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FDA must do more to protect consumers from 'outright fraud' of dietary supplements
There is significant morbidity and even mortality from 'snake-oil' supplements

June 17, 2019  •  Genetic Literacy Project

Dietary supplements are big business. Three out of four Americans take one or more on a regular basis, and for older Americans the fraction is four out of five. One in three children also takes supplements. The estimated number of supplement products increased from 4,000 in 1994 to 50,000-80,000 today. Out-of-pocket expenditures for herbal and complementary nutritional products are about $50 billion.

However, one of the great hoaxes perpetrated on health-conscious American consumers is the hype and outright fraud of dietary supplements that don't work and are sometimes dangerous.

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Bizarre Democratic Politics in the DC Suburbs
An unqualified, unethical radical tries to steal a primary election

June 6, 2019  •  American Greatness

In the Democratic primary race for commonwealth attorney in Arlington, Virginia, the prevailing principle seems to be that no good deed goes unpunished.

The moderate, much-admired Democrat incumbent, Theo Stamos, is being challenged in the primary by an unqualified radical lawyer whose campaign is being funded largely from outside the area and who has spouted one falsehood after another. She is also strangely clueless about local priorities.

Stamos, who has served eight years in the Arlington-Falls Church district, is widely regarded as sensible, moderate, and competent. Residents are overwhelmingly satisfied with law enforcement.

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Dishonest Propaganda Sprouts from Organic Agriculture
Organic practices are to agriculture and the environment what cigarette smoking is to human health

June 5, 2019  •  PRI Issue Brief

In The Wealth of Nations, the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Nowhere is that truer than in today's organic agriculture and food industries, whose bamboozling of the public relies on chicanery and misrepresentations.

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The FDA's Bad Medicine
The demonstration of safety and efficacy for a new drug is a high enough bar; adding a requirement for superiority would harm patients

May 22, 2019  •  Issues & Insights

Before leaving office, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Senate Appropriations Committee that Congress should create a new requirement for opioid approvals. New opioids should have to demonstrate superiority over those already on the market, he said.

That would be a departure from the current statutory requirement that drugs must simply be shown to be safe and effective for their intended use. And it would be a bad idea. It shows how out of step Dr. Gottlieb was with the intention of Congress and the Trump administration to increase competition in the marketplace and put downward pressure on drug prices.

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FDA Moves to Level the Food-Labeling Playing Field
New guidance should stop the organic ag/food industries from continuing to flout federal law

May 21, 2019  •  Real Clear Policy

The FDA is charged with ensuring that the labeling of packaged foods is not "false or misleading in any particular," as mandated by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. That ensures that consumers are not deceived and know what they're paying for.

In recent years, however, regulators' enforcement priorities have become distorted. In 2017, they sent a formal Warning Letter to a Massachusetts bakery for including "love" in its ingredient list. "'Love' is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient," it said.

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