Caveat emptor: Supplements can be harmful...or deadly

The dangers of unregulated supplements have attracted renewed attention following the recent deaths of two U.S. soldiers who were reportedly taking an amphetamine-like substance that is marketed as a dietary supplement. Yet as ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Medpage Today editor Dr. George Lundberg point out in their joint statement, the soldiers story is just the tip of a multi-billion-dollar industry whose ingredients go largely unregulated, and whose dangers go largely unnoticed and unreported.

Thanks to 1994's Hatch Act, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, write Dr. Ross and Dr. Lundberg, substances which may be benign, toxic, and everything in between, as long as they are sold as dietary nutritional supplements, get a virtual free pass.

Read the op-ed in full at Medpage Today, and see the accompanying video