if you eat large amounts: nutmeg springs to mind. But these kernels are not a spice. What are they selling this for? It hardly looks edible to me.

So, I walk in and as the shop assistant what these bitter apricot kernels were for. She responded straight away, "They are good for some sorts of cancer". OMFG!

Is that all? Apparently, yes. They are not food - they are far too bitter to eat. What is more, the disclaimer is there because they produce amounts of cyanide when eaten. Eat too many at one go and it will be your last visit to Julian Graves and that is not too good for repeat sales.

I am not too sure about the legality of this conversation. The Cancer Act of 1939 says "No person shall take any part in the publication of any advertisement containing an offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof." As this was a conversation, maybe it falls outside this act. I return home and check on the Julian Graves website about what they say. It is worth repeating their page in full…
"You have been requesting them in your hundreds and now they are available online and in stores.

We are the first UK retailer to sell this controversial product which many people believe may offer significant health benefits.

The kernels, seeds of the apricot fruit, are one of the highest sources of vitamin B17 - also known as laetrile -which, it is alleged, may help protect the immune system.

But the kernels have a very bitter aftertaste and can be toxic if eaten in large amounts. Yet, as more data becomes available particularly on the net about the benefits of vitamin B17, people will probably be willing to accept the bitter taste in the belief that these kernels may help maintain their health.

But it's important to stress that - to date - no medical or scientific research has been carried out on the kernels so their 'perceived' benefits cannot be proven in any way.

As a responsible retailer, we do not make any claims about the products alleged powers. All we can do is make them available and ensure the potential problem of eating too many in one go is highlighted.

We strongly recommend that if people want to know more about bitter apricot kernels and vitamin B17, they should go online and do their own research."


A few weeks ago Julian Graves was acquired by American pharmaceutical company NBTY after troubled Icelandic conglomerate Baugur sold them on. Their CEO, Scott Rudolph, said,

The acquisition of Julian Graves is an integral part of NBTY's strategic plan to enhance its position as the number one supplement retailer in the UK and gain geater market share. We continue to seek acquisitions which generate growth and further entrench NBTY as the worldwide leader in the nutritional supplement industry.

Julian Graves has not really been big on 'health' supplements up til now. NBTY already own Holland and Barrett and GNC in the UK. They dominate the industry of useless pills that trade of web rumours for their effectiveness. A few days ago I speculated they might be interested in troubled UK supplement pill pushers Neutrahealth. I think we can be expecting to see a lot more irresponsible supplement nonsense in the shop that used to sell chocolate covered banana chips.
Labels: Holland and Barrett, Julian Graves, NBTY, vitamins

[Sylph]

Too bad the Progressive Community can't even agree on a simple issue like this. If all the Republican Reptiles died off… we on the Left would find lots of issues to disagree about, sadly

It's not sad! It's a learning experience when we disagree. When we have a point to prove we do some research into the issue
and maybe open our minds to new ideas...

https://www.drugdanger.com/Others/4-04-01consumerreports.htm
Name(Also known as)

DEFINITELY HAZARDOUS

Documented organ failure and known carcinogenic properties

Aristolochic acid (Aristolochia, birthwort, snakeroot, snakeweed, sangree root, sangrel, serpentary, serpentaria; asarum canadense, wild ginger)

VERY LIKELY HAZARDOUS

Banned in other countries, FDA warning, or adverse effects in studies

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale, ass ear, black root, blackwort, bruisewort, consolidae radix, consound, gum plant, healing herb, knitback, knitbone, salsify, slippery root, symphytum radix, wallwort)
Androstenedione
(4-androstene-3, 17-dione, andro, androstene)
Chaparral (Larrea divaricata, creosote bush, greasewood, hediondilla, jarilla, larreastat)
Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys, wall germander, wild germander)
Kava (Piper methysticum, ava, awa, gea, gi, intoxicating pepper, kao, kavain, kawa-pfeffer, kew, long pepper, malohu, maluk, meruk, milik, rauschpfeffer, sakau, tonga, wurzelstock, yagona, yangona)

LIKELY HAZARDOUS

Adverse-event reports or theoretical risks

Bitter orange (Citrus aurantium, green orange, kijitsu, neroli oil, Seville orange, shangzhou zhiqiao, sour orange, zhi oiao, zhi xhi)
Organ/glandular extracts (brain/adrenal/pituitary/
placenta/other gland “substance� or “concentrate�)
Lobelia (Lobelia inflata, asthma weed, bladderpod, emetic herb, gagroot, lobelie, indian tobacco, pukeweed, vomit wort, wild tobacco)
Pennyroyal oil (Hedeoma pulegioides, lurk-in-the-ditch, mosquito plant, piliolerial, pudding grass, pulegium, run-by-the-ground, squaw balm, squawmint, stinking balm, tickweed)
Scullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora, blue pimpernel, helmet flower, hoodwort, mad weed, mad-dog herb, mad-dog weed, quaker bonnet, scutelluria, skullcap)
Yohimbe (Pausinystalia yohimbe, johimbi, yohimbehe, yohimbine)

[decterlove]

Oh, Horsedooey!

Of course there are toxic plants out there! But there's not a hundred thousand doctors out there prescribing lobelia for their patients (which I've taken by the way and I'm still HERE!) and making obscene profits on it!

And yes yohimbe (which I've admonished Wacco members in the past to be VERY CAREFUL WITH!) can be dangerous but so can alcohol! (and I have taken the above and I still take bitter orange....and I'm still HERE!) Scullcap, by the way, is a wonderful herb, and I've taken it in many formulas with excellent results.

The point Sylph, and I acknowledge your desire to be fair and rational about it, is that in conventional medicine, the way it's practiced in America for the past three decades or more, the first thing to be done is to Disempower the Patient, Introduce the Fear Factor into SelfCare, and Treat the Symptom while ignoring the possible underlying, and sometimes Simple, Lifestyle Causes.

We've created a whole nation of helpless idiots who go to the Emergency Room when they have a stomach ache or a cough, agree to surgery when their children suffer chronic ear aches from the crappy food they're eating, (Can we have pizza again tonight, mom? Oh, sure...I'm too tired to cook after working three jobs just to pay the rent!) and take a sleeping pill instead of some chamomile tea or a capsule of calcium/magnesium to calm their frayed nerves.

We've destroyed the Omega 3 oil compounds in many of our foods, as well as the natural b vitamin content in most of them, introduced huge amounts of polyunsaturated fats as well as hydrogenated oils, tons of sugar, fast foods, salt, caffeine, and a high animal food diet for three generations, watch tv for 8 hours a day or play video games all afternoon and get zero exercise, we never sit down and share a meal with family or other people, and wonder why we all suffer from mental illness and attention deficit disorder! Visit a country that hasn't abandoned common sense in all these areas and how many diabetics, schizophrenics, manic depressives, bi polar and obese people are your going to find? If such a country actually even exists anymore!

And the first thing most doctors are going to tell us, is "HERE, WE JUST DECIDED THERE'S A NEW NAME FOR YOUR DISEASE AND HERE'S A NEW PILL FOR IT. COME BACK IN SIX MONTHS WHEN THE DRUG WE'VE GIVEN YOU CREATES A WHOLE NEW SET OF SYMPTOMS AND WE'LL GIVE YOU A STRONGER ONE OR MAYBE WE CAN OPERATE! SEE YOU LATER!

And if the Patient balks or goes to see an alternative practitioner...then the QUACK LABEL is brought out.............just like the right wing has been using the TERRORIST LABEL for the last 7 years to corral Americans into a fear response so they can be further manipulated. And yes, THERE ARE QUACKS AND THERE ARE TERRORISTS but let's use a little caution about who we throw those labels at so casually! (I wonder if Sarah Palin considers those racists in the South that still bomb churches and synogogues to be TERRORISTS or is that a label that can only be applied to those sitting on your left?)

And one last note, we will NEVER be able to afford to provide Comprehensive Health Care for all people in this country UNTIL Americans are willing to regain and practice some common sense about prevention and using simple, traditional remedies for the more simple common complaints they suffer.

EVEN DOCTORS ARE BEGINNING TO FIGURE THIS OUT BUT IT'S THE FDA AND THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY THAT ARE KEEPING THE WHOLE TOXIC MESS FIRMLY IN PLACE, AT LEAST FOR AS LONG AS THEY CAN.

Nuff said....now where's my damn sleeping pill! Arrrrgh! MY DOG ATE MY SEROTONIN!

DEFINITELY HAZARDOUS

[/b]

Documented organ failure and known carcinogenic properties

Aristolochic acid (Aristolochia, birthwort, snakeroot, snakeweed, sangree root, sangrel, serpentary, serpentaria; asarum canadense, wild ginger)

VERY LIKELY HAZARDOUS

Banned in other countries, FDA warning, or adverse effects in studies

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale, ass ear, black root, blackwort, bruisewort, consolidae radix, consound, gum plant, healing herb, knitback, knitbone, salsify, slippery root, symphytum radix, wallwort)
Androstenedione
(4-androstene-3, 17-dione, andro, androstene)
Chaparral (Larrea divaricata, creosote bush, greasewood, hediondilla, jarilla, larreastat)
Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys, wall germander, wild germander)
Kava (Piper methysticum, ava, awa, gea, gi, intoxicating pepper, kao, kavain, kawa-pfeffer, kew, long pepper, malohu, maluk, meruk, milik, rauschpfeffer, sakau, tonga, wurzelstock, yagona, yangona)

LIKELY HAZARDOUS

Adverse-event reports or theoretical risks

Bitter orange (Citrus aurantium, green orange, kijitsu, neroli oil, Seville orange, shangzhou zhiqiao, sour orange, zhi oiao, zhi xhi)
Organ/glandular extracts (brain/adrenal/pituitary/
placenta/other gland “substance� or “concentrate�)
Lobelia (Lobelia inflata, asthma weed, bladderpod, emetic herb, gagroot, lobelie, indian tobacco, pukeweed, vomit wort, wild tobacco)
Pennyroyal oil (Hedeoma pulegioides, lurk-in-the-ditch, mosquito plant, piliolerial, pudding grass, pulegium, run-by-the-ground, squaw balm, squawmint, stinking balm, tickweed)
Scullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora, blue pimpernel, helmet flower, hoodwort, mad weed, mad-dog herb, mad-dog weed, quaker bonnet, scutelluria, skullcap)
Yohimbe (Pausinystalia yohimbe, johimbi, yohimbehe, yohimbine)

[Sylph]

I think supplements are more of a waste of money than a huge danger. I've taken them too, like Kava, without ill effects, but really without much effect at all. It's disturbing that they may not even have what is purported to be in them, or contain heavy metals. I even subscribed to Consumer Labs for a while. They test various supplements to make sure the active ingredient is really in them. I think it's fascinating that large-scale clinical trials are showing that multivitamins do more harm than good and that certain anti-oxidants may promote cancer.

We really are a nation of helpless idiots. I contend that there may be ignorance in the 'All natural, alternative treatment' group, as well, even though these folks usually have put more thought into health issues. It's ideal to take the best from both worlds, after researching pros and cons. Unfortunately, the internet sites are about 100 to one in favor of quackery and the average 'joe six-pack' may be unable to get accurate information.

Basically, we are in agreement, Dector! The American lifestyle is the cause of most degenerative disease. The impact of diet is profound. I love the point you make about people not even sitting down for a meal together anymore. Well said!

[phooph]

I am only still walking around and functional due to alternative medicine and supplements. The medical community has been fairly useless with either diagnosing or treating my ills. I am 64 years old and my mother started me off with doctors who said I might just be anemic (I now know I wasn't) or whatever it was I'd out grow it (I didn't). After the doctors killed of my mother (radiation induced liver degeneration) I began to look to nutrition and natural healing and discovered answers to what's wrong with me and things that actually worked to make me healthier. Every decade or so I have had another round of medical tests that tell me I am healthier than most people they see and they have no idea what causes my particular symptoms. I can go to acupuncturists and get the same diagnosis over and over consistent with my symptoms, and treatments that actually relieve those symptoms.

Medicine is useful for some things and not others. It is still listed as the number one cause of preventable death (surpassing tobacco) by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. The supplement industry may have its warts but it doesn't include killing hundreds of thousands of people every single year. Finding the references on this has become more difficult, since as the information has become more widely disseminated the industry has pressured publications to remove the links to online articles. Here's a page that used to have live links to many of the articles. Notice that they all give error messages now. The industry is covering its tracks.

I think supplements are more of a waste of money than a huge danger. I've taken them too, like Kava, without ill effects, but really without much effect at all. It's disturbing that they may not even have what is purported to be in them, or contain heavy metals. I even subscribed to Consumer Labs for a while. They test various supplements to make sure the active ingredient is really in them. I think it's fascinating that large-scale clinical trials are showing that multivitamins do more harm than good and that certain anti-oxidants may promote cancer.

We really are a nation of helpless idiots. I contend that there may be ignorance in the 'All natural, alternative treatment' group, as well, even though these folks usually have put more thought into health issues. It's ideal to take the best from both worlds, after researching pros and cons. Unfortunately, the internet sites are about 100 to one in favor of quackery and the average 'joe six-pack' may be unable to get accurate information.

Basically, we are in agreement, Dector! The American lifestyle is the cause of most degenerative disease. The impact of diet is profound. I love the point you make about people not even sitting down for a meal together anymore. Well said!