CRN condemns ‘fear-mongering’ selenium allegations
The group was responding to complaints filed last month with the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission by the consumer advocacy Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
In its complaints, CSPI had urged the agencies to put a stop to prostate cancer health claims made on Bayer HealthCare’s selenium-containing One A Day Men’s Health Formula multivitamins, and to seize improperly labeled products from shelves.
Referring to the major SELECT trial conducted on selenium and mentioned in CSPI’s complaints, Steve Mister, president and CEO, CRN said:
“The fact is that the researchers involved in the SELECT trial have themselves been very careful to state that any increased risk of diabetes that might have been associated with the SELECT trial was not statistically significant and may have been due to chance.”
“If the tables were turned and the study showed a similar reduction in the risk of diabetes that was not statistically significant, but CRN or its members were promoting a reduced risk, CSPI would not hesitate to chide the industry for doing so. It is more than a little disingenuous to keep raising the specter of increased chance of diabetes from non-statistically significant data from a single study that may be due to chance.”
He added that rather than calling for the seizure of products that cause no health risk to consumers, CSPI should focus its efforts on helping to reign in the “outliers in this industry”.
“It would be nice to see CSPI join CRN in calling for FDA resources to be directed to these kinds of egregious behaviors where there really is the potential for health risks to consumers.”
