Bush Administration to Ban Ephedra I have ranted extensively about ephedra – just go and search for multiple rants (22).
Ephedra, also known as Ma huang, Chinese Ephedra and epitonin, poses health hazards ranging from high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, nerve damage, injury, insomnia, tremors and headaches to seizures, heart attack, stroke and death, the FDA says.
Ephedra has been linked to as many as 100 deaths, officials have said.
The ban is likely to be met with litigation from manufacturers who dispute the agency’s assertion that ephedra is a health risk.
Ephedra, which has also been used by many athletes to enhance performance, is believed to have killed 23-year-old Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler (search) last February.
Bechler died during spring training while trying to lose weight. Toxicology tests showed ephedra was in his system.
The government ban, one of the first involving a dietary supplement, comes after Thompson urged Congress this summer to require manufacturers to acknowledge potential side effects and to rewrite a law that rolled back dietary-supplement regulations.
And if ever a law needed rewriting – this law does!!!!!!
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2 Responses to Ephedra – banned!
Bernie Simon
December 30th, 2003 at 6:56 pm
And if ever a law needed rewriting – this law does!!!!!!
Forty years of drug regulation under the Harris-Kefauver amendment has not increased either the safety or efficacy of the prescription medicines. It has increased the cost and time it takes to bring drugs to market. Before bringing supplements and herbs under this system of regulation, I’d like to have confidence the system works.
There’s no clear dividing line between nutrition and medicine. The idea that chamomile tea, prune juice, and cod liver oil should be subject to the same stringent regulation as chemotherapy agents boggles the imagination. You may wish to take us back to the bad old days when the FDA impounded shipments of evening primrose oil and prosected senior citizens who used DHEA for illegal prosession of steroids. But millions of Americans are heartily sick of the arrogance of a medical establishment that looks with disdain on any approach it has not blessed and will fight tooth and nail to keep supplements legal.
What makes ephedra dangerous is how it has been used, an approach sometimes called “green allopathy”. That is, the administration by rote of large doses of ephedra in the form purified extracts to override the body’s natural metabolic processes. Used in this way ephedra certainly is risky. But it’s the allopathic approach that’s risky and it’s ironic that the same voices calling fot ephedra to be banned employ the same risky approach with other medications and with the same unfortunate results.
Chully
January 5th, 2004 at 2:33 pm
My wife and I have studied and used herbs as our primary method of healthcare in a country where medical doctors are *still* the third leading cause of death. I personally feel that the banning of a useful herb is a knee-jerk reaction, with no supporting data on the health or potential abusive use of the herb in the very small number of people who died taking it.
What seems highly suspect, is that the government did not, at the same time, announce a banning of the synthetic version of the main active ingredient; pseudo-ephedrine. This compound is found in cold rememdy tablets at doses easily 2 to 4 times the dosage in most of the herbal suppliments, and HUNDREDS of times greater than that of the ephedrine content in the whole herb.
155 people? What about the tens of thousands of cigarette smoking related deaths each year? When is that ban coming? Answer: never, as long as the government continues to capitalize on the sale of cigarettes through taxes and other kick backs.
Bottom line of this post is that something stinks here, and it doesn’t smell like ma huang.