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Funding
of research at the NIH
January 1999
Pharmaceutical
research is heavily funded by the federal government. In comparison,
miniscule resources have been dedicated to dietary supplements.
This is beginning to change. The budget for the National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine within the Office of
Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
was increased from $20M to $50M in October of 1998. This is still
modest compared to the billions of research dollars spent on pharmaceuticals.
While
many advocate increased government spending to research dietary
supplements, such spending runs the risk of running counter to consumer
and producer interests. Funding can lead to more regulation, insurance
mandates, and higher prices. Furthermore, it causes funding of research
to be politically-driven rather than market-driven. This is one
of the reasons that dietary supplement research has been delayed
decades beyond what would have been prompted by an unencumbered
market.
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More
about standards & regulations:
Industry
standards
Creating
a quality model for dietary supplements
Different
types of standards
Pros
and cons of standards
Competing
standards
Testing
products for quality
Dosage
recommendations
Good
manufacturing practices (GMPs)
Self-regulatory
quality standards
Government
regulations
FDA
safety monitoring
Federal
Trade Commision (FTC)
State
laws
Health
benefit claims
RDA,
DV, and other recommended intake values
Funding
of research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Possible
future FDA regulations
Possible
future Codex regulations
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