Posts Tagged ‘hydroxycut settlements’

On May one, 2009, the FDA issued a recall of fourteen differing kinds of Hydroxycut products manufactured by Iovate Medical Sciences. All these products were sold as helps for weight reduction, fat burners, energy enhancers, and minimal cost diet products in grocery stores, drug stores, and bargain stores all over the United States And in 70 other countries. This Hydroxycut recall was based on reports turned into the FDA concerning heavy liver issues as well as a death that have been associated with the drugs.

Some sites will tell you the Hydroxycut recall was totally voluntary on the part of Iovate; however, keep in mind the the FDA was pivotal in making it happen. Many reports of problems associated with diet drugs are never passed along to the FDA, as the agency isn’t set up to monitor products such as these which technically are not medicines. However, when enough reports of health issues filter into the organization, they do take notice and proceed to sort out it. Of course, public health is their primary concern.

Reports of twenty-three cases of serious liver damage and one death, all related to Hydroxycut, were sufficient to get the FDA interested. Sadly , it requires a period of years for enough cases to reach the agency in order for it to act. The one death they looked into was of a teen-aged boy back in 2007. The Hydroxycut recall didn’t happen until 2009, however, which which permitted for time for the FDA to research the difficulty and react. In the interim, it’s hard telling how many extra health issues resulted from folks continuing to use the diet supplement.

All of this information might lead you to wonder if the system is set up the way it should be. Should the FDA policies be modified in order they have more control of the diet product industry? Is it right for the firms that make these products to be allowed to advertise that their diet drugs are safe and made only of natural ingredients? This kind of so-so advertising lulls the public into a false sense of complacency. Most folk believe that if a product is sitting on store shelves and available for widespread public use, it could have been tested and proven safe. Sadly, this isn’t necessarily the case.

The Hydroxycut recall brought the difficulty into public focus, but if there is a problem with the product, shouldn’t the company making the drug be held in charge of safety issues? Should the folk be put through a barrage of products that will essentially be unsafe to their health? Of course, prescription medicines, and even many kinds of over-the-counter drugs, are required to pass tough inspection by the FDA. Why then are other products which are equally-capable of damaging someone’s health being permitted on the market without these protects in place?

Apparently you can put any kind of preparation into a shiny carton and call it a diet supplement. Everyone knows this is true, because everybody’s seen hundreds of products that have been hailed as helping folk to lose weight which basically do not work at all. The diet drug industry is booming to the tune of billions of dollars every year, and people are risking their health taking uncontrolled chemicals. The recent Hydroxycut recall has brought this fact to the public attention like never before making people realize that changes need to made in the system.