Talking to a colleague about cancer treatment we were discussing the vast array of alternative supplements that people tend to take. The medical community tends to not approve of such things as claims are often unfounded and they can interfere with prescribed drugs.

It's always struck me as odd that this sector is not regulated more. It seems that provided something is a "nutritional supplement" you can get it on the shelves with very little testing.

Anyone know why this is the case? I think there should be tighter regulations.

Posted 29th March 2010, 20:53:58

Supplements tend to be naturally occurring substances and tend not to have evidence supporting medical claims limiting how they can be promoted.

Posted 29th October 2010, 09:01:17

I know this has been posted a while back, but I just spotted it. I am really interested in this one.

The lack of clinical evidence doesn't correlate with the level of medical claims, unfortunately. Supplements are also not always naturally occurring substances, or at the very least are highly processed extracts of naturally occurring substance, like many prescription drugs.

But supplements are all about emotion and control. Emotion and control for the patient, that is. Tempting notions and I can see why so many people in desperate situations would like those ideas.

To be honest, I don't know why there is so little regulation of these. Clearly there should be.

Posted 1st December 2010, 22:06:18

Where there is desperate people there will always be snake oil. The challenge here is that these things are so cheap to produce that it's virtually impossible to monitor them all.

Maybe any product making any kind of medical claim should have had to go through a clinical trial process?

Posted 21st December 2010, 09:34:40

Clinical trial is probably a bit strong, but it looks like steps are being made to regulate and test all medical claims more rigidly. The recent pharma-nutrition article was quite interesting discussing some of these points.

Posted 10th January 2011, 11:26:49

steve9 said
Where there is desperate people there will always be snake oil. The challenge here is that these things are so cheap to produce that it's virtually impossible to monitor them all.
Maybe any product making any kind of medical claim should have had to go through a clinical trial process?

Agree that monitoring them all is impossible. So why not go the other route and only allow approved supplements that can back their medical claims to wear a "trusted" label - a bit like the tag that secure websites have?