Re: Senator McCain Cosponsors Bill That Threatens Access To Supplements (Feb. 2010)

Sure, in an ideal world we all would like to see some kind of standardization to insure that supplements contained what they said, had no dangerous contaminants and were of reasonable potency.  However, in the real word, the trillion dollar a year pharmaceutical empire would surely end up controlling supplements and making sure that they had even more power to suppress them and eliminate competition to their patented and approved medicines.

At the end of the day:

Deaths each year in the US alone from side effects from properly prescribed and adminstered pharmaceuticals:  Over 140,000

Deaths each year worldwide due to supplements:  No more than a handful at most

So where is the logic in wasting their time and our money pursuing a problem that pales in comparison to the problem they should be looking at?  The Federal Government nor any other agency should have no right to dictate how each of us choose to address our private health issues and certainly not to suppress supplements or other alternatives without concrete proof of harm.

Maybe when the government can get a handle on ensuring that patented drugs as safe as our supplements, there might be some logical justification for addressing supplement safety.  Until then, they should keep their hands off our supplements and out of our private lives.