FDA & Texas Attack the ECA Stack

FDA and Texas are ignoring decades of medical research as they try to squash the ECA stack.

On March 31, 2000 the FDA is going to release another batch of dubious adverse event reports and try to kill ma huang (ephedrine) supplements. The media is aiding and abetting this effort by churning out biased "news" articles that do not mention the benefits of ECA. There has never been a better time to write some letters explaining why obese people do not want thermogenic supplements taken off the market.

Texas wants the MEDWATCH telephone number put on the label of ephedra supplements so they can collect even more dubious adverse event reports. Would the supplement companies go along with this, or would they refuse to change their labels just for Texas? Could this kill herbal stacks in Texas? Who knows? However, once a precedent is set, this MEDWATCH telephone number could easily be used as a weapon against ALL dietary supplements. Let the Texas Department of Health know what you think about this MEDWATCH telephone number scheme.

Here are a few facts about ephedrine that you might want to mention in your letters:

1. In Denmark, ephedrine and caffeine is licensed as a prescription drug and doctors prescribed 9.6 million daily doses over a two year period. It has an excellent safety record.

2. The medical evidence showing that ECA is safe and effective is so strong that research scientists organized an international symposium to encourage the medical industry to use ECA to treat obesity. Scientists from all over the world published papers from this symposium in Supplement 1 of the Feb 1993 issue of the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders.

3. An estimated 300,000 obesity-related deaths occur each year. If ECA helps even a small percentage of these people lose weight, then this adds up to thousands of lives SAVED each year by thermogenic supplements. If the FDA takes ephedrine off the market, they will cause thousands of avoidable deaths each year.

4. The medical journal, JAMA, recently published a meta-analysis of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in hospitalized patients and found that PRESCRIPTION drugs are "between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death" in the United States. This is an estimated 2.2 million serious ADRs and 106,000 deaths EACH YEAR from prescription drugs! By the way, they define "serious adverse drug reactions" as "those that required hospitalization, were permanently disabling, or resulted in death" How dare they portray supplements as dangerous?

5. In light of all these deaths from prescription drugs, wouldn't it be more appropriate to put the MEDWATCH telephone number on prescription drugs?

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

eca stack, texas, fda