Dangerous Doses

Date: 06-06-2003 Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited States

There's been some good news in recent weeks about the dangerous dietary supplement ephedra. While the federal government fiddles with warning labels, Illinois adopted the nation's first statewide ban on the drug. The state legislature acted after the death of 16-year-old Sean Riggins, who was taking the supplement to boost his chances of making the first-string football team. General Nutrition Corp., which runs the largest chain of dietary supplement stores, announced it will stop selling ephedra, which has been linked to about 100 deaths. A California judge ruled that the manufacturer of an ephedra product, Xenadrine RFA-1, bilked consumers by making false and misleading claims about its weight-loss properties and ordered the company to pay $12.5 million. For ephedra, in short, the marketplace is working -- albeit too late for some of its apparent victims, including 23-year-old Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler. According to Health & Medicine Week, industry experts estimate that the sale of ephedrine pills has plunged 70 percent since 1999.

The bad news is that as ephedra vanishes from store shelves, other dietary supplements are being rushed in to fill the void -- and are being marketed without any requirement that manufacturers show that they are safe or effective. The basic problem remains a 1994 law, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which recklessly allows such products to be marketed without any proof of safety and which limits authorities' ability to act if health problems appear. This is particularly worrisome because many parents seem to be dosing their children with herbal remedies with little or no understanding of the possible side effects or interactions with prescription medication. A study reported last month in the journal Pediatrics found that of 142 families interviewed in hospital emergency rooms, nearly half said they had given their children an herbal product. Some children were taking prescription medication at the same time, and in potentially harmful combinations, such as ephedra and a prescription asthma medicine. Less than half of the parents discussed the products with their children's physician, and most knew little about potential side effects. Interestingly, parents with a year or more of college were more likely to use such products.

Florida recently took a swipe at the problem, banning the sale of over-the-counter weight-loss products to minors. That's fine, but particularly in an Internet age, the safety of dietary supplements, for adults as well as children, is a national problem. It needs a national solution.