Comments on: FDA Blunders

By: Regulating Drugs | John Goodman's Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org

Regulating Drugs | John Goodman's Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:40:08 +0000

[...] Hat tip to Robin Hanson (Overcoming Bias blog). [...]

By: Regulating Drugs « Daniel Joseph Smith

Regulating Drugs « Daniel Joseph Smith — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:34:53 +0000

[...] Hat tip to Robin Hanson (Overcoming Bias blog). [...]

By: toto

toto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:43:15 +0000

Robin, just to be sure: would you say that false advertising (claiming that a product can do something it can’t) should be protected under the 1st amendment?

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:06:02 +0000

I couldn’t get the link too to work The New York Times article is here:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/news-keeps-getting-worse-for-vitamins/?scp=1&sq=v

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:12:23 +0000

The vitamin thing seems to go like this.
1.)Observational – People who eat a diet rich is vitamin x don’t get
(fill in the blank),
2.) Plausible explanation- Vitamin x in an anti- oxidant . Oxygen radicals cause(fill in the blank).
3. People take mega-doses of vitamin x as recommended by popular guru such as Linus Pauling.
4.) Mega doses are found to be toxic or harmful. For example,cancer cells love vitamins. Antioxidants prevents muscle conditioning.
5.) Prospective ,long term studies are done and years later show no effect of vitamin x.
6.) Then, observational studies show that people who eat a diet rich in vitamin y, and so on ad nauseam.
A good article in the NY Times a year ago summarized several recent studies.

By: Michael Turner

Michael Turner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:23:16 +0000

No, I don’t think there’s NO point in food producers mentioning a given possible nutrition benefit. I DO think there’s a policy case for regulating HOW or WHETHER it’s mentioned, even if that means regulators sometimes err on the side of caution or enthusiasm. Food producers tend to err only on the side of enthusiasm, for obvious reasons.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:02:25 +0000

The FDA blew it with tryptophan, too.

By: mjgeddes

mjgeddes — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:23:01 +0000

I caution all readers to be on the look-out for cranks!

The health food business attracts cranks like flies to honey, a cursory persual of past supplement fads shows that about 90% or more of claims don’t stack up, the media seems to move from one vitamin craze to the next.

In particular, megadoses of vitamins A,C and E, which were hyped as powerful antioxidants, have been demonstrated to be useless at best and actually slightly harmful at worst. Some initial studies did suggest that E might prevent health disease, but later bigger studies found this claim baseless.

Vitamins B and D do show some promise, but are still under investigation. Minerals Zinc, Magnesium and Selenium are also promising, but as above (still under investigation).

By: Greg Lee

Greg Lee — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:37:16 +0000

“FDA blunders” is probably not a helpful summary; “regulatory blunders” might be better. Remember that the FDA is a creature of its enabling legislation, and in my experience working in an FDA-regulated industry, the FDA is mostly driven by what it thinks the law requires. “Corrective” actions by Congress often amount to changing or clarifying the statutory requirements.

Of course, particular interpretations may not be correct, and sometimes a particular Commissioner has a particular agenda to advance (e.g. regulating tobacco).

By: Grant

Grant — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:04:17 +0000

I have never had a doctor advise me on nutrition. Many producers have and of course some of their claims turn out to be true, so I am glad they are able to advertise. I’m not sure such advertisements would be very useful before the Internet of course.

On the subject of consumer protection in general: if consumers are limited in their knowledge and want to hold someone accountable for product claims, isn’t it more rational for them to demand accountability from producers and retailers than to vote for regulators to regulate? The later group seems to have less incentive to actually provide the goods the consumers are looking for, and probably has less knowledge too.

This seems to be how the vast majority of consumer protection works: we return stuff to the store we bought it from if it doesn’t work. I’m wondering why the same can’t be done with health products.

e.g., “I found a study showing this product’s claims to be false. I want my money back!”