Polite Dissent

The AP Newswire is carrying yet another story on herbal supplements. This article focuses mainly on Berkley Premuium Nutraceuticals, the makers of a wide variety of these nutritional supplements, including Enzite for “male enhancement” (and maker of those extremely annoying television ads with “Smiling Bob” and his Stepford-ish wife).

The company’s founder comes across as either misguided or extremely shrewd. I suspect the latter. Here’s a a revealing quote:

As for Berkeley’s products, [company founder] Warshak considers it misguided to talk about effectiveness.
“It’s not about whether something works or doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s more about whether it can help or not.”

This is simply ridiculous. Either the products work, or they don’t. If they don’t work, then they can’t help. Q.E.D.

Unsurprisingly, Berkley has racked up an impressive amount of Better Business Bureau complaints, over three thousand, and a class action lawsuit (admittedly, many of the BBB complaints seem to be as much about billing policies as the product themselves).

There are many reasons I have problems with these products. Here are a just a few:

• As Warshak himself seems to conform, they rarely work as promised.
• Most of their ads are extremely misleading. They use vague terms like “enhancement” or “boost performance.” Often, their ads in secondary media sources make ludicrous (and illegal) claims. Just google Enzite and read the promises on many of the listed web sites (though make sure your browser’s security settings are on high first — I wouldn’t trust these sites any farther than I could throw them).
• These “supplements” are expensive. People often complain about the high costs of prescription drugs — and they are expensive — but so are the vast majority of these “nutraceuticals.” Thier price is comparable to that of real drugs.
• Quality control is non-existant. Multiple studies have been done on these supplements. One study on Echinacea showed that less than half of the products contained the stated amount. Some actually contained no Echinacea.
• These sorts of supplements can be dangerous. Some contain dangerous ingredients, while others allow people to self-diagnose while a dangerous condition goes untreated.

The sad fact is that supplements and nutraceuticals face barely any government regulation, if any at all. Real pharmaceuticals have many, many steps of regulation. Vioxx was withdrawn recently in great part because of these regulations. The same is not true for supplements. The makers of Metabolife maintained for years that their product was perfectly safe while hiding thousands upon thousands of reports of adverse incidents including fatalities. In all fairness, these supplements should have to go through the same regulations as the legitimate treatments they are trying to replace.

One last quote from the article, this time showing a perfect example of how these companies use statistics to mislead.

UCSF researcher Jeffrey Tice and his colleagues gave one form of the supplement to 84 women, and a slightly different formulation to another 84. A third group of 84 got a placebo.

The researchers found that both forms of red clover extract did indeed decrease hot flashes. But so did the placebo - and it worked equally well.
Because the placebo did just as well as the two forms of red clover, Tice and his colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “neither supplement had a clinically important effect on hot flashes or other symptoms of menopause.”

Representatives of Novogen interpreted the results a different way, calling it “undeniable” that their product reduced hot flashes - which is true thanks to the placebo effect.

Sigh.