7 ms·

Unapproved Pharmaceutical Ingredients Included in Dietary Supplements

67 points by scott_s 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
394549 8y ago
This is the free market at work, throwing off its chains. /s
- briandear 8y ago
  Why do people buy that stuff? They could choose not to.
  - jerf 8y ago
    Well... we're generally used to "adulterants" referring to inactive or even potentially (purely) harmful ingredients being added to things to make them cheaper. However, note that "adulterating" your sexual potency supplement with Viagra means that it will, you know... work. Same with putting steroids in your workout supplement... it makes it work, better than the competition that doesn't do it. There are all kinds of other problems with that, of course. I'm not saying it's a good idea. But in terms of "why would people buy these?", well, I'd suggest part of the reason is that people want to lose weight, be sexually potent, or get swole, and these "adulterated" supplements actually work. Just at a cost you may not have realized you were paying, or intended to pay.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  The free market proscribes fraud.
  - 394549 8y ago
    Only if you get caught.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      That's like saying "murder is proscribed only if you get caught".
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    In the most abstract way possible: sure, in the real world: not so much.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      Misrepresenting your product is fraud and is illegal in a free market.
      - InclinedPlane 8y ago
        Misrepresentation is commonplace, even outright fraud is commonplace. Serious fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry. "Light fraud" and gray area misrepresentation is at least hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
        skookumchuck 8y ago
        It's still illegal under a free market, and prosecutable.
        394549 8y ago
        The "free market" doesn't make fraud or misrepresentation illegal, the laws and regulations of the dreaded government do. The worst the free market can do to a fraudster is to stop dealing with her as knowledge of her frauds becomes widely known. That, of course, doesn't work very well to limit fraud.
- refurb 8y ago
  Are you saying that if there wasn't a free market there wouldn't be fake products? That's obviously false.
wdewind 8y ago
The reality of supplements is that there is a limited number that are both safe and have strong scientific evidence backing them. Whey protein, vitamin D, ZMA, caffeine maybe a few others. If you buy those from any kind of reputable brand (Optimum Nutrition is a great place to start), there is absolutely zero risk of any of this happening. If you start taking sketchy pre-workout that boasts ridiculous improvements, then yeah you will end up getting a mixed bag of stuff. But the idea that this is hard to avoid is nonsense. Same with athletes who test positive and then blame a supplement. This problem is not at all difficult to avoid, you only find trouble if you're looking for it.
- scott_s 8y ago
  Forgive me if I'm reading your take wrong, but I believe your general attitude is buyer beware. That is, you're assuming there are bad actors out there, and the onus is on individuals to avoid those bad actors. My take is that it's unreasonable to expect most of the population to be mostly skeptical of the products they consume most of the time. I think most people have the feeling that things they buy at the drug store or GNC will not actively harm them; I don't think they understand that the supplement industry is essentially unregulated. I think they have about the same level of trust in supplements as they do in, say, buying meat from the grocery store. My position, then, is rather than acceding to the existence of the bad actors, we should use regulation to prevent them from existing. An editorial from a medical researcher who thinks the FDA is under-performing in even the light regulation they have of the supplement industry: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2706489 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
  - jotm 8y ago
    Let all the people who rely on non-approved drugs just die, lose their minds, or go to prison. They're pathetic fucking illegal-drug using peasants, anyway, amirite.
  - wdewind 8y ago
    No that is not my attitude. My attitude is that the only people who are experiencing issues are shopping way outside of normal channels. Nothing you buy at GNC will be tainted with steroids. The study takes 150 random products and finds issues with 20% of them, I guarantee those 20% are not sold at GNC, VitaminShoppe etc. This is just really not a big problem for normal every day people.
mallomarmeasle 8y ago
Here is the data that the study is compiled from. The majority of the added compounds are sildenafil (Viagra) or analogs of it. Interesting to me, Locacerin showed up in some of the weight loss preparations. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/sda/sdNavigation.cfm?sd=tainted_supplements_cder&displayAll=false&page=6 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/sda/sdNavigation.cfm?...
- wdewind 8y ago
  Thanks for posting the list. This is a list of dick and diet pills and Slim Fast. Slim Fast is genuinely surprising to see on this list, especially considering it's for an ingredient they used to have openly but was banned. The rest of this stuff is not at all in the same category as whey, creatine etc., and the study muddies the waters by grouping them together.
freeone3000 8y ago
It seems like these products are mysteriously tainted with illegal active ingredients that make them functional. It is unclear to anyone why or how this would happen.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  At least it's not irrelevant drugs, like I first thought when I read the headline. Like Vitamin C that works like, I dunno, sleeping pills, for example.
- learc83 8y ago
  Because the company wants their supplement to be more effective to encourage sales is the likely answer.
  - excalibur 8y ago
    Looks like your browser isn't correctly displaying the sarcasm font.
- excalibur 8y ago
  Legal or not, they're filling a real niche with real demand. If you have ED and insurance, you can go to the doctor, who will run tests to confirm that you have a medical need before prescribing you Viagra/Cialis/whatever. If you're uninsured, or are actually capable of getting a boner on your own, but just want a performance boost so you can have marathon sex or crazy orgies or something, the guy at the gas station has your back.
  - ensignavenger 8y ago
    What sort of test does a dr perform to see if you need Viagra? I thought the doc just asked some questions and wrote the prescription if you gave the right answers?
learc83 8y ago
The FDA needs to regulate supplements. At the very least they need more random spot checking and stiff fines for misrepresenting ingredients. It's absurd that you can't trust that the ingredients list on something as mundane as a multi vitamin is accurate.
- choko 8y ago
  The article calls out sexual performance and muscle building supplements (many of which are snake oil). The word vitamin doesn't appear in the article.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Which has zero bearing on the parent's point: supplements (which includes vitamins) aren't regulated making them less safe. There's an incentive to adulterate these products with anything producing noticable positive short-term effects. There's no reason to believe vitamins are exceptional here - if you start taking a multivitamin that seems to improve your focus and energy slightly, you're more likely to continue buying that vitamin. A small addition of Amphetamine salts or even caffeine would do the trick.
- xenadu02 8y ago
  The FDA is prohibited by law from regulating "dietary supplements", much of that thanks to Orin Hatch. A concerted campaign (largely effective) stripped the FDA's ability to regulate many forms of snake oil, "alternative medicine", and other quackery.
  - kevin_b_er 8y ago
    https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=00110 https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
  - bokchoi 8y ago
    Don't forget to thank Mel Gibson! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGNm8_y6yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGNm8_y6yU
mnm1 8y ago
So why aren't these companies being shut down and their executives arrested for drug trafficking? As an individual this is exactly what would happen if say your St. John's wort also contained some prescription drug that you did not have a prescription for and the authorities found out. Somehow it's ok for companies to peddle this garbage to millions but not ok for the individual?
- paulgrant999 8y ago
  #1 - Drugs aren't scheduled. #2 - They're usually dropshipped out of China.
jsonne 8y ago
There was an NHL player who recently got suspended that made this argument. I wonder if that was actually the case. Certainly, this evidence would help his case or at least cast reasonable doubt.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Many UFC Fighters have also made the claim, and were apparently vindicated by testing at least twice I can recall.

67 points by scott_s 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

394549 8y ago

This is the free market at work, throwing off its chains. /s

briandear 8y ago
Why do people buy that stuff? They could choose not to.
- jerf 8y ago
  Well... we're generally used to "adulterants" referring to inactive or even potentially (purely) harmful ingredients being added to things to make them cheaper. However, note that "adulterating" your sexual potency supplement with Viagra means that it will, you know... work. Same with putting steroids in your workout supplement... it makes it work, better than the competition that doesn't do it. There are all kinds of other problems with that, of course. I'm not saying it's a good idea. But in terms of "why would people buy these?", well, I'd suggest part of the reason is that people want to lose weight, be sexually potent, or get swole, and these "adulterated" supplements actually work. Just at a cost you may not have realized you were paying, or intended to pay.
skookumchuck 8y ago
The free market proscribes fraud.
- 394549 8y ago
  Only if you get caught.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    That's like saying "murder is proscribed only if you get caught".
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  In the most abstract way possible: sure, in the real world: not so much.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Misrepresenting your product is fraud and is illegal in a free market.
    - InclinedPlane 8y ago
      Misrepresentation is commonplace, even outright fraud is commonplace. Serious fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry. "Light fraud" and gray area misrepresentation is at least hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
      - skookumchuck 8y ago
        It's still illegal under a free market, and prosecutable.
        394549 8y ago
        The "free market" doesn't make fraud or misrepresentation illegal, the laws and regulations of the dreaded government do. The worst the free market can do to a fraudster is to stop dealing with her as knowledge of her frauds becomes widely known. That, of course, doesn't work very well to limit fraud.
refurb 8y ago
Are you saying that if there wasn't a free market there wouldn't be fake products? That's obviously false.

wdewind 8y ago

The reality of supplements is that there is a limited number that are both safe and have strong scientific evidence backing them. Whey protein, vitamin D, ZMA, caffeine maybe a few others. If you buy those from any kind of reputable brand (Optimum Nutrition is a great place to start), there is absolutely zero risk of any of this happening. If you start taking sketchy pre-workout that boasts ridiculous improvements, then yeah you will end up getting a mixed bag of stuff. But the idea that this is hard to avoid is nonsense. Same with athletes who test positive and then blame a supplement. This problem is not at all difficult to avoid, you only find trouble if you're looking for it.

scott_s 8y ago
Forgive me if I'm reading your take wrong, but I believe your general attitude is buyer beware. That is, you're assuming there are bad actors out there, and the onus is on individuals to avoid those bad actors. My take is that it's unreasonable to expect most of the population to be mostly skeptical of the products they consume most of the time. I think most people have the feeling that things they buy at the drug store or GNC will not actively harm them; I don't think they understand that the supplement industry is essentially unregulated. I think they have about the same level of trust in supplements as they do in, say, buying meat from the grocery store. My position, then, is rather than acceding to the existence of the bad actors, we should use regulation to prevent them from existing. An editorial from a medical researcher who thinks the FDA is under-performing in even the light regulation they have of the supplement industry: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2706489 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
- jotm 8y ago
  Let all the people who rely on non-approved drugs just die, lose their minds, or go to prison. They're pathetic fucking illegal-drug using peasants, anyway, amirite.
- wdewind 8y ago
  No that is not my attitude. My attitude is that the only people who are experiencing issues are shopping way outside of normal channels. Nothing you buy at GNC will be tainted with steroids. The study takes 150 random products and finds issues with 20% of them, I guarantee those 20% are not sold at GNC, VitaminShoppe etc. This is just really not a big problem for normal every day people.

mallomarmeasle 8y ago

Here is the data that the study is compiled from. The majority of the added compounds are sildenafil (Viagra) or analogs of it. Interesting to me, Locacerin showed up in some of the weight loss preparations. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/sda/sdNavigation.cfm?sd=tainted_supplements_cder&displayAll=false&page=6 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/sda/sdNavigation.cfm?...

wdewind 8y ago
Thanks for posting the list. This is a list of dick and diet pills and Slim Fast. Slim Fast is genuinely surprising to see on this list, especially considering it's for an ingredient they used to have openly but was banned. The rest of this stuff is not at all in the same category as whey, creatine etc., and the study muddies the waters by grouping them together.

freeone3000 8y ago

It seems like these products are mysteriously tainted with illegal active ingredients that make them functional. It is unclear to anyone why or how this would happen.

rdiddly 8y ago
At least it's not irrelevant drugs, like I first thought when I read the headline. Like Vitamin C that works like, I dunno, sleeping pills, for example.
learc83 8y ago
Because the company wants their supplement to be more effective to encourage sales is the likely answer.
- excalibur 8y ago
  Looks like your browser isn't correctly displaying the sarcasm font.
excalibur 8y ago
Legal or not, they're filling a real niche with real demand. If you have ED and insurance, you can go to the doctor, who will run tests to confirm that you have a medical need before prescribing you Viagra/Cialis/whatever. If you're uninsured, or are actually capable of getting a boner on your own, but just want a performance boost so you can have marathon sex or crazy orgies or something, the guy at the gas station has your back.
- ensignavenger 8y ago
  What sort of test does a dr perform to see if you need Viagra? I thought the doc just asked some questions and wrote the prescription if you gave the right answers?

learc83 8y ago

The FDA needs to regulate supplements. At the very least they need more random spot checking and stiff fines for misrepresenting ingredients. It's absurd that you can't trust that the ingredients list on something as mundane as a multi vitamin is accurate.

choko 8y ago
The article calls out sexual performance and muscle building supplements (many of which are snake oil). The word vitamin doesn't appear in the article.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Which has zero bearing on the parent's point: supplements (which includes vitamins) aren't regulated making them less safe. There's an incentive to adulterate these products with anything producing noticable positive short-term effects. There's no reason to believe vitamins are exceptional here - if you start taking a multivitamin that seems to improve your focus and energy slightly, you're more likely to continue buying that vitamin. A small addition of Amphetamine salts or even caffeine would do the trick.
xenadu02 8y ago
The FDA is prohibited by law from regulating "dietary supplements", much of that thanks to Orin Hatch. A concerted campaign (largely effective) stripped the FDA's ability to regulate many forms of snake oil, "alternative medicine", and other quackery.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=00110 https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
- bokchoi 8y ago
  Don't forget to thank Mel Gibson! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGNm8_y6yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGNm8_y6yU

mnm1 8y ago

So why aren't these companies being shut down and their executives arrested for drug trafficking? As an individual this is exactly what would happen if say your St. John's wort also contained some prescription drug that you did not have a prescription for and the authorities found out. Somehow it's ok for companies to peddle this garbage to millions but not ok for the individual?

paulgrant999 8y ago
#1 - Drugs aren't scheduled. #2 - They're usually dropshipped out of China.

jsonne 8y ago

There was an NHL player who recently got suspended that made this argument. I wonder if that was actually the case. Certainly, this evidence would help his case or at least cast reasonable doubt.

justtopost 8y ago
Many UFC Fighters have also made the claim, and were apparently vindicated by testing at least twice I can recall.