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Spanish Health Ministry overrun by miracle cures
By h.b. - Apr 24, 2008 - 3:37 PM

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Consumers group FACUA has asked the ministry to better control the products which are advertised widely in the Spanish press

The Spanish Ministry for Health says it is overrun with slimming products, and it cannot keep a close control on all the ‘miracle medicines’ sold in Spain as they are not sold as pharmaceuticals. Often the sale of such items is disguised as natural products, but some contain as many as five different types of hormones.

The admission comes in the week that the Ministry issued a warning about possible liver toxicity from Herbalife products, to which the company responded that there has been ‘an extremely low incidence of serious adverse reports citing liver function abnormalities’ in the 28 years that it has been selling products.

Many such slimming products have been denounced by the consumers group FACUA and the names of Keikoslim, Tropexlight, Canialb and Detoxykall are on the suspicious list. Such miracle products are advertised freely in the press, although in many cases the Ministry for Health considers that they are illegal.

Despite its lack of resources to fight the problems the Ministry has said it will investigate all the items mentioned to it by FACUA and others as being suspicious. The slimming aid, Depuralina, was withdrawn from sale on April 9 because of concerns over possible side effects, as well as the illegality of the company selling it in Spain. However there is a legal loophole, and in fact the Ministry can only act when the product is claimed to have therapeutic properties.

For now they have issued a warning to people about the possible dangers of such items, and repeated advice to not purchase any medicines over the Internet, because of the lack of control that implies.

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