Word: fda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...manufacturers try not to get too specific in the health claims for their beverages, for fear of provoking the FDA. Says Dr. Gabe Mirkin, associate professor at Georgetown University Medical School: "There's no way the consumer can know if any of these beverages are really doing all that they claim to do." Many of the putatively healing potions contain little more than trace elements of the prominently mentioned herbal ingredients, says Mirkin. For example, in order to take aboard the dosage of St. John's wort that clinical tests have shown to reduce stress, one would have to drink...
...because companies have little incentive to spend $500 million on 10 to 15 years of tests--as pharmaceutical firms typically do to check out new medications. Unlike drugs, most herbal preparations cannot be patented, so the testing company would not be rewarded for its efforts. The FDA, meanwhile, would have to prove that a supplement is unsafe before yanking it off the market, yet it has no authority to test nutritional supplements. "The result is that there are a lot of products on the market that little is known about," says FDA deputy commissioner for policy William Schultz...
...Make sure what you're taking is pure. Last May the FDA verified industry reports that certain shipments of ginseng were contaminated with high levels of a fungicide. Elaine Kang-Yum, a pharmacist at the Hudson Valley Poison Control Center in Tarrytown, N.Y., who tracks herbal medicines, says some imported Chinese remedies have been doped with Valium or other prescription drugs...
...oral drug for a month. Future trials will be conducted on a larger scale and will continue to study the effects of the inhibitor on blindness. If the next study, which consists of a thousand patients, proves effective, King and Aiello say they will send their findings to the FDA for approval...
Sources: Nature Medicine; PACE, FDA; Circulation; Lancet