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Comment by alexashka | Hacker News Reader

'Earlier this year, the New York AG investigated supplements at major retailers and found that four out of five didn’t contain any of the labelled herbs'

The article could've been simply this, followed by ...

I don't know how people are not in prison for this. If you printed counterfeit money, you'd be so done with. If you sell quackery in a bottle, for money, you're fine?

Makes sense.

What this tells me is the system is completely rotten, where even the most blatant loopholes are being exploited in broad daylight, with no fear of repercussions.

Reminds me that empires fall apart at the weight of stupidity and incompetence of it's own citizens, no need for an enemy.

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The article isn't really about the supplement industry, though. It's about news media's complete inability to do anything investigative, as evidenced by the fact that this guy, with a handful of publicly accessible tools and websites, was able to find more information on this scandal in an hour then the journalists who were covering this case.

There is no consequence for selling quackery/products that suck.

There is no consequence for writing quackery/products that suck.

They are not separate phenomena. They are one and the same, done by different organizations. I should go a step further and say sometimes the way incentives align - you are actually encouraged to sell quackery, it is very profitable. Any system that doesn't actively discourage the possibility of quackery being profitable is mediocre at it's root.

It's just mediocrity that goes unchecked. It is the same problem every time.

Yep.

The lesson I take from this: don't be so quick to denigrate liberal arts and traditional university education. The kind of skills one learns in college, namely, the ability to do independent research, to write well, to think critically, and to make moral judgments, are precisely what's been taught as part of a classic liberal curriculum since Roman times.

We can talk about how expensive it is, and that there may be better delivery methods, but per se liberal arts education will only become more important as the clickbait / spam / dreck-production machine of ads / neutraceuticals, etc. kicks into higher gear.

This loophole exists because of heavy lobbying by the "neutraceutical" and "natural supplement" industry. For phamaceuticals, the FDA requires that they be demonstrated "safe" and "effective" through clinical testing. (Most new drugs fail in clinical testing, incidentally.) For "neutraceuticals", only "safe" is required, and clinical testing is not required.

You know the thing about supplements is very simple: Don't take them unless a doctor recommends it. I recently found (but have not verified this) that the burden is on the FDA to prove a supplement is not safe. With drugs the burden is on the manufacturer. The FDA just does not have the resources to prove tens of thousands of supplements are safe to use.

Its more complicated than that, actually.

Even if a doctor tells you to use it (and doctors aren't immune to quackery) there is still a problem, you have no idea if the bottle of Vitamin D actually contains Vitamin D or just sawdust, or worse.

This was actually the case here, the bottle of "herbal Viagria" was actually just Viagria. Weight loss/bodybuilding supplements are also known to contain prescription stimulants.

You also can't know if the dosage is what it says on the label. Frontline showed an example where the Vitamin D content of a pill was double the stated dosage on the label.

Counterfeit money introduces fake money into an economy, selling quackery just moves money from idiots to asshats. This case is pretty clearly on the "shouldn't be allowed" side of the line but I think most sales involve various levels of idiocy and asshatery.

The New York AG actually dropped all of those lawsuits (and frankly should pay those companies damages) because it was wrong and simply failed to understand how DNA testing worked. There is plenty of fraud in the supplement industry but that is irrelevant to the AG scandal. Look it up.

Which, amusingly, proves the same point as the author is making.

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