One of the nation's leading consumer advocacy groups called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week to ban the sale of dietary supplements containing the herbal stimulant ephedra. In the latest report, Washington, DC-based Public Citizen, which originally asked the FDA to ban ephedra in September 2001, cites at least 100 deaths attributed to ephedra use and several hundred adverse reactions, including hypertension, arrhythmia and stroke, associated with the substance.

Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, whose comments appear in the journal Science, called on the FDA to "fulfill their legal responsibility", contending that the FDA could ban ephedra under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, legislation that allows the agency to remove a product that has proven to cause harm.