Congressional One Pager

August 31st, 2007

Natural Solutions Foundation Media Release
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org

GeneralStubblebine@GlobalHealthFreedom.org

 

Protecting Health Freedom for Consumers and Entrepreneurs

1. While health care reformers want a more educated health care consumer, FDA seeks to further stifle health information. FDA has issued a Guidance prohibiting the making of any Health Claims that lack “Significant Scientific Agreement,” an impossible standard since “significant” and “agreement” cannot be defined. Under a policy of “Harmonization,” as well as a published preference for international over domestic rulemaking (Federal Register, October 11, 1995), FDA’s own Head of Dietary Supplements Office convinced an international body, the UN-sponsored Codex Alimentarius, to prohibit as “advertising” any food related health benefit information that can change consumer behavior. Congress should pass HR 2117, the “Health Freedom Protection Act,” to allow “common law”claims and follow Supreme Court decisions, empowering consumers with helpful information on food and supplements.2. While these same health reformers want to expand access, FDA is threatening supply with another FDA Guidance, on “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (CAM), which creates new categories of “medicine”, services and products not authorized by Congress. By using the word “Medicine” instead of “Modalities,” FDA is setting up natural therapies for a takeover by the world of licensed physicians. FDA’s intent here was made clear in March, 2007, when, after the Michigan Cherry Growers Association published scientific evidence of the healing benefits of cherries for arthritis, FDA forced the removal of that information under threat forbidding cherries as an “untested drug.” Since state medical boards often forbid natural therapies as outside the scope of medical practice, licensees who engage in such modalities could lose their licenses; lack of insurance coverage for natural modalities further will further restrict their availability. Congress should hold hearings on FDA’s attack on the natural therapies industry.

3. With a pending recession threatening jobs, FDA is poised to put manufacturers of natural therapies out of business. FDA’s own Economic Impact analysis of its dietary supplement “Good Manufacturing Practices” (GMPs) showed “establishments with not only high costs, but also average costs, could be hard pressed to continue to operate…Very small businesses with less than 20 employees will be at risk of going out of business.” Supplement manufactures already are facing cruel surprise invasions by FDA inspectors dedicated to a “strong enforcement policy” (www.fda.gov/oc/whitepapers/enforce.html). Congress should divest the FDA of “food regulation”, adding an independent Inspector General and a consumer ombudsman to protect the US food supply.4. In an FDA Revitalization bill pending Conference, the Senate version seeks to reform food regulation in response to complaints about Chinese import dangers. Section 608 would exempt from this food proposal supplements which as “food” are generally considered safe under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA). Any final FDA Reform bill should retain Section 608.

Posted in The Law & CODEX | 1 Comment »

Introducing the Health Freedom Protection Act

August 31st, 2007

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
Before the U.S. House of Representatives

May 2, 2007

Introducing the Health Freedom Protection Act

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Health Freedom Protection Act. This bill restores the First Amendment rights of consumers to receive truthful information regarding the benefits of foods and dietary supplements by codifying the First Amendment standards used by federal courts to strike down the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) efforts to censor truthful health claims. The Health Freedom Protection Act also stops the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) from censoring truthful health care claims.

The American people have made it clear they do not want the federal government to interfere with their access to dietary supplements, yet the FDA and the FTC continue to engage in heavy-handed attempts to restrict such access. The FDA continues to frustrate consumers’ efforts to learn how they can improve their health even after Congress, responding to a record number of constituents’ comments, passed the Dietary Supplement and Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). FDA bureaucrats are so determined to frustrate consumers’ access to truthful information that they are even evading their duty to comply with four federal court decisions vindicating consumers’ First Amendment rights to discover the health benefits of foods and dietary supplements.

FDA bureaucrats have even refused to abide by the DSHEA section allowing the public to have access to scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against diseases by claiming that every article concerning this topic is evidence of intent to sell a drug.

Because of the FDA’s censorship of truthful health claims, millions of Americans may suffer with diseases and other health care problems they may have avoided by using dietary supplements. For example, the FDA prohibited consumers from learning how folic acid reduces the risk of neural tube defects for four years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended every woman of childbearing age take folic acid supplements to reduce neural tube defects. This FDA action contributed to an estimated 10,000 cases of preventable neutral tube defects!

The FDA also continues to prohibit consumers from learning about the scientific evidence that glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate are effective in the treatment of osteoarthritis; that omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of sudden death heart attack; and that calcium may reduce the risk of bone fractures.

The Health Freedom Protection Act will force the FDA to at last comply with the commands of Congress, the First Amendment, and the American people by codifying the First Amendment standards adopted by the federal courts. Specifically, the Health Freedom Protection Act stops the FDA from censoring truthful claims about the curative, mitigative, or preventative effects of dietary supplements, and adopts the federal court’s suggested use of disclaimers as an alternative to censorship. The Health Freedom Protection Act also stops the FDA from prohibiting the distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease.

This legislation also addresses the FTC’s violations of the First Amendment. Under traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, the federal government bears the burden of proving an advertising statement false before censoring that statement. However, the FTC has reversed the standard in the case of dietary supplements by requiring supplement manufactures to satisfy an unobtainable standard of proof that their statement is true. The FTC’s standards are blocking innovation in the marketplace.

The Health Freedom Protection Act requires the government bear the burden of proving that speech could be censored. This is how it should be in a free, dynamic society. The bill also requires that the FTC warn parties that their advertising is false and give them a chance to correct their mistakes.

Madam Speaker, if we are serious about putting people in charge of their health care, then shouldn’t we stop federal bureaucrats from preventing Americans from learning about simple ways to improve their health. I therefore call on my colleagues to stand up for good health care and the First Amendment by cosponsoring the Health Freedom Protection Act.

Posted in Legislation to Support | No Comments »

FDA Chief Says FDA “Needs to Work More Closely With Drug Companies” WHY?

May 31st, 2007

Ralph Fucetola. whose website is www.VitaminLawyer.com, writes a blog on issues pertaining to health freedom and regulatory issues. Here is Ralph’s articulate and important commentary on the absurd position of Von Eschenbach, the drug company darling running the FDA and allowing dangerous drugs to flood the market and poison Americans by the hundreds of thousands (or more: adverse reactions are notoriously under-reported).

Here is his latest blog/newsletter on Von Eschenbach ‘s dangerous dereliction of the FDA’s responsibility to the American people:

SPECIAL VLUeM – 05.31.07 – VITAMIN LAWYER UPDATE e-MEMO

PRIVATE MESSAGE: The purpose of the VLUeM e-memo is to update the Vitamin
Lawyer and Vitamin Lawyer News web sites for my contacts and client list.
Please take a look at www.vitaminlawyer.com – we have a new look and better
indexing. Private, privileged & confidential…

——————————————————–

Ron Paul’s Bill is the answer to the FDA’s failings…

Head of FDA wants to work more closely with Drug Companies…

Report from Gardner Harris – “May 30 – When Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach took
over the Food and Drug Administration in 2005, the agency had a crisis over
drug approvals that had missed or ignored dangerous side effects in Vioxx,
antidepressants and other prominent medications. Dr. von Eschenbach promised
improvements, and agency officials said they would no longer be caught
flatfooted on drug safety. But this month, The New England Journal of Medicine
published a study suggesting that a major diabetes pill, Avandia, might
increase the risk of heart attacks.

Concerns over that drug and others have led Republicans and Democrats in the
House and the Senate to call for investigations. A House hearing is planned
for June 6. Dr. von Eschenbach said in a briefing on Wednesday that his agency
needed to collaborate more closely with drug companies.

’The point is that we need to look at the role of the F.D.A. in being a
bridge to the future, not a barrier to the future,’ he said at his office
here.”

My question: is working closely with Drug Companies the solution… or the
problem?

I suggest that a better solution would be promoting natural remedies without
dangerous side effects; not putting up bureaucratic barriers to them. This
can best be done by allowing people access to truthful information about
traditional, non-drug approaches; by letting natural product purveyors make
serious health claims… exactly what Ron Paul’s Health Freedom Protection Act
would do.

In the twelve hours since www.globalhealthfreedom.org sent an email blast
seeking support for the Paul bill over 10,000 people have written their
congresspeople supporting the bill! We still need hundreds of thousands to
move Congress.

[Note:
Here’s where to do it: http://tinyurl.com/3xwmjm or

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11754

Protect our herbs, vitamins, minerals and natural remedies from bureaucratic
meddling!!

Spread the word. Ron Paul’s bill should either be passed as written or passed as an amendment to the House version of the bill that makes the FDA even more of a threat to life and liberty than it is now, Kennedy’s S. 1082 (passed May 9 with only one dissenting vote). Tell your Representatives that is what you want! Click here to direct them to protect your right to know what dietary supplements actually do for you.

The FDA is bound and determined to make that knowledge a crime, thus killing the market for dietary supplements by the efforts of the poison press (including Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s illogical, slanted and destructive article in the May 24, 2007 issue of Time Magazine) and the seductive, but equally dangerous and misleading advertising of drugs for every possible state of human experience.

If you have not already watched the “Nutricide” lecture on our home page, please do so now. It will change your life. Then get involved in making sure that everyone you know gets involved, too. That’s how we will protect our health freedom.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

Posted in Activism, Hall of Shame, Home Page, Medical Hazards | 1 Comment »

Action Alert

May 19th, 2007
  1. Don’t let the FDA take away your right to health information! Act NOW.
  2. Support Ron Paul’s Health Freedom Protection Act! Tell House to Protect Valid Health Claims!
  3. Ask the Presidential candidates to clarify their stance on health freedom issues by sending them 19 tough questions.
  4. Click here to tell US House of Representatives to protect your health freedom.
  5. Donate Now!
  6. Sign Citizen’s Petition

Posted in Activism, Home - Top Right, Legislation to Oppose, Legislation to Support | No Comments »

Codex Scorecard: Codex +1, Consumers -2

May 2nd, 2007

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

Yesterday had some very hopeful moments at the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) meeting here in Ottawa. The World Health Organization (WHO) gave CCFL a bunch of action steps that is wanted Codex (through this committee and the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses) to use to implement the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical activity and Diet. These steps include informative labels on pre-packaged food about the caloric content (“energy”), saturated and trans fats, sodium, sugars and nutrients. The purpose of this is to allow consumers to reduce their risk for the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) of under nutrition, identified by the WHO as cancers, cardiovascular disease and stroke, diabetes and obesity and manage them via dietary strategies.

That’s right: there IS a connection, says the WHO, between what goes into your mouth and what becomes of your body! And it is up to the world’s food standard setting body, the WHO says, to do something positive about it. Who could argue with that? Well, Canada, the US, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and a host of other countries, that’s who. You see, if the world’s people knew how to reduce their risk factors for the major killers (aside from properly prescribed drugs, of course), they would not be buying the really bad foods that comprise so much of the Standard American Diet (so aptly called “SAD”, but now rapidly becoming the “SGD”, Standard Global Diet). They might choose veggies, not fried chicken wings, fruits, not dough nuts, and local foods, not Big Macs and fries.

If they understood how to prevent the highly profitable killer diseases they might not spend billions and billions of dollars on drug-based illness care because they would not have illnesses that needed treatment and if they did have those illnesses, they could manage their conditions with diet reducing or eliminating the need for drugs (an drugs to control the side effects of those drugs, of course!)

If consumers knew that giving their babies and children sweets would give them heart disease and diabetes, they might make different choices for them resulting in the loss of more billions of dollars in kiddie food porn.

And if labels contained helpful information about macro nutrients (protein, fiber, sugar, sodium) and micro nutrients (vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other big impact, small dose diet components), they might decide to regulate their health for preventive, as well as therapeutic purposes. Eating patterns would change, disease expenditures would change, corporate profits would change and consumers would be making a heap of bother for the multinational corporations and the countries that serve their interests and call it public policy.

Other countries, of course, expressed strong commitment to the implementation strategies brought forward by the WHO. But it turned into a bad day at black rock anyway for consumer health.

A Bit of Necessary Background

The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) has been headed for decades by the autocratic, anti-nutrition and very powerful Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician with a specialization in nutritional medicine (which is an option in Germany). Aside from humiliating and dismissing any one at all who does not support his point of view during each and every one of the CCNFSDU meetings, Dr. G. maintains that nutrition has no place in medicine (2003) and that only super low dose nutrients, in doses so tiny that they have no impact on any human, should be permitted. Dr. Grossklaus is also the Chairman of the Board of bFR, a State owned German company that performs “Risk Assessment” on toxins of various sorts. Dr. G. has sold the Codex world a very rotten bill of goods by selling the concept of “risk assessment” for nutrients. The net result? Codex treats nutrients as if they were dangerous industrial chemicals. Of course, if it is true that Dr. G serves both as the Chairman of the Board of a company that does Risk Assessment on a contract basis for Codex and serves as the chair of the committee that requires these same risk assessments would be highly questionable ethically.

Dr. Grossklaus has applied the toxicology tool of risk assessment to nutrients. Here is a very abbreviated list of the “Maximum Permissible Levels” (MPL) which bFR proposes for everyone in the world thus assuring global under nutrition (followed by the amount that I take on a daily basis for comparison)

Nutrient MPL My Daily Dose
Vitamin C 225 mg /// 3.5 grams (3500 mg)
Vitamin D 5 IU /// 8000 IU
Vitamin E 15 IU /// 1200 IU
Vitamin B3 17 mg /// 1000 mg
Vitamin B6 5.4 mg /// 250 mg
Vitamin B12 5 mcg /// 5000 mcg
Fluoride 3.8 mg /// 0.00 mg: significant toxin

Read more about this dangerous “risk assessment”.

And Codex buys it. Right now, the CCNFSDU is engaged in setting Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) at the dangerously low levels for vitamins and minerals.

Back to Today at CCFL

When the WHO proposal was brought forward to make labeling of both macro and micro nutrients part of the information available on pre packaged foods, some countries thought that would help their consumers and were strongly in favor of it. Others, however, including the usual gang of suspects (which always seems to include the United States), proposed that the determination of the values to be indicated on labels as necessary to prevent or manage the NCDs (caused by under nutrition, you will recall) on food labels should be left to CCNFSDU. Since they were already working on the NRVs for vitamins and minerals, the countries said, CCNFSDU would be the perfect part of Codex to refer this task to.

Of course, what this means is that Dr. G’s overt hostility to effective doses of nutrients is virtually certain to lead to values so low that the concept of reducing risk of disease or managing that disease through these doses will be meaningless. Winner” Big Pharma and the other components of the Illness Care industry. Looser? You and I, our loved ones and our friends and neighbors.

For Shame!

Round 2

Powdered infant formula is contaminated on a regular basis with at least two potentially deadly microbes. Only careful handling, short limits on use after mixing, and other strict precautions can keep babies from dying in significant numbers from contaminated formula, especially if there the baby already is weakened by malnutrition, parasites, etc. The International Breast Feeding Action Network (IBFAN), an NGO which speaks for the interests of pregnant women and babies, asked that a WHO report on the proper treatment and procedures of reconstituted powdered infant formula be referenced by the CCFL in its report. “Good idea” said the predictably pro-health countries. Bad, bad, bad idea said the “Pharma Phriends”: We do not need to tell mothers, care givers, hospitals, etc.

If there were logical reasons given for sentencing countless babies to serious illness and many of them to death, I missed them and I was listening pretty hard.

The good news today, however, is that we got invited to a special regional meeting set up to allow us to share our insights and opinions in an area ripe for action — they ARE mad as Hell and the ARE NOT going to take it any more.
I think you will have an easy time understanding why saying more is premature!

Remembering that World Trade Organization trade sanctions are the teeth of Codex, the Codex Working Group developed a strategy to make countries that choose not to follow Codex “Trade Sanction Proof”. You can imagine how veyr intersted health-friendly nations are!

We continue to build the “coalition of the willingly healthy” at Codex and in their own countries so that they can engage in real self determination through the application of our two step WTO Proofing Concept. One of the tools we provide is a hard copy of the Codex eBook. This is the identical book we offer to Codex Delegates, Ministers of Health and other decision makers. The Codex book provides the information necessary for any country to protect its people from any danger brought by Codex and still avoid World Trade Organization (WTO) trade sanctions by the application of a scientific and legislative template. We also make available our highly informative and startling Nutricide:the DVD, too.

As it happens, this Codex eBook is the application of the WTO-proof template has been applied to the dangerous and restrictive Vitamin and Mineral Guideline so it is exceptionally timely right now!

One final word: right now 180,623 people have submitted their comments on the destructive and deceptive FDA CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine/Modalities) Guidance. Please take a moment to do the same if you haven’t already told the FDA how important the practices and products you rely on in Natural Health options are to you.

Thanks!

Yours in health freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD

Medical Director

Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

Posted in CODEX Consequences, CODEX Industries, Hall of Shame, Home Page | 2 Comments »

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