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Comment by numbsafari | Hacker News Reader

It’s also really had to control quality of “natural” substances. Sure, the box might say “100% organic bobloblaw”, but it could just be viagra.

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Chocolate from all kinds of produces has high levels of heavy metals, yet it's still sold everywhere. It's not hard to control the quality, and safety, but it's easier to look the other way and profit.

https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...

And many pharmaceuticals start from natural substances that had to be refined. There's nothing humans don't understand about refining and purifying, we've done it for a very, very long time. It's a solved problem. Greed is not.

The Pharmacopoia shows that it's easy to control quality of natural drugs - maximum acceptable level of contaminants or adulterants, minimum level of active principle (nowadays with HPLC). It's just that the feeble government can't rouse itself to enforce truth-in-advertising standards.

When it comes to natural medicine, the FDA loves to capitalize on instances of adulteration and mislabeling. This enables them to trumpet the allegedly unsafe nature of anything they don't regulate, and lets them spread F.U.D. about those products, until finally they can yank it all from the market.

There are plenty of reputable manufacturers who wouldn't think of adulterating medicine or misleading their customers, but all it takes is a couple sleazy Chinese vendors on Amazon to spoil the entire apple-barrel.

You don't even need to resort to racism or jingoism. You can visit your local GNC or Target and find products made right here in America that contain adulterated medicine or misleading claims.

In fact I have made some orders from vendors of natural medicine, and I believe they may be legally bound to lie and falsify instructions for use, lest they run afoul of the FDA.

For example, my potassium iodide specifically instructs the user to consume it orally, which is dangerously incorrect. I believe that if they put the correct instructions on the bottle, the product would be so efficacious that it'd demand removal from the market.

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