Health Pearl Harbor: HR 3156

July 13th, 2005

CODEX Daily Update
July 13, 2005
Rome, Italy
Rima E. Laibow, MD

Health Pearl Harbor signals Domestic War on Health Freedom!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Those of you who have declared that the restrictive and anti-health CODEX Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (accepted on July 4, 2005 in Rome by CODEX with US support ) will have no impact on domestic nutrients, the wellness industry, natural medicine and personal health choices are wrong. Dead wrong! That’s “DEAD” as in war. That’s dead as in dead from the increased cancer, diabetes, degenerative neurological conditions (including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS) which would result from the elimination of health choices right here in the good old USA! That’s unnecessary and preventable illness and death which will do only Big Pharma and Big Medica good and will cost you and your family your health and health freedom.

“Wait”, you may still be saying, “NNFA (Natural Nutritional Foods Assocation) and the FDA and the US CODEX Office and CRN (Council for Responsible Nutrition) have all told us that CODEX does not apply domestically so we have nothing to worry about!” Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you are still saying that and, worse, you believe it, listen up! Here is the game plan unless you and everyone you know wakes up and takes action: Having passed the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline with strong US policy support to do so, the pro-illness forces have begun the onslaught to take away your access to the high potency nutrients which will keep you from developing the highly profitable, and misery-inducing diseases of chronic under-nutrition.

Take a look at the first piece of legislation in the assault HR 3156) and be afraid, very afraid. This astonishingly destructive legislation, introduced by Susan Davis of California and cosponsored by Dingle of Michigan and Waxman of California allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services (which contains the FDA) to remove nutrients from the market place if there is a risk, no matter how tiny, of any harm to anyone even if that risk has never occurred. It allows the Secretary of HHS to remove nutrients if they might have been associated with an adverse event and require the reporting of any possible adverse event associated with a nutrient and its investigation by the reporter. Note, the playing field is nowhere near level, folks: drugs have no adverse event reporting system, NONE. Let me say that again for those of you who might have become so mind boggled by that fact that you skipped over it: DRUGS HAVE NO REQUIRED ADVERSE EVENT REPORTING SYSTEM EVEN IN THE CASE OF DEATH.

So what is being proposed is the opportunity to manipulate make believe data (adverse event reports which may not be connected with the supplement blamed) about make believe problems (toxicity of nutrients which are exceptionally safe and helpful to even the most fragile people) about make believe toxins (nutrients are not toxic: they cannot induce death so the dose at which 50% of the test animals die, the LD 50, cannot be determined. By definition, they are therefore not toxic.) I know, it seems silly to non-toxicologists, but the consequences of this distinction are significant: if you cannot classify a compound as a toxin, then the use of Risk Assessment to determine a safe dose for it makes no sense. Risk Assessment is a technique that toxicologists use to determine what dose of this potentially lethal stuff can be allowed because it causes no discernable impact on people or animals. In other words, if you use Risk Assessment to determine doses of nutrients, there will be no biological effect at that dose, none! And you guarantee under nutrition if it is not adequately supplied by your diet.

Ready for something else really interesting? HR 3165 excludes vitamins and minerals! SO? So the work is already done on them: CODEX approved the pro-illness Vitamin and Mineral Guideline last week which is going to do the heavy lifting there: no need to waste the effort on them here in the US. Does that chill your enthusiasm for the accuracy of the NNFA, CRN, FDA, IADSA position that the actions of CODEX have no domestic impact? If not, you either work for them in their PR departments or you should.

I have a friend who told me that in Australia, as soon as the Trans Tasman Agreement had harmonized with CODEX ALIMENTARIUS long before the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline was passed last week, the protective legislation that Australians relied upon to give them access to their natural health products (like our DSHEA legislation) were quickly and efficiently annihilated. The execution team had been waiting in the wings and, at the signal, swept in before the opposition (the consumers) could begin to get organized. I have previously said that we would need to be alert to the same threat. And here it is! The first wave of the post VMG domestic assault on our rights as Americans to make, market and purchase high potency nutrients is here and its name is HR 3156. It will not be the last: this is a salvo, not the war itself.

Let’s talk about war, shall we, since we are now fighting what I call “The Vitamin Wars”. No one ever won a war on the defensive. Wars are won on the offensive.

Right now, the European Court of Justice has declared that Vitamins and Minerals (and other nutrients, too, in a short time) will be limited to those on a “Positive List” unless they are approved as to dose and source through a process initiated by the submission of an astonishingly expensive dossier or file on that nutrient from that particular source at that particular dose. In the UK, the government has created a pot of money to help defray the cost of these dossier submissions. Because they had to be submitted by July 12 of this year (the same day, coincidentally, that the ECJ ruled in favor of the European Food Supplements Directive and against health freedom in the EU), by yesterday nearly 500 dossiers had been submitted for consideration. Until they are approved or rejected, they may still be sold in the EU. That means that for some time, at least, those items will be available and the August 1 disaster has been softened, if not averted. Good news, right? Well, sort of, if you like defensive postures. The other items, not the subject of dossiers, will be pulled on August 1. And the dossier items? Well, if they succeed in winning a so-called “derogation” or exception, they will be sold until … December 31, 2009! At that point, all such derogations become irrelevant and we are back to the pro-illness situation where only the risk-assessed, ultra low level nutrients are permitted anyway.

Clearly, this defensive struggle must be fought, but it cannot be won.

The way you win a war is by going on the offensive and staying there. Those of you who have been reading my blogs and the Natural Solutions Foundation site and listening to our live radio show, FREE U.S./FREE US!, Wednesdays at 7-8 PM eastern time know that we are an action-oriented organization. There is a reason for being action-oriented: that’s how you win wars. In a war, if you apply the Principles of War and follow them you have a high likelihood of winning. The first Principle of War is OBJECTIVE: Protect, defend and expand Health Freedom in the United States and globally. The second Principle of War is OFFENSIVE. Find it, occupy it and stay there.

When you go to the Six Easy Steps on our site today, you will find a new letter to Congress (if you have already carried out the Six Easy Steps, then you can go straight to the new letter). The new letter outlines the dangers of the health assault in HR 3156 and the other bills like it to come and tells Congress that there is a committed and determined army of health freedom advocates who will do whatever democracy allows them to do, including removing members of Congress from office who do not protect their rights. Send it to your Congressional Delegation. Follow all of the other steps, too, and send the site to everyone you know.

Don’t forget the donation step. We have no other way of supporting this fight besides your support. We are fighting this together and your donations are our lifeblood. We appreciate the small donation and the large one equally. But consider this: what will it mean to you and your family, your business and your well-being if we falter? Why not make a pledge to the Natural Solutions Foundation for a monthly level of support which you can sustain and which you feel matches the importance of this fight.

We are at war. There is no way to win a war except to gain the offensive position and exploit it. In the coming days we will be doing that together.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. You can use the easy and quick “Email to Friend” buttons on the HealthFreedomUSA.org web site to tell all your friends.

Posted in Activism, CODEX Consequences, Events, The Law & CODEX | No Comments »

How Are You Going to Keep Them Down on the Farm? Distract Them!

July 12th, 2005

Coincidence is a wonderful thing (assuming that it really exists at all, of course). Yesterday I wrote a blog about disinformation around CODEX (specifically, the dangers of focusing on the derivative or secondary issues of FTAA and CAFTA as if they were, in fact, related causally to CODEX).

Today I got an exceptionally important email from my good friend and advisor, Ralph Fucetola, JD. Ralph is smart and experienced in regulatory law with an unshakable belief in the importance and power of advanced medicine and its safe, non toxic tools (I strongly dislike the word “alternative” – what is good medicine an alternative to?).

When Ralph thinks something demands being listened to, I listen and pay close attention. Although it is long, the article which follows was passed along to me by Ralph and relates directly, especially in the first half, to the very issues that we considered yesterday: the techniques by which thought and information are distorted and, in turn, distort belief and behavior.

The grammar is not perfect but the information in this extremely vital piece make the lapses forgivable. If you think that your understanding of CODEX is being manipulated by words (such as “risk assessment” as a scientific approach of toxicology appropriate to nutrients which are, by definition, non-toxic, for example), distortion (“CAFTA and FTAA have CODEX language in them so they are the same as the CODEX problem”) and distraction (who is a Druid?, who is a witch?, who is “Controlled Opposition”?, who is a CIA Agent?, who is a good person?, who is a bad person?, etc.”) you are right.

So the infighting and turf wars which have provided this distortion and distraction (and which the Natural Solutions Foundation will not dignify by entering since there is plenty of turf to go around in the world of health freedom) fulfill the role of the bloated and meaningless “news” that keeps us disconnected both from reality and from its meaning.

Read, study, follow the links and make sure that you are comfortable with both what is presented and what is concluded from that. Above all, question your sources and evaluate the answers carefully. I know that I do.

You won’t always be correct, but you can always be informed. If you are an American, Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers gave you that opportunity and obligation. If not, seize this right for yourself as a human being! Sadly, the CODEX battle is no different from any other struggle for freedom. Then, if you discover that you are wrong, your truth-seeking awareness can correct your understanding and you can move on more accurately without being bogged down in a phantom reality which you are stuck defending because you don’t know how to integrate information without this particular piece of empty data.

Please ask, question, pursue and conclude for yourself. Such actions constitute the bedrock of Democracy.

Continue to read the thought-provoking The Doors of Perception – Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything, by Tim O’Shea.

And remember: reality, beyond distortion and illusion, is gracious.

Yours in Health and Freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »

MIS and DIS Information – CODEX Itself is the Problem, Not FTAA/CAFTA

July 11th, 2005

Daily CODEX Update
Rome, Italy
July 11, 2005

Rima E. Laibow, MD

Disseminating incorrect information is as old as human communication. Agencies and individuals do it for reasons they know and reasons they do not know. Sometimes we can distinguish between misinformation (incorrect but not meant to mislead) and disinformation (incorrect and intended to mislead). CODEX is rife with both and, as is often the case, sometimes it is hard to be sure which is which. But there is one CODEX area where the distinction, while interesting, is not even relevant: the information focusing on FTAA/CAFTA as the CODEX problem is wrong, just plain dead wrong.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe that CAFTA and FTAA are really, really bad for the US and the other countries being globalized. They are good for the multinational corporations and there will be a piñata of goodies showering on the people who help them gain control of global markets and global means of production if CAFTA and FTAA pass while the rest of us will suffer badly for a very long time. I would like FTAA and CAFTA to disappear and never present their ugly, greedy selves to us again since I believe they will harm both humans and the environment in dreadful ways. I am equally opposed to the national ID card passed by Congress recently (“Real ID”) because I believe it is bad for America and bad for liberty. But just as CODEX is not the Real ID card, so CODEX is neither CAFTA nor FTAA and stopping any or all of the three dead in their tracks, while a really good idea, will have no impact whatsoever on CODEX, none whatsoever. CAFTA/FTAA are nothing more than symptoms of globalization. Trying to stop CODEX by blocking them is like trying to remove a hornet’s nest by treating the hornet sting victim with medication to ease their pain. It reduces the pain for the moment, but leaves the problem free to develop unchecked.

FTAA and CAFTA are really bad ideas for US interests. But all the recent focus in them as related to the CODEX issue because they contain CODEX language is either an error in the understanding of the real nature of the CODEX problem or, worse yet, intentional disinformation to drain off energy and political force from opposition to CODEX ALIMENTARIUS. FTAA and CAFTA are totally irrelevant to the CODEX issue. I will repeat that for those of you who have been having your ears filled with the opposite position. If FTAA and CAFTA disappear tomorrow (which they should, to my thinking), we still have a major problem until CODEX is solved. CODEX is the problem and will be until CODEX’s devastatingly anti-health, pro-illness policies, positions and strategies are controlled and changed. I believe we can both control and change them and will write about that later in this blog, but this is a really important issue which must be addressed head on.

Some people in the CODEX arena are now focusing on FTAA and CAFTA and saying that it is a waste of time to focus in CODEX because FTAA and CAFTA contain CODEX language in their text. These forces are either using mis- or dis- information by misleading people to think that because these trade agreements contain CODEX language they somehow are a significant part of the Codex problem. Simple logic makes it clear that they are derivative problems, not the problem itself. They are symptoms of the problem, not its cause and not the problem itself.

They contain CODEX language because they are international agreements which must conform to the requirements and agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since the US is a party to the WTO and so are all of the nations which would participate in FTAA and CAFTA, OF COURSE they contain language which is consistent with CODEX and all of the other agreements. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement is a part of the WTO agreements and so is the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement. Every international agreement we enter into will contain language which reflects them. But the trade agreements can only implement what the original agreements require or permit. Why would anyone putting together a WTO-based agreement not put language in which makes the agreement consistent with them and therefore legal in each country and permissible in the WTO?

Here is the real story: If FTAA and CAFTA comply with CODEX language and CODEX has been changed from its pro-illness, pro-corporate greed contents there is no CODEX-related problem. If they are defeated and CODEX is still pro-illness and pro-greed, then we still have the CODEX problem just as we did before all that energy was drained off from the CODEX battle by mis – or dis—information.

Why anyone would focus on FTAA and CAFTA as if they were the problem and not the symptom is beyond me if they are genuinely concerned with solving the problem unless they have been mislead. If they are focusing on it to divert political attention and effort, we are dealing with disinformation and that’s pretty ugly.

In any event, whatever the reason, focusing on FTAA and CAFTA instead of CODEX is absolutely as wrong-headed as the “reasoning” by which conventional medicine reaches its conclusions. In fact, it is allopathic reasoning: focusing on the symptom and confusing its suppression with the cure of the disease itself!

Allopathic medicine focuses on symptoms, not causes. Allopathic medicine, while useful in many situations (such as trauma), reasons that by using toxic and dangerous means to suppress the symptoms of a disease, it has dealt with the problem in a satisfying and meaningful way. Diverting energy to FTAA and CAFTA that should go toward defeating CODEX may be well intentioned (or not, of course) but is naive and inefficient. Dealing with them as if they are the same thing takes energy vitally needed at this crucial juncture and dissipates it on another fight. CODEX itself is the root of the problem. CODEX language in FTAA/CAFTA is a symptom, nothing more.

But then, I am a physician who treats the underlying causes of a condition, not its symptoms. People very often get well when we work together even where conventional medicine (and less profound “alternative” approaches) has failed them. Conventional medicine reasons, for example, “You are a perfectly healthy woman, Mrs. Jones, except that you have breast cancer. Let’s make it go away and everything will be fine.” while Advanced Medicine (which is what I practice) says, “Your basic condition is immune compromise. Your immune system has been overwhelmed and the result is breast cancer, Mrs. Jones. Our task is to support your immune system so it can deal with the problem and make sure that any underlying causes are corrected. When that happens, you will be fine.”

So, there are those making the argument that if we make FTAA and CAFTA go away, we will be just fine. But if we don’t attend to the basic CODEX cancer, we will not be fine, because once ratified, CODEX is part of our world unless we can eliminate it in other ways. And now, because of the events that took place in two surprise moves by the WHO and FOA at CODEX last week, we can protect health freedom from CODEX!

There is no doubt in my mind that until this last week, the pro-health war we set out to win against the pro-illness, industrial forces who control CODEX (I call them, the “Bigs”) was an enormous undertaking which would require a series of mistakes on the part of the Bigs and strokes of good luck or divine intervention on our side (depending on how you look at things) for us to win and secure our fundamental rights to eternal health freedom.

The “Bigs” (that is, Big Pharma, Big AgraBiz, Big Chema, Big Biotechna and Big Medica) were set to win big via CODEX. Here is where they were headed:

  • Controlling the regulation of food and food components
  • Setting wildly elevated levels of pesticide, herbicide and veterinary drug contaminants
  • Compelling all food animals to be treated with antibiotics, growth hormones and other toxins
  • Forbidding nutritional information on labels
  • Defining nutrients as toxins so that anything that had a biological effect on a person was forbidden
  • Mandating irradiation of food
  • Allowing only synthetic varieties of those few ultra low level nutrients permitted.

It’s a long and deadly list but it was perfectly OK with the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) up until health freedom stood up and took control of the proceedings in the form of the very unhappy FAO and WHO representatives who spoke on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons last week and tilted the terrain in favor of health (people and planet), not corporate greed.

I have written in these Daily Blog Updates about what happened when the Under Secretary of Food Safety for the World Health Organization (WHO) noted with disgust that CODEX had made no contribution to health in its more than 40 years of existence (which was ignored in autocratic fashion by the Chairman of CAC).

I have also told you how the joint WHO/FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Consultant’s Report and its 20 formal recommendations were briefly discussed on Wednesday afternoon and how the CAC Chairman refused to allow discussion of Recommendation No. 18 (which noted that CAC needed to determine whether it does or does not have a relationship with nutrition and what that relationship should be if it does have one). Think about that: the parents (WHO and FAO) tell the child, CAC, that it has a pretty poor report card and the CAC “disses” Mom and Dad and goes on about its business thinking there will be no consequences.

Wrong!

I have also kept you up to date about how WHO and FAO chose to respond by ordering the CAC to implement their health-oriented “Global Strategy” and demanded that CAC make a contribution to global health either by reformatting the 2 committees which have a logical connection to nutrition (including the one chaired by the anti-nutrition Dr. Rolf Grossklaus) or creating a new structure, a Task Force on Nutrition.

Could our side want much more of an opportunity handed to it on a silver organizational platter?

Here is our task, now that we have been given this gift: We need to become the go-to people who help the folks who make our international policy become heroes by providing them with the best possible scientific and clinical documentation of the importance of pro-health options (including the nutritional and environmental literature and clinical arts) so that they can support CODEX policies which make positive health impacts.

We are already working with other organizations to pool our resources and our abilities to do just that nationally and internationally. FTAA? CAFTA? Symptoms, not diseases, results, not causes.

Mis information or dis information (or something else), the Natural Solutions Foundation advises every person who values the market economy to oppose FTAA and CAFTA. But make sure to preserve your energy, focus, attention and involvement for dealing with a current and immediate threat called CODEX. With your input and action, CODEX now can be changed from a global disaster to a global opportunity to bring American values like the DSHEA style classification of nutrients and herbs as foods allowing people to make their own health choices and other pro-health positions to the world. Focus on FTAA and CAFTA and our failure is assured since they are hemispheric while CODEX is global. The WHO and FAO are not setting policy for FTAA or CAFTA but they are setting health-focused requirements for CODEX which will determine the provisions of CODEX in FTAA and CAFTA.

Go to the Six Easy Steps and let Congress know that you value our health freedoms and want CODEX to support health and US law. Take the other steps, too, and tell everyone you know how important to winning this battle it is for them to join in now! Put a link to our site on your emails and site and spread the word (you can use our marketing material)!

Listen to our internet Radio Show, FREE U.S./FREE US! live from Rome this Wednesday, July 13, 2005 on www.FICAA.com at 7-8 PM Eastern. And stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog update.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. Please support the Natural Solutions Foundation with your donations.

Posted in CODEX Consequences, Events, Promising Developments | 2 Comments »

We Begin To Win – Let Us Continue Being Active

July 9th, 2005

If you think that the significant gift handed to us by the World Health Organization means that we can relax and forget about the problem of health and health freedom, that’s not so. In fact, by the time that the CODEX Secretariat had produced the draft document of this week’s work for CAC approval today, the resistance to that gift was apparent. We have a great deal of work to do to win this one but we CAN win it. It will take time, effort, strategic sophistication and money but the victory we are striving for which will assure health freedom globally is achievable, thanks to the World Health Organization.

Read the summary of how we got to the report and then I will share with you the first counter strike of the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) so you will be able to work with me to counter the counter measure (and all the counter moves which surely follow).

Don’t forget, the forces that are very happy to support and profit from illness are neither stupid nor weak: we really need to press forward on this WHO initiative.

Here is the story so far:

The CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) finished its 28th Commission meeting with the development of an extraordinary opportunity for us, the advocates of health and health choice. Our liklihood of success was magnified many fold by the intervention of the WHO in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) when they stated their dissatisfaction with the failure of the CODEX process and CAC to make any significant contribution to human health over the 42 years of its existence. Although it has made contributions to the regulation of food, CODEX’s contribution to human health is a very different matter.

And that difference was strongly noted on Thursday by WHO Under Secretary for Food Safety, Karen Leitner, when she made the observation to the entire CAC body that CODEX had not done very much to promote health. The CAC Chairman, Dr. Stuart Alexander Slorach of Sweden, had just finished ignoring recommendation number 18 of the joint FAO and WHO Consultant Report (which noted that CODEX “should determine whether it had a relationship to nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is”). Although Dr. Slorach had allowed some discussion of other recommendations of the Consultant’s Report, he barred Recommendation No. 18 from consideration by the CAC.

Dr. Leitner then spoke sternly, sharply and scathingly of the fact that little contribution to human health had been made by CODEX yet they continued to ask for more money from both FAO and WHO for their continued work!

The Chairman curtly thanked her and rapidly moved along to the important business of adjourning the meeting for the day. It is my perception, based on my observations of the content and nature of the interactions, including body language, facial expression and verbal and non-verbal cues (including my brief discussion with Dr. Leitner immediately after her statement of dissatisfaction) that this was NOT a wise move on the part of the Chairman since funding for CODEX comes from WHO and FAO and they had just been publicly and rudely “blown off ” by CAC.

The next day, Thursday, at the very end of the deliberations of CAC for the year (except for the approval of the draft report today, Saturday), WHO laid their displeasure on the heads of the CAC and stated that
things would be different in the future.

CODEX will implement the WHO Global Strategy for world health through diet, physical exercise and nutrition and CODEX will develop a “relationship with nutrition” as demanded by WHO. How will CODEX do that? By redefining the “Terms of Reference” (i.e., the mandate) of the two committees which can deal with nutrition, the previously anti-nutritional claims and information CODEX Committee on Food Labelling and the highly “anti-prevention, anti treatment-or-cure-of-any-disease-or-condition and let-us-treat-nutrients-as-toxins” of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus.

Here is the counter move by CAC: in the draft report presented for approval by the CAC this morning, Saturday, June 10, NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of Dr. Leitner’s comments appeared in the draft. Furthermore, not one single nation picked up on it although every other word in the document was scrutinized with a microscopically fine tooth comb.

Not a word. Now I ask you, do you think that the WHO and FAO are going to be particularly pleased with this development? I think they wont be.

Here is what I propose: I asked yesterday for volunteers to help compile an outstanding bibliography to present to the US government employees who deal with CODEX policy and the WHO secretariat itself to illustrate exactly what the relationship of CODEX to nutrition needs to be to advance human health and precisely what recommendations and regulations CODEX, as a food standard setting body, should undertake.

I propose that we also establish a watchdog task force to keep track of legal maneuvering, which will surely take place in the US to weaken and distort our access to nutrients as food through congressional action in amendments and bills which might be sneaked in while we are not watching carefully. Every single person in every single circle of influence of each reader of this blog needs to contact the Congressional Delegation to inform them that we WILL be watching and supporting anything they do to protect our health freedoms and that we WILL take effective political action to oppose them in their primaries and general elections if they do not support those freedoms. Send a quick Congressional letter via our web site (Congressional letter) or write your own. Call and ask to speak to the Health Aide and direct them to this special web page for Congress representatives so that they can learn about CODEX. I assure you that most Congressional Offices have never heard of CODEX before HealthFreedomUSA.org came along. Many have heard of it now so there is awareness of CODEX – now we need to make sure that they don’t forget how serious the issue is. So keep those letters going.

While we have been in Rome at the CAC, we have had a chance to make excellent connections both with US groups and international officials who were totally unaware of the implications of Risk Assessment (the wrong science used by CODEX) of nutrients for the people of their countries and we will follow up on these connections.

Do we have an opportunity to protect our health freedom and that of the world? YES! Can we lose it through inaction or apathy? Yes again.

Let’s protect our health freedom and deliver that precious gift to the rest of the world as well!

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. Support HealthFreedomUSA.org with your donations. Your donations help pay for all the work we are doing on behalf of your health freedom.

Posted in Activism, Events, Promising Developments | 1 Comment »

Seizing the Critical Terrain

July 8th, 2005

This is a short and essential blog.

I need your help if you are a physician or health scientist (or know any physicians or health scientists).

Yesterday, the terrain in CODEX land changed dramatically when the World Health Organization (WHO) made it clear that CODEX’s impact on health, as opposed to regulation, was significantly lacking and that CODEX would now be required to relate to nutrition, not just control food. The WHO Global Strategy on health focuses on diet, nutrition and physical exercise and CODEX is expected to help implement that strategy. This is our opportunity: we can shape and impact both US and global policy based on the WHO directive if we are organized, focused, effecive and clever.

General Stubblebine and I are staying at the same hotel as the US Delegation to CODEX and had the opportunity to chat informally and congenially with Dr. Ed Scarbrough, the US CODEX Manager, about this change of terrain over our excellent Italian coffee (although it is probably not organic, it is delicious!) this morning. Now the responsiblity falls upon us to make proper use of it. Dr. Scarbrough offered to help us find the proper people inside the US to work with to support our belief that US Policy should support DSHEA as the international standard because it offers choice, not restriction, and is consistent with US law.

Dr. Scarbrough made it very clear that he cannot be an advocate of our position but he would help us find our way through the CODEX system. I’ll take that! Having another point of contact with whom we have cordial relations is always useful and Dr. Scarbrough is willing to help us get our information to the right places.

One of his interesting comments was on the fragmented and dysfunctional nature of the Health Freedom Movement and we agreed that adult, reasoned discourse and data would go a lot further than shaking fists in the air and making irrational accusations. Sounds good to me!

We now have the opportunity to apply the useful and wise military notion of shifting and capturing the critical terrain. Part of the critical terrain is the database from which decision-makers are operating and how CODEX seeks to be science based. So here is what we need: a volunteer corps of people skilled in science and scientific methodology to compile the sharpest, strongest and most compelling research on the science of nutrition to present to the US Delegation to CODEX, the FDA, the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses next November in Bonn, Congress and elsewhere in the universe of policy decision making.

Science-based is the paradigm: we have the science on the side of health freedom, supporting nutrients as effective means of health promotion (whereas Risk Assessment – a branch of the science of toxicology – as used by CODEX to assess nutrients is unscientific because nutrients are not toxins). Now we need to really prove that science is on the side of the case for laws such as DSHEA. If you have the skills and the passion, come onboard, and welcome! The creation of the science base (supporting the use of nutrients and other natural health products) for our policy makers is crucial. Write to me at rima.laibow@healthfreedomusa.org and tell me what your expertise is and we’ll put the task force together. Let’s make the best use of the critical terrain for the sake of health and health freedom!

Yours in Health and Freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Posted in The Law & CODEX | 9 Comments »

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