The Politics Of Health: Feature ArticleBig Pharma Juggernaut Rolls to Victory - Health Freedom Reels - Part 2Monday, December 18, 2006Byron Richards, CCN In the middle of the night the House passed a bill at the conclusion of the lame duck session known as Adverse Event Reporting legislation for dietary supplements (S.3546). The bill was pushed through the Senate and the House by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), also known as the Hatch-et-man. Many Congressional leaders were hoodwinked by Hatch to back the bill, as he passed around letters of various trade organizations to imply the bill had wide support amongst stakeholders (it does not). Others were most likely bribed with threats to hold other legislation hostage in the Senate unless Hatch-et-man’s bill was passed in the House.
AER legislation will enable doctors to viciously attack vitamin supplements based on Big Pharma propaganda, and with the help of the FDA have effective dietary supplements removed from the market. Despite considerable grass roots pressure the House buckled under to Hatch pressure and AER legislation was ramrodded through in despicable fashion while Americans slept. Americans will pay a heavy toll; the von Eschenbach-run FDA, the AMA, and Big Pharma are quite pleased with this huge legislative victory. So are various traitorous trade organizations within the dietary supplement industry itself that sold you out.
During the last six months it was made very plain, behind the scenes, that anyone in the supplement industry opposing AER legislation would draw the wrath of Hatch-et-man and co-conspirator Tom Harkin (D-IA). The public relations spin from the likes of controlled opposition group Citizens for Health (Jim Turner and Elwood Richard, founder of Now Foods) used to support the bill was to make “safe supplements even safer.” The growing supplement industry would be demonstrating “maturity” and acting responsibly by accepting these draconian FDA-concocted guidelines for regulation. Anyone opposing the legislation was branded as anti-regulation libertarians, dishonest companies, and fly-by-night operations seeking to scam the unsuspecting public. And if that didn’t work we were all told to accept this legislation now or whatever vitamin-hating Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) will do in the new Congress will be far worse. Mandatory AER legislation, especially as written, is unnecessary and unwise. It is nothing but an example of expanded government regulation that will reduce the quality of health for Americans. There is already an FDA-voluntary serious adverse event reporting system in place for dietary supplements known as MedWatch. It is easy for a consumer or health care professional to report a serious adverse health event to the FDA via MedWatch. In fact, this voluntary system had over eight hundred serious adverse event reports on ephedra by the mid 1990s and over nineteen thousand by the time the FDA took ephedra off the market, meaning the existing reporting system worked just fine. Who stood in the way of the FDA taking action on Metabolife? You guessed it: Hatch-et-man and Harkin. Hatch took in $30,500 in campaign donations from Metabolife during the FDA investigation. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the several million of lobbying money taken in by his son, Scott Hatch, as fully exposed in the LA Times back in 2003. The LA Times article explains how Hatch and Harkin (who controlled FDA budget appropriations) chided the FDA for trying to remove ephedra from the market and got in the way of FDA efforts to do anything. It seems the “bad actors” here are Hatch and Harkin. Why do we need mandatory AER legislation for all supplement companies when the source of the problem, politicians for hire, is easy to identify?
Supplement companies have paid Hatch for favors and mob-like protection on a regular basis. Herbalife did it in the early 90’s ($33,750 to Hatch, $129,752 to Harkin) and now XanGo is doing it ($46,200). Paying off a powerful Senator comes in handy when the FDA looks into blatantly false health claims. When asked to comment on the FDA warning letter, Hatch said, “XanGo is well-known in Utah and throughout the supplement industry for its quality products. I know they will take this seriously and work with the FDA to address these concerns.”
Ever since DSHEA was passed in 1994, Big Pharma, with the help of the FDA, has been seeking to undermine supplements on a regular basis, viewing the industry as major competition to its pharmaceutical drug cartel. These facts are fully explained in my book, Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA Betrayal of America. Big Pharma is not trying to eliminate the market; they are seeking to own the market for profit. In 1996 German drug companies Bayer and BASF were instrumental in setting up a new committee for Codex called the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU), hosted by the Germans. Its goal is to classify therapeutic supplements as drugs, using drug-based risk evaluation to falsely brand dietary food supplements as toxic and dangerous above very low doses, thus having them removed internationally from the free market via trade rules and trade sanctions. FDA has stated in congressional testimony they are 100% behind this initiative, even though their website scams Americans by currently telling them it will not affect their access to dietary supplements (a blatant lie). The “risk assessment” technology is owned by the German government, and FDA is colluding towards the goal of implementing international Codex guidelines behind the backs of Americans. In 1998 Big Pharma created IADSA, the International Alliance of Dietary Food Supplement Associations, whose stated goal is to implement Codex internationally. NNFA (now NPA – Natural Products Association) joined IADSA and thereafter spews their globalist garbage to American consumers, thus controlling the opinion of health food store owners and their customers. Another industry trade group, CRN (Council for Responsible Nutrition), opened its doors to Big Pharma companies and is now run by Bayer, BASF, Wyeth, and the like. CRN now works closely with NNFA and IADSA, adopting complementary approaches to facilitate international Codex implementation and causing large numbers of Americans to not take any action through their Big Pharma sponsored propaganda. CRN has many network marketing company members, thus considerable potential grass roots support for health freedom is neutralized by the owners of network marketing companies like Mannatech and Herbalife. The FDA has embarked upon an illegal collusion with Canada and Mexico called the Trilateral Cooperation Charter, a subset of the North American Union, which is a subset of Codex. The goal is to harmonize U.S. health law with Canada and Mexico, whom already have horrid dietary supplement laws. The FDA is seeking to undermine U.S. law from within, and create the false appearance that vitamins are dangerous and require excessive regulation. The recent ephedra case in Utah is truly alarming, as FDA used a drug-based risk principle to keep ephedra off the market even in low doses, a legal precedent that can now be applied to any dietary supplement. This, in fact, is the goal of the FDA-concocted AER legislation, to brand dietary supplements as dangerous above a certain level using risk analysis. Thus, internationally, regionally, and within the United States there is a Big Pharma/FDA-sponsored movement to remove therapeutic dietary supplements from the free market by classifying them as drugs that require drug-like risk evaluation. Dietary supplements must not be classified as drugs or have drug industry risk analysis used to fraudulently evaluate their safety. Dietary supplements are foods, and far safer than the general food supply. The billion dollar questions are:
1) Why are various supplement trade organizations behind the effort to sell out your rights to natural health options?
On December 11, 2006 NPA warned its members not to be scared by people like me, saying those opposed to AER are spreading false propaganda. David Taylor, president of NPA then goes on to blatantly deceive about what the AER bill means, “The bill includes several provisions that were key to earning the Natural Products Association’s support. These include requiring that the bill: Be limited to serious adverse events and not require reporting of just any complaint.” This statement is very deceptive, as any adverse event must be recorded, even non serious ones. The bill circularly defines such “adverse events” as “any event that is adverse.” While these complaints don’t need to be submitted, they must be kept track of for six years! The FDA will now publish rules as to what this means, but could include almost any symptom a person experiences. Supplement distributors will need to make a file of such complaints available to the FDA for routine inspection. No drug could meet these standards of reporting and no food would be left to eat following these stupid guidelines. The brain-dead NPA thinks this is just fine.
Big Pharma will pay for fraudulent science, as was done to attack vitamin E, and doctors across the country will tell their patients to report any symptom as an adverse event relating to vitamin E (or anything else), simply because the person is taking vitamin E. Then, the FDA will apply drug-like risk analysis to the information they collect from vitamin companies, and slant statistics with a goon-like twisted “public health” perspective. They will then rule numerous vitamins to be unsafe at various levels of intake. This is completely compatible with their already stated international and regional agenda. The net effect is clearly to remove therapeutic nutrition, the only competition for Big Pharma, from the free market.
Patients who seek out professional nutritional assistance already have long lists of daily symptoms that classify as “adverse events,” simply by the nature of their pre-existing health situations. Nutrients often produce new symptoms in such people as they seek to improve, and many are “sensitive” to multiple things they ingest including a majority of foods.
Yes, this holiday season there will be visions of sugar plums dancing in the minds of millions of innocent children, not knowing they are target of a Big Pharma mind-control agenda. And as Hatch settles in for a long winters nap, a visit from the ghost of Jacob Marley is about the only thing that may offer reclamation. The sun is setting on health freedom in America. For part one click below.
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In an unprecedented change of posture the New England Journal of Medicine has reversed itself on the issue of whether Vytorin causes cancer. In the initial release of data back in July NEJM stood by Merck and Schering-Plough, who hired an Oxford consultant to rule that a 50% statistically significant increased risk of cancer was by chance. I pointed out in an earlier posting that such statistical manipulation, based primarily on the opinion of the Oxford reviewer, was ridiculous. NEJM has had a sudden change of heart and now agrees with me.
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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