The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended that Primus Pharmaceuticals, Scottsdale, Arizona, voluntarily recall Limbrel, a capsule marketed to “manage the metabolic processes associated with osteoarthritis.” The company has not yet acted to remove the product from the market. Although the product is marketed as a medical food, the preliminary determination of the FDA investigation is that Limbrel is an unapproved new drug. The agency does not have mandatory recall authority over drug products.
The FDA reminds consumers not to use Limbrel because of the risk of drug-induced liver injury, and a lung condition called hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Consumers taking this product should stop immediately and contact their health care provider. Health care providers who are aware that their patients are taking Limbrel should advise them to stop using it.
What's interesting is this is a "medical food", which the pharmaceutical industry uses for its root, bark snakes and rattles that fall under the Orphan Drug Act in the United States.
US snake oil would fall in this category (note Chinese snake oil is made from *aquatic* snakes and ia omega-3 fish oils, US made oil are rattlesnake that doesn't do anything). You can buy Chinese snake oil on ebay, it's a liniment for arthritic knees come to think of it. At no point did snake oil ever not work as there's probably better things but it did work. The American patent medicine system is who you thank for the association of snake oil and placebo.
The site referenced here goes to great lengths to explain the difference between the two classes of nutritional therapeutic agents the FDA regulates: supplements (Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats etc) referred to as"supplements" and "medical foods" and go to great lengths to explain they're not the same thing.
They're the same. There is one difference.
That's because vitamins don't get recalled. "Remember when we said you'd die without these chemicals. Yeah not any more." - That's not ever going to happen, The problem with picking up weird gnomic mutations where the soil is different (ie selenium or boron) and incorporating it into or genome is of great advantage, now we can make all sorts of helpful chemicals ut the cost is a lifetime need for certain very tiny amounts of these substances.
