Vitamins: - The assault intensifies

Industry watchers have been forecasting the imminent demise of the drug companies after all the bad news about their harmful products has finally reached the media. If this highly premature and optimistic eventuality does occur, it won't happen before the pharmaceuticals' thousands of lobbyists and pressure groups have brought down the nutritional manufacturers.
The major scene of action is the United States, where the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) is taking a keen interest in restricting the sale of vitamins. Vitamins and other health supplements are currently protected under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (Dshea) 1994, which has allowed for the free sale of vitamins and supplements provided the manufacturers make no health claims for them.
But the FDA is working with several groups to step up quality control at the manufacturing stage, and the regulator is also making noises about the safety of supplements.
As a result, a new action group - the Coalition to Preserve DSHEA Mission - has been created, and we hope it gets the support from the vitamin industry. When we set up the Health Freedom Movement, we found it all but impossible to stop the internal bickering between the groups and associations.
Meanwhile the EU machine against alternative medicine rolls on. A new German report is suggesting a very low 'safe upper limit' for vitamins. For instance, the group - the recently created Federal Institute for Risk Assessment - is recommending a level of just 225 mg for vitamin C whereas many health stores in the UK currently sell 1000 mg tablets. Maximum recommended doses for vitamin B6 have been set at 5.4 mg against the 25 mg currently available in the UK, while B12 is recommended at just 9 mcg compared with 300 mcg available in many supplements.
The last hopes to overturn the legislation rest with the Alliance for Natural Health, a pressure group whose legal challenge is being heard at the European Court of Justice next Tuesday (January 25).