FDA Warns HCG is Dangerous, MS Bans Prescriptions

Zaneta Lowe

5:42 p.m. CST, February 16, 2012

FAST FACTS: HCG combined with a low calorie diet often leads to quick weight loss. The FDA banned OTC HCG products, but you can still find them. Mississippi doctors can't prescribe it for weight loss anymore.  

(Memphis 2/16/2012) "I was obese, I weighed 285 pounds."

Over the last six months, 57-year-old Jack Hammers has dropped 80 pounds.

"Pants went from a 46 to a 36," says Hammers.

Hammers says he owes it all to the HCG diet.

First created in the 1950s, the diet combines the use of daily HCG injections with eating only 500 calories a day.  

Hammers and his wife Alice tried it together. She's lost 30 pounds.

"You keep each other motivated," Alice says.

The HCG diet has recently re-surged in popularity.

There are weight loss clinics all across the country and here in the MidSouth.

Dr. James "Bo" Adams has prescribed HCG for about 200 patients since he added the weight loss clinic to his practice more than a year ago.

"We looked into it and thought, that might be a reasonable thing to offer to patients because obesity is a health care issue," says Adams.

In spite of the popularity, the Food and Drug Administration calls the HCG diet dangerous.

It says HCG is fine to treat infertility, but so called "off label" use, like using the hormone in combination with a 500 calorie diet can cause harm. 

A little more than a month ago, the FDA banned the sale of over the counter HCG, specifically those labeled homeopathic.

The FDA and Federal Trade Commission sent warnings to seven companies ordering them to halt sales.

Despite the FDA'S ban on homeopathic HCG, we were still able to find it online and in stores.

See the article here:
FDA Warns HCG is Dangerous, MS Bans Prescriptions