Re: FDA Ban ALERT: Cholestin

James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Wed, 03 Jun 1998 09:41:24 -0700

At 09:29 PM 6/2/98 -0400, Ian Goddard fowarded:
>
>"Mevacor.") (In addition to the substance which is similar to lovastatin,
>the red rice yeast also contains nine other active ingredients which
>undoubtedly make it synergistically much SAFER than Mevacor.)

This is an irritatingly common misperception. How does something being
"natural" make it chemically any safer than synthetically manufactured
drugs? Also how does having 10 active ingredients make something safer (as
opposed to one), when the opposite should generally be true? Not to
mention that "synergistically much safer" is a lot of meaningless hand-waving.

While I disagree with the FDA action in principle, this particular post
panders to the sensibilities of New Age types and irritates mine.

-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com