STEVE BAYT (Brook Park/Parma, Ohio)
This months Consumer Reports does horrible injustice to the
Nutritional Supplement industry. These postings hopefully,
will be read by enough people to equal the readership of
Consumer Reports.
According to Frontline, in the 160 years of medical record
keeping, 70,000 people have required medical treatment due
to Nutritional Supplement use. That is an average of 450
Americans annually have to go to hospitals for supplement
use. In 2001, an average year, 107,000,000 Americans had to
go to hospitals, according to the 2004 World Almanac.
Consumer Reports endorses Senate Bill 722 which would apply
to supplements the same standards of prescription drugs
which produce 2,100,000 hospitalizations and 106,000
American deaths every year.
The government should be establishing programs to encourage
supplement use, and even require those who can't afford
health care (Medicare people) to take them. For an ounce of
prevention is worth a ton of cure. And taking supplements is
indeed contrary to the disclaimer on all containers and
marketing. For example, it costs about $8 for a measles
shot, but $4,000 to treat a kid with measles.
The government and media seem to be intimidated by the
surreal success of supplements. Friday most networks had
stories on The Consumer Reports story filled with anecdotal
stories of the one in 50,000 supplement users who can't read
directions on labels, or who didn't tell their doctors what
they were taking.
The statistics quoted in Consumer Reports were entirely from
THE FDA which has been out to get The Supplement Industry
for decades.
The fact is that the annual average death rate from
Supplement use is
116. There are more than 116 Driving Deaths in an hour in
America. Yet, driving is very much legal.
The few "Durbin Poster Boys" (similar to KS Poster Boys in
SF in 1981) that Consumer Reports used comprise such a small
number of supplement casualties that medical science can't
form protocols. Nor make any suggestions on treating
supplement patients.
With a few hundred thousand doctors in America, it's not
inconceivable a 25-year-old Intern back in the 1950's is yet
to see their first supplement misuse patient. There are
probably hospitals, which treat only one or two supplement
patients in a year.
The reason why "The FDA doesn't approve these claims. Yada
yada yada." Is that there aren't enough people who have
suffered symptoms to comprise a valid number of cases for a
case study. It's not financially worth while for either the
government, nor the private sector to do such studies. For a
bazillion dollars would have to be spent to treat the 450-
ish American supplement users in need of medical treatment.
There are manufacturing quality ratings called "Six Sigma"
and ISO9000. There are about 15 million Americans who
consume about $1,500 yearly in supplements (I call them the
15/15 club). There are also an additional 15 or so million
Americans who take much less but still considerable amounts.
Yet, with the 15/15 club and the other casual users, only
450 Americans (out of 107,500,000 ER visits) have to go to
hospitals annually. That is a success record beyond even Six
Sigma or ISO900.
The best doctors can do is tell those 450 to drink lots of
water, take laxatives then stay near bathrooms for days. For
there simply isn't enough of a sample to draw conclusions on
treatments.
The Consumer Reports cover uses the word deaths. Yet, no
other activity in America produces so few (annual average
116) deaths.
Senator Durbin should be starting a commission to get
supplements from undercapitalized manufacturers who didn't
figure for marketing and distribution. Although Americans
consume $19 billion yearly on Supplements, undercapitalized
manufacturers throw away billions of dollars of unsold
inventory. The government should get those before they are
thrown out and give them to People With AIDS, and others who
can't afford them. Those that could have many diseases
prevented yet can't afford medical care.
The virtually negligible cost of acquiring the trash bound
supplements then distributing them via Homeless Shelters,
AIDS Centers, Free Clinics would save Americans bazillions
of billions of dollars spent every year in government
financed low income medical treatment. Most of those treated
had problems which could have been prevented.
Instead of Durbin and the media being intimidated by the
surreal success of the Nutritional Supplement industry. They
should be using the industry to save millions of lives and
bazillions of dollars.
Consumer Reports should be condemned for creating any type
of impression that supplements are dangerous. They took 12
dangerous supplements which only 1 in 50,000 Americans
(including the 15/15 club) provide enough consumers to
market. Yet, not one paragraph or word told of the thousands
of supplements which thousands of doctors are now
prescribing to patients.
Thousands of doctors are going to jail and loosing their
licenses because they are sick of the barbaric practice of
issuing drugs with horrific side effects. Instead going to
alternative therapies which have a greater success with less
side effects.
Consumer Reports should do stories on the best supplements
and profiles on the hero and heroine doctors who are going
to alternative therapies.
As for the medical community and it's use of supplements.
That will be for my next article sometime before April
9,2004. These articles will be cross posted until the equal
number of people read the truth that Consumer Reports
didn't tell.
Help in posting would be appreciated.