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Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients

fda.gov

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

#351

Post by jdksmdbtbdnmsm »

partiallypro wrote: post #323
jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and availability are expensive commodities. Who's paying for that?

I literally just said that they make their money on fees from the outcome of the cases. That is how basically every personal injury case works. If they don't think the case will win, they don't take it. Personal injury/tort lawyers do not charge clients in the same way as other types of law. They especially don't do that because a) they'd make less money and b) they are often times dealing with people that couldn't a…

[dead]

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

#352

Post by error_logic »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #342
growse wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's almost like there's a balance of harms to be evaluated. Which is a highly context-specific evaluation, so is it better decided by the person with the most knowledge of their own circumstances, or across the board with no context at all?

Even that depends on the scale of the risks involved.

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

#353

Post by djur »

ben_w wrote: post #309
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They made a product and told you what was in it. You're not required to read the ingredients first but you have the opportunity to. Are you proposing that we ban beef gelatin? > if you rely on "co…

> Are you proposing that we ban beef gelatin? Although I would in general, that wasn't the point being made in that comment. The point was: nobody expects surprises. People mostly don't read lists to confirm the absence of things they think would be crazy to find. Like boiled cow bone and skin derivatives in yoghurt . > But what are you even suggesting here? The specific thing that I actually said, with no extra hidd…

> Like boiled cow bone and skin derivatives in yoghurt.

Yogurt is already made out of bovine bodily fluids. Why is it so shocking and disgusting for another bovine product to be used in it as well?

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

#354

Post by djur »

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?

A regulatory state where a government agency has to decide whether every product is sold in a way that accurately describes its risk to the consumer is going to be bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive than one where sufficiently dangerous products are banned outright.

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

#355

Post by growse »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #342
growse wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's almost like there's a balance of harms to be evaluated. Which is a highly context-specific evaluation, so is it better decided by the person with the most knowledge of their own circumstances, or across the board with no context at all?

> Which is a highly context-specific evaluation, so is it better decided by the person with the most knowledge of their own circumstances, or across the board with no context at all?

It depends on the context.

In many, many contexts, people are explicitly not the people with the most knowledge about their circumstances. When I'm crossing a pedestrian foot-bridge, I have much less knowledge about whether this particular bridge is safe or not than the people who built it and the regulators who regulated it. The same is true when I drive my car, take medication, eat food, etc. etc. etc. I make risk decisions every day, but those decisions occur within a societal context, and part of that context is a general regulatory framework.

We are not all experts in everything. Which is why we (The People) gather together and delegate that responsibility in general to bodies of experts who try to make context-aware determinations about what in general should be allowed, what shouldn't be, and what should be left up to the end-user. It's a vast spectrum, and people often disagree about what goes where - this is fine! But if you want to get rid of the spectrum and have everything decided by people who should have "the most knowledge of their own circumstances", then it sounds like you're in favour of people dying and then blaming them for it.

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

#356

Post by Exoristos »

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…

Do you really have any idea what a body of laws would look like that treated the public as though everyone has "dementia, ... a stroke," and "macular degeneration"?

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

#357

Post by lmm »

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.

I have a nut-allergic friend who has given up on reading the labels and relies on his own common sense, because the labels are on everything now. (Worse, if you look at what's happened with sesame, manufacturers now deliberately incorporate sesame into their recipes so that they can put the warning labels on, because that's cheaper than the risk of selling a product that doesn't contain sesame).

> 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.

How do you imagine that this might be accomplished? If manufacturers have the choice of a) go through an approvals process b) put a warning label on their product, they're going to pick b, every time.

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

And the result is that smoking has fallen a lot more slowly than predicted and millions of people have died.

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

#358

Post by Alupis »

blagie wrote: post #158
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.

Here's my list of things I won't buy on Amazon.com: - Anything which goes in or on my body (foods, medicines, etc.). - Anything which is easily knocked off (SD cards, memory, SSDs, etc.) - Bed sheets (oddly enough, you'll often get lies on materials and fabric) - Thing I need reliably / reliably on-time (I cancelled Prime after several shipping issues) Since I cancelled Prime, things added to this list include: - Mos…

> I'll go Aliexpress, eBay

Do you know who sells on Aliexpress, and to a large extent on eBay? The very same shady Chinese/Indian sellers peddling counterfiet products you are seeking to avoid by not shopping on Amazon.

Aliexpress was literally set up as a direct-to-US-market Chinese factory marketplace, which results in 99% counterfeit and knock-off products being pushed directly to consumers.

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

#359

Post by [deleted] »

Alupis wrote: post #358
blagie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my list of things I won't buy on Amazon.com: - Anything which goes in or on my body (foods, medicines, etc.). - Anything which is easily knocked off (SD cards, memory, SSDs, etc.) - Bed sheets (oddly enough, you'll often get lies on materials and fabric) - Thing I need reliably / reliably on-time (I cancelled Prime after several shipping issues) Since I cancelled Prime, things added to this list include: - Mos…

> I'll go Aliexpress, eBay Do you know who sells on Aliexpress, and to a large extent on eBay? The very same shady Chinese/Indian sellers peddling counterfiet products you are seeking to avoid by not shopping on Amazon. Aliexpress was literally set up as a direct-to-US-market Chinese factory marketplace, which results in 99% counterfeit and knock-off products being pushed directly to consumers.

[deleted]

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

#360

Post by psychlops »

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.

I didn't make a judgement, was just pointing out the slippery slope of your argument. If you place someone in charge of allowing things to come to market, particularly those in the role of safety, their safest option will always be to say no.
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