(CNN) -- Did you know that there exists an all-natural remedy for memory loss? Weight gain? Macular degeneration? Prostate enlargement? These products are so successful that clinical testing has already begun! Just listen to the following testimonial from an unidentified person ...



As these ads blare at you from your favorite AM radio station, perhaps you wonder: How can this be legal? Since the late 1960s, aspirin makers have been trying to win the right to tell the public that a daily low-dose tablet can help prevent heart disease. They have been told no, and no, and no again.



Federal regulators are so nervous about over-selling aspirin's benefits that they have restricted statements about aspirin to the most bland and basic. Yet while the statements about aspirin have to be cushioned in the vaguest generalities, snake oil flim-flam can be huckstered in the most truth-defying way, thanks to a 1994 law coaxed through Congress by the people who make these drugs.



The law bears the long title of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. It was sponsored in House of Representatives by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indiana, and in the Senate by Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.



The DSHEA law draws a line between synthesized medicines like aspirin and remedies made from herbs, minerals, vitamins and amino acids. This latter group was recategorized as "dietary supplements" -- that is, as foods rather than drugs.



"Drugs" are subjected to exacting scientific trial to prove them both safe and also effective. Sellers of dietary supplements are not required to prove that their remedies work. They are not even required to prove them safe -- as "foods" they are presumed safe unless shown otherwise. "Drugs" must disclose any risk of side effect. (That's why those erectile dysfunction ads terrify TV audiences with their references to four-hour erections.)



Dietary supplements bear no such burden -- which is why St. John's wort can be sold as an anti-depressant, without any mention of the disturbing indications that the herb weakens the effectiveness of birth control pills.



"Drug" advertising must be pre-approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which minutely reviews the ads' accuracy. Dietary supplement advertising is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission.



So long as supplements avoid promises to cure a specific disease, their sellers can say pretty much whatever they want, provided only that they have some kind of supporting evidence on file.



That evidence does not have to meet any kind of scientific test: pretty much any pattern of ink on paper will do the job. I cannot say, "My rosemary-sage-thyme-and-oregano tablets cure AIDS." But if I pay my cousin $100 to do a few experiments, I can claim, "My tablets boost the immune system -- and clinical trials are under way!"



(There is an exception to the permissive rules about advertising natural products: wine. There is substantial evidence that a glass of red wine a day reduces the risk of heart attack. The laws of most states forbid any hint or suggestion that moderate alcohol use might confer health benefits. Still, if you ask the scientists, wine has better grounds to call itself a health food than does, say, echinacea!)



Fifteen years after receiving the favor of Congress, dietary supplements have grown into a $24 billion a year industry. Most of the products sold by the industry are merely useless.



For those who eat a balanced diet, scientists have found no quantifiable benefit from taking multivitamins. On the other hand, multivitamins probably won't do any harm. It would be better to give the $10 you spend on a jar of pills to the Salvation Army, but at least you are not poisoning yourself.



The same could not be said, alas, for the unfortunate customers of a Belgian herbal dispensary who bought a supplement that contained the herb Aristolochia fangi. The A. fangi herb is rich in aristolochic acid, a carcinogen -- and users experienced an
in which year was the law adopted? What year was the law from?
1994 1994
question: in which year was the law adopted?, answer: 1994 | question: What year was the law from?, answer: 1994