Dental health is nothing to floss over.
The dietary supplement industry began flexing its muscles in Washington in 1993, when the FDA threatened to tighten controls on its products. Before then, dietary supplements, which include herbal medicines, vitamins, minerals, hormones and homeopathic remedies, fell through the regulatory cracks and a quiet hostility existed between the agency and manufacturers. The FDA kept many supplements off the market with the threat that they would be treated like drugs, which generally require several years of pre-market testing at a cost of several million dollars. The alliance hired one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, Tony Podesta, whose brother John would become President Clinton's chief of staff. Mel Gibson was featured in a TV commercial, handcuffed by FDA agents for possession of vitamins.