Should there be a language standard in Google ads for supplements? Drug marketers may adopt rules given the close scrutiny that the FDA is giving search-generated ads for pharmaceuticals. It may also be time for makers and marketers to set rules what is allowed.

Three Americans won the Nobel prize in medicine for their research work on telomeres, the endcaps of chromosomes that protect genetic material from being erased. Understanding that mechanism is enlightening scientists on aging and disease. Nutritional supplement companies should pay special attention to the research that merited the award.

The Federal Trade Commission provides advertising lessons in its proposed settlement with CVS to refund nearly $2.8 million to buyers of the retailer’s Air Shield dietary supplement. The drug store chain made cold-prevention claims for the product that were similar to those for competing products, Airborne and Germ Defense. Those product claims also ran afoul of the FTC and cost their companies.

We are not sure of the reason, but it seems that every three months or so, a national media outlet weighs in on an old story: tainted nutritional supplements. The latest is a rehash of anecdotes with the same question: Are vitamins safe? So goes the Sept. 7 article in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “What’s Really in Supplements?”

This is Part II of the Post that began here in which we discuss the three important suits filed this summer by supplement lawyer Jonathan Emord challenging FDA administrative action on first amendment grounds. The cGMP Challenge – FDA Overreaching? The FDA supplement cGMP regulations were anticipated from the time that DSHEA was passed in [...]

This is a tale of two types of weight-loss products and how the Food and Drug Administration had different responses to similar problems with them. The separate, but not equivalent treatment raises questions about how the FDA operates.