With all of the cry wolf alternative health fear mongers falsely claiming that CODEX is coming to America, they won’t discuss the supplement industries ugly secret which is how poorly we self-regulate our industry. In a report garnering headlines at MSNBC.com, a number of supplements which claim to contain chondroitin, either didn’t or had much less than the labels claimed. This is intolerable in our industry and almost beckons government intervention.

Instead of whining about a false impending doom called CODEX (which by the way cannot come to fruition in the US because of the DSHEA bill), start getting going after the lousy manufacturers and distributors who sell crap to consumers. If this trend of bad publicity continues, then the FDA has no choice but to step in and increase surveillance. In my opinion the biggest screamers against FDA interference are those who produce lousy products or people who use questionable practices in their clinics. There is one women, who claims to be a doctor (and is a total fraud), charges $14K to come to a clinic she works at to inject people with a protocol so lacking in science, but high in hype, that people line up to have the work done on them. Unfortunately for many, the results are disastrous. I have worked with a number of them, some physicians, who have had horrible side-effects, some lasting for years.

Maybe the time has come for intelligent regulation of this industry. Sadly, as with most regulation, it will come at a terrible price.