A Response to John Oliver’s Story on Dr Oz and Supplements

The argument here is this: The FDA does not regulate supplements; it bans supplements.

John Oliver and anyone else who wants to, can scream to the high heavens complaining about the movement that sent people’s money to Washington and into the coffers of Senators Hatch and Harkin all he wants, because nobody in America wants the FDA to take away our right to use vitamins, minerals, supplements, and natural products (except the pharmaceutical industry and its friends).

This is what the battle boils down to: a battle between the people who want to use diet, vitamins, herbs, and supplements to maintain their health versus a pharmaceutical industry using the FDA to protect their profits by maintaining a tight squeeze on the smaller industries. The pharmaceutical industry's goal is to make every person in America (and beyond) a "patient."

This is a classic David v Goliath story. In 2013, the nutritional and dietary supplement industry sent $1,635,000 to congress (in lobbying). The pharmaceutical industry sent $226,114,456. [www.opensecrets.org]

Exactly how many drugs have the FDA banned?

Tylenol: 130 average deaths yearly (of people who used it according to the label instructions). Still available.

Vioxx: Over 60,000 deaths. The FDA did not ban Vioxx, but Merck & Co. voluntarily removed it from the market.

Coumadin: Over 12,000 deaths each year. Still approved and on the market.

Birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin, released in 2006, are responsible for at least 100 deaths and over 10,000 injuries. Still available.

Actos, Avandia, Paxil, Prozac, Effexor, Zoloft, Lexapro, Depakote, Testosterone, Accutane, Crestor, Pradaxa, Xarelto, Fosomax, and Reglan, all of these responsible for deaths and injuries numbering in the thousands, yet still on the market. Over the counter NSAIDS (non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) send nearly 30,000 - 50,000 people to the hospitals yearly. Still on the market.

The “FDA Drug Review: Postapproval Risks 1976-1985” found the following annual deaths from:

Approved Drugs ................60,000 - 140,000

Food Contamination ..............................9,100

Aspirin ..........................................................90

Compared To:

All vitamins ...................................................0

Uncontaminated amino acids ......................0

Commercial herbs ........................................0

And yet, just one problem with a supplement pops up or someone abuses a supplement and the FDA removes the product from the market.

Today, it is estimated that over 200,000 people die from prescription drugs, though you will see “official” numbers a lot lower, mainly because the industry does not “snitch” on itself and tends to “under-report.”

Is the FDA complicit?

You bet  it is. A recent report that the blood pressure drug Benicar had caused 23 serious cases of late-onset diarrhea associated with significant weight loss sent those terrible trial attorneys into action.

Twenty-three serious cases? The attorneys found thousands of cases, many of whom had died from either the drug or while being treated for serious intestinal distress. And they discovered that the FDA had known about the problem for quite a long time but covered that up.

Is the FDA complicit? That’s kind of what “cover-up” means.

A Very Shorth History of the FDA

With the passage of the Federal Food and Drug act, Harvey W Wiley, MD headed up the Bureau of Chemistry which would one day become our modern FDA. In 1912 Wiley resigned in disgust, “because the fundamental principles of the Pure Food Law have been strangled; because he has been powerless to punish the manufacturers of misbranded and adulterated drugs." [Rocky Mountain News, March 21, 1912]

In 1929, Wiley wrote a book entitled, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law: The Amazing Story of the National Food and Drugs Law Intended to Protect the Health of the People, Perverted to Protect Adulteration of Foods and Drugs. In it he wrote: "If the Bureau of Chemistry had been permitted to enforce the law as it was written and as it tried to do, what would have been the condition now (1929)? No food product in our country would have any trace of benzoic acid, sulphurous acid or sulphites...no soft drink would contain caffeine...no bleached flour would enter interstate commerce...Our food and drugs would be wholly without any form of adulteration. The health of our people would be vastly improved and their life greatly extended...The manufacturers of our food supply would (provide) whole ground, unrefined cereal flours and meals. The resistance of our people to infectious diseases would be greatly increased by a vastly improved and more wholesome diet...The cause of a wholesome diet would not have been put back for fifty or a hundred years...and this History of a Crime would never have been written."

Skip ahead to January 2, 197 and Dr Herbert Ley, Commissioner of the FDA has this to say:

In 1993, Federal Judge Lowell Jensen was quoted saying, "It apparently is FDA's view that if a company makes a claim that milk helps prevent rickets, milk suddenly becomes a drug."

As to the companies they’re supposed to oversee, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, 1970, FDA Commissioner Charles C. Edwards testified: "(It is) not our policy to jeopardize the financial interests of the pharmaceutical companies.”

Later Senator William Proxmire was quoted saying: "The FDA...(is) actively hostile against the manufacture, sale and distribution of vitamins and mineral as food or food supplements. They are out to get the health food industry and drive the health food stores out of business. And they are trying to do this out of active hostility and prejudice."

Regulation? Really?

While Oliver cries out for “regulation” of supplements, regulation isn’t even on the list of things the FDA has in store for vitamins and supplements. In order to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, their main goal is to destroy the vitamin and supplement industry, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why people like you and me sent money to Senators Hatch and Harkin.

We wanted to rein in the FDA and keep their hands off of our supplements.

Sure, some supplements will not have in them what they claim to have in them. This is fraud, and the supplement industry is rife with fraud at times. But again, this is why we have Consumer Labs; this is why we, at this site, and many others write exposes on fraudulent products; why we read Mercola, Jason Kennedy, Dr. Ray Sahelian, MD, and Dr Alan Sears; and why we receive newsletters and do our own thorough research. This is why we shop for trusted brands, like Swanson's, NOW Foods, Nature Made, and many, many more.

The simple fact is: people who are concerned with their health are the most informed buyers in America. And when some clown like Dr Oz spouts off about miracles and the clowns in his audience take him up on it and order fraudulent products, their behaviors are injurious to the rest of us who know what the FDA is up to and who carefully pick and choose our nutrition and nutritional products to maintain good health.

When Dr Oz spouts off about the miracle named “garcinia cambogia,” we the buyer can go to a good number of trusted sites to learn that it’s really “garbagea.”

Yes, we who want good health, who are interested in our good health, and are doing things to maintain our good health; we are the overseers of vitamins and supplements.

Do we really need the crooked FDA, daily complicitly foisting off on the public dangerous drugs while trying to outlaw berries and raw milk?

I don’t think so.

Further Reading