Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry (Hardcover)

by Dan Hurley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In his lively debut, health and medical journalist Hurley takes aim at the $21 billion supplement industry and its potentially injurious "natural" products. He critiques its strong-arming of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act through Congress—a law that rendered the FDA virtually powerless to regulate these remedies—and observes the FDA's "coziness" with the industry it regulates. From snake oil and shark cartilage to ephedra, Hurley consistently animates patches of dry legal and medical material with harrowing case studies. Sue Gilliatt, for example, burned off her nose when she used the Native American herbal remedy bloodroot to treat her skin cancer in 2001. When Dorothy Wilson's doctor prescribed L-tryptophan for her insomnia in 1988, the over-the-counter amino acid triggered a mysterious disease that left her painfully incapacitated by nerve damage. Although Hurley presents scanty evidence regarding vitamin C's inability to prevent colds, his claim about the criminal backgrounds of several supplement manufacturers is alarming. Hurley wraps up with a refreshingly tough-love conclusion: the bamboozled have to accept some of the blame themselves for wanting a quick-fix promise of good health without having to do the work of a salubrious lifestyle. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Hurley maintains that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 is one of the worst laws on the books. Shielding vitamins and herbal concoctions from FDA testing, it requires only that no curative claims be made for such "dietary supplements." In the prologue, Hurley shows that curative claims are made, anyway, and the users of an herbal salve were able to sue when the stuff ate their flesh. Subsequent chapters cite cases that also show that per-dosage amounts of dietary-supplement ingredients are often improperly listed; that greater than standard recommended daily amounts of most vitamins wreak havoc in the body; and that natural doesn't mean safe or effective. He notes the high proportion of convicted felons in the supplement industry, sketching the careers of several of the most egregious, including best-selling self-help health author Kevin Trudeau. He points to research that nullifies common knowledge about the effectiveness of virtually all dietary supplements; food, not pills, is the optimal and probably the only means of properly ingesting vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and so forth. He puts all such substantive information in the context of plenty of absorbing and moving stories of death, deceit, and political chicanery. Truly a good book that is good for you. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767920422
• ISBN-13: 978-0767920421
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #507,307 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Extreme Cases do not call for extreeme regulation , August 18, 2008

By	Jason Black "J Black" (USA) - See all my reviews

Sensationalism sells books. It sold "Natural Cures" on TV direct media campaigns, and it sold this book - at least to me. Both are at extreme opposite end of the subject and both are misleading. Take your supplements. Do your research, don't over do it, just as you should not over do OTC meds and prescription meds.
I've been taking supplements for most of my life and exercising. At age 51 I look younger, feel better, work longer, and enjoy life so much more than those that have not followed this path. I would suggest that you continue to take basic supplements, avoid any Muscle and Body Building magazine recommendations (if you are stupid enough not to know that the results are from Steroids and not fat burners and whey, then uh, well you should read more). Be careful with herbs, but know that there are herbs that predate the pharmacy industry and are proven safe, effective and we know how they work. Look at Lunesta vs. Valerian for example. Do your research be smart, buy vitamins from a reputable store and a reputable company.
BMX Extreme sports are dangerous, but I still ride a bike. I have lifted for 35 years, but have never touched steroids. A few people died from taking ephedrine based supplements, it's speed people! Don't exceed the dose and don't take it if you think it's going to melt your beer gut away by itself! Pick up a "Pill Book" or another medical book and become informed about everything before you put anything in your body. Look up the top 10 prescribed pills and be amazed at comments like "not sure how they work", "they may increase X production, but also they may limit Y production" We just know they work.
Vitamins are safe, many herbs are safe. If you are trying to regulate a mood with herbs, be careful. Sensationalism sells books, be it Barack Husein Barry Obama or Vitamins.
It's true it's a business. There is a profit motive duh! So buyer always beware and don't take everything on the aisle, just as you wouldn't take everything on the cold formula aisle.

41 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rife with errors, poorly researched, January 16, 2007

By	Marc S. Ullman "MarcU" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Whatever Mr. Hurley's agenda might be, he is free to have is own point of view and to write about it. The essential problem with this book is that its central thesis is undercut by the incredibly poor job of fact checking by Mr. Hurley and his editors. Let's take two very fundamental mistakes that could have been corrected with even the most basic fact checking.

For one, the author couldn't even get the name of the CEO of Natrol, who he claims to have interviewed, correct. The name of Natrol's founder and Chairman of the Board is Elliott Balbert. Mr. Hurley repeatedly refers to him as Mitchell Balbert. Did anyone bother to do any fact checking? This mistake could have been "discovered" if anyone associated with the publication of this book had simply gone to Natrol's web page and verified the name of the company's Chairman of the Board. [...]

Let's take another, even more fundamental error given the subject matter of this publication. Mr. Hurley discusses the plight of a woman who claims that her nose fell off because of a product she put on it to treat what she thought was skin cancer. Suspend reality and set aside whatever questions you have about someone who claims to be a nurse self-treating her skin cancer in the manner described by Mr. Hurley. The real problem is that any topical product such as the one described in this section of Mr. Hurley's book is not a dietary supplement, and cannot be legally sold as one in the United States. By law such products are drugs. If either Mr. Hurley or his editors had bothered to look at the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, they could have avoided this fundamental mistake.

If the author could make these kinds of basic mistakes and his editors could not bother to undertake the effort to fact check such basic assertions like these, what level of confidence should anyone have in Mr. Hurley's "facts"?

In the interests of full disclosure, I am an attorney specializing in food in drug law. Many of my clients are in the dietary supplement/natural products industry.

35 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Irresponsible, January 16, 2007

By	William Martin (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a scientist I found this book quite disappointing and found several instances where the author misinterprets the scientific literature. Here is one example of this distortion. There have been about 40 reasonably designed studies conducted on St Johns Wort for depression. In sum, the science has clearly demonstrated that SJW is efficacious. However there a few trials that have failed to find a beneficial effect...and for understandable reasons that have now been clarified, i.e. source, dose, number of subjects, etc. The author uses one of these federally funded studies to demean the value of saint johns wort and concludes that it does not work. That is simply irresponsible and untrue. This is analogous to testing 40 automobiles for their ability to get a person to work on time. In a few of the tests the person does not make it to work on time because either the car breaks down, there is too much traffic, the person leaves late or there is not enough gas in the tank. However, the vast majority of people make it to work on time. Using this authors logic, the conclusion would be that cars dont work for getting people to point B on time.

It appears that the author did a fair amount of research on this book and therefore knows that SJW is efficacious when used appropriately. The question then becomes why distort the truth, which I do not have an answer for.

As the book points out bloodroot is indeed caustic and I have used it myself. However it is not a dietary supplement. The person who used burnt off her nose by using bloodroot is one extreme example. After poking around on the internet the US justice system found her claim to be unfounded, yet the author of this book takes her word as gospel.