Should the FDA regulate herbal remedies?

Question

I am doing a research project on this subject and I need help with yes, no, and sources, please be very detailed.

Answer 1

NO, they should not and they should not have the power to do so, let them regulate this and you might as well put a gun to your head. They should not have any type of regulation whatsoever, people who take herbl remedies take them because they know how to use them, those who dont know how to use them should not take them, you take medications at your own risk, you east fast food at your own risk, you take herbal remedies at your own risk, do not let the government tell you what you can and cant take, taking this choice away from you is taking away your rights.

Answer 2

If you look into how the Japanese government is handling herbal remedies, you would see it can be done on a massive scale without limiting options or effectiveness.  The plus side to regulation is keeping the quacks out of circulation which would reduce the number & severity of herbal accidents/deaths.  The negative side would be the large pharmacudical companies would want so many restrictions on what the herbals can be considered doing & labeled to do it would make a layman distrust the herbal concoctions.  

In Japan, however, the government keeps the large pharms out of herbals & regulates how much, how strong, & how effective each herbal ready-to-use treatment is.  Even there, however, if you go to an herbalist, it is up to the practitioner to keep the treatment healthy.

For instance, the Horny Goat Weed tablets that are sold in grocery stores can vary so widely that the same bottle can have tablets with effectiveness ranges from 2-9 on a 1-10 scale as long as they average out for that individual manufacturing cycle where they are supposed to be.  If regulated, they would have to be within .5-1 point of the spot they claim to be on the scale above, by federal mandate.  

In short (yea, I know!) regulation of the herbal market has it's good & bad sides but, if you look at the fact that almost no information is readily available to pharmacists about interactions with herbs, let alone interaction information listed on the bottles, these are serios medications that can hurt & kill people if used by the uneducated.

One last point.  Most of the medications we have been using for the last 50+ years started out & where isolated from herbs, either local to America or Europe or imported from Africa or South America.  The common link in these is that they were herbs that were tested and used for centuries before modern medicine learned how to synthesize the active ingridents to make our modern little white, yellow, blue pills.   If the FDA regulates the synthacized ones, why not the natural ones?

Answer 3

I wish they would. At this time, because the FDA does not regulate them, herbals can make all kinds of claims of efficacy without hard science to back them up. They are often poorly labeled and most don't warn people about interactions with other meds. Moreover, there is no oversight on whether the manufacturers are actually putting what they say they are in each of those pills/tabs. If the bottle says 3mg tablets, some may be 3mg of active ingredient...but some may only be 2, some 4 some 1.5....there is not regulation to maintain conformity and quality assurance.

Here are two sites with other good info on this topic.

http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Diab-Em/Di...

http://ods.od.nih.gov/

Answer 4

No.  But the FDA should regulate labeling and full disclosure of all ingredients.  All ingredients should be listed by common name.

Answer 5

You can find lots of relevant information in web searches for codex + "health regulations" and fda + "health regulations".

My answer to your question would be a definite NO as regulating herbal remedies by the FDA would restrict your options.

Answer 6

No, because the F.D.A. is greatly influenced by Big Pharma who is against any treatment that doesn't involve drugs.  A twenty year study at a prominent N.Y. Hospital,   involving tens of thousands of people was done evaluating the merits of drug and natural therapies. The determination was that the best treatment for most maladies is a combination of both. But that infringes on Big Pharma's profits. The F.D.A. is really a farce that can be influenced by drug companies, many of which have members that sit on the boards of both.