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One other point should be made about the self-anointed "quackbusters."

During the hearing, Dr. Timothy Gorski, a board member of the National Council on Health Fraud mounted a vicious attack on the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy (NCCAM) and on the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (WHCCAMP), claiming that NCCAM:

"...continues to be staffed and controlled by ideological advocates..."

Yet in his prepared statement, Gorski quotes from a 1998 JAMA article that he says:

"...spoke for us all..."

And just what was the position Gorski says speaks for his group?

"There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine for which scientific medicine is lacking."

Yet, Gorski doesn’t consider the notion that alternative medicine doesn’t exist ideological! What makes Gorski’s assault on alternative and complementary medicine all the more disturbing is that he may have misrepresented himself to the committee.

On his written statement he lists his credentials as including the position of "Assistant Professor, University of North Texas Health Science Center," an impressive credential. However, when officials of the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee checked, they discovered that his claim of being on that prestigious faculty was untrue.

According to the Committee:

" ...we have learned that Dr. Timothy N. Gorski is not currently affiliated with the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC). Dr. Gorski lists on the first page of his testimony that he is an Assistant Clinical Professor at UNTHSC. In his testimony he makes strong attacks regarding alternative medicine, including attacks on the credibility of research published after peer-review in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Coming from someone with an academic appointment from UNTSC, these attacks carry significantly more merit than someone who has made a career of attacking CAM practices. Calls from my staff on September 21 to the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center, including to the University President, uncovered that Dr. Gorski is not an employee or on faculty of that center. He is not now, nor has he been on faculty at least as far back as 1998. His intentional misuse of an academic affiliation should completely discount his testimony. A follow up investigation by UNTHSC uncovered that in 1991 Dr. Gorski had been granted a clinical appointment because he was on staff at a community hospital where UNTHSC sent several residents. In 1995 UNTHSC conducted an audit of these clinical appointments, sending letters requesting verification of credentials and licensing was sent to all community physicians. Dr. Gorski never responded and was dropped from the clinical appointment."

The question is why did Dr. Gorski apparently inflate his resume? One reason may be that all of his other credentials derive from his association with the anti-alternative medicine group on whose board he serves. Without the added credential, he would appear "ideological," exactly the charge he levels at the far more qualified officials of the NCCAM.

But what of the claim that more regulatory authority is needed? Here again, the facts do not fit the claims. Indeed, the FDA has broad powers to act if it finds that a dietary supplement poses a threat to the public safety.

Specifically the FDA can:

• Refer for criminal action any company that sells a dietary supplement that is toxic or unsanitary [Section 402(a)]
• Obtain an injunction against the sale of a dietary supplement that has false or unsubstantiated claims [Section 403(a),(r6)]
• Seize dietary supplements that pose an" unreasonable or significant risk of illness or injury" [Section 402(f)]
• Sue any company making a claim that a product cures or treats a disease [Section 201(g)]
• Stop a new dietary ingredient from being marketed if FDA does not receive enough safety data in advance [Section 413]
• Stop the sale of an entire class of dietary supplements if they pose an imminent public health hazard [Section 402(f)]
• Require dietary supplements to meet strict manufacturing requirements (Good Manufacturing Practices), including potency, cleanliness and stability [Section 402(g)]

Moreover, the FDA has not been at all shy about using these powers. It has conducted frequent raids on supplement manufacturers and distributors, often with little or no justification. Unlike pharmaceutical manufacturers who often repeatedly commit the same offense without any action being taken, any supplement manufacturer that fails to dot their I’s and cross their T’s perfectly can expect an FDA SWAT team to break down their door.

A few examples:

When the manufacturer of "Stevia" a natural sweetener offered cookbooks to his customers to help them understand the appropriate amounts to use in various foods, the FDA raided his office demanding that he burn the offending volumes. They claimed that making the books available "adulterated" his product. It was only after he began to videotape the agents that they backed down. Later, in the face of a court challenge under the First Amendment, the Agency reversed its position.

Compounding pharmacist Gary Osborne’s office was raided by flak-vested FDA enforcers who herded his staff into a small coffee room and then demanded all of his records. When Osborne read the warrant and discovered it only covered one product that he no longer carried, he offered to simply have his secretary provide the requested information. The FDA enforcers would have none of it. They told Dr. Osborne:

"We decide what to take!"

It was later discovered that Dr. Osborne wasn’t even the target of an investigation, but rather one of sixteen compounding pharmacists raided that day in an effort to obtain information about a physician living abroad!

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