Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Recent news about the War-on-Freedom

The campaign against nutritional supplements — that is, the war to deprive us of our rights to use them — is heating up. The focus is on athletic performance enhancers, which is the arena where freedom-haters think they have their best chance at whittling away the laws that still to some extent protect our freedom of choice. The news media are full of stories about certain sports figures that supposedly have been killed by ephedra or other supplements. However, a close reading of even the most luridly written stories reveals that the real evidence points to other causes for the deaths of these athletes. What we are seeing is nothing more than a cynical campaign of distortion and lies by government agencies and others who stand to profit by misinforming and confusing the public.

One of the better examples of misinformation is a story by Denver Post Sports Writer Mike Klis about drug testing of baseball players. Klis claims that “By definition, steroids are complex hormones that enhance testosterone levels, which in turn promote muscle growth.” — a statement that is completely wrong. (Some steroids enhance testosterone levels, some do not. Some promote muscle growth, some do not. And ‘steroids’ are not defined by what they do, they are defined by their molecular structure.) Klis also says that “testosterone is an ingredient in many legal supplements such as creatine and androstenedione.” The fact is that neither of these supplements ever contains testosterone as an ingredient.

Judging by the quotes Klis uses in his article, it seems that he takes it for granted that players’ should have no right to decide what methods to use to improve their performance, and should have no right to resist having their bodies invaded by drug testers. It’s easy to see why the American people are, on the whole, so misguided about drugs and supplements — their main sources of information are clueless sports writers.

Link to the news article:

Rockies speak out as drug testing set to begin

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One way to lead people astray in their thinking is to state a fact and then talk about something else as if it were still the same subject. The FDA often uses this tactic to fool people into believing that its rules are designed to ensure that product labels state the truth about the product. But in reality the FDA’s labelling rules have nothing to do with truth. They simply prohibit supplement labels from stating that a supplement can cure, mitigate or treat any disease even if it is, in fact, an effective treatment for a disease! In other words, no necessary connection exists between what the FDA allows on a label and what the truth is.

A recent Reuters news article illustrates the “double-think” employed by the FDA in discussing its enforcement activities against supplement companies. First the reader is told, correctly, that “Federal law prohibits makers of dietary supplements from claiming that their products can cure, mitigate or treat diseases.” Then such claims are called “drug claims”, falsely implying that the manufacturer is marketing the product as a drug instead of a supplement. And finally, the reader is told that the “FDA is absolutely committed to ferreting out and removing from the marketplace any products that make false and misleading claims.” — this being an attempt to fool the reader into equating violations of the labelling rules with the making of false and misleading claims.

A link to the news story:

FDA Seizes Dietary Supplements Bearing Drug Claims

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The news industry, in its eagerness to curry favor with its government news sources, has lately been publishing many stories purporting to warn readers of the dangers of using supplements. Seldom, if ever, do the so-called “journalists” who write these stories ever ask penetrating questions of their sources, nor do they do any independent analysis of the information they receive. In effect, the journalists are acting as passive channels for whatever hidden agendas their government sources may be promoting. A news story by Linda Marsa of the Los Angeles Times shows how this process works.

The story begins with the ominous statement that supplements can cause side effects, which in turn can be life-threatening. Then there is a list of terrible results that are said to result from supplement use: “heart attacks, liver failure, bleeding, seizures and death”. The story then discusses a one-year study of supplement side effects conducted by a group of poison-control centers in the U.S. The data used for the study were a collection of reports made to these centers by people who were having medical symptoms after ingesting supplements. The news story acknowledges that “the majority of symptoms were mild”, but goes on to list the symptoms that weren’t, including “chest pains, irregular heartbeats, tightness in the chest and throat, trouble breathing, seizures, coma, heart attacks and death”. Then the reader is told that the FDA estimates that “less than 1 percent of adverse reactions from supplement usage are officially reported”. (How the FDA arrived at this estimate is anyone’s guess. The most reasonable explanation is that they just made it up.)

A careful look at the study described in the news article reveals a somewhat different picture. The data, which were compiled from phone calls made in 1998 to eleven poison-control centers, consisted of 489 cases that the researchers decided were probably the result of supplement ingestion. Many of these were unintentional ingestions of excessive amounts. In the majority of cases (70%) the symptoms were mild. There were 28 cases considered severe, and 4 cases that resulted in death.

To put things in perspective, let’s assume for the sake of argument that this study correctly reflects the risks of supplement use. How does this risk compare with the risk of other common activities — such as travelling in a car? Taking into account the fact that the 11 poison-control centers used in the supplement study represent 17% of such centers in the U.S., we arrive at a figure of 15 deaths per year from supplement use. According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 41,501 fatalities to people travelling in automobiles in the U.S. in the year 1998. That is 2766 times as many deaths as the 15 supposed supplement-related deaths for that same period. Even if we accepted the FDA’s fabricated figure of “less than 1 percent” of the supplement reactions being reported, and assumed that deaths from supplement usage go similarly unreported, car travel would still be more deadly than supplement use. Yet nobody is suggesting that automobiles be banned.

Why, then, is there so much eagerness to ban supplements? What motivates the movement against supplements? More to the point, who would benefit the most if supplements were made illegal? Several groups come to mind: the medical profession, the law enforcement industry, pharmaceutical companies, black marketeers, headline-hungry politicians, and the handful of people who would otherwise overdose themselves. Why should the interests of any of these groups take precedence over our freedom to use nutritional supplements to improve our bodies and minds?

Link to the news story:

Study: Dietary supplements can harm

Link to the supplement study (you’ll have to register for free access to the article):

Adverse events associated with dietary supplements: an observational study

Link to statistics on transportation safety (or lack thereof):

Motor Vehicle Safety Data

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To close this article we have an obnoxious little UPI news story about the supposed threat posed to society by anti-aging drugs. This time it is the so-called “bioethicists” who are looking for excuses to prevent people from benefitting from a technology that has yet to be developed. The interviewees are quoted as calling for a public debate on anti-aging technologies. When someone calls for a “public debate” about something, what they really mean is that they want to stir up opposition to it. No doubt in coming years we will see an anti-rejuvenation movement take shape, and we’ll have to fight for our rights in that arena, too, in much the same way that we are now having to fight for access to body-enhancement technologies.

Link to the news story:

Anti-aging drugs may change society