Email Newsletter from 7/2/05

“Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.”

– Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President

Message from Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation (sponsor of HealthFreedomUSA.org):

CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Will Be Meeting in Rome Next Week and I Am Going Too!

Hi,

I am leaving in about an hour for Rome, Italy, to attend the CODEX meeting as an observer and networking with as many people as possible for several reasons:

1. We know that the media will not tell you much about CODEX (where does the major share of the media’s income come from? You guessed it: from the very industry that stands most to gain from CODEX: the pharmaceutical industry). Their logic is why bite the hand that feeds them so amply?

2. We know that the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Vitamin and Mineral Guideline will adversely affect the health and very lives of [literally] billions of people around the earth and we need as much information about it as possible to effectively organize its defeat even if it is ratified.

3. We know that information is the coin of freedom and we will be bringing you information through:

My Daily CODEX Update Blog. Every day I will write a detailed report to tell you what I see, hear and learn. So my time in (heat wave blasted) Rome becomes your gain.

FREE U.S./FREE US!, our live internet radio show (see link below) (7-8 PM Eastern from Rome on Wednesdays July 6 and July 13). Who will our guests be? That will emerge as we network and connect.

Live radio reports and updates for other national radio shows like The Power Hour and The Robby Noel Show. I’ll keep you posted on my Daily CODEX Update Blog when they are coming up. Stay tuned!

All the links to updates (blog and radio) from Rome have been put into a special “Rome page”:

[Webmaster’s Note: this link is no longer online. For regular blog click here, and for radio archive click here.]

All the information you need about the Rome trip is on this page so please bookmark it for easy access.

What Will Happen at the CODEX Meeting?

Next week, the international team of bureaucrats who make up the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS meeting in Rome, are set to ratify a bunch of niggling little details in international food regulation, some pretty significant rules and one gigantic disaster, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG). It is possible that micro-change by countries that support the VMG (in one case, a single word) would mean that the VMG gets sent back to Dr. Rolf Grossklaus and his CODEX nutrition committee for another year or two. We would like to see that but no one knows for sure what will happen.

It’s also possible (and likely) that the differences will be sorted out at the meeting and the VMG will be ratified. If so, there are several consequences because of the VMG:

1. If ratified in Rome, the VMG will be passed without contents, an empty shell. It is, in essence, a blank check for the autocratic Dr. Grossklaus, the head of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) to fill in with values as he wishes. When it is done, it will look a lot like the European Food Supplements Directive’s ultra restrictive, ultra low dose “Positive List” which bans all but a few nutrients at doses so low that they are designed to have no effect on the human body.

a. On a Positive List, everything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. This is a Napoleonic Code concept.

b. Common Law, the US legal tradition, holds that everything not forbidden is permitted. CODEX violates Common Law.

2. The VMG will no longer be voluntary and becomes a standard upon which the WTO decides international disputes and trade sanctions can be levied to punish those who do not comply.

3. The VMG will be urged upon countries in the developing world for adoption as their national laws. These countries do not have the resources or tradition of standards of their own (as we do with DSHEA) to establish their own nutritional supplements law.

4. The VMG can become mandatory US law (canceling out DSHEA and the protective provisions of the 1997 FDA Modernization Law) because of Article 2 of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement which requires WTO members (that’s us) to bring their laws into conformity with CODEX (… “Members shall base their sanitary or phytosanitary measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations…”)

5. If ratified in Rome, the VMG will be responsible, according to every available prediction, including a joint publication of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, for death and disease on an unprecedented global scale. America is not exempt from that toll.

6. If ratified in Rome, the VMG will be implemented to criminalize the use, production, sale or distribution of all substances which are not on the Positive List, such as high dose vitamins or minerals with or without a doctor’s prescription.

Consider the following scenario:

There is a drought in, let’s say, Senegal because of on-going climate changes (see my blog on the topic). People are starving and dying of nutritional deficits. Famine claims the weakest first but it will take the others either through acute starvation or the chronic diseases of under-nutrition.

Because of the VMG, which makes all but a few ultra-low dose nutrients illegal and therefore illegal to ship internationally, and because Senegal has adopted the VMG as its domestic law (under our scenario), although relief groups would like to ship standard famine relief items (i.e., nutrient dense flour, bread and biscuits, etc.) to Senegal, they would not be able to. International movement of those items violates WTO standards.

Since Senegal, in our hypothetical example, cannot import desperately needed nutrients for its people, they decide to use domestic supplies but there are none because they have adopted the VMG which makes the use of any nutrients but the ones on the Positive List illegal.

The consequences: legislated, predictable death for uncounted numbers of people.

Along the way, the percentage of our foreign aid which goes into the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry would rise from the everyday 86% to much higher levels since drugs would be used to treat the symptoms of under nutrition and starvation, given that nutrients could not.

How would LIVE 8 do its job if CODEX ALIMENTARIUS comes in and makes nutritional aid illegal? Maybe aid isn’t the best answer to the global problem of poverty, but to make nutritious aid illegal for the sake of the financial profits of multi-national corporations is in violation of respect for fellow human beings, plain and simple.

What About America?

What would your life be like without the freedom to choose those nutrients if you want them? Think about it and take action if you haven’t already. If you’ve already taken action, donate to support our work (your donations are especially important due to the trip to Rome).

I spoke with a US CODEX Delegate (who is on our side, the side of health freedom) as he was walking through the boarding gate on his way to Rome two days ago and asked him what the most important thing we here in the US could do. His answer: “Get as many people as possible to contact Congress and join in the Citizen’s Petition!” You can do both these things with ease by following this link:

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=183

Make sure you follow all 6 steps, and if you have already done so, then please compose an email right now (the situation is urgent) and tell at least 10 people in your address book about the CODEX issue. Simply send them a link to http://www.healthfreedomusa.org and let the site do the rest (so you don’t have to worry about convincing them).

There is Hope – Your Action for Health Freedom is Working to Reach Congress!

We are building important support in Congress and that support comes because people like you have taken action via HealthFreedomUSA.org.

Every single congressional office to which the Natural Solutions Foundation has spoken had never heard of CODEX until we informed them about it! This means that HealthFreedomUSA.org is having a tremendous impact. Your letters really do count by a factor, we have been told, of 13,000 constituents who are assumed to agree with your letter!

So your single letter counts as if 13,000 other people had sent a letter each! If you will also take the time to phone your Congressional Delegation and speak with the Health Aid to your Senators and Representatives, that would add another level of urgency and impact to the CODEX issue (find their phone numbers here: http://clerk.house.gov/members/mcapdir.html). Ask them to visit http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=177, a page especially made to educate American politicians about the illegal CODEX policy of the U.S. CODEX Office.

We Will Continue this Critical Work Regardless of Outcome in Rome

Remember, if we sit idly by, the pro-illness forces will win. They are on the move and CODEX is their horse. We at the Natural Solutions Foundation aren’t out for the demise of pharmaceutical drugs, which have a beneficial role in trauma medicine. We believe natural medicine (in its proper role as preventive and curative medicine) and allopathic medicine (in its proper role as trauma medicine) can, and eventually will, peacefully co-exist. But we wont sit idly by and watch the corrupt forces of greed try to destroy our right to choose our own health paths! Let each who wants to choose the products of the pharmaceutical industry do so, but there will be no passive sitting around if the right to choose alternatives to drugs are tyrannically trampled upon!

And never lose hope [[First_Name]]: even if the Vitamin and Mineral Standard is ratified in Rome, the battle is far from over. We have our Citizen’s Petition with which to take the U.S. CODEX Office to court for their illegal, un-American policy of support for CODEX ALIMENTARIUS. I’ll be back from Italy, ready to continue working passionately for your health freedom, regardless of outcome in Rome. Your donations are really important to help me continue doing my job.

Eternal Vigilance?

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” said Thomas Jefferson.

What good is eternal vigilance without effective action?, I ask.

It is easy to misunderstand Jefferson’s quote to mean that we must always be under stress, if we are to be always vigilant. I don’t think he meant that we need to be eternally “stressed” because we don’t need to be stressed in order to be vigilant. We can simply be mindful that government and corporations have the ability to go against our best interests (instead of blindly trusting them), consider the information given to us by those who are working to keep us informed (such as the Natural Solutions Foundation in the case of CODEX ALIMENTARIUS), accept what is happening after analysing the facts with an open mind, and take appropriate action to remind government and corporations that We, the People, are masters of our own destiny and will let that be known (loudly) if anyone tries to obstruct our power to responsibly choose for our own life.

So where to go from here? To Rome.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

P.S. Your donations make our work possible. Click here to donate now.

P.P.S. Please tell everyone you know to visit HealthFreedomUSA.org and take action on the 6 easy steps to protecting America from CODEX. You can use the “tell a friend” button in the right-hand column of this page. With your help, we can reach millions of Americans.