Editorial: No cause to limit health supplements

Tomorrow Health Minister Annette King will sign a treaty with an Australian counterpart setting up a joint agency to regulate dietary supplements and alternative therapeutic products in the two countries. In reality, New Zealand will be signing up to an Australian regime which is far more restrictive than ours. Do we need it? There is clearly a need to ensure that pills and lotions sold as health-enhancing products do not do physical harm, just as there is need to ensure that food put on the market is safe for human consumption.

But need Governments go further and attempt to regulate the efficacy of alternative remedies? In the name of safeguarding public health and safety the transtasman joint agency will regulate "the quality, safety and efficacy" of the products. The consequence, according to the industry, will be a severe reduction in the range of alternative remedies available here - three times more choice than in Australia, they say - and an increase in prices to cover the costs of satisfying the official requirements. Those are just the obvious effects of regulation; there can also be perverse consequences, such as the possibility that approved products may thereby acquire more credibility than they deserve.

So long as health products do not cause physical harm it would seem better to leave their efficacy to the judgment of consumers. Most people are quite capable of testing a potion for themselves if they feel the need. If they experience no effects, they give it away. If, however, its efficacy is implicitly endorsed by an official licensing authority, people who feel no benefit may continue to use it in the belief that it must be doing them some good.

Dietary supplements, for example, are not allowed to make therapeutic claims in New Zealand. Under the joint regime, however, dietary supplements will be regulated as complementary medicines and therapeutic claims will be permitted. But the greater likelihood is that many products will disappear from the market not because they are "unsafe" in the ordinary meaning of the word but because their manufacturer will not invest in the additional expense of meeting the regulatory red tape of a relatively small market.

If someone feels better for taking a dietary supplement, for example, what does it matter if medical science doubts the benefit? Medicine manufacturers fiercely resent the fact that alternative remedies can make health claims without undergoing the many years of rigorous and expensive trials required before any medicine can be put on the market. But medicines are artificial chemical compounds with risks proportionate to their efficacy. Alternative remedies are normally extracts of natural products and both their efficacy and risks are probably less than those of orthodox medicine.

Earlier this year, of course, a great many alternative remedies were recalled from sale because they contained ingredients manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals of Australia, one of whose products had caused users to suffer an adverse reaction. That scare has led to the decision to ditch New Zealand's more liberal regime and merge with the Australian regulatory agency. But it is worth recalling that Pan Pharmaceuticals had failed to meet the Australian regulatory requirements we are now to adopt.

High public confidence in medical science has survived much worse mishaps than the Pan Pharmaceuticals scare. But confidence in natural concoctions might not survive too many such alarms. The sector that is more lightly regulated has to be more sensitive to its market reputation. It has to attend to its safety before its efficacy. If its efficacy is less than consumers believe, what harm is really done? When Governments start deciding the wisdom of our personal purchases, we are back on the slippery slope.