More News about supplements found on MSNews tonight

[Guest guest]

DR. SCOTT A. NORTON, a Maryland dermatologist, wrote in a

letter to the editor in Thursday's New England Journal of

Medicine that because these " natural " supplements are

essentially

unregulated by the federal government, many contain a variety of

animal tissues that could spread illness such as bovine spongiform

encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease.

Eating meat from an animal with the disease is believed by

scientists to cause a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a

similar fatal brain-wasting affliction that has killed more than 50

people in Britain. No case of BSE has ever been found in the United

States.

" Organs you can never eat for food can be found raw in

dietary supplements, " Norton said in an interview.

The Council on Responsible Nutrition, the lobby for the

supplement industry, said through a spokesman that they could not

comment without reading the letter.

Norton, who is also a botanist, said he stumbled onto the

problem while visiting a health food store to show his children how

plants can be used as medicines. " I was struck by how many

products contained raw animals parts. One product had 17 bovine (cow)

organs, including many I would choose not to eat, such as brains and

testicles. "

 

UNCLEAR LABELS

And he found that those ingredients were often listed in a way

that made it difficult for people to understand what they were

taking. The product labels, he said, " often obscure the fact that

animal tissues are present. "

" I saw two jars labeled 'thymus' on the shelf side

by side, " he recalled. One contained the herb thyme. The other

contained lymph tissue from a cow, tissue that transmits the

particles responsible for deadly mad cow disease.

Because the health food industry has gotten Congress to

exempt it from regulations for product safety and

effectiveness, " there is no mechanism to regulate where that

tissue comes from. It could from a horse or a cow. You could get cow

brains from England (which had a mad cow disease outbreak) and the

label would make it look like herbal medicine, " Norton warned.

The doctor said the U.S. Department of Agriculture cannot

block the importation of potentially diseased tissues " if they

are intended for use in dietary supplements, " even though he said

the USDA considers most cow organs found in dietary supplements to be

susceptible to contamination by mad cow disease.

And because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also

forbidden from preventing the use of high-risk animal tissues in

dietary supplements, " the health food industry has no

restrictions on the source of animal tissues used in their

products, "

Norton said in his letter.

In addition to people concerned about disea

se, " vegetarians,

persons who have religious restrictions regarding the consumption of

meat, and those who find kibbled cow repugnant will also value this

information, " Norton said.

The warning is the latest from doctors concerned that

consumers may be risking serious medical problems from unregulated

dietary supplements if they assume that the products are safe because

they are labeled " all natural. "

Last month, researchers reported in the Journal on the case of

a health food product that turned out to contain a Chinese herb that

causes kidney failure and eventually leads to tumors in the kidney

and urinary tract.

The herb, Aristolochia fangchi, is often substituted for

another herb Stephania tetrandra. It was banned in Belgium in the

1990s but continues to be available in the United States.