One A Day Men’s Vitamin Law Suit
June 18, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Men's Health
Who’d have thought that a vitamin could cause so much controversy? Certainly not Bayer, the makers of One A Day vitamins.
According to the Bayer website, “One A Day® Men’s Health Formula is a complete multivitamin plus key nutrients to support a healthy heart, and Selenium to support a healthy prostate.*”
But, if you notice the asterix (star) at the end of the statement and you look further down on the website, you see:
*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
So, is this a true claim or isn’t it? A non-profit group, Center for Science in the Public Interest, says it isn’t and is threatening to file a law suit against the makers of the vitamin.
According to the CNN article, Group threatens suit over vitamins’ anti-cancer claims, there is little evidence to support Bayers’ claims:
The center isn’t acting alone and has the support of researchers and medical professionals from the Harvard School of Public Health, American Cancer Society and University of Illinois at Chicago Division of Pathology Research. The authors of the article wrote:
A seven-year, $118 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health found last year that selenium does not prevent prostate cancer in healthy men, the center said.
The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial involving 35,000 U.S. and Canadian men was halted in October when researchers determined that selenium was not protecting the men from prostate cancer and may have been causing diabetes in some of them.
The study was financed by the federal government and was one of the largest ever on this subject.
Bayer refuses to back down on its claims. What do you think the outcome will be?
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Image: Bayer
This may just be another instance of the FDA taking the side of Big Pharma. They are also prosecuting companies that offer natural remedies for H1N1. Seeing that the FDA is controlled by these companies I don’t put much credence in much that the FDA says these days. I have worked in medical manufacturing for over 30 years and can see the negative changes in the FDA just about the same time that large drug companies were allowed to advertise as they do now.