Please Tell Consumer Reports They're Reporting Only One Side of the Subject!

Consumer Reports Health has just published an article called “Dangerous Supplements: What You Don't Know about These 12 Ingredients Could Hurt You.” The reporting was extraordinarily one-sided, contained a number of misstatements, and issued a warning that suggested that supplements are unregulated.

Our Action Alert asks Consumer Reports Health to present a more balanced picture of supplements. The reason Americans spend $26.7 billion on supplements each year is because they work—usually as supplements to diet, but often to improve health more effectively, more reliably, and more safely than prescription drugs.

Recipients

Executive Editor Greg Daugherty
Vice President and Editorial Director Kevin McKean
Editor-in-Chief Kimberly Kleman
Managing Editor Robert Tierman

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Dear Consumer Reports Editoral Staff: [Decision Maker],

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Your report, "Dangerous Supplements: What You Don't Know About These 12 Ingredients Could Hurt You" was shockingly unbalanced. You do a grave disservice to loyal Consumer Reports Health readers genuinely interested in a natural health lifestyle by printing one-sided findings challenging dietary supplement safety and regulation.

You uncritically suggest that supplements generally are unsafe and unregulated. In fact, the FDA may remove any unsafe, misbranded, or adulterated supplements from the market. The FDA is charged with enforcing the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which holds supplement manufacturers to "good manufacturing practices" (industry standards for product quality), and it takes any necessary action based on adverse event reports. Both the FDA and the FTC also have to power to stop any fraudulent advertising.

Your bias showed when you discussed the twelve ingredients to avoid in two separate sections--the chart at the end, and the "dirty dozen" section. Supplements to consider are only included in the chart and information about them is very incomplete. In the "dirty dozen" section you also make the absurd statement that "under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), it is difficult for the FDA to put together strong enough evidence to order products off the market." All the FDA needs is adverse event reports and these are legally required.

Your article discusses adverse reactions from a couple of supplements, and complains that supplements are not required to go through the billion-dollar testing process to be declared safe and effective. You never mention adverse reactions from drugs which did go through the "safe and effective" certification required for FDA approval yet still killed or harmed people in large numbers. In 2009, the FDA received reports of more than 373,000 serious adverse events and nearly 64,000 deaths associated with FDA-approved pharmaceutical drugs. In contrast, the FDA received only 1275 serious adverse event reports and not a single reported death from the use of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or herbs by the Poison Control Center.

You also failed entirely to consider the "Catch 22" of today's drug regulation. It easily costs on average a billion dollars to demonstrate safety and effectiveness to the FDA. What supplement company can afford this sum for an unpatented product? And natural products are generally barred from being patented.
Consumer Reports has a long and venerated history of impartiality. But this article was not balanced or factual. It was simply dismissive of nutritional supplements and those who take them. Blaming the entire industry because some salesperson broke federal law and told customers what conditions a particular herb might help is rather silly.

Please go back to your fair, unbiased, and trustworthy reporting. Warning the public that some supplements are unsafe when abused, or do not combine well with certain pharmaceuticals, is useful and appropriate; throwing doubt on the safety and efficacy of nutritional supplements in general, which your article most certainly did, is unfair, misleading, and fails to hold to the high standards we have come to expect from Consumer Reports.

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Protecting Natural Health