From our president: A daily dose of risk

Perfection can be found in a pill. So say ads and infomercials for dietary supplements. They're touted as the path to health, wellness, and long life, so much so that more than half of U.S. consumers take them, to the tune of billions of dollars in 2011.

But as you'll read in our new investigation, all of those promises come at a price. Most supplements aren't tested for safety before they're put on the market. More than 6,300 reports of serious adverse events associated with them have been reported over the past five years. Although the reports themselves don't prove the supplements caused the problems, they do raise concern. And more than 400 dietary supplements have been found to be spiked with prescription drugs or other compounds in the past four years.

So why is the government so hands-off? Whenever the Food and Drug Administration or Congress moves toward more oversight of supplements, manufacturers accuse the government of trying to interfere with consumers' freedom of choice. 

We wonder how it is that consumers' freedom of choice means the industry gets a pass on meeting basic safety standards and providing accurate information. We believe Congress and the FDA should make supplements safer by taking these steps:

• Supplement manufacturers should be required to register their products with the FDA annually.
• The FDA should have the authority to order a recall of unsafe products.
• Requirements for supplement labeling should be strengthened to ensure that consistent, reliable safety information exists for all products.
• The FDA should post summaries of the serious adverse-event reports it receives from manufacturers and consumers on its website.
• The FDA should impose stiffer fines and penalties on companies that sell products that are illegally spiked with prescription drugs.

Check out our free guide to more than 100 commonly used supplements.