It's about EDTA. It can be legitimately used to treat heavy metal poisoning, plus some other things. Some people (who are probably misguided) want to self-medicate. The FDA won't let you. Hence, drama.

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Metacelsus 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

yeah, because unless you legitimately have heavy metal poisoning, the side effects DEFINITELY aren't worth it

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hinterlands 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Probably, but the process doesn't work that way. The default is that you can't sell medication to people, period. Some pharmaceutical company applied to have a specific form of EDTA approved as a prescription drug, and that was that.

Separately from this, substances that meet the criteria of being "natural" can be sold as supplements as long as you don't claim they cure anything. EDTA is naturally-occurring and you can buy it as a supplement in the US, although the FDA has some beef with this, which I think is what the original remark might be alluding to.

EDTA is also a common food additive and a laboratory reagent, so people who want to use it can buy it easily, which makes the whole debate basically performance art.

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sorcerer-mar 18 hours ago | parent [-]

So in summary, the FDA prevents you from marketing something as a medicine unless you have gone through the approval process and developed all the regulatory apparatus around a medicine (e.g. packaging, suppliers, prescription guidelines, etc)?

	▲	hinterlands 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Look, I'm not arguing this is bad, I'm just trying to respond to the original question and capture the essence of the debate. There are three pertinent points: (1) it's EDTA; (2) it's not that EDTA is safe or not safe, it's that no one applied to have it approved as an OTC medication; (3) you can still (probably) sell EDTA as a supplement in the US, but the FDA grumbled about it, which angered various chelation cranks.

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Aloisius 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Iron, copper, zinc, cobalt, manganese and selenium are "heavy metals."

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Tuna-Fish 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

EDTA removes all metals. It's simply a compound that forms water-soluble complexes with metal ions, removing them from the body.

The way idiots kill their children with it is that among other metals, it removes calcium ions, and those are necessary for life, with low enough concentration in blood eventually resulting in cardiac arrest.

So said idiots have an autistic child, read junk online that tells them that "toxins" caused this, find the compound that is legitimately used to remove toxins, and administer enough to end the autism. By stopping their child's heart.

I don't particularly like the FDA, but restricting the availability of EDTA is not something I'd criticize.

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jajko 11 hours ago | parent [-]

If you have such parents, you basically lost the game of life without having a chance to participate much. The only real solution would be to forcibly and permanently take children away from such people, not something I see flying in US if we don't include ie physical abuse or pedophilia.

I feel like a basic human life value has decreased recently. Be it ongoing brutal wars, news pushing doom and gloom 24/7, covid certainly didnt help or something similar. A bit like reversal to medieval times when cruel public executions were a spectacle for whole town and families and life of individual was truly worthless.

If thats the case, let the dumb die including offsprings, just don't let their bills to be picked up by society. Extremely cruel, but it seems we are heading that way, and we have this little thing called overpopulation. Extreme freedom with extreme consequences.

	▲	msgodel 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah this is one of those situations where people freak out about their neighbor's behavior and try to change who they are with administrative policy. It's really just counter productive. I think better would be for people to be more personally picky who they share spaces with.

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rob74 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow, that's an interesting rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metals.

> Even in applications other than toxicity, no widely agreed criterion-based definition of a heavy metal exists. Reviews have recommended that it not be used. Different meanings may be attached to the term, depending on the context.

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grues-dinner 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Heavy metal" in general is a bad term, but especially when used as a proxy for toxin. There is no universal definition of heavy metal and there is no inherent connection to toxicity in any specific organism.

Then again, pretty much every metal is toxic at some relatively low body-mass concentration, even iron (which actually can and does kill people, especially when children eat adult iron supplements).

Even lovely unreactive gold does have compounds that are toxic.

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msgodel 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not allowing self medication was probably a mistake.