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Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

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Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#291

Post by macNchz »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #103
ta988 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviews are transferable? I was wondering because many reviews I have seen don't seem to be for the product I am looking at at all.

It's a tactic that's been abused by third-party sellers for a long time now. They list a product, organize a bunch of paid-for 5-star reviews on another platform (you buy the product, submit a 5-star review, and they refund you the purchase cost, so you get the item for free), and then once all those 5-star reviews are in place, they eventually re-use the product page for another item entirely. It baffles me that Ama…

Perhaps forgivable that it was allowed in the first place, but unacceptable that it was allowed to continue after the first time they noticed the lack of a review requirement for product page changes being exploited in this way.

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#292

Post by bjt »

lwhi wrote: post #271
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on the flip side: the whole reason these are sold is that the FDA is preventing the substance from being sold OTC. This is not an example of a manufacturer putting something unwanted in the product. It's all just a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of a deal with willing buyers. It creates some risk of accidents, but I doubt there were any. I'm not sure the regulation here is great. As with Rx-only contraception, thes…

It's the job of a regulatory body to reduce risk. If wrongly prescribed equipment can cause harm, it's very justifiable that a license scheme is put in place.

> It's the job of a regulatory body to reduce risk.

Sure, and the parent comment's point was that there's a line where further risk reduction doesn't make sense anymore. The agency doesn't have the right incentives to stop at that line.

Plenty of very significant risks aren't regulated to the degree that Viagra and Cialis are. You don't need a note from a doctor or a govt-issued permit to buy kitchen knives or a table saw or a Bic lighter, for example.

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#293

Post by nickff »

wallaBBB wrote: post #289
nickff wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments around the world are terrible at 'catching corporations for lying' in any way. There are manifold examples in every regulatory field, in every country. Examples include Wirecard, Theranos, Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson talc, etc. In most cases, the regulators are handed the evidence, and take a long time to do anything about it. In my mind, the question is whether the massive regulatory burdens which prot…

The list of caught ones is immensely longer. It’s a cat and mouse game, it doesn’t really stop. Big pharma spends a lot of money on training the employees on how not to get caught. I worked 5 years in big pharma and it took me almost a year to understand why are the constantly repeating compliance and fair practice trainings. Giving examples how others failed, etc. Those were not there to tell you not to do it, but w…

The FDA was the regulator for Theranos' products, which were used by customers, and the SEC was the regulator for Theranos' securities.

https://theconversation.com/how-theranos-faulty-blood-tests-...

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr-24069

Wirecard was actually a much worse regulatory failure in that the regulator attempted to prosecute the reporters which revealed the affair. Not only did the regulator fail to uncover either side of Wirecard's illegal behaviour, they went after the people who did.

https://www.ft.com/content/4ebd9032-d3d1-4a9e-976c-d1235448e...

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#294

Post by AnthonyMouse »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #287
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Label the things unsafe that are currently banned. Not everything is currently banned, is it?

I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect. Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of c…

You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them.

California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their labeling rules are stupid. If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned.

This would only be a problem if you would otherwise have banned lots of things people would still want to buy given a free and informed choice, in which case actually banning them is even worse.

We didn't ban cigarettes, we informed people of the risk:

https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...

And that's one of the most addictive products known. Around the same percentage of adults smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs. So what good is the ban?

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#295

Post by jejeyyy77 »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #5

Nothing bought on Amazon should be consumed or applied topically or otherwise come into prolonged contact with your body. I learned this the hard way a few years back with some counterfeit shampoo that severely burned my scalp after a single use.

what about brand name items?

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#296

Post by lotsofpulp »

giarc wrote: post #193
stickfigure wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: What level of scrutiny do you think Amazon should provide here? In vaguely increasing level of detail/effort, it could be... * Checking the published label of items for illicit content * Checking the contents of one bottle for undeclared ingredients * Checking the contents of all bottles for undeclared ingredients * Checking the contents of all pills in all bottles for undeclared ingredients ...etc.…

GNC (and likely other online supplement stores) have an online presence and likely has some QA for the products they sell. Amazon just insists on having 1,000,000+ listings for supplements rather than a more curated list. Perhaps some categories shouldn't have endless list of products.

The only QA in the "supplement" and "vitamin" business I know of is USP:

https://www.quality-supplements.org

Although, I have no clue if USP simply rubber stamps it once time, or if they do continuous testing of the products. If I were to bet, I would say they probably do not test often enough after initial certification.

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#297

Post by ben_w »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #294
VBprogrammer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect. Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of c…

You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them. California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their label…

> But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product.

And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs.

For me vegetarian is a choice rather than mandatory, but if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known.

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#298

Post by cheald »

dahart wrote: post #41
bpodgursky wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have an honest conversation about whether there's any good reason for Viagra to require a prescription? The barrier right now is that you have to waste 2 hours and $100 to tell a doctor that you have ED. What's the point? It's not stopping anyone except people too poor or busy to jump through the hoops.

If we’re going to have an honest conversation, Sildenafil does have some serious potential side effects and contraindications. Googling “why does viagra require a prescription?” I get an answer attributed to Healthline: “due to these severe (but rare) side-effects, Viagra requires a prescription”. At least acknowledge that, it is a good reason. A doc visit does take time but it neither takes 2 hours nor costs $100 fo…

Aspirin has "severe (but rare) side effects", too. Many of the OTC pharmaceuticals we take have potentially nasty side effects. The only 100% safe stuff is homeopathic, and that's because it's not actually chemically active. I'd be a lot more convinced by the argument if it weren't widely OTC in most of the rest of the world.

Interestingly, there do seem to be long-term side effects of sildenafil/tadalafil - though they seem to be positive. There is a possible link between long-term usage of ED drugs and cognitive protections in old age:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6705107/

https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#299

Post by Retric »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #294
VBprogrammer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect. Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of c…

You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them. California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their label…

> You're assuming that people would disregard the labels.

People do disregard labels including those with allergies.

> If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned.

Ahh, but the risks are high enough that companies will still put that label on everything unless companies where required to only put such a label on products with significant risk which then gets back to regulators.

Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

#300

Post by ben_w »

RobotToaster wrote: post #257
kayodelycaon wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having things unnecessarily banned is a trade off of enforcing regulations effectively. Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. The FDA could do better but you’ll never fix that problem unless you don’t allow the FDA to enforce regulations.

> Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold. Why? If someone buys deadly nightshade, and gets deadly nightshade, why should the government care?

My mum was a big believer in homeopathy and Bach flower remedies.

The homeopathic sodium chloride and silicon dioxide sugar tablets probably didn't hurt me, but given how dumb Bach flower remedies are it's entirely possible she randomly and unwittingly dosed me with a small quantity of ground up something in the Solanaceae family.

Governments care because well meaning hippy parents who don't know any better feeding snake oil to their kids gets headlines in newspapers.

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