The thin edge of the wedge?

Did you know that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) the giant pharmaceutical company has petitioned the FDA in an attempt to have supplements that claim weight loss reclassified as a drug?

If successful they will strike a double blow, one for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry and the other which is to the detriment of the consumer and supplement industry.

It seems that the incentive to push for this petition is an attempt to eliminate competition from supplements against their new OTC drug called ALLI.  This new drug has some serious side effects many of which will as yet be unknown, but a common one is anal leakage…  That side effect alone apart from the embarrassment that it could cause users is enough to realize that there may be some serious reactions going on in the digestive system as a result in taking the drug.

Will that lead to an increase in cancer in later years?  No one knows because the drug has not been tested long enough.

Anyway, GlaxoSmithKline’s plan is to suggest that “weight loss” is a precursor to obesity which they want to be classified as a disease and therefore any products claiming weight loss assistance are claiming to cure a disease in the early stages and as such the product is not a supplement but rather a drug.

If GSK are successful with their petition then that would effectively wipe out a large section of the dietary supplement industry and eliminate a considerable amount of competition for GSK. 

Of course there are many companies in the supplement industry that sell useless weight loss product and they deserve to be wiped out after ‘scamming’ the public so long…but not this way!

The implications for both consumers and the supplement industry are far more ominous than just eliminating those ‘weight loss’ companies that shouldn’t be around anyway.  It will be the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ and I would not be surprised if GSK are successful that we will soon find out about other petitions being submitted by the pharmaceutical industry to systematically remove other supplements from the market under the guise that they may indirectly be making a claim to cure a disease.

For example, if a supplement is being taken for general health it may be argued that if a person did not have good general health then they would likely have a disease.  So, by promoting a supplement for general health an indirect claim is being made relating to a disease and therefore the supplement should be a drug.

That may sound a bit far fetched but in the pharmaceutical world of money and power with more political and legal clout of any industry, anything is possible.

Let us hope that the decision makers in the FDA keep a level head and are not coerced by GSK…and GSK are not above coercing people or being dishonest.  They do it all the time.

Remember when the FDA issued a warning to GlaxoSmithKline for not reporting safety results on its diabetes pill Avandia?  The Senate Finance Committee also found that GSK intimidated and coerced a prominent critic of Avandia so that he would no longer speak critically of the drug.

Not long before that, it was alleged that GSK systematically hid and manipulated data concerning Paxil-induced suicide in depressed adults.

I will let you know as more information comes to hand.