[Music] tonight on Frontline a multi-billion dollar a year industry the debate over supplements how could it be that you can sell something without any evidence that it's safe or effective they say their products will make you healthier consumers derive a benefit over half the country every day takes a supplement safely and effectively but critics say that many have fraudulent claims could be dangerous and should be regulated it almost takes a sacrificial lamb to die before the Food and Drug Administration can take any action correspondent Jillian Finlay investigates oh that doesn't smell good very strong fishy smell supplements and safety a Frontline New York Times special [Music] report this is a product that was formulated for people who are under severe this is an herb that would be great for older individuals that are concerned about it's estimated that half of all Americans take a health supplement every day that one is going to be amazing for supporting encapsulates the nutrients in a non-GMO soy antio it's a 30 plus billion doll industry I will guarantee you that this will change your reality within 3 to 5 days companies range from Big Pharma to M and Pop I started in my kitchen making them by hand back in the80s I would order the ingredients I would order the capsules and with a plate of a 100 capsules I would weigh out and fill them up and you have a bottle of 100 capsules of any particular vitamin you wanted do you have background in Pharmacology or medicine or any expertise in this area I did some college but most of my time was spent in the medical libraries at Stony Brook so you sort of were self-taught then were you selftaught correct yes Candace trip called her company Purity first she says she was helped by her then husband Terren Dulan a chiropractor and what was his academic background or or expertise in this area he was a chemist he was a chemist in college and then he went on to chiropractic school from Mod beginning she says she grew the business into a half a million doll a year Enterprise selling on the web in stores and through local Alternative healthc Care Providers Purity first is a great name and I said Gee how can you go wrong it's what you would imagine that you would want in every single vitamin that it's absolutely pure Vinnie Gro was an early Purity first customer the vitamins became part of his daily Quest For Better Health I felt fine and of course you know I'm running every day I'm feeling great up until the October November December time frame of 2012 where I had some very unusual symptoms it started with unexplained back pain that soon became debilitating he then started hearing from other Purity first customers with troubling symptoms of their own I'm hearing stories my daughter is an honor student she's on the swim team but she's been thrown out of school for being overly aggressive I'm talking to a woman who had lost uh her position in a choir because her voice had changed I'm talking to another woman who said I've got these incredible bleeding scales on my head and I can't go to work they were all taking the same vitamins recommended they say by Terren Duan the chiropractor now a naturopath Duan declined to be interviewed and denies any responsibility Terry had come to me in January and asked me if I thought anything was wrong because he said there was some blood tests coming back that was funky at that point we had just had Hurricane Sandy come through and a lot of people were getting sick after they were in their basements cleaning up water and that's why he had recommended people go see um this other doctor right and they started going to see doctor's faith we had an examination and he said to me what is it that all of you who've come to me in the past month and a half have one commonality you've all taken Purity first b50 vitamins it's estimated there are 85,000 dietary supplements for sale in the United States today right here I have our liposomal D this is our bopa this is an herb that would be great for older individuals that are the essential nutrients like chromium with so many pictures and promises you might assume that some government agency has approved them before allowing them onto the market the FDA does not do any review of dietary supplements before they come onto the market and I think that all consumers need to understand this no testing no obligation to provide any evidence a product is effective or even safe the one thing manufacturers do have to show is that they follow good manufacturing practices the FDA conducts inspections for that but it's limited by resources and by information we actually don't know the total number of Manufacturers that we need to be able to inspect because there is no formal registration system that is required of um um manufacturers that make dietary supplements and so we do inspections of the ones that we know about the FDA did know about a supplement manufacturer that used to operate here in 2012 and again in the spring of 2013 Mira Health Products was cited by FDA inspectors for violating manufacturing codes among the products mea produced Candace stps Purity first vitamins I had a lot of faith in Mirror because he was more of a smaller scale manufacturer he wasn't one of these big pharmaceutical company that just didn't really make you warm and fuzzy well what did you do to try to verify that this was a reputable company that would make the product that you wanted um they're supposed to test the product and give you an analysis at the end that what is in the capsule is what they've tested and the certificate is supposed to be certified and this is what your product is and did they give you those certificates I believe yes they did they did they gave us those and there didn't seem to be a problem but by 2013 there was a problem Dr Kenna spaith who specializes in environmental health is a man those pury first customers turned to to investigate their symptoms he arranged for the b50 vitamins to be tested and the results were a shock the capsules were laced with two anabolic steroids Joe quailer Candace Trip's current husband took it up with mir's owner I called Mike and said pretty much what could have happened and you know he was making the M enhancement pills and he said Joe he said if they found any type of steroids in there the only thing I could possibly think is maybe the mixer was not cleaned enough you know you go to by now Purity first customers had started hiring lawyers and sharing their stories uh change in the voice change in the sexual organs hair growth on a young lady was one of our clients basically developing mustache beard uh the female sexual organs taking on a male configuration for The Men Who ingested these things they developed what's called gynecomastia uh you end up with male breasts it would take the FDA nearly 6 months to get the Purity first vitamins off the market a response Dr spai calls glacial he declined to be interviewed on camera but he shared email exchanges with us detailing his efforts to get the FDA to act space says he suspected contamination but his first inquiry went unanswered when he emailed again asking if the lack of response was was a lack of Interest he was referred to the fda's hotline for adverse reactions called medwatch spaith had tried the line been transferred and put on hold before being disconnected twice 5 weeks later he was still frustrated will you tell me what your plans are he wrote I have 20 very worried patients and little to offer them among the officials spaith was writing to was Daniel fabricant then head of the the fda's division of dietary supplements we took that information um while it was helpful it didn't make the whole case we had to make the case at FDA and we did uh and remove the product successfully one of his biggest complaints is is the amount of time it took just to get somebody to call him back he says one of the operators she acted as if I was telling her that aliens put messages in my Cheerios now that doesn't suggest that you've got a particularly robust system in place to allow people to report problems when they happen right well I can assure you the government worked very quickly the agency is acting to remove the product across the board across the country so it's a bit more of a heavier scientific lift than just a doctor having an Intuition or a feeling about something we had to build evidence Court ready evidence to take away somebody's product somebody's manufacturing operation and that's exactly what we did and doing that in 6 months the team at the FDA worked diligently and worked quickly to do that which was a quite a successful accomplishment two women from the FDA came in and they were speaking with us about how there seems to be a problem with one of our products when we asked which product they said oh that didn't matter yet okay do you want us to stop selling the product no you don't have to stop selling the product nobody died they said nobody died those were their words their words were nobody died you don't have to pull the product if there was any concern at all what why didn't you just pull it from the market I mean why did you not do it yourself great question their response to me um was people call the FDA all the times to report minor things so don't worry about it the FDA strongly denies those things were said some vitamins manufactured here in Long Island are triggering recently issued stero in the end Purity first withdrew the V under pressure ofor miror was forced out of business by the FDA nobody from the company would speak to us 36 people are now suing the companies and no one knows how many people in total may have been harmed SPI had brought up that he was looking for a needle on a Hy for Vin Grau and his lawyer it was a sobering look into a troubled World dollar I was very concerned and then I realized that this whole industry needs change and it and how much danger we're all in not just from Purity first likely but from others that can put anything into these little bottles and and put a seal and a label on it in 2013 the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had had enough worried about the number and quality of the supplements their patients were arriving with Hospital pharmacists decided to challenge manufacturers families are showing up literally with shopping bags full of dietary supplements regulatory issues in the United States are that you have to if a patient brings a medication into a hospital we have to as pharmacist verify that this is a quality product it is what it says it is it's labeled appropriately it's being dosed appropriately and so on we got fed up we took a step back and we said okay we're going to ask these companies to at least meet a labeling standard they have to send us something called a certificate of analysis which means they've had their product analyzed by an independent party that says that what's on the labels what's in the bottle 90% of the companies never responded and of the 10% that responded of the that 10% often they would send us certificates of analysis where what was on the label wasn't even close to what was in the bottle and these were the ones who responded to us which made us fearful of an industry that we couldn't trust for example this is a aquous vitamin D drop so we use vitamin D in um premature infants it says it should have 400 international units per 1 ml of solution however it tells us that the results are that it's 213% of the labeled value so it's more than double what it says that it is so if we're dosing premature infants who need very tiny doses of this drug we're now potentially giving them double what they should get and could really put them at risk for toxicity in the end only 35 supplements met the hospital standards I come away very worried and dismayed I'm worried mostly about what um the American public is being exposed to because it's essentially a complete unknown when you're buying a dietary supplement unless you have some proof of what's in that product it could be anything at the New York Botanical Gardens you can find many of the herbs We Buy in bottles in their natural state this is black kohos commonly recommended to women to treat symptoms of menopause in 2010 gynecologist David Baker decided to check out what so many of his patients were taking he bought dozens of brands of black coo supplements and started testing the DNA 30% had no black Kash and the the samples that we found we could identify the other plants as well and they were from ornamental plants from China Baker and his colleagues published the results in an academic Journal but they didn't get much attention so they kept on testing other supplements produced results that were no less disturbing upwards of 15% of supplements like Sal pometto or not Sal pometto uh supplements like um Devil's claw 100% are not Devil's claw or contaminated with some other problem what I see in this is that there are those who take the easy way out a fraudulent way and want to put something in the bottle that's cheap and readily available and buyer beware with billions of dollars at stake it's no surprise that the supplement is industry is a powerful force in Washington there are four separate Lobby groups the largest the natural products Association headed by Daniel fabricant you know a lot of products now you'll see private label a lot of the contract manufacturers that make the private label are a members as well it's the same Daniel fabricant who until 2014 was in charge of regulating dietary supplements at the FDA he defends what critics have called a disturbing revolving door folks who understand an industry make for very effective Regulators I think that it certainly worked for the consumer benefit which at the end of the day I think FDA the industry in are in the same business is to make sure consumers have access to safe healthy products do you accept that there is a problem with adulteration though in the natural health food industry there may be some supply chain issues we need to be mindful of but again I think that there are federal authorities that cover that that ensure that products are made to you know made to certain quality parameters it's defined by law and if firms don't there are clear consequences so I think that that's the important thing is and Americans have a high degree of confidence in the products because of that but just months after leaving the FDA fabricant didn't sound so confident himself in a presentation to a trade Association conference he shared some of the results of FDA inspections you talked about the some of the findings the companies that were doing no testing uh have no idea of what they're buying or selling companies that have no standards inadequate records being kept no specification set and this is a quotation the extreme of this observation is more common than expected which I read to be this is worse than the extreme those are the companies we took action against those are the companies we drove out of business though I'm speaking from my experience when I was a regulator when we saw those problems and they were they were extreme we threw the book at people and so I think that that's you know that's good news for consumers as how how many companies did you throw at a business uh quite a number I think we processed over 25 injunctions during my time at the agency mhm so in in an industry that has 4,000 or more manufacturers is that significant I got my 25 you get yours I'm not a regulator I don't think that's going to happen it is significant it's very significant the FDA division in charge of the supplement industry is Tiny just 25 employees they target companies they consider the most risky but agree the problem remains much bigger than that because of the targeting and because of traditionally the way this industry has developed over time we do see a higher proportion of inspections that we do with dietary supplements a higher proportion of them that have substantial problems than in other categories that we regulate how much does that worry you um it of course it's a concern because ultimately this isn't about us and it isn't about the companies it's about the consumers to many supplements may look like prescription drugs but there's a big difference drug makers have to prove their products are safe and effective before putting them on the market those who make supplements don't not unless they're introducing a new ingredient that's never been marketed before it's an absurd absurd system in the future many years we'll look back and we'll say how could we have possibly done this it took a hundred years of thoughtful regulatory advances to ensure that drugs now we're talking about prescription drugs are both safe and effective how could it be that the clock turned back to the world of uh 1920s 1930s when you can sell something without any evidence that it's safe or effective we are back at the turn of a century when snake oil salesmen could Hawk their potions with promises that couldn't be kept in the early 1990s the head of the FDA was David Kesler that is absolutely false he arrived in office promising tougher regulations for supplements in particular demanding Health claims be backed by scientific evidence the industry went Bonkers everything exploded I mean I've taken on some of the hardest regulatory issues me I did uh tobacco tobacco looked easy compared U to dietary supplements what what happened was the dietary supplement industry recognized that the standard that we set significant scientific agreement would require it before it could make a claim to have a scientific basis and they just couldn't make any claim and they saw literally billions of dollars at stake and they Unleashed a lobbying campaign that was Second To None the campaign was as dramatic as it was effective hey guys got it's only vitam complete with Hollywood stars vitamin C you know like in oranges Congress received more letters regarding this than they ever received regarding the Vietnam War Dan Hurley has written what many consider the definitive account of the industry's battle with the regulator we hear people claiming that FDA is while David kler was trying to convince Congress behind the scenes another kler was at work Jerry wrer ran a large dietary supplement company was a very strong W character the FDA is going to limit potencies of vitamins which is what they've said the FDA is going to take herbs and make them drugs and he called together every leading manufacturer to come out to his Ranch in California which used to belong to Ray Croc of McDonald's okay so Jerry basically stands up before the group and says as this is the either the end of our of our industry or a new beginning and we have to defend our interests Jerry kastler would turn out to be a very effective lobbyist joining forces with powerful political friends because today we honored the wishes of 100 million people consumers of dietary supplements friends like Senator Orin hatch of Utah the senator deined to be interviewed his state has seen as the global Center for dietary supplement manufacturing his son has lobbied for the industry and hatch himself his own shares in at least one supplement company he's never hidden the fact he's a Believer we know that the American people are not a bunch of cooks or a bunch of dummies and what the people want is a right to use products which have helped them for centuries the campaign worked Jerry Kesler said forget this law that's going to actually regulate we need a law that says uh you can't regulate these products and he named it the dietary supplement health and Education Act he came up with the name of it Jerry Kessler did a manufacturer the one concession the FDA did get was an agreement that manufacturers would not make unproven Health claims and so for example they can't say their products cure our arthritis or prevent heart disease but they can say they support things like bone density promote cardiovascular health what Congress did is basically said industry you go make the claims and if FDA has a problem with it FDA has to prove it's false or misleading so the horse is out of out of the barn FDA then has to go seiz the produ go into court and it has the burden 784 a bill to amend the federal Food Drug and cosmetic act to establish standards with respect to dietary supplements problems with the legislation would become apparent even before it passed the FDA was getting complaints about popular new weight loss supplements containing an ingredient called aedra manufactur has fought the FDA for more than a decade yesterday 23-year-old Steve Beckler became the first baseball player ever to die in it wasn't until a young major league pitcher died after taking a fedra that sales were halted called edra by then more than 160 deaths had been linked to the supplement it almost takes a sacrificial lamb to die of liver injury or some other injury before the Food and Drug Administration can take any action I am Dr Bowski thank thanks for being here Dr Herbert Bowski is an investigator with a liver Injury Network funded by the National Institutes of Health let me get a listen of your your lungs and then concerned about the harm supplements are causing and just just lie lie back there for this has been sort of the fastest growing kind of liver injury that we're observing in the drug induced liver Injury Network the frequency with which we see this has roughly tripled in the last 10 years about 7% of all the cases that we've enrolled into this network over the years were due to these in the last couple of years it's been around 20% it's incredibly hard to quantify the current problem how much harm are supplements doing just yesterday I was talking to a patient who suffered a bleeding stroke into his brain after taking just one um workout supplement and the reason why we don't know is that there's no effective system to detect harm from supplements take what happened in Hawaii in the summer of 2013 there was an outbreak of liver problem Health officials would link to a diet and workout supplement we didn't know if it was something in you know the Hawaiian population or or some sort of contaminant or what exactly the problem was the state's only transplant center was overrun an initial cluster of seven patients grew to more than two dozen two of them sick enough to need new livers it was difficult it was stressful cuz people were calling up and they were continually referring new patients and um I don't have enough organs to give I I don't know how I could put all these patients on a transplant list and possibly save all of them sad news tonight from the family of a Maui woman the mother of seven who fell ill after taking diet pills the Department of Health reports 32 cases of liver damage o elite pro and health officials dietary supplement oxy elite pro just two months before the outbreak the makers of oxy elite pro had been pressured to pull an earlier form a from the market following years of complaints the new version included a compound called ageline now ageline is a normal component of the baale tree and it's been used as as a natural product by naturopathic healers for centuries usually fairly safely but they didn't use bail tree extract they bought ageline from a Chinese drug company that made ageline at least the company claimed it was ageline and within a few months uh they began to observe patients with liver failure uh mostly in Hawaii but not entirely Cynthia novid is a chief petty officer with the US Navy based in San Diego she turned to oxy elite pro to help pass Fitness tests it helped keep my weight down it helped you know just give me that extra push during the workout and I was liking it and know I would take it but only halfway through the first bottle Cynthia's eyes started turning yellow her doctor had bad news that's when he told me that your liver is shot pretty much I possibly need a liver transplant she would get a transplant the FDA has linked oxy Elite to more than 70 cases of liver damage the company declined to be interviewed and denies any responsibility doctors in Hawaii still remember how slow the FDA was to act they say they followed all the directions on the agency's medwatch website they phoned several times but it wasn't until they approached the State Health authorities that the FDA they finally called them back they told one of our liver doctors that you know they thought she was a prankster because she had sent in her you know private email address and you know kept bugging them and you know they didn't think we were real they weren't taking you seriously no it would be nice if there was a system that you know we could use and get some consistent results but the FDA says they do have a system that's what medat is you know right but I don't know if they're overwhelmed but the way it stands is there's you know we're not getting a response as quick as we probably should be in Hawaii there were uh reports of a cluster of people who develop severe liver problems the doctor in the case that we have spoken with raises troubling questions repeatedly she says she and her colleagues tried to contact medwatch tried to report and tried to get advice from the FDA as to what to do and repeatedly she says they heard nothing back had you heard this before no I can't deal with hear saying speculation and I'm not going to speculate what I can tell you is when the documents did come in the FDA that alerted us to the problem in Hawaii we were able to remove the product within a month by that point there were 56 cases of liver damage that had been reported and this was for a company that only 6 months earlier had had another formulation there removed what there were there weren't 56 cases reported until sometime after we had the product removed we had the product removed with effectively about 20 cases Cynthia novida is one of more than a hundred people who are now suing the makers of oxy elite pro a 23-year veteran with the Navy she had hoped to get her 25-year service pin that's not likely to happen now you know I have to be able to travel and can't do that now can't go on a ship because they don't carry the meds that I need continuously her doctors tell her the price of that one pill is that she'll have to take 19 pills every day for the rest of her life the makers of oxy Elite deny all claims against them the allegations against USP Labs and its operators but in November 2015 the justice department launched a criminal case against the company and arrested four of its Executives frud charges Vigilant when it comes to the health and safety of the American public it's a Great Big Beautiful Day omega3 is essential for good health the promises are endless the minerals your kids need but even if what you buy in those bottles is real critics contend there's a bigger problem many supplements simply don't work what's worse they could be doing you harm now supplements I get this question all the time I only take four pills our screens blare advice on how to get health from a pill and today I'd like to talk to you a little bit about supplementation reputations have been built on dispensing that advice that everyone should be taking a multivitamin multimineral product as insurance against but amid all the hype what's often lost is the [Music] science when people walk into the dietary supplement or vitamin store um they think that everything is just perfectly safe in addition to being a pediatri nutrition Paul offet is a best-selling author whose book do you believe in magic questions are supplement habit so I've got uh vitamins for children and vitamins for adults the problem is is that when you look on the the back you find that a number of these vitamins are contained in uh in amounts that are much greater than the recommended daily allowance offet believes we simply take too many I think multivitamins don't hurt you which is to say vitamins at or around the recommend daily L for each of those vitamins I mean you need vitamins to live the question is do you get enough in food and I think the answer to that question is yes but now there are studies done done showing if you use a me take a mega vitamin you actually can hurt yourself you actually can increase your risk of cancer increase your risk of heart disease I think few people know the risks they're taking and how do you know what's too much you here's how you know what's too much you shouldn't bypass the satiety level your stomach is only so big for a reason he illustrates the point with a 1,000 mg of vitamin C that's one of these pills to get the same amount of the vitamin from a food source you'd have to eat between seven and eight entire cantaloupes no you're not meant to eat eight cantaloupes it's a dangerous thing to do to go against what nature intends it's even worse with vitamin E he says this capsule has a th000 international units you can also find vitamin E in almonds but to get the same 1,000 units you'd have to eat a lot of almonds 1,670 to be precise scientific Studies have shown that that much vitamin E can be dangerous if you take large quantities of vitamin E as a supplement you clearly and definitively increase your risk of prostate cancer and in a better world in a regulated world where vitamin E a regulated product it should have a blackbox warning on it that says just that vitamins E and C are an antioxidants and for years we've been told to take them because antioxidants are the mortal enemy of free radicals cells linked to cancer and other diseases I mean if you look at people for example who eat diets rich in fruits rich in vegetables they contain antioxidants they do seem to live longer and have lesser rates of cancer and heart disease so the thinking was great okay now we figured out a way to make ourselves healthier now let's let's let's double down and take even larger quantities of antioxidants and that's where we cross the line and now study after study shows that in fact it's true you can take too much in the way of antioxidants in response to the studies in 2013 one of the world's most important scientific journals published an editorial enough is enough argued the case is closed supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with most supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful Dr alisso yr was the lead author this might be the some of the best well studied compounds in in the history of mankind in terms of of uh clinical trials uh there there well over a couple hundred uh thousand people that have participated in in clinical trial so the conclusions that we have for antioxidant vitamins I think are very strong vitamin D is not an antioxidant but it is one of the top selling vitamins in America pushed with information that's often confusing vitamin D to pick one vitamin to push to everybody to think about again in their lives it's vitamin D it's true we do all need some vitamin D The Institute of medicine recommends adults get 600 international units a day in vitamin D3 but look at the doses some others are suggested recomended 5,000 IUS daily 5,000 I tends to be perfect when people are initially really on one website I answered just three questions my age my height and my weight and I was told I needed 10,000 international units a day 16 times the iom's recommendation when I hear that various groups are recommending 10,000 IUS a day or even 5,000 IUS a day routinely I really want to say show me the data show me the evidence evidence is what Dr Joanne Manson is accumulating here she's collected blood samples from over 25,000 people the vital trial is to our knowledge the largest randomized clinical trial of vitamin D supplementation in the world Manson is comparing disease rates between those who take Vitamin D supplements and those who don't final results won't be known until 2017 but but already she has concerns many people are taking too much uh vitamin D The Institute of medicine also recommended avoiding getting above 4,000 IUS daily because that could be associated with Adverse Events calcium in the urine which can be associated with kidney stones high blood calcium calcium um in in the arteries vascular calcification as well soft tissue calcification and there are now studies that show a U-shaped curve that those who have high as well as low blood levels of vitamin D have higher risks of cardiovascular disease as well as all cause mortality so we can't assume that more is necessarily better the third most widely used supplement in America is fish oil the Omega-3s contained in the oil are believed by many to be essential for good health DHA omega-3 in particular is is extremely important it also helps prevent disease according to the man who heads one of the largest fish oil trade associations it's different from them there's certainly ample evidence that it helps things like reducing blood pressure reducing your risk of coronary death but the science behind fish oil is a little more complicated than that so these are two capsules this is a FDA approved product this is Dr Preston Mason is a Harvard University researcher here he's comparing prescription quality fish oil to the oil found in over-the-counter supplements and uh give it a smell smells a little bit fishy but not not bad right smells you're going to have always some smell one of the issues with fish oil is it's delicate it's extracted as a byproduct from oil fish like anchovies as the fish get crushed the oil is exposed to oxygen and it doesn't take much oxygen to turn the oil rancid this is a common supplement for fish oil see what that smells like oh what that doesn't smell good that's that smells like it's going bad yeah right yeah it's a very strong fishy smell if it was simply an odor issue that would be one thing but oxidized oil contains oxidized lipids one of the building blocks of cells we've long known that lipids when oxidized can be harmful so oxidized lipid triggers inflammatory responses within our body particularly in our cells and uh if we ingest oxidized lipid we can trigger these inflammatory changes that can lead to things like cardiovascular disease recently Mason published his own study of fish oil supplements the results were consistent with other studies showing high levels of oxidation one in New Zealand found 83% of fish oils tested failed to meet the industry's own standard it was shocking to see such a high proportion of products that that had high oxidation levels and so we went and and actually bought 47 products from the New Zealand market and had them tested at multiple labs and we did not see that same effect well what was the percentage of that you discovered that were not in compliance with your standards uh it was it was around 20% would you agree that 20% is still problematic um well from a consumer's point of view I mean if if it's truly 20% Then then yeah we would like to see those um those 20% uh improved but improving the quality won't address the other issue with fish oil the growing questions about whether it prevents disease to years ago epidemiologist Dr Andrew Gray compiled all the best studies on fish oil as reported in the world's most prestigious scientific journals I think for cardiovascular disease one has to say there is no compelling evidence that taking fish oils protects against a first heart attack or a second heart attack and so people who are advised to do that or are doing it are are are wasting their time and the money but the fish oil industry continues to insist there is a benefit particularly for preventing heart attacks we asked their spokesman to send us his best evidence which included some of the same studies gray had cited and didn't seem to support his case this one says it doesn't appear to reduce sudden cardiac death the next one insufficient evidence jamama 2012 overall omega-3 supplementation was not a associated with a lower risk of all cause mortality another journal the evidence is not clear cut and any benefits are almost certainly not as great as previously believed so that doesn't seem to be suggesting there's an overwhelming amount of evidence yeah well I I think what you're looking at are the abstracts but the conclusions are the conclusions well but but again those papers are looking at very large areas of cardiovascular disease and and um you know I think it's it's hard to argue that Omega-3s aren't important for how your heart functions many researchers agree if you get them from eating actual fish the problem is science still hasn't proven its true for supplements we would think that something that's natural That's essential to normal cell function and body function would have clinical benefits uh it just has to be proven but in the meantime there's certainly been a lot of promotion suggesting a benefit in every everything from Alzheimer's disease to cardiovascular disease but we still need the strong clinical trials to validate those hypothesis the same can be said about virtually every product the supplement industry sells essal vitamins and minerals to help keep you we wanted to discuss the issues with some of the industry's most prominent Advocates so many questions so many concerns Dr in addition it's loaded with beneficial Dr Joseph vitamin D would be an example of that and Dr Andrew wild all decline to be interviewed while the debate continues over whether supplements actually work in rural G onario there is a botanist who may have found an answer to that other Troublesome question what's actually in the pills and potions that we take Dr Steven newmaster is part of a worldwide effort to collect and catalog Nature's wide array of DNA he believes in the power of nature to heal I buy and use Natural Health Products I believe in them I've used them all my life um used them with my family we have that anecdotal evidence that you have some ailment and you take a whatever the the remedy is and it's dealt with so it's an irony that GF University was responsible for one of the latest studies documenting problems with supplement quality in 2012 new master and his team randomly selected 44 herbal Products off the shelves in Canada and the US and started comparing them to the plant DNA in their datab bank and we looked at the results I was fairly astounded like wow 60% of the products contained ingredients not listed on their labels even more astonishingly one in three proved to be outright fakes if I put my consumer hat on that pissed me off because I go in to buy a product that I believe in that I care about and I pay a lot of money for it's not even in the bottle are you kidding me unlike similar studies in the past this one got noticed front page of the health section in the New York Times an article that was read by among others New York's attorney general last December my office purchased a variety of storebrand herbal supplements from stores in different parts of New York State Eric Schneiderman ordered up his own test of herbal supplements which produced even worse results and found that only 21% of the products we tested uh had in fact had DNA evidence that they contained the product listed on the label we uh found the results to be shocking we purchased products from four major chains Walmart Walgreens Target and GNC we found asparagus DNA house plant DNA rice and other things but not the product that was on the labels and it seemed that there was just a massive fraud going on the Attorney General demanded the company stop selling the products at first the industry questioned the methodology but then GNC the largest of the supplement retailers agreed to use DNA barcoding to authenticate its products the industry spokesman however still isn't convinced Daniel fabricant we're working with the Attorney General's office so they understand more about the industry and we understand more of their concerns I think that that's important that we work together do you accept the findings that they published well I haven't been able to review the findings no because they they say because it's an act of Investigation but what they have told you do you accept them without seeing the science I'm a scientist first and foremost I can't really comment on data I haven't seen so is that a yes or a no that's a no you say you haven't seen the actual study from from the attorney general so you can't actually comment but you have seen the study from from the guf University univers that was published uh a year 2013 I've seen that and you know and what do you make of that I mean fairly similar finding well I think some there's same challenges though is the accreditation of the lab there's no mention of reference materials reference materials are critical when you're doing DNA analysis um you know not knowing how you established a baseline what are you comparing new Master's comparison was to that library of DNA he an international scientists have been collecting we've done this now thousands actually tens of thousands of times for products and the process works and it works really well today 14 States Attorneys General have come together to demand change not only from the industry but from the FDA and lawmakers we think that there's responsibility in Congress and there's responsibility at the agency level and we're just going to keep pressing until we can get them to take action thank than you since that interview Federal prosecutors and Regulators announced they've taken action against over a 100 companies we see a number of serious issues with dietary supplements and products falsely marketed as dietary supplements there are now signs that at least some in the industry are adopting new technology to ensure accurate labeling we have implemented the use of DNA bar code technology here in our products I think it is a game Chang right it's new and uh with with newness comes um you know first some early adopters Nature's Way is among those leading the way the manufacturer is one of several who have now partnered with the Canadian scientists in A Renewed effort to put quality first we made contact with him and started a relationship which included um testing many of our of our herbal dietary ingredients for identity right now testing is done offsite at the University of G and Dr new master is working on some technology that could possibly be implemented in a you know in a commercial manner take some of the sample and simply put it into this Pro new master believes the partnership is just the beginning and loaded into the machine press go he's refined his barcoding technology further making it cheaper and easier to use you can start testing further back in the supply chain uh what about that batch that came in it's a huge vat and it's powder the DNA is excellent in that it's easy it's cheap it could be tested at where it's being transported and the supplier is doing trading and buying it could be tested at the producer the farmer it could be tested all the way along and I think that's an appropriate way to solve the problem but that still leaves the question of what if any of this stuff actually works we're using the herb combined with the standardized extract the industry is quick to criticize studies that challenge their products but it hasn't produced large peer-reviewed studies of its own with clinical trials where supplements are tested against placebos the crazy thing about the dietary supplement world is there are none of those studies and the studies that are done say the stuff doesn't work there is new science out there all the time consumers are going to continue to take supplements because they derive a benefit over half the country every day takes a supplement safely and effectively we love the notion of a magic pill with something that makes it all better it's just too seductive but it is a pill just like any other pill the only difference is it's an unregulated pill and you don't know what's in [Music] it [Music] for more on on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org [Music] Frontline front lines supplements and safety is available on DVD to order visit shop pbs.org or call 1 1800 playay PBS front line is also available for download on iTunes [Music] oh
