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Major Retailers Accused of Selling Fraudulent Herbal Supplements
MikeChino writes: The New York State Attorney General's Office is demanding that GNC, Walmart, Walgreens, and Target remove store brand herbal supplements from their shelves after the pills were found to be packed with a strange array of fraudulent—and in some cases hazardous—ingredients. Popular supplements such as ginseng, valerian root, and St. John's wort sold under store brand names at the four major retailers were found to contain powdered rice, asparagus, and even houseplants, while being completely void of any of the ingredients on the label.
Because the ones that list their actual ingredients are honest and factual?
What's the big deal? Instead of getting "Useless Compound X," buyers were getting "Useless Compound Y."
Note: Yes, I'm partially kidding. People are entitled to get the woo they've been promised, and I suppose there are allergy issues involved.
But of course it's perfectly ok to sell fraudule...err, homeopathic "remedies" which do not and cannot work any different than a placebo.
So sell them as homeopathic and charge even more (because they are more powerful, right!)
But the Republican/Libertarian said regulation is bad!
Other than lightening the consumers wallet. Same for the Tommy Copper crap. They should have to publish results from double-blind studies. Otherwise it's a scam.
Every herbal supplement that is going to be ingested in America needs a COA (Certificate of Authenticity) to verify their legitimacy. Disclosure: I used to work in the herbal supplement industry. This is not wholly uncommon. The biggest issue here is that the suppliers/manufacturers were ripping off the GNC etc. Someone along the way faile dto check the authenticity, and they got burned.
As you say, it's irrelevant that the supplements don't work: what matters is the false advertizing. This is a legitimate consumer protection issue, unlilke all the nannying and moralizing I'm using to getting from the NY State Attroneys General.
I'm highly skeptical of store brands as a whole. They're much cheaper than the national brands, and claim to be the same thing. But, as they're "supplements", FDA doesn't check. We should just trust CVS, Walgreens, etc, to be telling the truth, right? I mean, they're huge, honest companies and they distribute real medicines, so you know they are taking great care to make sure the stuff they sell is as advertised. Let's do a sniff test on that statement. Nope. Doesn't pass. I suppose the store brands *could* be legit, and I could be getting a great deal -- exact same, high quality multivitamins for 1/4 the cost of the national brand. But my spidey sense says, no. Rice flour and rat droppings are far more likely, especially since the package gives no indication of where the product originates, just "Distributed by CVS". Yeah, that in itself inspires a whole lot of confidence...NOT.
I suspect this has something to do with outsurcing herbal supplements for the cheapest price to a country that begins with letter c. If they don't care about reusing sewer oil for their own population imagine what they might sell you.
That's what you get when your supplier is the lowest bidder, and zero checks and balances are in place, all in the name of profit.
Meanwhile, some MBA that set up the deal is relaxing on his Yacht. This is capitalism at work.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
500 mg or more of Cinnamon helps insulin sensitivity- close to what the diabetic drug Metformin does. However, a number of cinnamon pills are bogus- sawdust and cinnamon oil often times.
500 mg -1000mg of Niacin (nicotinic acid) raises HDL (even more effective when combined with large doses of fish oil).
Some supplements do work. It is bad enough to try and figure out which supplement contains the right form of Niacin, compared to figuring out if the supplement even contains the ingredients on the label.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Surprise? No!
It's not about whether the stuff works or not; the customer should get what they pay for, and not get extraneous crap they may be allergic to.
Same goes for ratings on movies, books, etc. - if a customer wants something, or wants to avoid something, it's not about passing judgement on the customer's interests, but about making sure that people can get what they want AND avoid what they don't want.
No, they wouldn't be called drugs. The FDA considers synthetic, non-natural compounds as drugs, as well as specifically-derived and scheduled natural compounds. Anything unscheduled and synthetic is a drug which may not be labeled for any use; anything unscheduled and a natural part of diet (i.e. synthesized or refined minerals, vitamins, neurotransmitters) or from a natural source is a supplement, and may be labeled with anything that anyone has stated before, including historical uses or scientific conjectures with no evidence.
Scheduled: Drug. Not present in nature: Drug. Present in nature: Supplement. Synthesized drug which metabolizes into a natural substance present in the body (e.g. a wholly-unnatural compound which metabolizes into noradrenaline): Supplement.
Notice the difference between Choline Citrate, which metabolizes into Acetylcholine, and Valium, which excites the GABA receptors but does not metabolize into GABA.
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supplement company: check out our new herbal animal vegetable raw vegan youth potion penis elixer and life enhancer with guanaramalama and bilinko for supported function of your satrogenum B9
AG: this is nothing but brake dust, old chinese newspaper shreds, and windshield glass
supplement company: well its been on the market for 2 years and is completely safe.
AG: yeah but it doesnt do what it says and contains things it doesnt list. pull it.
supplement company: sure thing buddy! let me just step over this large mountain of cash I earned and ill get right to it. sure am sorry about the mixup.
Stores: oh we sure are super sorry too, turns out we got distracted by counting all this money.
Supplement company: who wants to sell this new supplement! its got enhanced vigorators and revitalomic green tea tomato lyzopramic dyloricackles to enhance your penis life
Stores: who are we do deny the customer!
AG: THIS IS JUST SHREDDED PHONEBOOKS AND CAFFEINE
supplement company: it iiiiiis? oh my worrrrd it happened again! goodness gracious.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can't decide whether this says more about corporate greed or about the culture of alternative medicine, that these retailers can make such a flagrant mockery of herbal supplements, and apparently get away with it for quite a while.
Confused. Are you suggesting that caffeine doesn't work? Because to me, that would be a prime example of a plant-derived substance that works just great, but is not considered a drug. Plus it's not about whether they work or not, it's about truth in labeling.
They found powdered legumes in some of the products.
People with peanut allergies may want to know that it's in there...
AC b/c posting at work.
Over-regulation is bad. Selling a bottle that is 100% not what it says on the label, is a reasonable expectation. Call it what you want - false advertising, fraud, etc. It's clearly something that shouldn't be permitted. I don't think you'd get much argument from either side of the isle.
Er, aisle.
"dietary supplements, which are exempt from the strict regulatory oversight applied to prescription drugs."
Quite well manipulated strike, on the dietary supplements, the War though is for the power of controlling and regulating them and soon one will not be able to buy a dietary supplement without a prescription from a Doc, such a nonsense.
Soon to come, one will need a prescription drug to buy vegetables from the local store, but of course, buying any processed poison/food will be absolutely unregulated.
For everyone information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dhlp8jSiiU
There's no actual treatment of flu.
(peers closely at bottle) ...are you saying that this isn't GENUINE snake oil?
-Styopa
> If there was *any* hope that this herb could treat that sickness where money could be made selling it, big pharma would have snapped it up and sold it under FDA rules as a drug, even over the counter
If it's a natural herb they can't get the patent. If they can't get the patent, they can't get a monopoly. If they can't get a monopoly, they can't make profit.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
But the Republican/Libertarian said regulation is bad!
Nope...That's NOT what they say.
The ones I hear talking about this say that government and regulation should be as SMALL as possible; that OVER REGULATION and large government is bad.
There is a MAJOR difference between what they actually say and what you claim they say.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The store-brand crap claims to contain an ingredient it doesn't contain. The homeopathic crap claims to not contain an ingredient it doesn't contain. It should be obvious how those are different.
Unless you're Orin Hatch
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Wait a min... I've seen Caffeine listed in the "Active ingredient" list of some headache medications, which means it is being sold as a drug....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The regulations were there already, they were broken. The scrutiny happened. Offenders were caught. It's a good thing. You have no point.
When you sell crap people won't buy it if they know what it is. That is regulation force. Decent people don't want to commit fraud and those are the people you want to do business with. People that stand behind their products wouldn't try to sell you a lie. You would be a fool to buy herbal supplements from a big box store. Good herbal supplements are expensive and sold by people that understand the difference between sawdust and what they are selling. Those big box stores get the cheapest junk from China. They have the attitude that it is all snake oil. You are the fool for buying something like this from someone that does not care about you or the product. People like this AC ^ would do business with sheisters and run to whoever will hear them tattle-tell instead of having the acumen to asses the quality of a product before buying it.
If some idiot wants to buy 20C whatever that's their business. It's only a problem if the what is in the bottle is actually something different or false claims are made about efficacy.
Homeopathic "remedies" are the very definition of false claims regarding efficacy.
I RTFA and the links and I didn't see any mention of the source manufacturor, but If I had to guess, I would guess they were made under contract in China and labelled with whichever distributor was buying today's production run.
US FDA/USDA-style regulatory enforcement and quality controls are practically non-existant in China. Just look at the great melamine scare a few years ago where they where bumping up the "protein" level of ingrediants by adding toxic melamine (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...).
All imports of food/drug or ingrediants from china should be banned out-right.
No, try peppermint tea the next time you have a runny nose, natural antihistimine that works for a awhile...but pseudophed works better.
Try wintergreen tea (steep for 10 minutes from boiling, it's in a bark not leaves) instead of aspirin or advil, also a natural aspirin, contains chemical similar to it. Of course, aspirin works better....
Oil of oregano is also natural antihistamine.
I can buy tea and coffee and coca cola without limit or oversight or papers...what's your point in bringing up caffeine, same as the others
Scheduled: Drug. Not present in nature: Drug. Present in nature: Supplement. Synthesized drug which metabolizes into a natural substance present in the body (e.g. a wholly-unnatural compound which metabolizes into noradrenaline): Supplement.
So weed is not a scheduled Drug, it is a Supplement? Tell that one to the DEA
Substances are placed in their respective schedules based on whether they have a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, their relative abuse potential, and likelihood of causing dependence when abused.
Ill add that is also is determined by how many people in congress are using the drug. I believe that congresses use of Viagra is the only reason it is not a schedule 2 narcotic.
Uh, one of the tenets of the Libertarian platform is "No force or fraud." This is certainly fraud, and therefore a suitable target of government force.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You are confused, there are already regulations and they were broken in this case. The solution is there already in existing law.
Wrong. The true libertarians will argue that this is excessive government regulation, and that the government should stay out of commercial affairs like this, and that the "invisible hand of the holy free market" will correct these problems. So if someone wants to sell baby formula with melamine in it, libertarians think that should be perfectly legal and that bad word-of-mouth will put such companies out of business (after some babies die from it--oh well), and that the government should just keep its nose out of it.
This is precisely why libertarianism, in its pure form, is lunacy.
With Republicans, it really depends on how much libertarian kool-aid they've been drinking. Not all Republicans are that extreme. (I don't normally have much good to say about today's Republicans, but I'm not going to be untruthful about them either. They do mostly suck, the Teabaggers really suck, but to say they're all against all regulation is patently false, they're just generally very big-business-friendly and not very helpful to poorer or middle-class Americans.)
No, I think it's perfectly fine to require a company to have to prove that their product does what they say it does, or at the least, require that they provide refunds when it doesn't. If I buy a PS4, I expect it to play PS4 games, and if it doesn't, I have 30 days to return it. If I buy a case of beer that says variety pack but it turns out to only contain brown ale, the store is going to let me return it.
Many of these supplement companies do have a money back guarantee, but they make it such a hassle to return the product that most people chalk it up as a loss. I don't mind them being allowed to make whatever claims they want about efficacy as long as they're required to take it back when it doesn't work.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
There's a giant difference.
Homeopathic "crap" is actually highly purified water. So while it probably isn't going to help your ailment (though it might: the placebo effect is real!), it's not going to hurt you either.
These fraudelent supplements are made from all kinds of crap, some of it apparently even harmful. So taking it could cause you an allergic reaction or worse.
There's Tamiflu, which can lessen flu symptoms. So there's that.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Yes, marketing a useless supplement and listing what's in it is less fraudulent that marketing a useless supplement that misrepresents its ingredients.
Not true. Nobody has owned a patent on aspirin in my lifetime, but they still make money manufacturing it. You don't need a patent to make money, it helps, but it's not required. If they can isolate the active part of the herb, then they can patent that, or better yet, just get a chemist to synthesize that part... Where it costs money is in the double blind clinical trials which actually *prove* the stuff works without harming the patient and figure out the appropriate dosages.
IF it was effective at, say, treating depression (like some claim St. John's Wart is) the market for such a "natural occurring" substance would be pretty large and justify the cost of doing the chemistry and performing the trials. Even if you could prove the herb itself had some positive effects it would be a promising lead and likely draw attention and $$ to get it developed and into trials. But no...
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that of the known supplements which purport to be useful in treating something (at least in popular mythology) almost none of them have any provable positive affect beyond placebo. And the ones which have provable benefits will have dire side effects when taken at levels required to actually treat something effectively...
If you don't agree, then I suggest you prove me wrong by arranging the necessary clinical trials.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If there was *any* hope that this herb could treat that sickness where money could be made selling it, big pharma would have snapped it up and sold it under FDA rules as a drug, even over the counter.
Wrong. If it's naturally-occurring, they can't patent it, so they don't bother paying for all the clinical research that's necessary to make medical claims about its efficacy.
Over-the-counter stuff is cheap, sure, but the reason it's out there and being sold with specific claims about its efficacy is because all that clinical research was already done, years ago, back when it was covered by patents. Claritin is a good example of this: it used to be really expensive and only available from one company, and then the patent ran out so it became an OTC drug and the generics made their own versions of it for cheap.
The generic manufacturers aren't allowed to sell some herb along with any medical claims about what it can and can't do, like they can with a pharmaceutical compound which has undergone clinical trials. The pharma companies (even the generics) aren't going to pay for those trials, because they're expensive as hell, and they can't profit when anyone can package up that same natural herb and sell it in a bottle.
If they can devise a process to artificially create the effective compounds, they can patent that. But that only works when there is an identifiable effective compound.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It is not clear that these substances are useless.
It's also not clear that they are useful. Just because someone makes a claim about efficacy doesn't mean a thing without evidence.
Saying herbal medicine works, without evidence, is unscientific. Saying it doesn't work, without evidence, is also unscientific.
True but there ARE studies on a lot of this stuff that DOES say it doesn't work or that it is no different than placebo or in some cases is actually harmful.
Many herbs that have been tested, have turned out to be very effective, and many modern medicines are based on chemicals first found in herbs.
That has no bearing regarding the ones being sold here. Yes some herbs have medicinal effects. That doesn't mean you assume they do until they've actually been tested for efficacy using double blind studies.
You would think that the people selling the stuff would have an interest in proving these things were effective (perhaps via an industry association).
Why? People buy it anyway and the studies cost many millions of dollars. They have NO interest in proving (or disproving) anything about these supplements. In fact they had congress pass laws explicitly preventing the FDA from regulating them so that they wouldn't have to prove their claims.
It's two different issues.
Not really. Both are lies. The only difference is the precise nature of the deceit. Both are selling something that they know (or should know) has no proven medical benefit. Both meet the definition of fraud which is a deception deliberately practiced to secure unfair or unlawful gain. Whether you misrepresent or conceal the facts, in either case it still is fraud.
Yea, but somebody died..... I'm not laughing..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Over-regulation is bad.
Quackery is worse.
There is over regulation, making sure the stuff in the bottle is the exact same as what the label says.
Then there is casual regulation, where there is stuff in the bottle and a label, and you get money for it.
In the case of Bayer's aspirin, it's probably purely brand name loyalty that keep sales going. It's hard to do that with a new drug.
This is NOT a case of needing new regulations, we already HAVE regulations that cover this. What we need is a few class action lawsuits from customers who purchased one thing but got another... Problem will fix itself, eventually.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Not true, see my reply to another poster above..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Why are you purposefully adding DEA to the discussion? They are separate agencies, with their own disparate rules. What's a drug to DEA isn't to FDA, etc.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
So how do the natural herb sellers make a profit, then?
I and several of my friends can personally vouch for the mood elevating and mental focusing properties of Ginkgo. And I take ginseng regularly for various personal reasons. I can state with some confidence that I don't believe it's a placebo effect, by the strength of the results.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
'Just the cost of doing the chemistry and performing the trials...' WTF makes you think that is a 'just', especially when, absent patent protection, anyone else can make the same product WITHOUT spending that money? Here is a little clue for you - the AVERAGE cost of 'just doing the chemistry and perforrming the trials' is $2.5 BILLION.
This is the type of bullshit that leads down the road we are on today... the road to basic corporate anarchy.
The only reason the free market EVER works is because two parties have a roughly equal amount of information. The free market doesn't include deception. You want no regulations at all? Live on a desert island. I happen to like it that I live in civilization and there are some basic rules.
Many people I know admit to being addicted to Caffeine.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Looks like they used some questionable testing procedures and the New York AG may be a little premature:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...
Just today we had someone arguing that instead of health regulation that says restaurant employees should wash their hands when they come out of the bathroom that we should let the "free market" handle it.
How does the free market handle it? Do we wait until people die to find out people are going something wrong?
You are absolutely wrong here. The nutball elements of the far right want no regulation at all.
They make a profit because they don't spend billions of dollars on clinical trials; they just grow some plants, dry them out, crush them into powder, make pills out of them, put them in bottles and sell them. That's cheap to do. Then they make some claims with an asterisk that says "statements not evaluated by the FDA".
Pharmaceutical companies don't get involved in that kind of market.
Er, aisle.
It sounds suspiciously Welsh.
The nutball elements of the far right want no regulation at all.
The nutball left keep saying that ALL of the right want no regulation. Can we stop this please? Because nobody who is RESPONSIBLE wants what you claim, and nobody RESPONSIBLE applies the raving of the nutballs to the whole.
Where does that leave you and me?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yet companies other than Bayer make the stuff.... You can make a living making drugs w/o a patent is my point.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
>. Not all Republicans are that extreme. (I don't normally have much good to say about today's Republicans, but I'm not going to be untruthful about them either. They do mostly suck, the Teabaggers really suck, but to say they're all against all regulation is patently false, they're just generally very big-business-friendly and not very helpful to poorer or middle-class Americans.)
I for one appreciate your intellectual honesty. So many people will be complicit in lies, and even actively spread lies, about people they disagree with. I've made similar statements about specific Democrats and their party platform.
Obama, for example, doesn't actually want to destroy America and establish a totalitarian regime. He wants things that he thinks will be good. His administration is only destructive because he's incompetent, like Bush Jr was before him.
There is a world of difference between making money manufacturing existing drugs and making money bringing a new drug to market. I hope you can understand that.
And history repeats itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Marijuana is actually a Schedule 1 substance, known to the DEA to have no potential medical use. Phenibut is not, so it can be OTC, but only if you don't tell people what it does.
To put this into perspective: phenibut can be used once per month to any real effect, unless you ramp up the dose heavily. It produces immediate tolerance, and the withdrawal effects are worse than hard opiates. Based on these things, it obviously has no medical use, as it can't treat anything in one use and it can't be used even short-term. Why isn't it Schedule 1?
But, yes, weed is scheduled. Scheduling isn't automatic; a bureaucrat decides what to schedule.
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Maybe, if the lawsuits could use RIAA-style pricing for the fine: $150,000 per fake bottle sold.
As is though, when have you seen a "class-action" lawsuit exceed 10's of Millions? How many million bottles of fake-contents do you think have been sold?
To eventually fix itself, the fine would need to exceed the profits. That never happens.
Because the Food and Drug Administration decides how to regulate the production, sale, marketing, and use of drugs; the Drug Enforcement Administration decides how to schedule a drug's legal standing, including whether research on the drug for medical use is allowed, whether medical prescription is allowed, and whether possession or OTC use is allowed.
Something recognized as a drug follows different FDA rules than something not recognized as a drug. Scheduling something as a drug makes it a drug.
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That has been called into question.
One is what it claims to be and the other is not.
The pharmaceutical companies want nothing to do with it because they can't patent it and if they overcharge, people will grow it in their garden for next to nothing.
The true libertarians will argue that this is excessive government regulation, and that the government should stay out of commercial affairs like this, and that the "invisible hand of the holy free market" will correct these problems.
LIbertarians are likely to differ. Some might argue let them kill people and then sort it out with lawsuits. However, truth in labeling is something a lot of fairly hard-core libertarians would probably go along with. They wouldn't want the government banning the sale of any substance, but they would probably favor letting the buyer know what he is getting.
Selling adulterated supplements would be like selling a slave without disclosing that he has artificial teeth. That would be an abuse of the market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU
I guess they weren't homeopathic because those contain NO active ingredients!
However, truth in labeling is something a lot of fairly hard-core libertarians would probably go along with. They wouldn't want the government banning the sale of any substance, but they would probably favor letting the buyer know what he is getting.
I think any libertarians that agree with this are probably more "soft-core". The hard-core ones want a government that does absolutely nothing besides provide police and military, and really want no regulation at all because that requires a government agency to enforce competently.
No. One claims to do something it does not.* The other claims to be something it is not, to the same outcome.
Both mislead the consumer, both are equally as useless, and both may be dangerous to a person believing they have treated a condition when they have not. Barring extra harmful substances in the fake pills, the only substantive difference from homeopathic remedies is _when_ the lie is told.
*Specifically, the idea that a homeopathic potion "is what it claims to be" is wrong, in that it claims to be a treatment for a condition or to effect a change in a condition. It absolutely does not and cannot, unless one throws out basic laws of physics and chemistry. Homeopathy is solid bullshit from roots to branch, and it occasionally kills people.
I think not...(*poof*)
That is a fantasy. Class action suits only enrichen the lawyers running them. The lawyers get 30-50% of the settlement, where the other 100,000 have to split the rest of the settlement. Do the math quick, and a $20mill suit gets the lawyers say $5mil (40%). There is $15mil split between 100,000 folks or $150 per person. They probably don't even get that much when you figure what the administrative fees are.
I guess to Joe Sixpack, a free $150 will buy some beer, and make a weekend worth living again. Or maybe they will buy some protein shakes and bulk up to beat up the lawyer that promised 'em $millions.
No. It is a homeopathic preparation. Made in the standard way. If you look closely, the bottle makes no claims to do anything at all. If you happen to believe it will do something, fine. If not, then I can't imagine why you would buy it. Either way, works or not, it's on the buyer.
OTOH, the fake herbal supplements do not contain what they claim to. Even if the herb works (and yes, some do), that particular one won't because it contains someone's old houseplants instead. It moves the blame for failure to the fraudulent manufacturer.
Some people don't believe vaccines do anything. One of them might claim "what's the harm if that mmr vial only contains sterile water, it makes no practical difference. But I'll bet you would be plenty pissed off to discover you didn't get what you paid for, because you believe that if you had, you would have been immunized.
Isn't the point here to make manufacturers mindful of making sure the contents match the label? A class action would cost the manufacturer a LOT of money and make it unprofitable to sell stuff that doesn't match the labeling. So what if that means the lawyers get most of the money... Haven't we hit the original goal?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That is bunk... If there is a useful effective treatment there, then they can make money on it. If there isn't enough money to be made selling the proven FDA approved treatment, then there really isn't much of use there to start with.
It's not all that expensive to isolate a compound in something everybody can grow, test it, figure out how to manufacture it in bulk and sell it. Trust me, if there was any value there, they can come up with a way to patent it, the process to produce it or something *like* it that works too. The problem is that there isn't anything there in 99.999% of the herbal supplements you can find on store shelves, and usually any possible desired effect is FAR outweighed by the undesired side effects.
Herbal medicine is mostly snake oil and the power of suggestion coupled with a placebo, and who wants to admit they fell for the charlatan selling tonics armed with unscientific personal testimonials of past "happy customers". Don't get taken, don't be a rube. Leave that stuff on the store shelves so they will stop selling it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
To eventually fix itself, the fine would need to exceed the profits. That never happens.
Oh come on, sure it does. These guys don't have money to burn. They are running on razor thin margins as large retailers have pressed them on price. The manufacturers are NOT making billions upon billions ripping people off in most cases, they are struggling to keep afloat while the likes of Wal-Mart beat them down on price, ask for placement fees trim their margins so the retailer can turn more product though their inventory. Big Retail is about turning your inventory dollars as fast as you can (which is why Radio Shack bit the big one). Turning inventory requires that you do VOLUME and that requires the perception that your PRICE is the best so the customers will come to you, spend their money buying the stuff you have in the store.
Margins are razor thin for everybody in these cases and everybody has to focus on turning inventory over as fast as they can.
A few million dollars lost to lawsuits will be huge problems for all but the largest of these companies. Even the big boys would shy away from the publicity and costs of loosing a lawsuit like this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Either way, they're getting a heaping helping of placebo. That's all they're really buying, anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Arguing about a bottle label? Now you're just trollin.'
Homeopathy is a system that claims to treat disease. A homeopathic preparation "made in the standard way" incorporates those claims, even if the FDA/equiv prohibits printing that claim on the bottle. This is because the preparation and method have been subjected to rigorous scientific and medical examination (for over two centuries) and found to be fake medicines before the fact.
Herbal supplements also claim to treat disease, and some of them have been found effective through scientific and medical examination. An herbal supplement (or any other medicine at all) that doesn't contain the specified substance is found to be a fake medicine after the fact.
I suppose the difference is "can't work" versus "doesn't work." Now if you're arguing that I ought to trust homeopathic preparations to actually be pure water when the entire system's basis has been utterly debunked.... that boils down to trusting a systemic liar to be consistent (and not to include harmful stuff). That's somehow better than finding incidents of lying (and possibly including harmful stuff) in a consistent supply chain? Really, really, no.
I think not...(*poof*)
You left out the multi-million dollar study following FDA guidelines that the first seller would have to pay for knowing that the subsequent sellers will get to skip. They might well all want to sell it but nobody wants to go first.
If you want to believe that chemicals are somehow weaker in effect if they happen to be produced by plant biology, it's no skin off my nose.
Yeah, I once baught a bottle labeled "label 5". It also said there was scotch wisky in it, but it didn't taste mutch like that.
The ones I hear talking about this say that government and regulation should be as SMALL as possible; that OVER REGULATION and large government is bad.
It's interesting, though, that these regulations usually come along when things go wrong. The ones who complain about "over regulation" are the ones who want to get away with something but they can't because there are regulations against it.
In other words, who defines what "Over regulation" is? Can you give me an example of an industry that is "over regulated"? Of what particular regulations would be "over"?
to improve your health, you're very confused.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And I thought all that stores were honest, really, really. A unicorn and a kitten must have drop dead right away now. Honestly, are not people retards buying that kind of stuff from unknown places? Does really a store hopes to have my business spamming my email account and my browsing experience with NOISE? Dream on.
I honestly can't think of an industry with more to gain from spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt than the pharmaceutical industry. Can you?
Yep, the defense industry and politicians. Want to sell weapons? FUD is your best ally. Want to pass civil-rights abusing legislation? FUD.
It's like some conspiracy theory with your type... There isn't any *value* there and *that's* why the drug makers ignore this stuff. If there was an effective treatment, believe me, the drug makers would have been all over it decades ago and come up with a patentable compound or process to make money on it. Don't trick your mind into believing otherwise. They spend big bucks doing research on this kind of thing all the time, looking for natural occurring compounds with interesting properties. I can assure you, they've evaluated these.
Oh, and we DID land on the moon and Area 51 was just a place where they did flight testing of classified aircraft (no aliens where ever there)..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm not going to "define" over regulation for you, but I'll venture to describe the criteria we should strive to meet with regulations and government.
Government is/was intended to be as small as possible and the least intrusive as possible. Government and regulation are both necessary evils and we should error on the side of smaller, less intrusive.
You see, the mindset that government/regulation is the solution to ANY and all problems is wrong headed. It is not government that makes this country great but the individual striving for a better life though innovation and hard work that did that. We seem to have a default setting that government has to "do something" about things like this, when it really should be individuals who solve the problem. When you start your thinking with "There aught to be a law that prevents this!" you've already set foot on the wrong path because you cannot legislate morality by making a law. What you *should* say is "How irresponsible of that person, how short sighted to cheat his/her customers" and we should then let the market take care of it because they just gave somebody else, who won't be dishonest, an opening to take their business away.
So in this case, having a fair court system and applying existing "truth in advertising laws" is all that is necessary.... We don't need the government involved in writing new regulations...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Look, nobody wants overregulation. Everybody wants government and regulation to be as small as practical, given the duties, requirements, and responsibilities thereof. People differ a lot on what said duties, requirements, and responsibilities are. A Libertarian is either an anarchist (there are some) or somebody who believes government should be restricted to very few fields (military, police, and courts are some popular ones). A liberal typically wants the government to assume more responsibilities, and regulate appropriately.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
St. John's Wort can treat some depression about as well as some modern antidepressants. However, while an antidepressant drug will come with a label saying exactly what it is and in what amount, St. John's Wort can presumably vary in dosage per plant or whatever, and its packaging is not particularly well regulated.
Now, if somebody analyzed it and came up with a chemical or collection of chemicals that make St. John's Wort do what it does, they could come up with a way to make the chemical(s) in a uniform concentration, and then they could run clinical tests and sell it as a drug. (This may have happened already; I'm not paying attention.) At that point, it would be patented. If you wanted it, you could either take the specified amount of the drug (probably requiring a prescription) or a certain amount of something packaged with "St. John's Wort" on the label on the bottle.
When the antibiotic business was getting started, companies researched them by finding a whole lot of natural substances and putting them in Petri dishes with some bacteria or something and seeing what happened. If it showed promising results, the company would investigate what it was putting out (frequently streptomycin) and come up with a way to synthesize it and maybe modify it. That's pretty much what you're suggesting for herbal medicine.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I think the difference between "conservative" and "Liberal" is their philosophical approach to solving problems. The liberal says "the government should fix that problem" and the conservative says "how can the market fix this and how can I help?" If your first response to a problem is to ask for new regulations or programs from your government, you are liberal. If you look for ways for people to solve problems on their own first, you are a conservative.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So it's great that the retail companies are taking these things off their shelves. It's even better that companies like WMT reach out to their vendors to clear things up. Thanks!... to the FDA and to the retailers.
But wouldn't it be very very very useful if the FDA lists the names of those offending products? Cuz there are a lot of innocent consumers who have already brought the products... they need to know these product names so that they can get rid of them.
No conspiracy theories here, just economic realities. A bunch of executives independently arriving at the same decision based on the same reality.
Ask 100 people if they want $5 or a poke in the eye. Is it a 'conspiracy' when all 100 pick $5?
Perhaps you were expecting the free market fairy to wave her wand and fix it?
They DID, in fact, develop synthetic analogs of any number of chemicals found in herbs that have useful medical effects. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes not, but always much more expensive than using the herb itself.
As for the rest, you must be projecting your own insecurities.
If an individual did this, they'd be arrested and dragged into court (correct me if I'm wrong, this is just what I would expect if I did that myself). Multiply the scale by 10,000 though, and the businesses involved get not even a fine but... a cease-and-desist letter?
Could someone please explain to me - omitting the-world-is-going-to-hell screed - why we tend to prosecute small crimes so much more aggressively than the large ones?
Well, I got to hand it to you, you keep believing. I thought we put the traveling medicine man snake oil folks out of business decades ago. Your call if you want to keep the tradition alive and buy this stuff.
Personally, I'm going to stick with the proven effective stuff (according to the FDA) and leave the experimentation with herbal "medicine" to others. If you want to be a lab rat in an unscientific study and pay others for the privilege, who am I to stop you. It's a free country and all..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Looks like someone got butthurt.
Wow there certainly is a lot of malice here in regards to people's attitudes towards herbal supplements. Check out http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and read up on the efficacy of various herbal supplements. There is a big difference between homeopathic and herbal supplements. Some herbal supplements do actually have noticeable and measurable benefits and often minimal side effects. A lot of extracts are where the efficacy shows. Many extracts are standardized for a certain amount of desired active constituents. You just have to use a reputable brand and find a product that works for what you need. There isn't an herbal cure for everything, but there are a lot that will help treat or prevent certain conditions For example there are are quite a few herbal extracts that can help with diabetes, such as certain strains of cinnamon extract, or gymnema sylvestre (both which have been shown to be significantly beneficial in scientific trials).I just recommended boswellia serrata extract for my Uncle for his arthritis, he started taking it a few days ago and has already noticed significant relief. Then there is peppermint oil as another posted mentioned for IBS.
I would also like to point out that not everyone who believes in the efficacy of some herbal supplements is against modern medicine or is some kind of all-organic-consuming naturalist. I just wanted to make a point that there is a huge difference between homeopathic (placebo dilution), and herbal extracts and supplements.I hope this sort of scandal doesn't make it any harder to sell and purchase herbal supplements, but rather just points out the frauds and could potentially show who is true from analyzing their products.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Your previous comment (and this one) misses the point, which is that while you are correct that money can be made manufacturing drugs that are already certified, the patent (time limited! Just like copyright was supposed to be!) allows the company a window of time in which to make back the investment in completing clinical trials.
Once that investment is "paid off," it can be profitable to just sell an inexpensive version of it. If the substance can never be patented, then it would be much more difficult (and/or take much longer) to make enough to pay back the costs of clinical trials, making it a much less appealing investment.