Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010

On February 4, 2010, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) introduced a Bill (S 3002 IS) to Congress that if passed will both drive up the cost of dietary supplements and restrict access to them. This bill, co-sponsored by Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakot), originated from McCain’s interest in the baseball steroid scandal, whereby some companies sold illegal steroids under the guise of dietary supplements.

CLICK HERE to read the proposed Bill.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) already has the power to outlaw supplements, evidenced by its ruling related to Ephedra. The problem with this bill is that it sets up a potentially arbitrary process and makes it too easy to ban supplements. It would give the FDA the authority to ban supplements as well as to set potencies.

Currently the FDA already requires all manufacturing companies to maintain records of any serious adverse reactions to its products. This new bill would require that all “non serious adverse events” also be reported to the federal government.

One obvious fault to requiring that non-serious adverse reactions, including headache, be recorded is that it’s often not possible to draw a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the supplement and – for example – a headache, which might have been caused by something else. If in our Dragon Heart Healing Arts clinic we prescribe a supplement and the patient gets a headache, how do we know that the remedy that we prescribed caused that particular headache, especially if the patient was prescribed and began to use more than one supplement at the same time? How do we even know that there was a connection between the supplement and the headache at all, which could have been caused by any number of other factors?

This bill, if enacted, would enable pharmaceutical companies to file to obtain reports on adverse OR non-adverse reactions using the Freedom of Information Act, and use this information to petition the FDA to restrict a particular supplement. This bill would also make it easier for large for-profit pharmaceutical companies to file use patents on supplements and convert them into drugs.

Fortunately, right now America is, more free than much of the world in terms of consumer access to potent (highly effective) vitamins and supplements. Much of this is due to the DSHEA Act of 1994 which governs current supplement law. This freedom is under considerable pressure from pharmaceutical companies with a profit motive, and also by some well-meaning politicians with specific concerns about protecting the public against against some specific harmful supplements, but whose proposed laws would also unduly and unnecessarily impact your ability to benefit by using supplements that are not only not harmful, but quite helpful.

In a related issue, there is an international effort under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization) WHO to regulate the food supply, which includes herbs and other nutritional supplements. I’ll be writing more about the Codex Alimentarius (Latin for food code) in a future article.

CLICK HERE to visit the Life Extension Action Alert Network for readers who wish to learn more about the Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) and to to take action on this threat: