Back Pain? Arthritis? Step Right Up to the Mouse
By SANA SIWOLOP
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NAKE-OIL salesmen used to travel the country in wagons demonstrating
miracle-cure tonics and ointments. Nowadays, the Internet is being used to help
peddle what the federal authorities and nutrition experts say is a rising number
of suspect vitamins and supplements, some of which carry the same kinds of
outlandish medical claims as in years past.
Featured on store shelves and on Web sites is a growing array of new products that often carry dozens of different ingredients — from trace levels of certain vitamins to pieces of dried vegetables and bits of freeze-dried organ meats — purported to help treat a variety of ailments.
There are so-called fitness waters with a hodgepodge of vitamins and minerals and "deer velvet" supplements (made from deer antlers and purportedly good for inflammation, infection and pain).
In recent months, the Federal Trade Commission has been cracking down on companies that make what it calls fraudulent claims about supplements. But policing the Internet, with its countless Web sites, is difficult. Worse yet, certain laws make it difficult for federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration to regulate herbs, dietary supplements and the like.
The F.T.C. did manage to expose one questionable product known as "vitamin O." Its marketers had claimed that vitamin O could prevent or treat life-threatening diseases like cancer and heart disease, and physical ailments like chronic headaches, fatigue, degenerative joints, infections, colds and hypertension by enriching the bloodstream with supplemental oxygen (hence, the name vitamin O). But the product, which sold for more than $10 an ounce, appeared to be nothing more than saltwater, according to the F.T.C.
It filed a complaint in federal district court accusing the marketers — Rose Creek Health Products and the Staff of Life, both based in Kettle Falls, Wash., along with Donald L. Smyth, the president and sole shareholder of both companies — of making blatantly false and unsubstantiated health claims. And last May, the companies, without admitting or denying guilt, agreed to pay $375,000 to consumers. As part of the settlement, the F.T.C. prohibited all three parties from making any unsupported claims for vitamin O — for instance, that it could help the body absorb more oxygen through a liquid. "Only fish can do that," said Michelle Rusk, a lawyer in the agency's division of advertising practices.
But that will probably not be the last consumers see of vitamin O. It is still being sold on the Web site of R-Garden Internationale, under which Staff of Life does business, albeit with a disclaimer. And vitamin O brochures are still available, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist and consumer advocate from Allentown, Pa. "I've gotten more brochures since the court order than before," he said.
Dennis Roberts, the marketing director for both Rose Creek Health and the Staff of Life, said his companies were complying with the F.T.C.'s orders. He refused to comment on his company's brochure mailings.
Still, the marketing of vitamin O does not surprise nutrition experts or consumer advocates like Dr. Barrett, who runs the Quackwatch Web site that tries to track questionable and fraudulent medical claims. They say the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 limited the ability of the F.D.A. to regulate drug-like claims that are made for vitamins, minerals and herbs. The agency generally does not review and approve supplements before they go to market. As for the F.T.C., it has the power to take action only against companies that make false and misleading marketing claims.
Industry experts say the $16 billion vitamins and supplements industry has had to come up with new products because sales are no longer growing at the double-digit rate of just a few years ago. Although not all of these new products are problematic, nutrition experts worry about those that are, and the fact that an increasing number of companies are marketing them on the Internet, the same place where many people turn for reliable data on the health benefits of dietary supplements. Experts say the products often pop up on the Web in "nutritional quizzes," where corporate affiliation may not be readily apparent.
"The Internet means that consumers are now more informed when it comes to being able to access vitamins and supplements data, but they are also probably more misinformed than ever," said Nancy Cotugna, a professor of clinical and community nutrition at the University of Delaware. "There are no reins in cyberspace."
In 1999, the F.T.C. started Operation Cure.All, an enforcement and consumer- education campaign aimed at stopping false and unsubstantiated health claims on the Internet, particularly those about serious diseases. The agency opened the campaign after it did a Web search and spotted more than 400 questionable sites, mostly for supplements. Ms. Rusk, the F.T.C. lawyer, said 28 percent of those sites had since shut down or revised claims about their products.
"We see that there is a real epidemic on the Internet," said Ms. Rusk, adding that her agency had already taken legal action against seven supplement companies.
One of them was CMO Distribution Centers of America of Sarasota, Fla., which sold capsules over the Internet containing a compound known as cetylmyristoleate. CMO had claimed that its capsules could treat 20 different diseases, including arthritis, according to Ms. Rusk.
Last April, the F.T.C. announced that it had reached a settlement with CMO, as well as with two other Internet companies — Natural Heritage Enterprises of Crestone, Colo., and EHP Products of Ashland, Ky. — that it accused of making deceptive supplement claims. As part of the settlement, none of the companies admitted wrongdoing.
Michael D. Miller, who operates Natural Heritage Enterprises, sold a four-herb tea called Essiac as a purported remedy for a host of cancers as well as other serious medical afflictions like lupus and diabetes, the F.T.C. said. According to the F.T.C., Mr. Miller dressed up his Web site with hyperlinks to direct consumers to other sites, with other names, implying that they were independent from his own. But the F.T.C. said he had also created those sites and included in them false health claims for his tea. As for EHP, the F.T.C. said the company had used a Web site that was coded to be found by consumers who were using search terms like "arthritis cure" or "miracle cure."
The companies agreed to provide refunds to their customers and were banned from making false claims for any food, drug or supplement and from misrepresenting the results of any research.
Last summer, the F.T.C. accused two New Jersey companies, Lane Labs-USA, of Allendale, and Cartilage Consultants of Short Hills, of using Web page coding to mislead consumers about the health benefits of products containing shark cartilage. In this case, the F.T.C. said, the two companies tagged the Web site that was operated by Lane Labs so that it would likely come up whenever a consumer typed in a search phrase like "cancer treatment." In separate settlements, the two companies, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed not to make unsubstantiated claims about their products, according to the F.T.C.
WHILE the authorities are concerned about the effects of some
supplements on consumers' physical health, they are also concerned about
consumers' financial health. The Internet, they say, has increased the chances
that some people could get caught in so-called multilevel marketing schemes, in
which vitamin and supplement companies use consumers as distributors in exchange
for often minuscule income, or possible perks like the free use of a company
car.
Dr. Barrett said high overhead costs meant that vitamins and supplements sold through multilevel marketing companies could cost 10 times as much as their retail counterparts, even though the products tend to be the same. Because of such costs, he said, multilevel marketing companies often feel pressed into making unsubstantiated claims for their products to increase sales.
For their part, trade groups that represent the vitamin and supplement industry, like the Council for Responsible Nutrition, based in Washington, say they have improved efforts to police their own industry. In 1999, some supplement makers appeared to score an important marketing victory. A federal appeals court ruled that the F.D.A. should consider allowing health claims not widely recognized as valid by scientists if the evidence supporting a claim outweighed the evidence against it, and if it could be qualified by an accompanying disclaimer, to prevent consumers from being misled.
-- Anonymous, January 07, 2001