Standing Up for Your Rights as a Consumer
PeterB
To all readers of: misc.health.alternative, uk.people.health,
talk.politics.medicine
Market-busting legislation designed to eliminate or restrict access
to
life-giving nutritional products in both Europe and the U.S. is now
underway. Codex guidelines will be used to segment dietary
supplements
into low-dose products for nutritional support, which will greatly
dilute their effectiveness and, in the process, increase the per unit
cost of materials to consumers. Equally harmful to free markets, the
door will then be opened to high-dose supplements at a much higher
price point for "medicinal" uses, giving the pharmaceutical industry
what it has been seeking since before it's scandalous effort to fix
prices on manufactured vitamins in 1999.* Product differentiation
based on such arbitrary definitions of nutritional properties is
exactly what the drug makers need to accomplish monopolization of
health markets. This is about controlling access to cost effective
healthcare, patient choice, and innovations in natural medicine.
Codex
guidelines will require that regulators separate (or try to separate)
the purely nutritive value of dietary supplements from their
medicinal
effects, as if that were possible. Establishing "safe upper limits"
(so-called) is a means for segmenting those two uses in order to
create
a new market for phytopharmaceuticals, while at the same time
limiting
the growth of a competitive threat that continues to vex the drug
makers. This is not dissimilar from industry efforts to own
agricultural seed, as independent farms whose natural crops become
contaminated with GMO seed are prosecuted for "patent infringement,"
despite the destruction of their own crops!
Codex will ultimately harmonize to the EU directives (as its intended
to do.) Non EU states will likely conform to those provisions, in
order to maintain parity with their trading partners. The drug
makers
know this, and they want a single umbrella for all health related
products, including naturally occuring vitamins and minerals. The
public must take a stand against this, by supporting the legal
efforts
of the Alliance for Natural Health, while there is still time.
The global fight to protect our health freedoms is not limited to
Europe, it affects the USA and other western nations, as well. Bills
introduced to the US Senate, including S. 722, combined with
influence
directed at the UN-sponsored CODEX Alimentarius in Europe using junk
science funded by industry, can only be countered with a broad, grass
roots effort by those who believe in natural healing solutions. If
we
permit pharmaceutical interests to limit our access to effective
potencies of vitamin and mineral supplements (which under the CODEX
will impact all WTO member states), we will lose our health to
corporate interests. Compliance with the CODEX will be WTO
enforceable
through the levy of fines, while trading partners will be likely to
apply pressure using economic sanction, citing parity in trade
policy.
To support the legal fight to protect consumer rights on this issue,
please visit the Alliance for Natural Health, at
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org. Click on the link next to
the
"Home" button which says "Regulatory Threats." Donations are
badly needed. While some progress in the courts has been made,
important legal challenges remain. Also see the article at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1608/is_8_19/ai_105853436.
American citizens should contact their representatives, by letter or
fax, and support The Health Freedom Protection Act, HR4282, today.
The
bill was introduced on November 9, 2005 by The Coalition to End FDA
and
FTC Censorship (http://www.emord.com/stories/cherish_0106.htm). If
passed, this legislation will prevent FDA from censoring
nutrient-disease treatment information, including its current
prosecution of cherries growers who cite scientific data on their
websites discussing the health benefits of cherries! By contrast,
the
drug makers are permitted to advertise their products without the
disclaimer that modifying a disease marker is not equivalent to
disease
prevention *or* treatment, as both the FTC and FDA look the other
way.)
The Coalition consists of 15 members of Congress, nearly 100 dietary
supplement companies, public interest groups and supplement
distributors. It's time to end the FDA's corrupt stranglehold on the
American public once and for all. Please visit:
http://www.StopFDACensorship.org.
Demands for an Adverse Event reporting system for dietary
supplements,
additional regulatory oversight, and a reclassification of high-dose
nutrients as drugs, will expose independent supplement makers to the
market-busting tactics of the multi-national drug makers. Their goal
is to reduce the threat posed by the growing interest in natural
medicine, its potential to reduce profits from canabolized drug sales
(in the case of manufacturers of both), and eliminate meaningful
competition from non-drug vitamin companies, which now generate
billions in annual revenue. This protectionist scheme is not about
consumer protection, but control of markets. As evidence, the drug
makers were recently caught in a major price-fixing scandal, in which
they attempted to artificially increase profits on the sale of
manufactured vitamins. The drug makers are well aware that more than
one-third of all Americans, and a higher ratio of Europeans, are
relying on some form of natural medicine for their health and
well-being, a trend that directly impacts pharmaceutical revenues.
Efforts to restrict access to dietary supplements, ostensibly for the
good of public health, are a thinly disguised attempt at eliminating
consumer choice and monoplozing markets outside the control of the
drug
makers. The body politic (as well as mainstream media) is beholden
to
the huge monetary influence of the pharmaceutical industry, whose
lobbys are the best-financed in history, as evidenced by the gross
inadequecies in regulation of prescription drugs. Scandals like
Vioxx,
poorly researched medical intervention programs (HRT), unacceptable
marketing tactics (direct to consumer advertising), misleading
marketing, and large numbers of deaths attributed to the "proper"
prescription of drugs, are all proof of this. At the same time, a
growing number of articles have begun to surface, based either on
junk
science or inept interpretations of study outcomes, citing the
so-called dangers of nutrients essential for life! This suggests a
very careful, orchestrated media campaign designed to compliment a
draconian assault on free market access to nutritional products
already
underway.
FDA has estimated that ADE (Adverse Drug Event) reporting is not more
than 20% effective, while some researchers have published studies
showing deaths related to prescription-drug use at more than 100,000
per year. It's important to be aware that a more reliable system of
adverse event reporting has been in place for decades, cataloging
even
potential episodes of poisoning, regardless of cause. The data
archives at Poison Control in Washington DC have for many years shown
a
huge disparity between the dangers of prescription drugs and dietary
supplements. In fact, fewer potential adverse reactions are
associated with ALL dietary supplements than just ONE class of
pharmaceutical drugs - pain killers. Indeed, fewer deaths are
associated with dietary supplements in any given year than death by
bee
sting, even though millions of people are using these products on a
daily basis. In refuting well-publicized iatrogenic mortality
studies
as published by JAMA and other medical journals, the demand for
greater
regulation of dietary supplements is equivalent to requiring that we
all wear seat belts sitting in a parked car. Genuine concern for
public safety should be directed towards ineffective regulation of
prescription drugs and dismantling of a corrupt FDA, whose budget is
largely funded by the drug makers themselves.
Educate yourself on this issue because it will affect you and your
loved ones for generations to come. Please visit
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org and help if you can.
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org
http://www.emord.com/stories/cherish_0106.htm
http://www.StopFDACensorship.org
Consumers Already Protected Under DSHEA
Congress requires that FDA regulate dietary supplements compliant
with
DSHEA (the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act of 1994.)
FDA's statement that dietary supplements present no "unreasonable
risk"
to consumers is consistent with provisions of DSHEA, including the
requirement that such products must be proven UNsafe before being
banned. FDA oversight is constraining to the addition of new
ingredients, as well. Supplement makers have to acquire approval
prior
to marketing products that contain novel ingredients, if they are not
already recognized as GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe.) In terms of
marketing claims, FTC has enforceable jurisdiction over false
labeling
of dietary supplements, both with respect to scientific claims and
claims as to content. (1)
(1) The FTC's authority derives from Section 5 of the FTC Act. In
addition, supplements have traditionally been regulated under
Sections
12 and 15, which prohibit false advertisements, defined as those that
are "misleading in a material respect," for foods, drugs, devices or
cosmetics.
The real question is why FDA and FTC permit false advertising by drug
companies, who are not required to explain that modification of
disease
markers is not equivalent to a reduction in disease, that most drugs
are only tested for toxic side effects for three MONTHS, and that
well
over 100,000 people die each year in the USA *alone* due to the
effects
of "properly" prescribed and dispensed medication.
For more on FDA and FTC complicity in protecting the drug makers, and
efforts to reform this bureacratic agency, see
http://www.talkstarradio.com/hosts/emordpage.htm.
* "In May of 1999, in the largest criminal antitrust fine in United
States history, Roche Holding A.G. and BASF A.G. agreed to pay more
than $725 million for illegal price fixing that caused fraudulent
inflation of vitamin prices throughout the world. These two
companies,
along with a third defendant, Rhone-Poulenc took part in this
conspiracy for over a decade, but was not penalized since they were
protected from criminal prosecution because of their cooperation in
the
case. The vitamins affected were vitamins A, B2, B5, C, E, and
beta-carotene. These three companies together control almost 90% of
the
[synthetic] vitamin market." - Allan Rubin (therubins.com)
PeterB
reference to various Senate bills, and a few links may not be working,
but the overall issue is extremely important and deserves continued
vigilance by those who value their health freedoms.