[.ca] Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's ... (ISBN 0767920430)

RIFE WITH ERRORS, POORLY RESEARCHED:
Whatever Mr. Hurleys agenda might be, he is free to have is own point of view and to write about it. The essential problem with this book is that its fundamental thesis is undercut by the incredibly poor job of fact checking by Mr. Hurley and his editors. Lets take two very fundamental mistakes that could have been corrected with even the most basic fact checking.For one, the author couldn't even get the name of the CEO of Natrol, who he claims to have interviewed, correct. The name of Natrol's founder and Chairman of the Board is Elliott Balbert. Mr. Hurley repeatedly refers to him as Mitchell Balbert. Did anyone bother to do any fact checking? This mistake could have been discovered if anyone associated with the publication of this book had simply gone to Natrols web page and verified the name of the companys Chairman of the Board. Let's take another, even more fundamental error give the subject matter of this publication. Mr. Hurley discusses the plight of a woman who claims that her nose fell off because of a product she put on it to treat what she thought was skin cancer. Suspend reality and set aside whatever questions you have about someone who claims to be a nurse self-treating her skin cancer in the manner described by Mr. Hurley. The real problem is that any topical product such as the one described in this section of Mr. Hurley's book is not a dietary supplement, and cannot be legally sold as one in the United States. By law such products are drugs. If either Mr. Hurley or his editors had bothered to look at the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, they could have avoided this fundamental mistake. If the author could make these kinds of basic mistakes and his editors could bother to undertake the effort to fact check such basic assertions like these, what level of confidence should anyone have in Mr. Hurley's "facts"? In the interests of full disclosure, I am an attorney specializing in food in drug law. Many of my clients are in the dietary supplement/natural products industry.

Everyone Who Takes Vitamins Should Read This Book:
This is an important book. We read about melamine in pet food from China killing our pets, and we assume our own government regulates American products to prevent such tragedies. It does, for food and drugs. But there is a crucial loophole. Since the DSHEA was passed in 1994, anything sold as a diet supplement bypasses government regulation. The fiction is that these supplements are food; that people are taking them to replace something lacking in their diet. The reality is that no one has ever had a deficiency of St. John's wort or echinacea in their diet: people are taking these for medicinal purposes. Drugs can't go on the market until they are tested for effectiveness and safety; known side effects must be communicated to the consumer; there is a system in place to detect problems after marketing; there are safeguards of quality and dosage control. None of this is true for diet supplements. An independent lab that tests vitamins and diet supplements estimates that there is only a 75% chance that you are getting what the label says. These products are widely assumed to be safe because they are natural. Hurley explains why this is a false assumption. About a third of prescription drugs come from natural sources. A drug is a drug, whether it was made in a plant or in a lab. Anything natural that has a therapeutic effect is likely to have side effects. We are increasingly seeing reports of people whose diet supplements interfered with the prescription drugs they were taking or contributed to excessive bleeding after surgery, people who required liver transplants after taking Kava kava, people who developed kidney failure after taking a weight loss pill, and people like Steve Bechtel who might be alive today if he had not used ephedra. People complain about "Big Pharma" but the diet supplement industry is a hugely profitable business that has deliberately organized itself and successfully lobbied to change our laws for their own financial benefit. They say they are protecting the public's right to choose, but they are also undermining the public's right to be safe. And the worst thing is that they are misinforming the public. Hurley names names and reports a surprising number of known scam artists and convicted felons in the business. Hurley lambastes the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: it has spent many millions of our tax dollars checking out unlikely remedies, and so far the results of all its research have been almost exclusively negative. Notably, recent NCCAM studies have concluded with a high degree of confidence that echinacea, saw palmetto, and glucosamine/chondroitin are ineffective. Hurley covers the evidence for vitamin pills and shows how recent studies are increasingly showing that they probably do more harm than good. He finds only two supplements that have good evidence behind them for use by the general public. If I hadn't already thrown my multivitamins away after doing my own research, I would have done so after reading this book. Hurley discusses why intelligent people forget the "buyer beware" principle and fall for diet supplement claims. We have been sold a bill of goods, both by cynical marketers and by well-meaning but misinformed friends. There is a huge body of mythology out there, and we owe it to ourselves to apply our critical thinking skills to the claims. I support the right of everyone to choose diet supplements, but I also support the right of everyone to have all the information needed to make an informed choice. This book is a valuable tool to help the consumer understand what he is really buying. It should open a lot of eyes. I think everyone who buys a diet supplement or even a multivitamin owes it to himself to know what is in this book.