Tsu Dho Nimh said:Do I detect the footprints of the FTC?
I think it is more likely that DEI folded up shop
because their parent company (Nature's Bounty,
a.k.a. NBTY) realized the enormous liability
risk they were taking. At some point, their
lawyers must have seen the file I posted about
how fucoidan enhances tumor metastasis.
NBTY is a billion-dollar company, and to risk
all of that over RTL would be very foolish.
Remember that RTL was being promoted to
cancer patients. When cancer follows its
normal course, it advances through metastasis,
ultimately killing the patient. All it would take
would be a few lawsuits in which a cancer
patient says "I took the limu, and then my
cancer metastasized" to pose an unacceptable
risk of liability, especially if plaintiff had a
sharp lawyer and an easily swayed jury.
And if that weren't enough, it's not clear
that limu was a legal product. Although the
laws on natural products sold as dietary
supplements are remarkably loose, they are
not non-existent. When you introduce a new
product ("new" meaning not marketed in the
U.S. before 1994), you must submit a pre-market
notification to the FDA at least 75 days before
marketing the product. This was never done
for RTL. If the 75-day pre-market notification
requirement was applicable to this product, it would
look very bad in the eyes of the jury if someone
was claiming injury from a product that was itself
illegal.
When you combine that with NBTY's unsavory
past and present (they are facing a $146 million
fine from the federal government for violations
of the Controlled Substances Act), a jury
would not be likely to feel favorably about
NBTY.
For details about the $146 million, see:
http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/hotnews/34h18141613.html