Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

fda.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 433 posts

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

#331

Post by davidthewatson »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #285
psychlops wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A business should only be permitted to exist if the government allows it." What could go wrong?

That’s a bit of a stretch. You’re not allowed to start a business selling cocaine. You’re not allow to start an airline without adhering to regulations. You’re not allow to sell certain unapproved pharmaceuticals or medical devices. This is a relatively narrow scope.

The problem is that some medical devices are approved despite their being demonstrably deadly as they are designed, manufactured, shipped, and used without sufficient oversight by the governing body of apologists put in place to oversee them. This pattern has only worsened since therac 25.

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

#332

Post by growse »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #325
rchaud wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> accurately labeled product with a risk-benefit trade off, the customer knows what the product is and is exercising informed consent, and the government says they can't have it anyway. The FDA's regulatory purview is to limit the collateral damage (negative externalities) of even accurately labeled products. Informed consent from the customer is one side of the equation. Unfortunately they cannot consent to conditio…

> Unfortunately they cannot consent to conditions like "Don't burden the hospital system if you take the wrong dosage". By this logic the FDA would have to ban Tylenol and Robitussin. Tens of thousands of ER visits every year. The government should generally be concerned with preventing deception and coercion and pricing externalities, because otherwise people have the incentive to do them and they would be prolific.…

> By this logic the FDA would have to ban Tylenol and Robitussin. Tens of thousands of ER visits every year.

It's almost like there's a balance of harms to be evaluated.

I'd bet the cheap availability of paracetamol etc. saves more hospital visits than it causes, but I don't have the data to hand.

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

#333

Post by Tao3300 »

sameermanek wrote: post #260

Amazon was a great site! I still remember buying my first converse from amazon in 2011. Back then, there were no nike stores in my town in India and i badly wanted one. I bought from a few local resellers who sold me duplicate products and i wasted a lot of my money on that. Now, the tables have turned. If i want a genuine product, i often shop locally rather than amazon. They even messed up my socks and sent duplica…

IMO Cons (at least Chuck Taylors) themselves have been counterfeit garbage for a while now. They imbue the soles with paper so they can dodge tariffs by calling them slippers. They don't pass the savings from this on to the consumer, and the traction is terrible.

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

#334

Post by fluidcruft »

rchaud wrote: post #318
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a side note, this letter is exactly why I think a regulatory agency like the FDA is absolutely necessary. This isn't what anybody objects to about the FDA. "You have to list what's in the product" is a simple rule that every knows, is easy to comply with, and doesn't require any government interaction even in the case of a suspected violation because the FDA can just buy the product to test it and compare the la…

> accurately labeled product with a risk-benefit trade off, the customer knows what the product is and is exercising informed consent, and the government says they can't have it anyway. The FDA's regulatory purview is to limit the collateral damage (negative externalities) of even accurately labeled products. Informed consent from the customer is one side of the equation. Unfortunately they cannot consent to conditio…

I'm not really sure what you're referring to, but the closest I can interpolate is that you are probably confusing the FDA with the DEA.

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

#335

Post by AnthonyMouse »

riversflow wrote: post #324
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People do disregard labels including those with allergies. Exception that proves the rule. The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. If you have an allergy and don't read the label, that's on you, not the company or the government. > Ahh, but the risks are such companies will still put that label on everything unless companies where required to only put such a label on products with signifi…

> The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. This is just flat out wrong, and pretty gross. The purpose of the law is to protect people . Not white people, not land-owning people, not smart people, not literate people, not able-bodied people, not "reasonable" people. People. Full stop. Assuming people are reasonable is a recipe for disaster, and ablest. Perhaps one day someone you know will ge…

I hope your argument isn't that only white people can exercise reason.

If you have a mental illness you can go to the store and buy rat poison and eat it. The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity.

Acting within reason in that context is getting treatment, which is a whole different set of laws.

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

#337

Post by bradfa »

abracadaniel wrote: post #265
schemescape wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I filtered to “sold by Walmart” (I forget the exact terminology, but customer support confirmed it was not from a marketplace seller), but the item I received had an Amazon return label and was shipped from an Amazon warehouse. That was the last time I bought from Walmart in an attempt to avoid Amazon’s shenanigans.

There is absolutely a tier of marketplace seller that bypasses that filter. I was trying to buy rechargeable batteries just yesterday and noticed this. If you look carefully, they are still listed as sold by a marketplace seller. Very frustrating, as it’s gotten nearly impossible to find a retailer that isn’t secretly selling me crap from the back of someone’s van.

I’ve given up buying rechargeable batteries online from anywhere except B&H in NYC and then only Panasonic branded ones at that. For a short time Amazon Basics rechargeables were decent but that was quite a while ago and only for a short time.

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

#338

Post by bradfa »

schemescape wrote: post #174
bradfa wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Walmart lets you easily filter search results for only things sold by Walmart itself. That makes it fine by me to be both a seller and marketplace. Amazon does not make such filtering easy at all.

Anecdote: I filtered to “sold by Walmart” (I forget the exact terminology, but customer support confirmed it was not from a marketplace seller), but the item I received had an Amazon return label and was shipped from an Amazon warehouse. That was the last time I bought from Walmart in an attempt to avoid Amazon’s shenanigans.

That’s frustrating. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at many of my interactions with Walmart when ordering online. Once even got same day delivery for free and without requesting it. Maybe I’m an outlier?

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

#339

Post by samstave »

noodlesUK wrote: post #26

I think with the state of things, Amazon should be completely banned from selling anything that might be construed a supplement. They have such lax controls that your protein powder or vitamin pills might contain pretty much anything. Even reputable brands bought from their brand storefront might be counterfeit [1]. You’d be shocked at the number of things that are counterfeit. A friend of mine recently bought a nich…

>>...the state of things...

If you're not familiar with Skinny Puppy (industrial band)

There is a lyric in a song "...define... the state of things...

https://youtu.be/sDEhCm0pxCo?t=271

"...that paper shredder, patent tender, puts us back in time again...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KHDb9xwHvc

Skinny puppy is from an AI cultural perspective, where they audience is a bunch of ~50 year old dorks (yes, population, we are fucking old - but we built things)

1. the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDEhCm0pxCo

2. Reference: https://youtu.be/sDEhCm0pxCo?t=271

(about to filter this through AI topaz and see if can get a better qual vid - but this song is a Hex on Exxon mobile (in response to valdez spills and oil profit demons)

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

#340

Post by Retric »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #335
riversflow wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. This is just flat out wrong, and pretty gross. The purpose of the law is to protect people . Not white people, not land-owning people, not smart people, not literate people, not able-bodied people, not "reasonable" people. People. Full stop. Assuming people are reasonable is a recipe for disaster, and ablest. Perhaps one day someone you know will ge…

I hope your argument isn't that only white people can exercise reason. If you have a mental illness you can go to the store and buy rat poison and eat it. The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity. Acting within reason in that context is getting treatment, which is a whole different set of laws.

This isn’t about extremely dumb behavior, this is about extreme consequences for reasonable actions.

If you walk up to a food truck you shouldn’t need to worry about long term mercury exposure from a single lunch. But the same is true if you happen to eat the same item from the same truck for 30 years.

The maximum allowable exposure from food is very different between those two cases. But the second case isn’t unreasonable so that’s what the standard should be set for.

Post reply on HN