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DoJ Going After Makers of Dietary Supplement (reuters.com)
schwit1 writes: Several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, have announced criminal and civil actions related to unlawful advertising and sale of dietary supplements. "Six executives with USPlabs LLC and a related company, S.K. Laboratories, face criminal charges related to the sale of unlawful dietary supplements. Four were arrested on Tuesday and two are expected to surrender, the Justice department said. The indictment says that USPlabs used a synthetic stimulant manufactured in China to make Jack3d and OxyElite Pro but told retailers that the supplements were made from plant extracts." The FTC is working on this as well, and their press release has more details. The DoJ's case involves "more than 100 makers and marketers" of these supplements. It's about time.
You can lie all you want about what the ingredients do, but you can't get away with lying about what they are.
It is mind boggling how little rules or enforcement there is in the supplement and food industries. We need a strong, well funded regulatory agency that is not beholden to the industry to protect us from the inevitable corrupt businesses who are willing to poison us in their efforts to make a buck.
Man, you really need that seminar!
removes paint, too.
What about Mannatech?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This re-created the snake oil industry that the FDA had killed, with but minor regulations preventing extreme claims - and also made it difficult for the FDA to prosecute if the company did make those claims.
Hatch and Harkin killed more Americans than most Senators, and helped enrich a whole generation of scamsters.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yet they still won't enforce the labeling of GMO products. How in the world is a forward looking person to seek out genetically altered produce if it isn't identified as such? Sure, we can avoid things labeled as "organic", but from what I understand that is no guarantee that the product has not actually been improved by science. One can not benefit from science if one is not made aware that science has provided a alternative to nature. We really need much better truth in labeling laws in the US.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Can't help but to notice the resemblance between the snake oil peddlers and the politicians.
With Ben Carson you can have both.
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
Political nonsense comments aside, this reminds me of when a few companies were prosecuted for claiming the garments they sold contained goose down, when they actually contained feathers. The official said it would be okay if the jackets were be filled with 100% horse feathers as long as that was what the label said.
I was an amateur boxer for a few years with no notable accomplishments. One thing I did notice was that supplement companies are COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT. There is a particularly eye-opening documentary about steroids called "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" where the director creates his own supplement using unknown ingredients and gives it an obscene markup, and they don't even have to list their ingredients. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They actually put something in these pills that might have some effect? Isn't that sort of rare? What if the chinese stuff actually works for once?
But unlike drugs the maker doesnt have to prove saftey nor effectiveness in advance.
As long as the FDA doesn't mess with the dick pills that I buy at the gas station. I like that they're right by the counter with the 5-hour energy, slim jims and cherry-flavored Philly blunts. Makes for efficient one-stop shopping.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is no way to tell what ingredients will do to an individual. I love peanuts, they are a cheap source or protein for me. They also cause massive allergic reactions and death for some people.
So just make sure if something has peanuts in it that it's labeled.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Take Ford. By their own admission, they have killed over 125 (or is it 150 or 200 or ???) people with a bad ignition switch. It's called mass murder. Except that you will never hear that phrase on TV or in the press. Why? Just notice how many car commercials there are on TV and in the press. No connection at all, just ask any ethical journalist. You'll find one riding a unicorn.
You know what happened to Ford? Not much. A few people were fired (the horror), but no one at the top. They paid some fines. Unless a victim is willing to take them to court the compensation was capped at $1 million. They are under three years "suspended prosecution", which is the corporate equivalent of house arrest with no ankle monitor or any other kind of oversight. And their stock is up. And they are really really sorry. Really.
Honestly, it's almost a surprise that the government didn't try and send the victims to jail for conspiracy because they found out that there was a flaw in the switch, and this was covered by the DCMA.
Why is Snark Required?
There's nothing more squirmy than listening to a Religious Libertarian explain why medicine regulations are evil and somehow there'd magically be fewer deaths or organ damage caused if the Invisible Hand were left unhindered.
I'd like to draw a line between Religious Libertarians and smug physicians and point out that *both* ends of the line cause unnecessary medical suffering.
The themes "do no harm regardless of cost" and "federal agency takes the blame for safety, but not the costs" have driven medical research to a standstill for the last 40 years.
There can be no medicines for afflictions that affect less than a billion people, simply because it takes $1.5 billion to bring a drug to market.
We're running out of antibiotics(*), we've already got diseases which are impervious to *all* antibiotics, and there are no new ones in the horizon.
Someone here (on slashdot) put this into perspective: peanuts would not be allowed under FDA rules.
Let's take peanuts as an example for discussion. Considering that they are easy to grow, and can be nourishing, can we outline an FDA procedure that costs less than $1.5 billion, and yet addresses the issues in a sane manner?
Let's divide this by a factor of 1,000: Can we get good safety regulations for peanuts for under $1.5 million?
I think we could. I'm not a Religious Libertarian, but from a purely mathematical standpoint it's obvious that letting people die because the treatment isn't known safe (absence of evidence is evidence of absence) is less efficient than the middle ground.
Probably more - I think more people die because we don't have working antibiotics than die from complications of supplements.
(*) Note that we've run out of antibiotics *not* because we keep feeding them to livestock, but because it's too expensive to make new ones. If we had 25 separate antibiotics and used them in a staggered pattern 5 years each (5 years of use, followed by 20 years of abstinence) we would never lack for working antibiotics.
How much benefit do you think you'll actually get by sucking down all that D in pill form? How much of that does your body actually put to use, if any? Or would you rather listen to the pill pusher's unchallenged cure-all claims and chomp on your placebo like a good consumer.
Let's take a trip down memory lane and recall how the RDA for vitamin D was established.
The FDA measured the amount of vitamin D people were getting throughout America, and then took the average value.
As anyone who isn't a physician can tell you, people living in the Northern latitudes get less vitamin D because they get less sunshine, and depending on where you live, from November through February you aren't getting any at all. And vitamin D has a half-life of about 6 weeks in the body, which is why we have a "cold and flu" season: once we stop getting sunshine, everyone's D levels drop low enough to depress our immune system.
More recently, they measured the vitamin D in a Spanish farmer working his fields w/o a shirt, and decided that he gets 50,000 IU of vitamin D each day.
So you tell me: 400 IU of vitamin D will prevent disease, but how much is the correct amount for optimum health?
The supplement industry as a whole is typically that way. And while TFS states "It's about time", I'm not so sure.
People who buy this shit seem like they WANT to get ripped off. If you try to explain to them scientifically why the claims don't make sense, they'll respond with some spiel about how how it makes them feel so much better, how they never get sick anymore (I roll my eyes when I hear people make the later claim, especially when they claim shit like vegetarian diets make them never sick anymore) when in reality it's a combination of placebo and confirmation bias.
And then there's claims from people who hear about MSG, HFCS, or Aspartame, and then from that point onward claim that one or all makes them sick or feel bad, even though it's scientifically proven that these same people don't actually develop any symptoms so long as they aren't consciously aware that what they eat actually has any of it, just like that electromagnetic hypersensitivity bullshit.
This all is really just the modern incarnation of prayer as a cure, and overpriced shit from Whole Foods (which sells a lot of junk food) is the modern equivalent of buying indulgences.
Similar issues in Canada, where - so long as ingredients are mentioned in some book somewhere - you can make a natural remedy and have it on the shelves regardless of whether it really works or not.
> In Australia, to sell supplements companies have to be able to show the ingredients are what the label says and must confirm structure and function.
So we can just order from Aussie companies to get stuff that has been vetted?
What a brave, resourceful, federal system we have. No tailgating, swipe your badge.
I don't mind people buying the crap, stuffing their face with it and croaking.
I fuckin' DO mind if they stuff that shit into their kids to allegedly cure things like Autism with the sole reason to get away with their MbP screw loose.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Did anyone die? Did people get what they paid for?
Is the entire weight loss supplement market really just an attempt to re-create the magic of the good old days of Dexedrine for weight loss? Just like "space" and all the synthetic fake marijuana is an attempt to get around legal prohibition of marijuana?
I wonder if we'd be better off just selling Dexedrine for weight loss. This way people would at least be taking a well-known substance with well-known risks and more or less predictable results, versus god knows what ("now with Melamine!") synthetics from China which are only "better for you" than Dexedrine because we know why Dexedrine can be bad for you.
And of course the entire "Spice" market wouldn't exist at all, along with the similar markets for kratom and other exotic-but-not-quite-regulated-out-of-existence substances designed to provide hallucinogenic experiences, if plain old marijuana and mushrooms/peyote/LSD were legal.
or you don't buy it and you're a freeloader off other people's taxes.
As usual you are assuming someone can't pay their own bills. Instead of thinking positive, that the person has taken responsibility for themselves and planned ahead by having money put aside, you're assuming all people are complete idiots and thus necessary to make everyone suffer by forcing them to hand over their money to a private company.
Just goes to show how ridiculous your argument is when one considers how many people are now freeloading off other people's taxes through subsidies. Instead of a small percentage having to be propped up by the taxpayers we now have millions being propped up by the taxpayers.
Mighty fine logic you have.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More importantly, you can actually have scientific evidence to back up claims, but not be able to make the claims because the claims themselves are reserved for "Drugs". Walnuts are drugs, but only if you claim the scientific proof of what they do. Can't have that now can we?
It isn't that walnuts are drugs. It isn't that the effects of walnuts isn't provable. It is that to claim what studies have shown, makes walnuts into "drugs" per FDA, and thus the walnut packagers cannot mention the scientific evidence regarding the "heart healthy" benefits.
Yes, I know the FDA won, but that doesn't negate the reality of the story, walnuts are natural and actually reduces risk for certain heart conditions. But to make those claims, requires walnuts to be classified as a "drug" and subject to FDA approval. This is simply insane.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Any company called Sunrise Nutraceuticals LLC just sounds suspect to me.
The Nutraceuticals part sounds all sciencey and healthy too, but means nothing really.
Mere names mean nothing as well, unless you're ignorant enough to believe "Marlboro" and "Budweiser" are somehow health products peddled by caring and loving executives.
Just like Tiger Woods isn't Oriental (Tai / Chinese) because he is black, Obama isn't white because he is black.
In other words, I love how people love to say race doesn't matter, when it obviously matters a great deal to them.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I took that stuff for years and it was the best pre-workout supplement. I know it was risky/dangerous but man that stuff actually worked. Nothing else like it. Thanks (aka fuck you) to the US government agencies who won't let adults make their own decisions on what's best for them.
If it's results you're after and don't give a shit about your health, then just take steroids.
If you're unconcerned about safety, why even bother with legality...
This is how our government is spending its time? When we're being infiltrated by terrorists, when Walmart is fleecing the taxpayer for $billions in welfare, and when Donald Trump is running for President, they're focusing their efforts on the mislabeling of something that any reasonable person knows is snake oil anyway?
No wonder our country is so fucked up.
Uh, our country is also rather fucked up because of the massive lack of "reasonable" people who don't know any better.
Of course, with the narcissist generation, it's almost impossible to tell if that's genuine stupidity or merely fashionable YOLO.
Obama is half white and half black. His father was a black man from Muslim Africa, and his mother is a white woman from Hawaii.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
yeah, I said as much. He's not half anything.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Frankly, it would be far cheaper that way, and it is how almost every other western country does it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You do realize that in the case of a car accident (what you appear to be referencing) the medical care is paid for by the car insurance, not health insurance. Health insurance will actually deny the claim if they find out the injuries were caused by a car accident, even a hit and run.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I don't know about hungry, but I noticed a few years ago when I'd use it, I wouldn't get tuckered out while lifting. I wasn't getting winded. It really boosted stamina. Just 1 minute of rest between sets and I was ready to go again. Eventually though, that effect seemed to taper off, and I stopped with all that stuff. Well, partly because I haven't had my lazy ass in a gym for 3 years.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Again? I don't know if he ever started taking his meds, but he sure needs to go in for a med check.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Did anyone die? The answer to that is a resounding...maybe. There's no question that the active ingredient, DMAA (dimethylamylamine), is a fairly powerful stimulant. It also constricts blood vessels, thereby increasing blood pressure. Any stimulant with cardiovascular effects has the potential for adverse effects, including heart attack or stroke. In the most recent info I found with a cursory Google search, the FDA says it has received numerous reports of adverse effects, and at least five deaths which occurred with users of DMAA products. This is not proof of causation, but because it's a plausible mechanism it bears close scrutiny.