What is the meaning of "No Therauputic Claims"?

Question

I saw it on a herbal medicine thingy once. What does it really mean?

Answer 1

Ditto to everything David S said.

The FDA has an "Alice In Wonderland" approach to herbs and other supplements.

If you don't make a therapeutic claim, it's an herb. If you make a claim, the very same herb or vitamin is a drug in their eyes. The herb hasn't changed...only the FDA's willingness to seize the claimants property for a criminal investigation has changed.

If that "through the looking glass" stance has you scratching your head, it demonstrates that you are able to reason things out.

In other words, if you were to claim that Vitamin C cures scurvy, that would be a therapeutic or illegal claim, unless you were to do $500,000,000 worth of studies to back it up.

In the course of that, you'd have to treat people with scurvy to prove it.

Good luck and be well.

Answer 2

The American Medical Association has a monopoly on the words "Treat, Cure, Diagnose"

This means that anything not directly endorsed by the AMA cannot use these words, with very few exceptions. For example, Chiropractors are allowed to diagnose and treat subluxation but they are not allowed to treat headaches, even though the treatment of subluxation often improves chronic headaches.

So even though the Lancet (the largest medical journal in the world) ran a paper saying that echinacea cuts the length of a cold by over 50%, it's still considered to be an herbal and herbs are officially not intended to "treat, cure or mitigate disease."

The FDA therefore requires all such "dietary supplements" to carry that text, or something to that effect.

Herbs are sold under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which was past by unanimous passage from both houses of Congress. It states that herbs and nutritional supplements (when made well) are shown to benefit the health of the public and we therefore now have a protected right to have access to education about these things and to such products.

So it has nothing to do with science or validation, but rather it has to do with the legal structure and how the medical monopoly has limited language about anything that might benefit your health.

Answer 3

It means they are not promising anything. It also means, by extension "take at your own risk!"
However, I disagree that the AMA has a monopoly on the words "cure, treat and diagnose." Chiropractors use those words all the time.
The monopoly lies with the FDA, not the AMA. As substances that you will take into your body, they must have passed certain standards of research to make medical claims, such as double blind studies, etc. Herbal supplements have in the most cases not been tested in these ways.

Answer 4

This is a disclaimer. It is saying that, for whatever reason you are using the particular "medicine", the packager makes no claim as to that herbs effectiveness as a medicine. It may be good for what you have, and it may not. To claim that it is good for a condition would make it a drug and it would have to undergo quality and effectiveness testing. Therfore, no claims are made.