The Dietary Supplement Safety Act

The The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (S. 722) is some very bad legislation, and everyone who is concerned about protecting our freedom to choose an alternative to the pharmaceutical-driven healthcare system in this country needs to take action now.

The following is a copy of the e-mails I sent to my Senators.  Please feel free to use it as a guide to your own letters and e-mails.

My e-mails on S. 722

Dear Sen. [enter name here]:

I have been severely disabled since I was in high school.  I had serious health problems before that (the result of the Sabin oral vaccine for polio).  Medically speaking, there was nothing that could be done for me.  I spent more than 20 years being dismissed by doctors before a diagnosis could be made.  Even then, there was nothing that could be done medically to help me.

As a result, I learned how to manage my own healthcare needs through alternative means.  Most notably: nutritional supplements and essential (aromatherapy) oils.

DVDs you should really see:

• We Become Silent
• Prescription for Disaster
• Codex and Nutricide

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I was a very active participant in the fight to enact the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).  Considering the efforts of the FDA up to that time, if this protective act had not been passed, I have no doubt that I would be dead now.  No doubt whatsoever.  The supplements that I depend on for any measure of health I have today would have been removed from the market.

I was somewhat relieved by the passage of DSHEA, although I foresaw serious problems in the future, given the control that the FDA still possessed under this act.  The bias of this agency against things non-pharmaceutical is legendary; as both Congress and the Courts have repeatedly noted on the record (if my sources are accurate).  I know that, even with DSHEA, many safe products that I have found to be most helpful in achieving a degree of functionality have been removed from the market by the FDA.  No reasons offered.

With that background in mind, I'd like to inform you of my very grave concern about S. 722, the so-called Dietary Supplement Safety Act, recently introduced by Senator Richard Durbin.  I'm starting to have nightmares all over again.  Please, as your constituent, I implore you: Do whatever you can to keep this bill from passing.

I ask this for the following reasons:

• In my opinion, it is ludicrous to single out nutritional supplements for scrutiny, which, over the course of many years have had virtually no adverse reactions (when used reasonably), when aspirin is free from such scrutiny, yet kills around 53,000 people each year, taken as directed by their doctors.
  
  Any dangers posed by nutritional supplements is negligible, when taken in an informed manner (as opposed to pharmaceuticals, which kill more than 200,000 people each year when taken according to their doctors' prescriptions).  Any danger with nutritional supplements is due to the lack of information mandated by the FDA's current interpretation of DSHEA.  Even without this information, however, the dangers are so minimal that further oversight is unwarranted.  The greater problem is that these supplements cannot be used to their greatest effect, because the people with the most information about them are not allowed to disseminate that information.
• Under DSHEA, the FDA has all the authority needed to monitor the dietary supplement industry.  Instead of passing new law, Congress should instead investigate and oversee ways in which the FDA can make full use of its current authority, as granted by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.
• Passage of S. 722 would unnecessarily expand the authority of the FDA, to the greater detriment of the American public.
  
  If adopted, this bill would subject nearly all vitamins, minerals, herbal products and other supplements to a level of scrutiny that is both unwarranted and unnecessary.  Products that have been used safely and beneficially for hundreds, or even thousands of years would be subject to clinical evaluation, using standards that are at the complete discretion of the FDA.  Given the FDA's demonstrated bias against non-pharmaceutical products, this would be a very great catastrophe in healthcare.
  
  Access to nutritional supplements is vital to my basic welfare, and the FDA has already amply demonstrated its bias against such health products.  The Durbin bill would add to the FDA new and discretionary enforcement powers that it would use to undermine my freedom to choose an alternative approach to healthcare.  This is a freedom that many American consumers hold dear; and in my case, is quite literally a matter of life or death.
• S.722 would allow no more consumer protection than provided by DSHEA.
• I am concerned that this bill, by questioning the safety of any dietary supplement that receives even one complaint, even if that complaint cannot be linked directly to the supplement itself — Sec. 416 (a)(1) — will result in potentially hundreds of products being removed from the marketplace.  Under this new legislation, the FDA has complete discretion to make this determination, regardless of whether the product was used under conditions cautioned against by the manufacturer on the label.
  
  By almost every measure, and by a wide margin, dietary supplements have proven themselves to be safer than almost any FDA-approved pharmaceutical.  Compared to many foods in our modern American diet, as well as most OTC drugs, nutritional supplements again prove themselves to be far safer.  Yet this legislation exempts foods containing the most common "stimulant" ingredient in foods (caffeine) from being classified as stimulants.
  
  (For the record, far more people have been hurt or killed taking FDA-approved OTC diet pills or caffeine pills than have ever been hurt or killed from any nutritional supplement.)

I realize that most of the impetus for this bill is the recent death of a baseball player who had used ephedra.  I am no fan of ephedra, and would not feel the loss if it was quietly removed from the market.  However, in all the years that ephedra has been on the market, there are only six deaths associated with it.  By contrast, each year there have been more than 8,800 deaths from aspirin, used as doctors recommend, for every ephedra-associated death since ephedra came on the market.  That ratio would be considerably higher if the numbers were applied year-to-year.

But the ephedra story is not cut-and-dried.  For another perspective on this subject, I would direct you to the article, "The Alleged Role of Ephedra in the Death of a Professional Baseball Player" on the Vitamin Research Products website.

There has been much unwarranted hysteria associated with unregulated nutritional supplements.  If the 253,000+ deaths each year associated with regulated medications is any standard of public safety, please do not impose any further regulation on me.

I ask you to oppose this extreme and unnecessary legislation, and instead take the opportunity to encourage and support the full utilization of the enforcement powers as granted by DSHEA.  (I would prefer that another governing agency could be found instead of the FDA.)

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this most important matter.

Sincerely,

Tom Anson
301 Glenhaven Dr
Lincoln, NE 68505

Let's join forces to see that this bill does not pass.