The $37 Billion Supplement Industry Is Barely REgulated And Could Be Dangerous
When Pouya Jamshidi, a resident at Weill Cornell Medical College, delivered his first baby, the doctor on call told him to take the newborn away from its mother.
The baby, a healthy girl with mocha-pink skin and a powerful set of lungs, was being quarantined.
In the middle of the pregnancy, her mother had come down with tuberculosis. She'd contracted the contagious lung infection in her teens, and the illness came back despite preventative antibiotics and regular screenings. The cause: a popular herbal supplement called St. John's wort.
"The trouble is most people don't consider it a medication because you don't need a prescription for it, and so she didn't tell us," Jamshidi told Business Insider.