Be skinny, be strong, be loved — be fooled
Weight loss, muscle building, and sexual enhancement supplements are today’s snake-oil cures, sometimes spiked with known and unknown drugs that could have potentially deadly consequences, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official said Wednesday (Oct. 13). Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner and a graduate of Harvard College in 1991 and Harvard Medical School in 1996, said dietary supplements are a major concern for the agency because they are often spiked with pharmaceuticals approved for other uses or with chemical analogs to known pharmaceuticals, whose altered molecular makeup means they won’t show up in regulatory screenings. “There is a serious problem with the dietary supplements,” Sharfstein said. “I think there’s a potential risk for one of these to harm a lot of people.” Other current threats on the FDA’s radar include medical devices made overseas, where quality varies widely, unsafe usage of approved medicines, tobacco control, and the campaign for food...