KFF Health News
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Before being appointed as a senior US official last fall, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released Americans from “active suppression” of the FDA for vitamins, dietary supplements and other substances He said that. Like he said.
In fact, the FDA cannot even require that supplements be effective before they are sold. When Congress urged, the last time they considered laws that required manufacturers of vitamins, herbal remedies and other tablets and portions to show evidence of safety and value before selling the product; It got more negative mail, phones, telegrams at any time by several accounts since the Vietnam War. The backlash led to a 1994 law, which would promote unproven benefits unless the dietary supplement industry would bring products to the market without testing and promote the advertising that would treat or treat the disease. I was able to do that. Since then, annual industry revenue has increased from $4 billion to $70 billion.
With Kennedy currently in the driver’s seat, the industry will hope for more. It aims to make bolder health claims for its products, get supplement payments in government, private insurance companies, and even flexible spending accounts, and essentially put them on an equal footing . Uses FDA approved medicines.
President Donald Trump on February 13th, the day Kennedy was sworn in as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. “Make America Healthy Again” published Targeting suspicions of corruption in health regulators, “providing benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention to ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and flexibility in health insurance coverage.” An agenda that instructs you to do so.
Kennedy says exercise, dietary supplements and nutrition are key to health, not medicine. Supplement manufacturers will allow consumers to benefit from health savings accounts, Medicare, and even supplemental nutrition support programs, and pay for items such as vitamins, fish oils, protein powders, and probiotics. I’m hoping.
“Essentially they’re looking for government subsidies,” said Peter Cohen, a Harvard physician who studies supplements.
As the Senate Finance Committee questioned Kennedy at a confirmation hearing on January 29, supporters of the Alliance for Natural Health who had lunch at the Capitol quinoa salad, ultimately for them The moment I arrived at it, it rang out Health freedom movementhas combined libertarian capitalism with the distrust of healthcare institutions to defend unregulated compounds since the 19th century.
“The greatest opportunity of our lifetime lies ahead of us,” said Jonathan Emaud, the group’s advisor. “RFK dedicated his life to opposing the excessive impact of the pharmaceutical industry, and “ensures that our interests will win,” Emodo said.
In a speech and a pamphlet called “Mahamandate,” Emodo and Alliance founder Robert Berkerk said Kennedy would make a free company a free company and make a bigger claim on allegations of perks on the product. Emodo said his group is preparing to prevent his group from suing the FDA to limit the production of non-drugs of substances like biopeptides.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon refused to respond to requests for comment on the agency’s plans for dietary supplements.
The basic law governing the FDA is under the agency’s requirements for high standards of scientific evidence, as it establishes that substances claimed to be therapeutic or effective are by definition “drugs.” , the new administration can redistribut the money from execution. said Mitch Zeller, former director of the FDA’s tobacco products center.
Earlier in his career, Zeller investigated contaminated L-tryptophan supplements that killed at least 30 people and made thousands sick in the United States in 1989. The scandal led the FDA to call for heavier regulations on supplements, but it resulted in a strong backlash. A relatively weak supplement method from 1994.
Even the enforcement of that law could be covered in pen strokes that prevent FDA inspectors from being locked out of the field, Zeller said.
Nathan Jones, founder and CEO of Xlear, which manufactures products containing the artificial sweetener Xylitol, couldn’t come too early. The Federal Trade Commission sued Xlear in 2021, creating a false claim that nasal sprays can prevent and treat Covid.
Jones points to a small number of studies assessing whether xylitol prevents cavity and infection, and says the FDA requires overly expensive research to approve xylitol as a drug. Meanwhile, he said the dentist was bought by “big toothpaste.”
He said it is hardly possible to find products “without fluoride for oral health.” “Crest and Colgate don’t want that to happen,” he said.
Kennedy’s desire to eliminate fluoride, allegedly suspected of impact on children’s IQ, is welcome news and not only because it can highlight the value of his product, he said. . Jones, like many health freedom advocates, emphasizes that clean air, water and pure food do more to prevent and treat disease than vaccines and drugs. For example, he and other supporters have falsely argued that the US eliminated crippling polio, a form of crippling disease, through better hygiene, rather than vaccination.
The Alliance for Natural Health hopes that instead of the strict FDA standards, Kennedy will allow businesses to make broad marketing claims based on evidence from non-FDA sources, Verkerk, National Institutes of Health The disadvantages of various supplements, including nutritional information sites, which explain their strengths.
Kennedy also calls for the reduction of psychedelic drug stenosis, and some veterans are interested in it as a potential remedy for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The San Diego-based organization Vets paid 1,000 veterans to receive treatment with the powerful hallucinogenic Ibogaine at clinics in Mexico and other countries, said Amber Capone, a co-founder of the group. .
She was involved in 2017 after spending a week at the Ibogain Clinic near Tijuana, Mexico, and after her husband’s retired Navy Seal was pulled out of the suicide spiral. Research on illegal substances – can cause cardiac complications and can be legally available as it is listed as a Schedule I drug equivalent to heroin and LSD. appropriate.
Coincidentally, supplements are being made to review preservatives and other food additives that Kennedy demands “the science of gold standard” and say he may play a role in the country’s chronic diseases. and there will be a push for more troublesome standards for psychedelics.
That idea “put aside the fact that valuable little evidence supports it,” said Stuart Purp, a former FDA Food Center lawyer. “There was no indication that they wanted the same rigor on supplements and dietary supplements.”
While most of these products don’t have any major safety concerns, “we don’t know which products will work, so in the best cases people throw away a lot of money,” Zeller says . “The worst case scenario is that they rely on unproven products to treat underlying conditions, and when the disease may have used effective FDA certified products, time It’s been going on.”
Supplement manufacturers are not completely unified. Groups such as the Consumer Healthcare Products Association and the Responsible Nutrition Council advocate for FDA to crack down on products that are insecure or misrepresented. Meanwhile, the Alliance of Natural Health and Natural Products Associations largely wants the government to stay out of the way.
“It’s time to embrace a fundamental shift, from managing reactive diseases to aggressive health development, from top-down public health dictatts to individual, individual-centered care,” Emodo and Berkerk states said, “The Maha Order “He says.
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