January 25, 2024

This is an issue everyone can agree on, but no one will act on:  Food allergies exist.  The U.S. food manufacturing industry does a decent job of providing ingredient information so that customers can make wise choices for their health.  The U.S. drug manufacturing industry puts forth no effort to deal with allergies. This is Russian Roulette with American lives at stake.

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The prevalence of food allergies is roughly 10.8% of U.S. adults.  (Allergy advocacy organizations use this number and cite at least three different studies to confirm this statistic.  The USDA says 2% of adults, but doesn’t cite any relevant scientific studies.).  I was first diagnosed with a food allergy roughly thirteen years ago.  I had been sick with arthriticlike symptoms for years, and my naval career had been cut short.  As far as I knew, I was the epitome of health before going into officer’s training, but less than three days in, weird unexplainable symptoms developed.  I had multiple “seizures” a week.  The leadership in charge threatened to court martial me for faking sickness, because the Navy doctors couldn’t find any medical evidence of seizures or reasons for any other issues I was experiencing.  After a harrowing ordeal, the Navy processed me out, and sent me home, still sick and with no idea what was going on with my health.  After a couple of years, an alternative medicine chiropractor told me all my symptoms were caused by food allergies.  I thought the doctor was a quack, but I tried it out for a week, and in two days all my symptoms were gone.  At the end of the week, I ate regular food, and in less than 1/2 hour all my symptoms had returned.  Later, I went to a regular doctor and had the diagnosis confirmed with modern medical science, but learning to live with a severe allergy was arduous.  I had to check the ingredients of everything.  There are a lot of scientific chemical names used for ingredients in U.S. manufactured food, so I had to learn if those were made from my allergen or not.  After about six years, I felt I had a really good handle on it.  Foods manufactured in the U.S. have good labeling, warn you of cross-contamination risks, and in many cases will tell you what some of the scientific-sounding ingredients are derived from.  Once I was used to checking every ingredient and asking all the hard questions, I started asking my pharmacist about the inactive ingredients in my prescriptions.  The first few times, the pharmacist sheepishly responded he had no idea, and left it at that.  Then one of the pharmacists went above and beyond the call of duty.  He found the inactive ingredients list and let me read it.  I found ingredients that might have been a problem, it all depended on what it was made from, so he called the drug manufacturer while I waited.  Since he was a pharmacist, they didn’t give him the runaround like they had given me, and he asked about the ingredients in question and what they were made from.  I will never forget their response, “We don’t track that, and there is no way for us to track it.”  

So anytime anyone with a severe allergy gets medicine, they have no way to make an informed decision.  Since then, I have regularly contacted my congressman about this issue.  The solution I have presented is to simply apply the same labeling guidelines for manufactured foods to drugs.  My assumption is that this would be an easy change, and that since the Food and Drug Administration, regulates food and drugs, this would be a simple fix.  I have received no response beyond a form letter from my congressman, and mass mailers touting the things he has done.  After several attempts at getting my congressman to fix this problem, I contacted the FDA directly.  After all, the bureaucratic agencies in the U.S. seem to love to flex their bureaucratic muscle, especially if they can help a minority.  Here is their emailed response, with my nom de plume in place of my real name:

Dear Monroe Wesson,

Thank you for writing the Division of Drug Information in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. 

We greatly appreciate your time and effort in contacting the FDA to share your concerns with us. We are aware that patients and healthcare providers do not have readily accessible information to easily determine whether drug products contain an allergen as the current laws do not require manufacturers to list such information.  

We fully understand your frustration but regrettably, we are unable to comment on future actions. We recommend that you continue to contact the manufacturer for the most updated information on the ingredients used in their drug products.

Apparently, if I want the bureaucracy to do anything for me, I either need to line several congressmen’s pockets with lots of lobbying money or have bright unnatural hair color and be confused about my reproductive organs.

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When I mention the problem of poor drug labeling information and how it affects people with allergies to my fellow citizens, every one of them asks the same question.  Why can’t they just put the information there like with food?  Doesn’t FDA mean food and drug?  It wouldn’t be that difficult a change.  Congress or the FDA need to make the food-labeling laws apply to drugs and the problem is solved.  I’ve never met someone who was opposed to it.  The legislation would only need to be a few words: “All laws regulating the labeling of foods sold in the USA apply to drugs sold in the USA.”  This is a nonpartisan issue (for now).  However, I am not hopeful that this can be fixed in the current political climate.  The solution is too simple.  Congress can’t hide large amounts of pork barrel spending or new bureaucratic agencies in it.  This issue is not an issue that draws attention or gets people worked up.  Only 1 in 9 adults deals with this.  That leaves 8 in 9 who don’t care because they aren’t affected.  It is so far down on the political priority list, that it’s not going to get any attention… unless a congressman’s loved one is affected by a food allergy.  Then Congress might find the gumption to make it happen.  If the readers of this column could write to their congressional representatives and senators, then maybe something might change.  If not, just be aware that there are over 32 million American adults who must choose between taking medication or dealing with allergic reactions.  All we want is to be able to make an informed decision, and right now, we’re playing Russian roulette with our medicines.

Image: Stephen Z