DamagedGoods

Shame on me, I didn't go to their site and look around until now. Damn, the writer of the letter in the newspaper talks about 'economic conflicts of interest' and then references a site like that? Not much more than a big supplement sales site.

The "supplement" industry is big $$$...they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, spend millions on radio and TV ads (far more even than pharmaceutical companies, at least in my area), and yet there's no potential conflict of interest when they fund their own studies about the products they sell? Bah.

At the least they are just as likely to be 'tainted' as the suppliers of traditional medicine. At worst, they are knowingly attempting to deceive people into buying crap by telling them they don't need all that 'traditional' medical stuff.

I'm sorry if I'm ranting here...it just burns me to know that these people can make all kinds of outlandish claims about their products and methods, and are apparently never going to be charged with fraud and put out of business.

thebeave

You can thank our lovely Congressmen (mostly Orrin Hatch) for allowing these bogus, fraudulent dietary supplements to invade our health system. They passed, in 1994, the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA... I think that's the name anyway) that basically allows these products on the market without testing for safety or efficacy by the FDA. What's also causing problems is that many of these dietary supplements interfere with conventional medication, resulting in serious problems. If you are taking some of these supplements, be sure to tell your doctor.

Garbles18

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

As far as the death rate in hospitals from medicine, who is more reliable, the CDC or the AMA? 100,000 compared to under 19,000 is a huge difference. It looked like the AMA data was from 1994 and the CDC data was from 1999. But I can't imagine a reduction like that in five years if medicine in hospitals is such a problem.

I think it's a good point that somebody said about alternative medicines like herbal supplements contributing to the high number of deaths from hospital medicine. I also wonder how many of those deaths are from people who just didn't follow their doctor's specific instructions.

I can post my response after I write it if anyone is interested in seeing it.

Garbles18

This is the letter I came up with. It had to be under 250 words and I went just a little over, and it really sucks trying to force myself to only address a couple of points. Let me know what you guys think.