The public is under attack, as if that's news. The Internet – nowadays available to anyone with a computer – offers all sorts of products and services that we should be able to assume have at least been considered by one of our federal agencies for legitimacy before being offered for sale. In the USA, the Federal Drug Administration [FDA] and the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] are in place to serve in that capacity, but they don’t because they can’t.
Anyone with a credit card can freely order diet drugs, sexual dysfunction devices and supplements, and a variety of items that are said to enhance athletic performance, and these are often sold exclusively via the Internet to escape regulation. Take one example, the “Slimming Beauty Bitter Orange Slimming Capsules,” which the vendors assured customers were “100% herbal” and “a Natural vitamin and calcium capsule.” But these pills – illegally – contained a powerful prescription-strength stimulant that in some patients could have brought about a heart attack. Luckily, this product was “withdrawn at the FDA’s request” before anyone was fatally affected by it.
Hold on! The FDA requested that it be withdrawn? They didn’t order its removal from sale? No, because the FDA can’t require that a product be intensively, independently, examined. They could do this themselves and pay for the research, spending our taxpayer money to do it, but they haven’t the budget. The quackery is just offered for sale. FDA surveillance and/or testing is limited by the huge size of the Internet industry, the other FDA duties, and lack of empowerment and resources to examine products before they’re put on sale. It’s a case of available manpower. FDA spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey says:
"The reality is that we are lacking resources in terms of authority and money… we allocate our funds to best protect the public health…"
But the number of supplements, alone – from an estimated 40,000 to 75,000 including everything from vitamin C to weight-loss products – means that neither the FDA nor the FTC can possibly keep track of them all. And anyone, anywhere in the world, can set up a web page with a US address on it, and stay safely outside of the law. Technically, the FTC has the responsibility of regulating fraudulent advertising and the merchandising of supplements and services, but that would mean monitoring literally thousands of products and hundreds of thousands of ads. The result is that this agency only gets to handle a few dozen cases a year!
No, we’re simply not properly nor adequately protected from fake products, false advertising, and possibly fatal “supplements” and “services” that bring in untold sums from naïve victims. And that includes the various mystical assistance schemes offered by “psychics,” “readers,” “intuitives,” and “advisors” in the woo-woo fringe who peddle their wares via TV ads and exuberant media hosts, as well as more direct forms of print media.
We should bear in mind, too, that we invoke the disdain and anger of other global cultures that also have access to this nonsense via the USA agencies who just as easily and eagerly accept foreign currency...