Email Newsletter from 2/26/06

The month long trip to Africa that we just concluded was, by far, the most grueling experience of my life. In fact, for the first time ever, it took me a full week to recover both my energy and my stamina after we got back. This is literally the first time I have ever experienced jet lag or whatever it was. The General, who is a good deal older than I am, bounced back after a single night of deep sleep in a familiar bed. So, functionally, the trip was actually 4 weeks long for him and 5 weeks long for me! But, at last, we’re ba-aaaack!

Although difficult, of course, there were wonderful moments like the time at a traditional restaurant in a country with a rich, strong dance and music culture a local man asked me to join him in dancing to the local music before the traditional dancers came out and he and I (alone) danced our hearts out to the delight of the highly nationalistic patrons. Apparently this honor was bestowed because I was wearing the national dress (cotton, luckily!) and that meant a great deal to the proud people of this African nation.

This African journey was, however hard, worth every difficult, hot, steamy and challenging moment because what we have initialized and what it means for the future of health freedom here and abroad. In brief, a large number of countries have been informed of a two step process by which nations whose national policies are not yet set by multinational interests (e.g., are either too independent-minded or too poor to spend enough money to make it worthwhile for Big Pharma and its sister Bigs, Big Chema, Big Agribiz, Big Biotechna and Big Medica, to corrupt and control them totally (or both).

Remember, everything we do in any other part of the world which strengthens the community of health-focused, consumer protecting nations builds the constituency for keeping the freedoms that we have here in the US and expanding them further. It's part of the strategy to make sure that clean, unadulterated food and high potency nutrients are available to all of us who know that they are literally the foundation of our health and our health freedom.

Since the General and I love to dance, and since one of my fondest memories of this trip will be the moment I just described, I want to tell you about the rest of the dancing that we are involved in to implement this novel and highly impactful strategy to hold and expand health and health freedom like the flame of light that it is:

Dance # 1: The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline Two Step: The legal strategy to protect a country from aproblematic Codex provision is a simple and powerful two step process:

[Step1] A Revised Guideline, Standard or Regulation is adopted by the country based on better science than the Codex one and

[Step 2] The legislation necessary to enable it is passed by the Parliament of the country. Then, under the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose trade sanctions are the teeth of Codex, the country will not be vulnerable to trade sanctions for creating a barrier to trade since the WTO rule is that Codex is A standard, not THE standard, by which food disputes are settled. In the WTO, the best science wins if the legal process allows it.

The US already has DSHEA. It consideres nutrients as foods and, as such, do not need upper limits on them. We have to protect DSHEA. Are we ready to let the pharmaceutical interests destroy our access to unlimited nutrients at our discretion while some of the poorest countries on earth take that freedom for themselves? If you’re not prepared to give up that freedom, to join the Citizen Petition and tell the US Government that its intent to “HARMonize” with the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline violates US law and must not happen. Make your voice heard and bring as many other voices to the table as possible while you’re at it!

The Natural Solutions Foundation, working with the Citizen Codex Working Group, chose to start with the particularly dangerous Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) whose ratification in Rome by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (July 4, 2005) was accompanied by the, in our view, shameful jubilation of the US Codex Manager, Dr. Ed Scarbrough. Considering the mandated under-nutrition and subsequent global disease which this standard guarantees, especially if adopted as domestic legislation as Codex members are urged to do, mourning, rather than jubilation, seems more appropriate to me.

From one end of Africa to another we presented the highest level decision-makers in government, consumer sectors and watch-dog organizations with a detailed bound document which contains

1. A letter of introduction by General Stubblebine as the President of the Natural Solutions Foundation,

2. An easy to read side-by side comparison of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG) and our Revised VMG

3. Model legislation based on the vitally important 1994 US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) which treats nutrients as foods which, as such, can have no upper limit set upon their use

4. A summary of the legal basis upon which we can say that we believe our strategy will allow nations to be safe from WTO trade sanctions

5. A detailed article with sections covering

a. the impact and importance of high potency nutrients in prevention, treatment, mitigation and cure of the conditions of under-nutrition

b. the economic impact of using these strategies for developed and developed nations to create a nutrition-based health strategy

c. the rules which the World Health Organization has set forth at Codex’s request including the one which classifies a nutrient-related adverse event as any change in any biomarker even in a positive direction

d. a detailed examination of the relative risks of nutrients compared to other hazards including drugs

e. detailed science-based articles on the use of high potency nutrients in sample disease states which present major public health costs and losses:

i. Trauma and Wound Healing

ii. Cardiovascular Disease

iii. Diabetes and Glucose Control a copy of “Nutricide: the DVD”

6. A copy of “Nutricide: the DVD”

This impressive full-color book, complete with beautiful professionally designed front and back covers (courtesy of our marvelously talented graphic artist, Sasha), accompanied by two small gifts (an attractive rose-wood laser-cut Natural Solutions Foundation pen set in a lovely rosewood presentation box and a full color matching key ring) was a highly effective document .* Its substance and seriousness opened high level discussions that will, we hope, bear significant fruit.

All of these people to whom we spoke in Africa understood clearly that Codex is a major problem for them. None of them had a protective strategy in mind until we presented ours to them. The most common comment we heard after our presentation was, "This is very timely. We are trying to figure out how to repsond to this and we will study your document and take this option very seriously". In fact, that was close to a universal response.

Dance # 2: The East African Shout: A really extraordinary event occurred which I want to share with you: The Natural Solutions Foundation was invited to attend a meeting of the Ministers of Health and their top aides of 42 African countries. We were admitted to the meeting with the understanding that, as observers who did not yet have formal credentials with this Regional African Organization (although we are working on becoming credentialed participants), we were not to speak, only to observe. We obeyed these rules scrupulously but when several presentations containing what we believed to be inaccurate Avian Flu information, its prevention and [lack of] treatment, I took the opportunity to approach a Minister of Health of a major African country who had just been elected President of the organization. I told her that I had some information which was of such vital importance on these issues that I needed to ask her to find some way to make it available to the Ministers of Health assembled there. When I shared it with her, she asked me, against all precedent and protocol, to take a few minutes to address the organization immediately after the tea break was over. Of course, I did so with great pleasure. Those 5 minutes may, in fact, save the lives of tens, perhaps 100s of millions of otherwise defenseless people from a possibly engineered and unnecessary pandemic. Whether or not the predicted pandemic is really a natural event is not the point here. The opportunity to put new and vitally important information into the health care system of nearly the entire continent with potentially momentus impact was thrilling. And I do not think that it hurt our efforts to make a formal arrangement for participation with the organization one bit!

In various countries, we met with various organizations and agencies which are deeply invovled in Codex. National Codex Committees are usually housed in the Standards Boards of their countries with significant input from other relevant ministries, civil societies and Consumer Organizations. Ministries of Health, Environmental Protection Agencies and so forth send representatives to the National Codex Committees and to those Committees which the country has elected to participate in (or is being supported to attend). Every single member of a National Codex Committee to whom we spoke (and there were many of them from various African countries) confided to us that they and their colleagues were “out gunned” and “out maneuvered” by the "big guys": the US and, except in the Biotech and Food Labeling Committee (on the issue of unlabeled GM foods) the EU and their developed allies. Whatever line these 500 lb trade gorillas take is generally followed closely by Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The little countries, many of whom lack the electronic and financial resources for full participation, have simply been unable to make their voices count despite some valiant efforts by heroic pro-health national and consumer group advocates. With your help, those days are over. Keep reading.

Since the real deals are usually done before the committees ever meet, the use of obviously pre-scripted outcomes and procedural shenanigans (2 examples follow) and orchestrated developed nation bloc voting leaves the delegates of small countries feeling powerless and isolated despite individual points of dispute or objection which are quickly steam-rollered, over-ruled or circumvented. Remember, the theory is that every country has an equal vote or voice in the Codex forum. The reality has been very, very different, however, espcially since all 25 member nations of the EU vote as a single bloc which counts as 25 votes.

Two examples of these breathtaking, rule-defying procedural acrobatic seated lap dances make the point:

Dance # 3. The Parliamentary Prance: Codex tries to avoid votes at all costs and instead uses real consensus (rare) or bogus consensus (frequent), a shifting concept which is defined and re-defined as needed only by the Chair. At the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) 2005, the delegate of one of our African countries reports that when a country called for a vote (a powerful move which is their right: the rules specify that a vote must then be held by the end of that day) the Chairman of the CCFL inaccurately stated: “Codex tradition is that we do not vote on anymore. We use ‘consensus’ ” which means that the Chair rules any way s/he wants and, unless an unusually procedurally skilled delegation objects successfully, the Chair wins the day. On this occasion a bogus consensus replaced real debate and a legitimate vote.

Dance # 4: The 7 Step Control-the-Outcome, Take That! Tango, an example from the most recent Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary (CCNFSDU) meeting in Bonn, 2005, chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus which General Stubblebine and I were present to witness:

[Step 1] Drag Right Foot. All health and nutrition-positive items such as not allowing sugar in baby formulas are fobbed off by the chairman who repeats “This (and that and the other thing) will be discussed when we come to Agenda Item #2, “Implementation of the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Exercise and Health” which Codex had been directed to implement by direct order of the WHO at the July, 2005 Codex Alimentarius Commission.

[Step 2] Shove Left Foot to Rear. Agenda Item # 2 gets shifted to the last position on the agenda, Now called "Item # 11", so that it cannot be discussed until the end of the last day of the CCNFSDU meeting after all other business is completely wrapped up.

[Step 3] Put Right Foot Where Left One Was (and Vice Versa) in One/Eighth of a Beat. Somehow the otherwise infallible German CCNFSDU Secretariat forgets to make the WHO document on implementation of the Global Strategy, which is essential for the discussion, available until the last 16 minutes of the session (the simultaneous translators leave promptly at the scheduled end of each session so the meeting really is over at that point).

[Step 4] Shuffle Aimlessly Around in a Circle for 64 Bars Without Lifting Feet From Floor. 6 minutes are used distributing the document to the delegates and observers leaving 10 minutes for discussion of implementation of the Global Strategy.

[Step 5] Engage Partner, Look Fleetingly in Eyes, Rapidly Let Go and Turn Your Back on Your Partner. Discussion begins but is cut short by the Chairman to allow 4 minutes for Thailand, the host of next year’s CCNFSDU, to show tourism slides of beautiful Chang Mai and the resort where the meeting will be held in late October, 2006.

[Step 6] Pause. The CCNFSDU meeting is adjourned after a total of 6 minutes to discuss the vitally important, complex and generally health-supportive Global Strategy.

[Step 7] Hold Breath. Will the Global Strategy be on next year’s CCNFSDU agenda? Your guess is just as good as mine.

This is about to change. First of all, thanks to the excellent work of our legal and technical colleagues and advisors in the Citizens Codex Working Group, we have been able to provide nations with a strategy which they can use to protect themselves from the excesses and errors of Codex by creating their own health-based regulations. Those nations who choose this route, by the way, instantly form a health-based trading block thus multiplying their economic and trade-group power. None of the nations missed this point.

Dance # 5: The Codex Conga Line: Pro-health nations will have the opportunity to participate in our new Natural Solutions Foundation Codex training workshops for their delegates in which

- procedural and technical information is shared

- strategies developed and

- participation effectiveness enhanced while

- building the capacity to take these techniques home and

- apply them to other Codex and international situations. Knowledge gained and shared is strong. Knowledge shared and put into action is massively powerful.

Step, KICK!

More events of significance: the South African Health Products Manufacturers Association (from whom we have never received any support of any kind) asked me to present on the implications of Codex for them at their meeting on January 26, 2006 in Johannesburg, South Africa. This event occasioned their request that we run a 2 day meeting for doctors in South Africa in September of this year to teach doctors and other high level health professionals how to use high potency nutrients as treatment strategies in their practices. The President of this association and others in South Africa and the Natural Solutions Foundation had discussed this possibility beforehand and now it is a reality coming up in the first week in September. What an exciting opportuntity to create and enlarge an influential constituency in support of maintaining high potency nutrient access this presents while spreading the gospel of nutritional health and natural medicine!

Similarly, in a North African country we met with the Minister of Health, the head of the national Diabetes Service, the head of the EPA and a large number of government-employed specialized physicians who were enthralled to find that they could use nutrients not only to prevent disease, but to treat it as well. We were asked to run a 6 day intensive training for physicians to teach them how to use high potency nutrients. We agreed for the same reason as in South Africa: these highly educated, influential and powerfully connected people will become an automatic pressure group for the adoption of the RVMG and its enabling legislation in order to keep access to these wonderful substances! They are then primed to take on the next Codex corrective issue and the next and the next.

This activity has official government sanction and support. It will come right after the South African symposium in September, 2006.

Doctors from all of the countries in our emerging bloc will be invited to either or both of these activities.
But that’s not all: You know that Mrs. Goski Alabi and Dr. Ferdinand Tay, two exceptionally talented and capable people with great local and international experience, have agreed to serve as Director and Director of Consumer Affairs of Natural Solutions Foundation – Africa, respectively. We will be attending the World Health Assembly (May, 2006) in Geneva, Switzerland, to meet and garner support for our position with delegates from around the world and engaging support for our Codex training workshop from countries who share our view of their role in protecting their citizens’ health i (Oh, yes, we’ll try to squeeze in attending the Codex Committee on Food Labeling in Ottowa at the beginning of May before we head from Geneva to South East Asia to share our message there.)

Of course, we plan on being in Geneva again for the Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting in July before we head back to Africa for our next planning session there.

Whew! That’s a lot.

Dance # 6: Twist and Shout: What’s your role? That’s easy:

1. Spread the world. Use your contacts at your health food store, natural health professional, membership groups, health club, etc., and your email circles of influence to let people know about Codex. The media isn’t doing the job so we have to. Keep telling people that Codex is a threat to their health and health freedom and refer them to this website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org to learn more
2. Stay Current. Join the Natural Solutions Foundation mailing list (which we never sell, never rent, never share) to stay up to date on health freedom here and abroad.
3. Watch “Nutricide: the DVD”
   a. Find out where Codex came from and where it's going.
   b. Show this vitally important DVD locally to alert and activate people. Let them know where they can get a copy so they can do the same.
   c. Email your circle of influence and suggest they inform themselves and others, too, with the DVD.
   d. Purchase copies at a deeply discounted rate for your Congressmen and women. Use our handy order form and we’ll send them off for you with a letter to your legislators telling them it came from you and urging them to watch this important information
4. Set up a local lecture/fund raiser in your community like the one Asheville, NC area supporters have organized for March 5, 2005. Schedule it far enough in advance and General Stubblebine and I will be there! Interested? The Asheville group has created a step-by-step template for you to follow! Contact us and get started being an even bigger part of the solution.
5. Support the Natural Solutions Foundation financially. Industry does not. Our support comes from you. Large or small, your contribution is vitally important to our efforts and to your health freedom. The cost of our just-concluded African trip was over $55,000. That’s economy all the way. Travel is expensive in Africa.
   
   The Natural Solutions Foundation –Africa budget alone for the remainder of the year is approximately $175,000 US. That doesn't take us to Codex or cover our other expenses not directly related to Africa or our travel and expenses when we are there (or anywhere else, for that matter). That includes rent, salaries, the cost of the CCNFSDU training workshop, equipment, phone and internet services, overhead, sponsoring delegates to attend CCNFSDU, etc for Natural Solutions Foundation -Africa.
   
   If health and health freedom is important to you, and if you think that what the Natural Solutions Foundation is doing is the right way to go (i.e.,
   
   a. legal and political solutions and options for countries to create a strong influence bloc of health-focused nations in turn
   b. increasing the pressure on the US to maintain its leadership in this area by
   c. protecting DSHEA and other health-promoting standards and legislation,
   d. building regional communities of interested and active countries willing to
   e. change the ground Codex is played upon and protect their peoples and
   f. fearless US and international dissemination of accurate, non-commercial information to influential communities who can joint the health-promotion efforts plus
   g. participation in Codex, World Health Assembly and other international organizations as a strong and consistent voice of health and health freedom),

we need to be able to count on you in several ways:

a. Use your Credit Card, Pay Pal account or a check to donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation.

b. Tax deduction? Follow these instructions.

c. Donate to the DUMP Fund and your merchandise will be sold on eBay like the donor who sold valuable old LPs!

The DUMP Initiative is simple. All you have to do is take the item(s) to any common carrier (Federal Express, UPS, DHL), pack it up yourself (or have them pack it) and ship it to the D.U.M.P. Fund, attention: NSF, 297 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, NJ 07004 (email us at infor@dumpfund.org with any questions). Make sure you include your name and address. Too heavy to carry or perhaps you are too busy? No problem. If you’d like, we can arrange for a common carrier pick-up – just email us at infor@dumpfund.org.

By the way, if you go to our blog, you will find a day by day log of our African trip emerging starting with Day 1. There was no way to mount it during the given the communication difficulties of the trip but you may find it interesting to see what happened at a finer grain, so to speak, than I can give you in this Newsletter.

You will probably not be surprised to see that the names of the individual countries we worked with and the people we met are not specified. The work that we are doing to enhance health and health freedom globally is not likely to be very welcome to opposing forces with major amounts of power (read $$$) and it does not seem reasonable to me to make their life easier as they attempt to undermine these efforts.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

* We are preparing this detailed and important document for sale as an e-book, by the way, since it contains a vast amount of vitally important information. Stay tuned!

A thought just occurred to me: we were so successful in creating these attractive and practical gifts that you might like to have them, too. Send me an email and let me know if you would like to own a beautiful pen set and/or key chain and we will put them up on this website and www.EatSafeEatSmart.com for sale if you tell me there is an interest in them! They are beautiful and unusual and really make lovely gifts which Ministers of Health, Heads of Environmental Protection Departments and Codex Committee Chair people were obviously delighted to have. These items will help keep the Natural Solutions Foundation in front of people’s eyes.) Thanks for your guidance, REL