WE CAN HANDLE MEDICINE BETTER

Dr Hallinan of the Irish Medicines Board maintains that by licensing herbal
and nutritional supplements these products will somehow become safer and
better value, despite the inevitable jump in their prices The Examiner,
November 22).

The logic is flawed when one takes into account the documented safety
records of these supplements. The Poisons Unit in Beaumont Hospital, for
example, hasn't had a single report of side effects from last year92s
estimated 75,000 users of St John's Wort in Ireland. Will putting the
herb on prescription improve that safety record?

Dr Hallinan dismisses "dire predictions that Vitamin C, garlic, etc are all
under threat". Yet elsewhere he has written that vitamins and minerals
above the RDA are medicines and "need to meet the appropriate standards of
safety, effectiveness and quality required of medicinal products".

In other words, almost all vitamin and mineral products on health store
shelves are to be regarded by the IMB as if had the toxic potential of
antibiotics or steroids. This is a dire prediction for anyone who uses
1000mg vitamin C to help ward off a cold: they may be faced with swallowing
17 tablets of the vitamin at the low RDA level to get the same effect!

Regulation is needed in the health supplements industry as in any other,
and in fact the industry has been vainly seeking reasonable regulation for
over ten years to safeguard its high standards. Let's hope common sense
will finally prevail. A realistic approach to available safety data coupled
with examination of successful regulatory systems operated elsewhere would
provide a way forward. It could lead to reconciliation of the concerns of
our regulators with the experience of consumers and the knowledge of health
store owners and staff.

Jill Bell Well and Good, Broderick Street, Midleton, Co Cork.