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Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
371–380 of 433 posts
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them. >If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now. > The law doesn't add…
> My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them.
I'm saying that people can make mistakes and incur the consequences of those mistakes. The only way to prevent this is to remove all choice.
This has nothing to do with whether you have some kind of disability. Have someone read it to you, use a magnifying glass, look it up on the internet with a screen reader, buy it from a store you trust not to carry controversial products, do as you like.
> The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now.
Guardrails are for preventing accidents, not purposeful action. You can't convert the entire world into a padded room. Suicide guards are a political maneuver meant to demonstrate something being done when politicians don't want to address underlying causes, not any kind of solution when there are an unending number of other bridges or tall buildings etc.
Their purpose is to prevent enough people from jumping off the same bridge for a newspaper to put a morbid number in a headline, when they should be addressing why those people wanted to jump.
> Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time.
Excellent example of regulation created by the need of legislators to be seen doing something even when nothing needs doing.
Poisons aren't rare. You can also buy a bottle of methanol, or various cleaning solvents, petroleum products, coolants etc. Many over the counter drugs are fatal in high doses.
Someone could drown, in water. Which is also fatal if you drink too much. Or too little.
Danger is everywhere and it's fine.
> The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety.
That's exactly what we have. Safety measures with body counts. Mandating inaction in cases of uncertainty is a harm in every case where something is better than nothing.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 particul…
> 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.
Which is why we communicate. If the bridge has loose stones, you put up a sign that says the bridge is hazardous and has loose stones and provide a map with an alternate route. Now the person who comes up to the bridge knows that a professional evaluation designated the bridge as hazardous and why.
Most of the time that means you'll want to go around. But if the bridge is only two feet off the ground and you can see your lost dog on the other side, you might reasonably be willing to exercise careful footing and risk twisting your ankle to get to your dog.
Whereas if it's a hundred feet off the ground, you can try to get your dog later. But you might still cross if was something more serious, like you're in the woods alone and injured, you have to get across to call for help before you bleed to death and the alternate route is several hours longer.
It's a lot easier to get general information to the person in the situation than the other way around.
> 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.
If a person in a situation makes a judgement call and they're wrong, they could die. If a legislator makes a judgement call for everyone all at once, people will die because different people will be on different sides of the trade off, possibly more of them than would otherwise if they'd each been able to make their own decision in context, and certainly some of them who would have lived if they'd been able to choose for themselves and choose differently.
It sounds like you want to trade the lives of people who choose well for the lives of people who choose wrong without even knowing which number is bigger. Or considering that the number of people who choose well could be increased in various ways other than coercion.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#374I’m glad the conclusion says the products lists are not the only ones to which this letter applies. Otherwise Amazon could just remove the products mentioned and make the FDA play wack-a-mole. As a side note, this letter is exactly why I think a regulatory agency like the FDA is absolutely necessary. This stuff can kill people and it is impossible for the average person to protect themselves.
> 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…
Sorry, I do not quite follow. FDA regulates the marketing of drugs, biologics, medical devices, etc. They do not regulate the practice of medicine. Your doctor can prescribe whatever they want “off label”.
So for example, manufacturers cannot market erbitux as a cure for migraine headaches because no sponsor has submitted an application to FDA with compelling evidence that it is safe and effective for that particular indication. However, your doctor can still prescribe it for migraines if they so choose. Whether your insurance will pay for it is a different story.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#375Heard a talk once by someone that managed nutrition for an NFL team. She said periodically clusters of players would pop positive for meth and inevitably it would be some new supplement that was giving them results and they told all their teammates about it. They’d just tell them to quit using it and move on. Interesting story, possibly true.
Wait. "some new supplement that was giving them results"? Testing positive for meth?
So, a performance enhancing drug, probably some kind of amphetamine if not straight meth, and it is fine? The story may be true but blaming Amazon sounds like a lousy excuse. Someone must know what he is doing.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#376Earlier 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…
Agreed with your post – except on the “Kids pajamas” – they should probably be reclassified under the “Anything which goes in or on my body” list you made. Whether it’s undisclosed flame retardants, toxic dyes, or other harmful substances, kids bodies are generally more susceptible to harm via environmental pollutants. Such harms may not be at all obvious in the short term, but could still be very harmful over the lo…
Can you name any specific instance where people were harmed by toxins in clothing? The skin tends to be a pretty good barrier. Creams and cosmetics are often designed to penetrate it, but clothing fits within my risk profile. I come in contact, skin-ways, with all sorts of nastier things day-to-day, even when working on my house.
My concerns around clothing have more to do with durability, comfort, and quality. For example, bad pyjamas can be not very breathable or collect sweat.
That's pretty easy to tell, though.
So that's shady clothing fits in my risk profile.
As a footnote: I'm not implying it should fit into your risk profile; I'd avoid based on hypothetical risks like lead contamination, PFAS, and other hypotheticals if I earned perhaps 50% more than I do today. I'm asking since if there are specific instances (not of contamination but of harm), I might change my risk profile.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but it's obvious, unlike Amazon where you get duped. So if you want a real name brand product you shop at none of the above, and if you want cheap junk you go to AliExpress. There's not a large reason to roll the dice on something in between (Amazon) unless you want junk with much faster shipping and streamlined returns (at double the price of AE).
It's just super ironic the parent post said they avoid counterfeits and knock-offs by shopping on Aliexpress. Aliexpress is basically counterfeit and knock-off central... On Amazon, look at who the seller is. If it's Amazon or the actual manufacturer, you'll be fine. For the rest, you need to do some additional research on the seller's business - but it's understandable to not want to do that effort. With that said,…
> It's just super ironic the parent post said they avoid counterfeits and knock-offs by shopping on Aliexpress. Aliexpress is basically counterfeit and knock-off central...
It doesn't. You read it wrong. Read it again.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Calling for Amazon to be banned from selling supplements is extreme If a physical store near you sold fake everything, including supplements, you’d think it extreme to shut it down?
Wouldn’t it be better for all parties involved to keep it open and implement regulations requiring they be honest about products? The customers could use the marketplace to get the products they actually want, and the business gets to benefit. Note that idea isn’t mutually incompatible with penalizing the company for all the counterfeit products it sold/marketed.
> implement regulations requiring they be honest about products?
Surely the US has regulation requiring this? So if it’s being ignored, what does the state do?
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#379Earlier 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.
There is a blackmarket of repurposed Amazon Product Pages. This is a problem that Amazon knows about and does nothing to resolve. So the way it works is that some company makes a page for a stuffed animal for example. They name the product page appropriately and start selling their toys. They push hard and gets lots of reviews and build up the aSEO (amazon search Optimization) for that page. They build up 1,000 posit…
I have heard similar stories of Amazon fraud like you describe. I don't know if everything is true, but this is a problem which can be solved with PKI.
With PKI, the customer reviews a product, and puts the hash of his review somewhere on the internet. The hash might be the hashed version of a JSON like so: {company: "Stuffed Animal company", product: "Stuffed Animal", review: "Very good stuffed animal toy"}
When the buyer tries to buy the product, he will verify each review against a public key, and check if all info in JSON verifies correctly. If it does not, then something fishy is going on.
The only problem is where to put the hash of the review. An official database of some kind is required, by a government or something like blockchain. That's why some people refer to blockchain as a "source of truth". It has the potential to contain information no human power can delete from the internet or modify in any way.
Re: Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ascorbic acid is cheap in bulk, something like less than $5/kg if you buy it by the ton. Maybe cheap enough to be the filler. And it is white and odorless in its pure form. It does have an acidic taste though, because it is an acid. I have some of it in my kitchen (pure bulk powder, not bought on Amazon) and I can tell you by experience.
Did you get it to make cheese sauce with?
Actually, I got it for making bread, because someone recommended it to me. I didn't really test the difference though. I didn't know about cheese sauce, I may take a look at it.
I have 250g of the stuff, probably enough to last me a lifetime considering the quantities used.