August 22nd, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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In 1994 Congress (pushed by Senators Harkin and Hatch) passed DSHEA (the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act). As regular readers of SBM know, we are not generally happy about this law, which essentially deregulated the supplement industry. Under DSHEA supplements, a category which specifically was defined to include herbals, are regulated more like food than like medicinals.
Since then the flood-gates opened, and there has been open competition in the marketplace for supplement products. This has not resulted, I would argue, in better products – only in slicker and more deceptive claims. What research we have into popular herbals and supplements shows that they are generally worthless (except for targeted vitamin supplementation, which was already part of science-based medicine, and remains so).
A company can essentially put a random combination of plants and vitamins into a pill or liquid and then make whatever health claims they wish for their product, as long as they stay within the “structure-function” guidelines. This means they Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
June 12th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in News
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Those who market heart scan services should be more careful about what they promote and to whom.
When ProPublica’s Marshall Allen got a telemarketing offer for heart scans for him and his wife, he followed up with a story, “Body Imaging Business Pushes Scans Many Don’t Need – Including Me.”
Reminding Allen about the deaths of figure skater Sergei Grinkov, baseball player Darryl Kile, newsman Tim Russert and actor Patrick Swayze, the salesman said:
“You never know when it could happen. … Boom, you’re dead!” he exclaimed, slapping a desk for emphasis.
But Allen tells another story – of complaints by patients and regulators about the business. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
June 6th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Opinion, Quackery Exposed
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I wrote once that not only is Oprah Winfrey not a doctor, she plays a really bad one on TV. From promoting Jenny McCarthy and the anti-vaccine movement, to allowing Suzanne Somers a bully-pulpit for her medical woo, to pushing Prudence Hall and her high-dose hormone treatments without acknowledging their potential risks, to leading the church of the Secret as a way to avoid facing the harsh realities of cancer, Oprah did more harm than good when it comes to health.
And while the publishing industry may be hanging crepe, the medical community is breathing a sigh of relief that Oprah has left the airwaves, at least for now. After all, we “conventional” docs were repeatedly relegated to a seat in the audience by Oprah, who usually presented us as naysayers and officials in the Church of Medicine to Oprah’s self-appointed Galileos of Woo, rather than the health experts we are. Of course, it was all couched in terms of female empowerment, a tactic that Oprah long ago taught marketers can be used to sell anything and everything to women.
My axe to grind against Oprah is not just professional, it’s personal. For I saw my sister, nearing the end of her life, turn to the Secret, believing that if she just believed enough in herself, she would be cured. Rather than strengthen her, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
April 28th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Health Policy, Opinion
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Imagine you’re a pharmaceutical company product manager and your specific product helps people with a chronic illness, or a cancer that can be managed by taking a pill or an injectable medicine over many years. You want to be part of the dialogue patients have with each other. You want to be part of the community. Facebook users, and other social media participants, are increasingly forming groups around health conditions, big and small. You want to be there, because, after all, your company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars developing the approved drug and hopes this medicine, and perhaps a successor, will be on the market for a long time.
This is an exciting time on the Internet and pharmaceutical product managers want to be part of health discussions. But it is fraught with legal pitfalls and penalties that can range into the millions of dollars if the product manager, or associated marketing agencies, make even an innocent mistake. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
April 23rd, 2011 by Glenn Laffel, M.D., Ph.D. in Research
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Based on their experience during countless schleps to the market, moms know that kids pick cereals whose boxes have cartoon characters on them. Previous research by Yale scientists explained the phenomenon: kids say that the stuff poured from such boxes tastes better than the same stuff when poured from a cartoon-less box. The same thing happens when kids pick graham crackers, carrots and gummy fruit snacks.
Pictures of Shrek, Dora the Explorer, Scooby Doo and their kin make just about anything taste yummier, it seems.
Can this observation be leveraged to encourage kids to select healthier foods? Yes, it turns out. But the story isn’t as straightforward as you’d think.
To study the impact of licensed media spokescharacters and other nutrition cues on kids’ taste assessment of food products, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania fed cereal from a box that had been labeled either “Sugar Bits” or “Healthy Bits” to 80 kids. Half the boxes in each “brand category” were adorned with cute cartoon penguins, while the other half were not. The kids were between 4 and 6 years old. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*
