Re: FDA Guidance info from Mercola -- Another take --

I do believe that though Mercola is a doctor, he makes his money from contrarian doctoring, so to speak -- the majority of people who don't want to self-treat as we do here, but who do feel better taking alternative suggestions from someone with an MD. (I did not realize until I got to Curezone and started doing the things we do here just how big a step it is to investigate and research one's health concerns and to take steps toward amending them -- no wonder taking pills was always so easy! Not just because taking 5 pills 3 times a day is easier than doing a liver flush, for instance, but easier because someone else has assumed authority for the process and has predicted your results or explained them to you. It takes a certain, and not a small, amount of courage to take your health into your own hands!) At any rate, though, I think Mercola is protecting his investment on the supplement angle because he does suggest and sell many of them.

I also know that supplements are a huge business, and that they have a very powerful lobby in Washington. Certainly not as big as allopathic pharma, but it's a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry, so I feel like "we" are being protected by that lobby -- it is simply not a case of the FDA vs. the little guy. The reason Orrin Hatch is mentioned in a previous post as someone to write to in the Senate is that Utah, which he represents, is home to a large amount of supplement makers, and also home base to pyramid-scheme companies that sell them (like Herbalife -- these are not supplements that probably a lot of people around here take, but they are enormously popular nationwide). Hatch's family members and former aides have gone to work for nutritional supplement associations and p.r. firms that represent them, which tells me that they are pretty big and powerful -- and that they are well-connected and have a lot of influence. The fact is, the supplements that we talk about on this forum are not representative of the vitamin and supplement market as a whole in terms of dollar amounts. I don't think they are going to go after Vitamin C -- I think they are going to go after weight-loss formulas. (The products of mine that concern me in terms of regulation are organ products, because of mad-cow disease and CJD -- which, to tell the truth, I think should be carefully regulated -- who at this point would want to buy something that might contain raw brain from a mad-cow country?)

Laura