“Protecting” our safety

I heard a song on the radio the other day with this refrain: “It’s rough out there – high water everywhere.”

The song refers to hard times in general, but the refrain could apply to the global efforts by drug companies, international organizations, and cooperating governments to limit the market of dietary supplements.

I hope you read yesterday’s e-Alert, “The Fix is In,” about the unnecessary and potentially destructive new authority that will be granted to the FDA if the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2003 is passed into law.

While we cope with that situation here in the states, things are even worse in the UK where Parliament recently rubber-stamped the approval of the European Union’s food supplements directive that will ban high dose vitamins and other supplements in summer 2005.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the freedom to purchase supplements has all but vanished. For an on-the-scene report, here’s an e-mail I received from an HSI member named Jenny who lives in Australia:

“We have just recently had a major withdrawal of vitamins and minerals off all healthshop, pharmacy and supermarket shelves nationally. I don’t know if you have had this news over in your country yet, but there was some suggestion that a natural airsickness medication was causing major health problems and that the manufacturers were not complying to health legislation with handling and labeling.

“This has been disastrous for the health food industry here in Australia. We are being inundated by medical reports about the overuse of vitamins and minerals and are being advised to seek medical advice from our M.O’s and stick to pharmaceutical prescriptions only and take medication only on the M.O’s advice and authority. It is very hard in Australia to access a lot of the vitamins and minerals that you can get in the USA.

“This I believe is now going to do irreparable damage to any future progress we may have expected to make.”

Australia’s counterpart to the FDA is the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which has banned more than 1,300 supplement products manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals. Pan produced about 80 percent of all dietary supplements sold in Australia until the TGA revoked their license when a contaminated lot of an over-the-counter airsickness drug was reported to cause hallucinations.

What the future may hold for dietary supplements in Australia is unclear, but the situation is obviously dire. In any case, it’s a striking reminder that the U.S. Senate’s Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2003 is just one squall in a much larger storm.

High water everywhere.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute