If Sen. John McCain has his way, Americans’ access to herbs, minerals and dietary supplements will be severely curtailed.
McCain’s newly introduced bill the Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) will give the FDA complete control over all dietary supplements.
The DSSA will repeal parts of the DSHEA (Dietary Supplement and Education Act).
I know this sounds like a bureaucratic an alphabet soup and it is. It also has the potential to turn into a health care nightmare.
Bureaucractic alphabet soup
DSHEA, enacted in 1994, protects two types of supplements: 1. supplements that have been in the food supply and are not chemically altered and 2. supplements that were sold before 1994.
DSHEA as it exists today is far from perfect, largely because it gives the FDA control over new supplements and discourages the development of new products. However, DSHEA does prevent the FDA from arbitrarily banning or reclassifying supplements.
The McCain bill, if passed, gives the very much flawed FDA the power to create a list of approved supplements that can remain on the market and to ban all others.
Switching the focus
I’ll return to the flaws of the FDA in a moment, but it’s important to understand that Sen. McCain apparently has the intention with this bill of protecting us against steroid use by professional athletes. The DSSA is supported by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which is funded by major league baseball, football and other sports teams.
It appears that major league sports is attempting to shift the focus away from its shameless drug use by claiming some players were unknowingly exposed to steroids through supplements.
While that is preposterous and I, for the life of me, cannot understand why legislators need to interrogate athletes about illegal drug use when we’ve got two wars, economic disaster and a health care crisis to deal with, the upshot of the McCain bill is to dismantle the dietary supplements industry as we know it.
Who is the beneficiary?
Who would benefit from the dismantling of the dietary supplements industry? Not you and me, my friends. Plain and simple: The pharmaceutical industry will be the only beneficiaries of the McCain bill.
The FDA receives substantial funding from the pharmaceutical industry, so its interests are in protecting the funding source—pharmaceutical industry, not the American people.
The pharmaceutical industry is hostile to supplement companies because natural supplements can prevent diseases that are treated by drugs sold at enormous profits by these very same drug companies.
It’s not a very big leap of logic to the certainty that under the McCain bill, the FDA will be hostile to supplement companies and our access to dietary supplements, minerals and herbs will be severely curtailed.
Here’s where you can read the entire bill.
Contact Sen. McCain and say “NO”
I am very careful not to engage in political partisanship in these pages. However, I feel compelled to engage in political advocacy here for the benefit of every American.
Sen. McCain’s bill, if passed, will have far-reaching and potentially disastrous effects on preventive h ealth care and on eevery single one of us. All of us need to tell Mr. McCain right now that this bill is very misguided.
Contact Sen. McCain by e-mail or by calling (202) 224-2235.
Please contact him now and often until we are absolutely certain this bill is dead and buried.
