Dangerous Supplements or Bad Journalism

I first became interested in journalism following the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein when I was a kid. The idea that a journalist could expose wrongdoing and get to the truth inspired me. So what the hell happened to journalism? Where have all of the reporters gone?

The media frenzy following the Consumer Reports cover story about "dangerous supplements" is the latest in the ongoing series of poor reporting on our industry. Rather than really dig into the story (and there is a story here), today's version of the "reporter" simply uses The Google, regurgitates the poor writing that others have put out there, and seeks to gain readers with shocking or sensational headlines and pseudo-facts. Sorry to be so mean, but today's writers are lazy, irresponsible and unaccountable. They rely on the opinions of others to form their own opinions, and they present these opinions as if they were facts.

The 12 dangerous supplements that Consumer Reports cites are hardly representative of the supplement industry. In fact, only three of them are even relatively common (kava, colloidal silver, bitter orange). As CRN's Steve Mister points out in today's USA Today, these 12 ingredients represent less than 1% of supplement sales (to see his Op-Ed piece click here). But, based on the media coverage, one would think that consumers are dropping like flies. This in no way is intended to suggest that safety and quality are unimportant. These are issues that must constantly be addressed. But for the media to characterize the entire supplement industry as dangerous, unregulated, etc is simply wrong. It has become an urban legend that lazy journalists pass along instead of doing any actual investigation or balanced reporting.

The media has also forgotten how to include perspective in its reporting. Take the use of the AER statistics as one example. Consumer Reports stated that "amazingly, for the first 13 years after the enactment of DSHEA, supplement makers didn't have to inform the FDA if they received reports of serious adverse events, an obligation that's required for prescription drugs. A law that took effect in December 2007 closed that loophole, and in 2008 and 2009 the FDA said it received 1,359 reports of serious adverse effects from manufacturers and 602 from consumers and health professionals." Let me add the perspective to that. First, supplement companies were not required to report adverse events to FDA even before DSHEA. The enactment of DSHEA has nothing to do with mandatory adverse event reporting at all, and did not address it or change anything related to AERs. Second, Consumer Reports states that prescription drug makers were required to report adverse events. True, but makers of OTC drugs were not required to do so. This requirement did not apply to OTCs or supplements until that 2007 law, a law that was supported by the supplement industry. Finally, Consumer Reports cites the number of AERs in 2008 and 2009. That number, 1359, is tiny. Drugs during those same 2 years, accounted for more than 1,100,000 adverse event reports. Click here to see the chart on FDA's website that shows it. And finally, any AER system is meant to monitor the overall landscape and look for red flags. A single AER is generally meaningless, and may not have anything to do with the product. FDA uses this system to look for patterns. Consumer Reports fails to explain this.

Luckily, consumers of supplements tend to know more about the products, the regulations, and the facts than the "reporters" who cover our industry. My biggest question is whether these "journalists" are just bad at what they do, or if they are omitting important information on purpose in order to support their opinions. Either way, it is still poor reporting that never would have been acceptable to any of my journalism professors. We need a new "Woodward and Bernstein" to investigate and expose the media.