The Politics Of Health: Feature ArticleUnderstanding the Threat to Dietary Supplements - Part 1Tuesday, May 15, 2007Byron Richards, CCN Your right to have free access to safe and highly effective dietary supplements is under an intense multi-pronged FDA attack. On May 14, 2007 the Supreme Court sided with the FDA by deciding not to hear the case of Nutraceutical v FDA, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that permits the FDA to use drug-related risk/ benefit analysis to determine if a nutrient is safe. This is the exact same point the FDA is trying to get put into law through Senate bill S.1082 and HR.2900, which consumers have flooded the Senate on over the past few weeks. And it is the same point the FDA is seeking to help implement on an international basis through Codex. The Supreme Court denial to hear this case is a dramatic turn of events that means there is very little time left to act to preserve free access to dietary supplements. The first part of this article explains this issue in depth so that Americans can understand what is taking place. The second part explains the steps Americans need to take to preserve their health freedom. Leading health freedom attorney, Jonathan Emord, has been handling the Supreme Court petition for Nutraceutical Corporation. He has also been helping us prepare amendments to neutralize the threat posed by current FDA reform legislation (S.1082/ HR.2900). On May 11, 2007 I received an email from Mr. Emord explaining the significance of the Supreme Court case: “In particular, FDA for the first time in its history now holds a dietary ingredient or dietary supplement adulterated at every dose level if at some dose level it can be shown to present even an infinitesimal risk if it concludes there to be no substantial health benefit from the supplement. Because all dietary ingredients, dietary supplements, and foods present a risk to health at some level of ingestion, the FDA’s new position permits the agency to declare any dietary ingredient or dietary supplement adulterated at its whim or caprice.” This abhorrent FDA strategy is now the prevailing legal precedent in the land. The FDA has also launched a sneak attack on dietary supplements through Senate bill S1082, seeking to slip wording into the bill that would allow this exact strategy to become law. Language within the bill allows the FDA to use drug-related risk assessment to brand dietary supplements as unsafe, overturning fundamental principles of food and drug law.
Under current law, it is up to the FDA to show that a food, food ingredient, or dietary supplement is adulterated and poses a risk to human health. The FDA is seeking to redefine the term “adulterated.” Please take the time to read and understand the substance of these issues – the future of health freedom in America depends on enough people understanding what is at stake. Within 1-2 weeks the House is likely to take up the same legislation that the Senate recently passed (S.1082). We must be ready to take action.
Industries constantly lobby the EPA and the FDA to ensure that various levels of chemicals, whether used as pesticides (like organophosphate nerve toxins) or found in the water (like perchlorate or PCBs) will be acceptable at certain levels in the food supply. Natural health advocates argue that not only are many of the government-sanctioned levels of toxins acutely detrimental to health, but the bio-accumulation of these poisons over the course of a lifetime is a primary cause of obesity, cancer, and heart disease. Government regulatory agencies invariably side with the profits of industry, and when they don’t industry files ridiculous law suits that tie issues up in court forever – all at the expense of human health. More insidiously, the FDA even acts to promote adulteration of food to support the economic priorities of the White House and its industry friends, as is the case with genetically modified crops wherein a toxin is now in every single cell of the genetically altered food. It is FDA management’s opinion, whose employees are a revolving door with the industries they regulate, that such toxins in food are safe. The FDA shocked many people last fall when they approved an industry-favorable cocktai of live viruses be added to the food supply. Thus, the EPA and the FDA do a poor job of establishing criteria for and managing even obvious adulteration of food and food ingredients, a problem that has been part of FDA culture since its inception 100 years ago.
On an international basis, the FDA-supported Codex Alimentarius is seeking to set international standards for food adulteration so low, including the elimination of true organic standards, that many contaminants that are adverse to health (such as the level of mycotoxin allowed in food) will be sanctioned as legal for the purpose of international trade. While Codex is a United Nations group, the members concocting these international guidelines are typically responding to the wishes and financial interests of multi-national corporations.
The recent Supreme Court case involves the herb Ephedra, wherein a high dose may have adverse cardiovascular side effects. However, there is no evidence that lower doses cause any harm at all. The herb has been in traditional use for several thousand years. The FDA has no proof that it poses any harm whatsoever in smaller amounts. By using drug-related risk/benefit analysis the FDA stated it had the authority to remove Ephedra at any dose – thus overturning basic fundamentals of food and drug law. As long as this case stands the FDA has the legal precedent to do this with any herb or vitamin it chooses. The FDA’s next step is to make this type of risk analysis into actual law. The language in S1082 is cleverly worded so that food and food ingredients (and thus dietary supplements) are lumped into the same category as drugs for safety review purposes. The FDA is slyly seeking to change existing law so that if the FDA determines even a small risk in any dietary supplement ingredient it can brand the ingredient as unsafe, even if the commonly consumed dose poses no threat to safety at all. Let’s take water as an example. We now know that too much water can kill athletes or those in military training when consumed at an amount greater than 1 ¼ gallons over a two hour period. Under the new wording in S1082, if the FDA, IN ITS OPINION, decided that the benefits of water were not adequate to warrant this risk, it could remove water from the market (even a sip of water). This is based on drug-related risk/benefit analysis. While it is unlikely FDA would ever try to remove water from the market, this same ludicrous logic can be applied to any dietary supplement ingredient – thus gutting the law known as DSHEA that gives Americans access to natural health options.
In recent days many Americans flooded the Senate with objections to this language and a proposed amendment to correct the problem, which Senator Enzi refused to place into the bill. Some progress was made in that Senators Hatch, Harkin, Kennedy, and Enzi went on record insisting that bill S1082 will not affect dietary supplements or alter DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994). However, the problematic language remains in the version of the legislation passed by the Senate. The battle now moves to the House. If this language becomes law the FDA will gain new regulatory power to remove dietary supplements based on highly-opinionated risk assessment (toxicology) criteria. It has long been a goal of the FDA to have dietary supplements regulated as drugs, against the wishes of the great majority of Americans
From a practical standpoint of drug safety today, wherein several million Americans are injured each year requiring medical attention and over 100,000 Americans die from drug errors and side effects, the Critical Path Initiative is a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream. Proponents of it promise to solve these existing drug safety issues by turning the practice of medicine over to FDA computers. The goal of the FDA is to use the Critical Path Initiative to radically change the drug approval and monitoring process from one based on extensive human clinical trials to one based on biomarkers. A biomarker is like a signpost. Some biomarkers indicate toxicity (risk assessment and analysis technology) and other biomarkers indicate a positive change in a cell or a defined clinical event (like tumor shrinkage). The FDA has undertaken a massive campaign, including the development of its own software, to analyze biomarkers and set up standards for drug development and disease treatment. This means that the current safety and effectiveness testing based on rigorous clinical trials will be replaced. It also means that a physician’s clinical judgment will be of secondary importance compared to FDA supercomputers (doctors will soon be lining up to join the health freedom movement). Simply because a biomarker looks good in a computer does not mean that a positive change is being produced or will be produced in the individual – especially in the long term. The focus of drug development will shift to drugs that target biomarkers as compared to drugs that demonstrate they improve human health. Many cellular proteins and protein-related pathways play both a positive and negative role in cell chemistry – depending on what the cell is trying to do. Thus, using risk assessment for biomarkers is incredibly complex and fraught with potential error – simply because we are still in our infancy of knowledge in terms of understanding how signaling pathways in cells work. The net result is that new and powerful biological drugs will come to the market faster with much less human testing for safety or effectiveness, and then the FDA will monitor the drugs as they are being used by patients and try to figure out if they are safe or not. Both Kennedy and Von Eschenbach make wild claims that this unproven technology will help drug safety, which at this time is nothing but unsubstantiated propaganda. Under the Clinical Path Initiative patients entering the doctor’s office for the “best possible care” will instead receive the latest FDA/Big Pharma drug experiment with extremely expensive biotech drugs. As Von Eschenbach stated on May 1, 2007 patients should be happy about this because this new science will “explore the unique genetic and biologic features of individuals that will determine how he or she responds to treatment.” Translated to English that means your DNA will not only be profiled, it will be in a government-controlled supercomputer in order for you to receive medical care. The purpose for creating the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA in bill S1082 is to facilitate a collaboration between Big Pharma, Big Biotech, academic research, and the FDA to get the funding for and carry out the extensive research required to move the Critical Path Initiative forward. The foundation will be under the direction of the FDA and will hold patents and licenses relating t o the drugs or devices that are developed. This concept is being patterned after a smaller Cri tical Path operation known as C-Path, wherein the FDA works with Big Pharma to develop drugs. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach has been heavily and financially involved with Big Bio tech companies for many years (leading the elder President Bush’s C-Change). It is no secret that the FDA is now headed by a biotech representative who has a top priority of bringing dr ugs to the market faster and a documented history of conflicts of interest. No person in th e civilized world should be duped into thinking this means improved safety. Von Eschenbach will argue that the cost and complexity of developing the next generation of drugs and standardizing the drug development is far too costly for any one drug company – which is true. This is the main reason Von Eschenbach took the top job at the FDA, to push the Big Biotech plan k nown as Critical Path (not because his passion or experience is in food or drug safety). One mai n problem with the Critical Path Initiative is that the FDA becomes a drug company with an impo rtant stake in the success of the drugs it approves and licensees for use. This creates major c onflicts of interest in multiple ways, with true safety and effectiveness left as large question marks.
If this is what Americans want in the name of progress then that should have been what Senators o penly debated and voted on. This could have lead to truly adequate safeguards being built into the law. Senators spent no time at all debating the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA and its major s afety and discrimination implications. Instead, this part of S1082 was rubberstamped. It is quite likely that 90% of the Senators do not understand what I have just explained. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to realize that Senators’ ignorance is likely to result in increased injuries and de aths and will eventually require the “Biomarker Fraud Act of 2012.”
`(b) Purpose of Foundation- The purpose of the Foundation is to advance the mission of the Food and Drug Administration to modernize medical, veterinary, food, food ingredient, and cosmetic product development, accelerate innovation, and enhance product safety. `(c) Duties of the Foundation- The Foundation shall-- `(1) taking into consideration the Critical Path reports and priorities published by the Food and Drug Administration, identify unmet needs in the development, manufacture, and evaluation of the safety and effectiveness, including postapproval, of devices, including diagnostics, biologics, and drugs, and the safety of food, food ingredients, and cosmetics; Earlier versions of S1082 did not contain the food and food ingredient language, nor does the current companion bill sitting in the House (HR. 2900) – although now that the Senate has passed S1082 it is likely that the House will take up the full Senate version and work from there. My point is that sneaking the words food and food ingredients into this legislation is a recent change. In January of 2007 the FDA issued a press release on the Critical Path Initiative. The FDA now wants to use the Critical Path risk assessment technology to help determine adulteration of food and food ingredients, such as identifying bacterial contamination (a valid use) AS WELL AS ASSESSING THE SAFETY OF FOOD AND FOOD INGREDIENTS (a use that can be used to frivolously attack dietary supplements with drug-based risk/benefit analysis). The FDA is trying to expand the role of the Critical Path Initiative from a new drug development initiative into new regulatory tools. The FDA states: “The Critical Path Initiative is not limited to the sciences that support human medical product development. Scientific advances hold the potential to improve the tools FDA uses to evaluate the safety and efficacy of human and veterinary products as well as the safety and nutrition of food and food ingredients (e.g., new rapid tests for biological and chemical contamination of animal-derived foods, technologies for detecting and mitigating the microbial contamination of food, analysis technologies [i.e., drug based risk/benefit analysis] for assessing the safety and nutritive value of foods and food ingredients).” Based on the recent additions of “food” and “food ingredients” to the S1082 legislation and this FDA document it can be seen that FDA wants to use the Critical Path Initiative technology to not only look for contamination of food (a good use) but also to evaluate safety of food and food ingredients. As I explained in the preceding sections, this technology is based on risk assessment and analysis (toxicology) using biomarkers and will fall heavily on FDA OPINION using drug-related risk/benefit analysis. There are two very important questions: What biomarkers will be used? and, How will biomarkers be set up to determine the level that is toxic? Unfortunately, the answer to the second question is based primarily ON THE OPINIONS OF WHOEVER IS SETTING THE STANDARDS, which is in this case the FDA. For example, let’s say you developed an invention to test the volume level of a stereo. In this analogy “volume” is a biomarker. You can plainly test for various volume levels, ranging from soft to loud. At what level is the volume a problem? Do we set the level based on shattering ear drums? What you think is nice? What a neighbor thinks is correct? In others words, the threshold for a “toxic” volume level is easily influenced by opinion or government policy – not science. Now remember, biomarkers are changes in proteins at the cellular level. Food, food ingredients , and dietary supplements obviously change proteins at the cellular level and will thus change a wide variety of biomarkers. Dietary supplements are indeed powerful changers of biomarkers. In a normal and sane world, this ability to see what dietary supplements do would be used to help individuals prevent and treat disease. In the anti-competitive FDA police-force world this same technology will be used to get competition off the market. The FDA can set the “volume” knob for health-related biomarkers based primarily on opinion and say “we only allow soft music, everything else requires a prescription.” Let’s take a specific example. NF KappaB is a protein that operates within a cell – in reality it is the brain of a cell that manages cellular stress. NF KappaB levels go up and down and do various things – all towards the goal of maintaining healthy cellular function. Many nutrients directly modulate NF kappaB, which is how they work to help a cell repair itself, reduce inflammation, and maintain normal healthy function. In almost every type of cancer, NF KappaB is hijacked and the cell’s natural defense system is taken over – like a terrorist attack. In this case, the volume knob on NF KappaB is now set in such a way that the music sounds like a loud blaring rock station and the excessive NF KappaB is the actual force driving the cancer process. Drugs are designed to knock out this hyped-up NF KappaB signal, resulting in death to cancer cells. The problem is of course that most drugs are not specific only to cancer cells, and interruption of NF KappaB in healthy cells also results in healthy cell death. Surviving cancer treatment is often a race between killing enough cancer cells before killing too many healthy cells. Along comes green tea. Green tea polyphenols, like many nutrients, change NF KappaB. Mother Nature has empowered green tea with wisdom that no drug possesses. Green tea can tell the difference between a cancer cell and a healthy cell. Green tea will take its best crack at turning off excessive NF KappaB in a cancer cell and thereby help induce the cancer cell to die. Amazingly, green tea will not bother the NF KappaB in a healthy cell, other than to assist it in normal and healthy cell function. This does not mean that green tea is a cure for cancer or even a treatment for cancer – but it sure won’t hurt someone who takes it who has cancer. It will be easy for the FDA to say, with the new powers proposed in S1082, that green tea is unsafe because it changes biomarkers related to cancer. The statement is factual. It is the OPINION of the FDA that the change is a problem. The language in S1082 gives the FDA the regulatory power to make that opinion stick, thus setting back natural options for health fifty years. You may find it hard to believe that the FDA would follow this path when so many people are in need of natural and safe health options. Yet, the FDA is already working with Codex on an international basis to help establish risk analysis (toxicology) for dietary supplements. FDA scientists are heavily involved with the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU). In the upcoming meeting in Germany in Nov 2007 an FDA-supported plan will be presented in an effort to help establish the application of risk analysis to guide CCNFSDU to set “Safe Upper Limits” for dietary supplements. Safe Upper Limits, as currently viewed by Codex, are a public health scam; they are a politically correct strategy for branding dietary supplements as drugs based on drug-related risk analysis technology. The FDA and Codex goal is to remove therapeutically useful dietary supplements from the free market so they don’t compete with drugs. Another goal is to make all useful nutrients into prescriptions to give Big Pharma a total monopoly on all health options. We must educate our legislators and get them to help us preserve our right to have free access to helpful dietary supplements. Coming soon – Part 2 (the take action plan). Other Feature Articles:
The shocking death of Tim Russert last Friday has left an entire nation wondering what happened. He was a model patient, doing everything his doctors asked. All major media have run articles trying to explain the nuances and difficulties in treating coronary artery disease. These articles find little fault in Russert’s care, trying to create the idea that his heart attack was just too hard to predict and that all that could have been done for him was done. I beg to differ. His death represents the failure of standard medical care to produce a positive result – an occurrence that is all too common in today’s world.
Legions of well wishers look on as Senator Ted Kennedy struggles for his life, fighting against one of the most difficult types of brain tumors. Ironically, it may be the drugs he has so adamantly promoted that are the straw that broke the camel’s back, leading to his brain tumor.
The latest stone thrown at the 200-billion-dollar-a-year cell phone industry came from a study by neurosurgeon Vini G. Khurana entitled Mobile Phone-Brain Tumour: Public Health Advisory. His meta-analysis of existing cell phone studies may not contain a lot of new information; but his rather alarming message was carried by media around the world: “there is a growing body of statistically significant evidence for a relationship between the overall length of use of a mobile phone and the delayed occurrence of a brain tumor on the same side of the head as the ‘preferred side’ for mobile phone usage.” He claimed a 2-4 fold increased risk following 10 years of regular use.
On April 2, 2008 CNN spent the day bringing awareness to the problem of autism. Larry King’s segment, which included Jenny McCarthy along with a panel of guests, was particularly enlightening. My hat is off to Jenny, a celebrity mother who is making it quite uncomfortable for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to ignore parents of autistic children seeking answers. Why does a mom have to do the work of the CDC? The answer is rather simple: our government’s zeal to insist on too many vaccines while ignoring the actual risks is the driving force behind the autism tragedy.
The Senate is about to approve legislation (Mothers Act – S.1375) which mandates the indoctrination of pregnant and nursing mothers into the use of extremely dangerous psychiatric medication. We already know this class of medication poses serious health risks to both mother and baby. Consequences to the baby are now proven to cause nerve-related changes that can adversely affect health for a lifetime.
Immediate Consumer Action is Needed to Stop Mothers Act The Mothers Act is pending legislation that will indoctrinate hundreds of thousands of mothers into taking dangerous psych drugs. It is a great example of how the Big Pharma lobby controls Congress to the detriment of health, as well as needlessly and dramatically inflating the costs of our health care system for everyone. Like any piece of legislation it purports to address a troubling issue – in this case the mood distress of mothers following birth known as postpartum depression. It is true that 10% - 15% of women need some assistance in dealing with this topic – but the majority of them sure don’t need it from Big Pharma. That is the Big Lie.
It now appears that the FDA Chief Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. has committed perjury before Congress. Unlike Roger Clemens, who also seems to be putting his foot in his mouth before Congress, von Eschenbach’s actions appeared to have allowed unnecessary deaths to Americans – hardly the mission of the FDA. By contrast, Roger Clemens is simply causing death to his own reputation. Hopefully Congress can quit wasting taxpayer money on baseball and get to the bottom of what is really going on at the FDA.
Several high profile human cardiovascular drug experiments have turned into disasters for Big Pharma. These findings are sure to shake the misguided consumer confidence in drugs as a mainstay of preventive cardiovascular health. Hanging in the balance are billions of dollars of fraudulent drug sales based on the flimsy argument that changing numbers (blood sugar, cholesterol, or blood pressure) with the use of toxic drugs is somehow the same as actually being healthy…
Women across the country are being duped to consume billions of dollars worth of bone poisons under the false pretense that if they take them long enough they will not develop osteoporosis. Even the FDA is becoming alarmed by the side effects of these bone drugs. The biggest selling drug in this class is called Fosamax, made by Merck – the very same company that killed thousands of Americans with Vioxx while hiding cardiovascular risks from the FDA and patients. Does anyone trust them?…
Considering that tens of millions of Americans now take statins to lower cholesterol, the following headline was conspicuously absent from the major media this month: “Statins Found to Turn On Gene that Causes Muscle Damage.” It’s now a fact of science; a new study shows that taking statins destroys your muscle to a greater or lesser degree. And let’s not forget that the heart is a muscle.
On November 29, 2007 the FDA made a rather surprising, almost honest announcement. It said that it could not protect Americans from the dangers of drugs. A 56-page report by its Subcommittee on Science and Technology stated the FDA “suffers from serious scientific deficiencies and is not positioned to meet current or emerging regulatory responsibilities.” This blistering report on the life-threatening shortcomings of the FDA was released with the stamp of approval of the head of the FDA, Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. The flagrant disregard for human health by the FDA…
Oprah has done an immense favor to millions of American women by helping them understand that a malfunctioning thyroid gland may indeed be part of their weight and health problems. After writing openly about her thyroid problem in the October 2007 Oprah Magazine, she then went into the nature of thyroid problems on her TV show.
The United States Health Freedom Assembly met October 12 – 14, 2007 at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, MN, a gathering of many of the top state, federal, and international health freedom advocates, organizations, and industry. The meeting took on a tone of extreme importance as the FDA has issued policy and obtained broad new regulatory authority over health freedom in the past 12 months. The FDA is seeking to undermine the law known as DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994), the cornerstone of health freedom in America. Emboldened by its new powers the FDA is now poised to trample the first amendment rights of companies and Americans who seek to explain or understand how nutrition can support health. The FDA campaign has begun.
On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and even transforms it into a quasi drug company.
The FDA, emboldened by its transformation into a drug company, has embarked upon an anti-American plan of interfering with business and intentionally eliminating various dietary supplement companies from the market. The FDA announcement came on Friday, June 22, 2007 under the guise of a final rule for dietary supplement good manufacturing practices (CGMPs). Within this 800 page rule the FDA states, “We find that this final rule will have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.... Establishments with above average costs, and even establishments with average costs, could be hard pressed to continue to operate. Some of these may decide it is too costly and either change product lines or go out of business.... 140 very small [less than 20 employees] and 32 small dietary supplement manufacturers [less than 500 employees] will be at risk of going out of business.... costs per establishment are proportionally higher for very small than for large establishments....The regulatory costs of this final rule will also discourage new small businesses from entering the industry.”
Under the false pretense of improved food and drug safety the FDA is re-inventing itself as a kingpin drug company. This charade has so far hoodwinked virtually all members of Congress. The Senate has already approved this FDA transformation. The House will bring similar legislation out of committee next week, with a vote in the full House likely in July.
The Andrew von Eschenbach FDA era is upon us. The Avandia scandal is the tip of the iceberg. Is anyone ready? The words “illicit financial collusion” have been replaced by the politically correct term, “collaboration.”
The penalty in China is death, in America its business as usual. Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of China’s FDA, was sentenced to death for accepting $832,000 in drug company bribes and for dereliction of duty. Like China, our country is in the middle of a drug and food safety crisis. Why is FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. getting a free pass? Why did the Senate just pass legislation (S.1082) that gives von Eschenbach significantly more power to do whatever he pleases? And exactly what is it that von Eschenbach is doing?
Senate Attempts Damage Control – House Braces for Onslaught Senators were taken off guard by the public outrage over the passing of bill S.1082 with language that can be used to seriously harass dietary supplements by enabling the FDA to apply drug-related risk analysis to the safety of food and food ingredients (and thus dietary supplements).
The FDA is Acquiring New Powers to Suppress Alternative Health Your right to have free access to safe and highly effective dietary supplements is under an intense multi-pronged FDA attack. On May 14, 2007 the Supreme Court sided with the FDA by deciding not to hear the case of Nutraceutical v FDA, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that permits the FDA to use drug-related risk/ benefit analysis to determine if a nutrient is safe.
The Senate has sold out the American people. Anyone voting for change in the last election can now plainly see the shenanigans of a Democratic-controlled Senate. Under Republicans no FDA reform ever took place. Big Pharma owns so many Republicans that all meaningful legislation to curtail the deaths and injuries of American citizens at the hands of Big Pharma and the FDA had been completely thwarted for the past six years. Under Democratic control sweeping FDA reform favorable to Big Pharma was proposed and the majority of meaningful reform was blocked or seriously watered down. Which is worse? As Kennedy stated in his opening remarks today, S1082 (the Kennedy/Enzi FDA bill) was an “elaborate scheme.”
For approximately four days Americans lived in a delusional state that they may soon pay drug prices the same as every other country in the civilized world. Euphoria over breaking the Big Pharma monopoly turned to disgust as the chameleon, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), changed sides and lead a contingency of Democrats against fellow Democrats lead by Byron Dorgan (D-ND). By passing the Cochran amendment the Dorgan amendment is poisoned and will no longer be effective. Maybe Democrats are now learning what Republicans have known for some time – you can’t trust Kennedy.
In May of 2006, after months of research and investigation, I published my ominous findings in the book Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America. Everything I predicted in this book is on the fast track to becoming reality. A majority of Americans, not informed on current events and unaware of the history involved, are silent. Mainstream media, one of Big Pharma’s largest clients, is silent. Only the power of the internet, which rivals the invention of the printing press in significance, is making it possible for individuals to understand what is going on.
There is still time to stop FDA, Inc. Bill S1082 is a bill that helps fund the FDA with Big Pharma money. It is known all over Capital Hill as Big Pharma-designed legislation. It is running into all sorts of credibility problems. A vote is likely on Monday – delayed due to all the opposition flooding the Senate by “we the people.”
S1082 Update – Tuesday’s Activity. Fight Erupts on Senate floor: As the Senate continues to debate the Big Pharma-friendly sweeping reform of the FDA a new problem for Big Pharma’s prize Senators has erupted and quickly turned into confrontation on the floor of the Senate. At stake is at least 10 billion dollars per year in exorbitant Big Pharma profits. In one corner is Big Pharma-puppet Orrin Hatch (R-UT), representing the Kennedy/Enzi drug cartel. In the other corner is a majority of Senators lead by Byron Dorgan (D-ND).
The combination of a lack of sun and cold weather invariably strains your mood as well as your metabolism. It is an energy-depleting form of stress, similar to having a daily argument with someone. If your energy systems…
S1082 Update – Monday’s Activity at the bottom of this article. Bill S1082: The Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (also called the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 2007) is one of the greatest scams and con jobs ever foisted on the American public. Current FDA management is grossly incompetent on the subject of drug safety.
A new attack against health freedom, drug safety, and dietary supplements was launched last week by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) with major support from Michael Enzi (R-WY). It is called the Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (S1082). This legislation was planned over the past few years working hand-in-glove with the FDA’s dysfunctional management and legal team – meaning this legislation was written for the profits of Big Pharma and Big Biotech AT THE EXPENSE OF SAFETY AND HUMAN HEALTH.
Americans are up in arms that our pets are being injured and killed by a toxin sent to America by a Chinese company. Melamine, a toxic fertilizer used in China, is the suspected culprit behind the deaths and injuries to potentially hundreds of thousands of our pets. The FDA assures us that this toxin has not entered the human food supply – does anyone believe in the competence of the FDA? It is only a matter of time before this type of problem happens to humans, as the inept FDA has no control over imported food intended for humans, let alone pets.
On February 13, 2007 the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations opened hearings lambasting the FDA regarding the safety of drugs. The opening statement by Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) set the tone, “It is clear … that the FDA is badly broken. I expect that before we finish this investigation, which is just getting underway, we will discover whether the problems we have found are due to the work of scoundrels, irrational penny-pinching, or because the doors to the FDA “hen house” have been thrown open to foxes. It may be a combination of all three.”
Wall Street, international bankers, President Bush, pharmaceutical companies, new biotech companies, the Rockefeller empire, and the FDA have created a new plan for public health. It is a grand vision based on profit. It will use the FDA and, as needed, the Department of Homeland Security as the regulatory police force that ensures compliance in the name of public safety. Legitimate objections may be overpowered in the name of national security.
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