Honorable President Bush,


I am deeply disturbed by the overwhelming power given to the FDA to ban not just the chemical extract Ephedrine, but the botanical herb itself, Ephedra or Ma Huang.

One will not find ephedrine in any herbalist's arsenal. The whole plant, Ephedra, however, has been used safely for thousands of years to treat colds, flu, and most importantly, asthma.

Please be advised that serious injuries, adverse reactions, and/or deaths are usually not attributed to the herb ephedra. It is difficult to find any such info in the 100s of years of usage in Western or Eastern medicine in any literature. http://www.supplementquality.com/news/ABC_ephedra_monograph.html states that 'the rate of occurrence of heart attacks and strokes among people who use ephedra seems to be no different from that in the general population' and that:
'The Ephedra Education Council, an industry-based group, presented a review of both the published literature on ephedra safety and on the FDA's collection of 1000 adverse event reports. This review concluded there was no evidence of an association between ephedra and serious adverse events at the industry-recommended levels of intake. It also criticized an analysis of 1000 adverse event reports that was conducted by FDA consultants and subsequently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

An FDA-sponsored review of 140 of the events reported to its MedWatch program concluded that one-third were "probably" and another third were "possibly" associated with ephedra. These included 17 reports of hypertension, 13 reports of palpitations and/or tachycardia, 10 reports of stroke, and 7 reports of seizures. Of these, 10 resulted in death and another 13 in disability.

The Ephedra Education Council also presented the results of the first comparison of how often heart attacks, strokes and seizures occur in the general population and among ephedra users, discovering no evidence of increased risk.'

Overdose was the frequent cause in most if not all of the cases attributed to this drug.

Ephedrine is an isolated component of ephedra. It is concentrated and potent. Instant coffee is also a concentrated and more potent form of the coffee bean. I hope that the more 'stringent' standards will apply to coffee as well.

This letter will be published on the number #1 most visited alternative health site in the world, www.curezone.com
as well as on my site, www.bobmantz.com. It also has been forwarded to the Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org

I strongly urge you to reconsider the government's stance on the herb ephedra - ban the isolate Ephedrine but let herbalists continue to have access to this wonderful herb. I look forward to your reply.

Regards,

Robert Mantz, Jr., Herbalist

I urge you to do the same:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
http://www.bobmantz.com