DSHEA Under Fire

23 Feb: Anti-Supplement “Perfect” Storm Building in Washington

By James J. Gormley, VP and Sr. Policy Advisor, Citizens for Health Via The Gormley Files As if Senate Bill 3002 (S. 3002) were not more than enough to deal with, according to The Hill Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) is criticizing the Senate for not moving on Senate Bill 510 (S. 510). Unfortunately, The Pew Charitable Trusts has been assisting…

16 Feb: Brief Description of the Provisions of the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010

New Requirements from Suppliers to Retailers Suppliers and retailers regardless of size all along the chain of commerce are required to “obtain adequate written evidence” from the seller that the product is registered as required. That evidence must be retained in a file available for inspection. Adverse Event Reporting (AER) Requires reporting of all adverse events, not just serious adverse…

15 Feb: The DEA Should Take Over All Sports Doping Enforcement

By James J. Gormley original link: The Gormley Files In February 2010 in New Orleans, three men were charged by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with drug-trafficking Ecstasy, or MDMA (3-4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), a synthetic chemical that can be derived from an essential oil of the sassafras tree. If convicted, the defendants face a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in…

11 Feb: Senator McCain Files New Bill That Attacks Your Access to Supplements and Repeals Key Sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act

original link: The Delano Report McCain’s bill is called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). It would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). DSHEA protects supplements if 1) they are food products that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as supplements prior to 1994,…

09 Feb: A Medical Doctor’s Open Letter Opposing the McCain Sponsored Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA)

Dear Senator McCain: Though I am a resident of New York, not Arizona, I suggest that someone in your staff reads my letter very carefully as I believe you are unwittingly sponsoring a bill with potentially onerous consequences, one that might if I read the information about it properly, lead to the death of hundreds of my patients fighting advanced,…

09 Feb: The Dietary Supplement Excuse

By James Gormley, Senior Policy Advisor for Citizens For Health via www.thegormleyfiles.blogspot.com [With the DSSA bill, S. 3002, now up for vigorous debate, it’s worth taking a look back to this article of mine from 2007, as most of the same issues still apply] On November 15th, 2007, home-run legend Barry Bonds was indicted for allegedly lying under oath to…

05 Feb: New Battle for Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)

Senators McCain and Dorgan Let Down Dietary Supplement Consumers On Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) introduced The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010. This bill would amend DSHEA, undermining, if not entirely eliminating, consumer access to valuable dietary supplements, according to Jim Turner, Citizens for Health Board Chair. Over the next week,…

10 Nov: Boston Globe Wrong on Vitamins, Supplements

By Neil Levin via www.honestnutrition.blogspot.com Dietary Supplements Are Regulated In its Nov. 2 editorial, the Globe complained that the FDA is “powerless” to police dietary supplements and called for a repeal of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. I suggest that the editors read the law and see what it is that they would lose by doing…

09 Nov: Pfizer Broke the Law by Promoting Drugs for Unapproved Uses

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) — Prosecutor Michael Loucks remembers clearly when lawyers for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company, looked across the table and promised it wouldn’t break the law again. It was January 2004, and the attorneys were negotiating in a conference room on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Boston, where Loucks was head of the…