Kessler's log, supplemental.

• Author: Lochhead, Carolyn
• Position: FDA commissioner David Kessler

THE OPENING ACT OF A WASHINGTON power grab always makes for fascinating, if now increasingly common, spectacle. But Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler's war on vitamins, minerals, and other dietary supplements is a real standout.

Kessler knows how to put on a show in the committee hearing rooms of Capitol Hill, where in the last few months he has been promoting his plan to impose sweeping new regulations on supplements. His assistants are even making the rounds of newspaper editorial rooms to press the FDA's case.

Kessler adamantly denies that the FDA will in any way limit access to or doses of vitamins and other supplements. He accuses critics of scaremongering. Yet the FDA's advance notice of proposed rule making in the June 18 Federal Register, the government's regulatory bible, indicates otherwise. Indeed, one gets a sense of cognitive dissonance listening to Kessler and reading the official record, which says that the agency would like to regulate amino acids as drugs, remove a number of herbs from the market, and set safety limits on vitamin and mineral potencies.

Matching Kessler's public statements against the scientific evidence can easily give the impression that it is the FDA chief who is doing the scaremongering. Perhaps the extreme positions outlined in the Federal Register notice were mere trial balloons. Nevertheless, Kessler has made it clear that the FDA wants to suppress consumer information about nutrients by forbidding manufacturers from making any health claims without prior FDA approval. Such a position is dubious at best, given the breath-taking new findings about the critical role nutrients play in preventing the chronic diseases that kill modern Americans--cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoperosis--as well as cataracts, infectious diseases, neural-tube birth defects, and other conditions. The potential human cost of restricting such information is huge.

When his time comes to testify at a subcommittee hearing, Kessler strides to the witness table and a bevy of aides springs into action. They set up large colored charts illustrating supplement dangers and heap on floors and tables big clear plastic bags filled with supplement bottles, presumably dangerous, fraudulent, or both.

His voice rising in indignation, Kessler insists that, contrary to what the $4-billion dietary supplement industry says, he is not out to deprive anyone of vitamins. (The $4-billion figure implies an unspoken connection...