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Comment by Metacelsus | Hacker News Reader

yeah, because unless you legitimately have heavy metal poisoning, the side effects DEFINITELY aren't worth it

Probably, but the process doesn't work that way. The default is that you can't sell medication to people, period. Some pharmaceutical company applied to have a specific form of EDTA approved as a prescription drug, and that was that.

Separately from this, substances that meet the criteria of being "natural" can be sold as supplements as long as you don't claim they cure anything. EDTA is naturally-occurring and you can buy it as a supplement in the US, although the FDA has some beef with this, which I think is what the original remark might be alluding to.

EDTA is also a common food additive and a laboratory reagent, so people who want to use it can buy it easily, which makes the whole debate basically performance art.

So in summary, the FDA prevents you from marketing something as a medicine unless you have gone through the approval process and developed all the regulatory apparatus around a medicine (e.g. packaging, suppliers, prescription guidelines, etc)?

Yes. Look, I'm not arguing this is bad, I'm just trying to respond to the original question and capture the essence of the debate.

There are three pertinent points: (1) it's EDTA; (2) it's not that EDTA is safe or not safe, it's that no one applied to have it approved as an OTC medication; (3) you can still (probably) sell EDTA as a supplement in the US, but the FDA grumbled about it, which angered various chelation cranks.

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