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Comment by beejiu | Hacker News Reader

And the reason for those restrictions is to protect consumers. If there was evidence that fish oil pills improved health, RB would have paid for the medical research already.

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Note that Lovaza is a fish oil preparation that is FDA-approved for treatment of "very high" triglyceride levels. There's probably a patent issue preventing other similar agents getting approved for the same indication for a number of years.

There's some evidence, enough that some doctors will recommend you take them, but there's not strong enough evidence that the FDA will let you make the marketing claim.

There is absolutely NO conclusive evidence. Your doctor is not a scientist (http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/328/7454/0.9.full.pdf). It's not up to doctors to decide what works and what doesn't. The fact that doctors prescribe Omega 3 pills means absolutely nothing. The fact that there is no scientific evidence to say the pills are conclusively beneficial DOES mean something. The only evidence of effect has been based on studies of large groups of people who claimed to consume Omega 3 or not. However, proper blind experiments do not reach any conclusive outcome. There is no evidence to suggest the effect is anything but correlatory. (That said, most supplementary pills will do you no harm, either.)

Even RB themselves write this on the homepage: "Supportive, but not conclusive research shows that consumption of EPA and DHA Omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease."

I didn't say there was conclusive evidence, and I agree that correlational evidence is low quality. A large randomized study on Omega 3 consumption would really help here, but in the mean time we have to use the evidence that's available.

(Though http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/omega-3-fatty-ac... judges the evidence behind the pills as "strong scientific evidence for this use" in several categories.)

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