FDA Regulators Using Legal Trickery to Jeopardize Alternative Procedures and Products The FDA has been known to use legal maneuvering to try to end your access to natural health products (like vitamins, minerals and herbs) and natural health therapies of all sorts. We believe they are at it again. This time, their ploy is to issue a "Guidance" that implies these therapies can be "Medicine," which
creates the risk that any non-physician who uses them could be held to be practicing medicine without a license. Since these practices could be considered "Medicine" any products intended for such use could be considered untested drugs and could therefore be forbidden. Your Comments are Vitally Important Public, professional and industry comments are being accepted by the FDA on the proposal, that we view as a sly maneuver to "capture" alternative procedures and products as "medicine" and then make them illegal. The history of these repressive attacks by the FDA makes it clear that public outcry, IN HUGE NUMBERS, is the only effective tool that natural health supporters have to change this potentially disastrous outcome. Comments will be accepted until April 30. By contacting everyone you can reach to ask for their participation in this comment campaign, we can kill this assault on personal health freedom.
While we do not expect our alternatives to be taken away from us immediately, we know it is easier to stop or change a bad guidance before it is finalized, rather than ever getting it repealed afterwards. FDA has given us an opportunity to let them know we want them to respect our right to choose the type of therapies we want for ourselves, including alternatives to pharmaceutical treatments.
Please send the link (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campai...) to this page to everyone you can reach with a brief explanation of the issues. Urge everyone in your personal and professional circles of influence to protect their health freedom -- their personal right to make their own health choices.
It is important to take a moment to email the manufacturers of the health care products you take an ask them to alert their suppliers and customer base to protect their businesses. Your natural health care providers need to alert their patients and colleagues, too.
Thanks for your activism!
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
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International Advocates for Health Freedom was the first to call the Codex international threat to health freedom in 1996 via an article by John C. Hammell in Life Extension Magazine. Our orginal website has been archived, and this NEW site has been built to STREAMLINE an understanding of this complex issue, and to make it EASY to fight back! More.... ABOUT IAHF where you'll find information about John Hammell, and an overview of IAHF's history, objectives, and work. On this site you will find: 1. Our ROADMAP to the Codex issue, (a series of hypertext links guide you to an understanding of this complex issue), 2. Our SEEING THRU THE SPIN page where you can understand how the dietary supplement industry is being misled on the Codex vitamin issue by Pharma Interests controlling the vitamin trade associations (which in turn have been misleading their health food store and vitamin company members. Active grassroots effort is needed to assist IAHF in communicating with NNFA member health food stores and vitamin companies to help them see thru spin originating from Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood LLP (NNFA's legal counsel). It is a complete conflict of interest that NNFA would utilize this lawfirm. They're a huge multinational lawfirm with numerous pharmaceutical clients. 3. Our ACTION PAGE where you can send form letters to congress to DEFEND the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act by working to kill anti freedom legislation which threatens to force the USA into a planned North American Union with Canada & Mexico (and further into the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the America), and into a WORLD GOVERNMENT.) Additionally there are domestic bills which threaten DSHEA, and also bills to support. 4. Please ORDER IAHF's EDUCATION KIT which will help you to understand the CODEX issue, and to hold meetings in your area necessary to activate family, friends, neighbors, and everyone who shops at health food stores in your area. Proceeds assist us in doing our work...(see full description and more info in this section...) 5. BROADENING OUR BASE This section contains information to catalyze a paradigm shift away from our current ineffective "disease care" system. Here you'll find sources of information about alternative medicine, dietary supplements, how to educate people to help them make healthy changes in their lives, how to write letters to the editor to comment on biased anti dietary supplement articles, how to do effective public speaking, how to generate press releases, how to lobby the US congress or any foreign government on our issues, how to network with other groups to get them involved in our campaign, etc. 6. LINKS SECTION Here you'll find LINKS to allied sites that are working with IAHF to defend health freedom in the USA and abroad. We also have links to additional information and TOOLS that can help you fight this health freedom battle. Some of these links are to sites that while not endorsed by IAHF, still may have useful information, even if some of it is even contrary to IAHFs (to sites of industry trade associations, or to controlled opposition groups.) |
HOW IS THIS A THREAT?
We must never forget how the FDA and their international counterparts define "health fraud."
The world's FDA's function as trade associations for pharmaceutical companies. They are paid millions of dollars in fees from the pharmaceutical companies to put Rx drugs thru their less than scientific "approval process." Furthermore, there is a revolving door between the drug companies and the FDA as many leave the FDA to go to work for the drug companies.
The FDA's defines "health fraud" to encompass any health claim made about any non patentable natural substance, regardless of how true it is, if it cuts into the sale of Rx drugs. They also consider health fraud to include any non mainstream, alternative medical approach (any approach not involving the use of patented prescription or OTC drugs that have been thru their so called "approval" process.
Read "Why is the FDA Picking on Cherries?" and you'll see the the FDA is currently attacking the Cherry Industry, threatening to start raiding cherry orchards, unless the industry stops making health claims about the therapeutic effects of Cherries that are endorsed by the US Department of Agriculture.
"The FDA does not want the cherry industry to tell people that recent studies show that cherries contain substances that are potentially 10 times stronger than aspirin or ibuprofen for relieving pain. It does not want the public to know that substances in cherries may kill cancer cells and prevent cancer. It makes no difference whether these statements are true. What's important is that the public not be told that a natural substance (cherries) has been shown to work as well as or better than an unnatural one (ibuprofen)."
"Only drugs, according to the FDA's legal doctrine, can prevent, treat, mitigate, or cure disease. If something does those things, it's a drug. And if it's a drug, it has to be tested for its ability to do those things. In this double-speak world, no natural substance can do anything significant against disease-that is, unless it undergoes testing as a drug. Attempts at slaying this many-headed monster of convoluted truths have only made it grow new heads."
The FDA is claiming that statements made by the Cherry Industry on their websites are an extension of the labelling of their products, and they're pressuring the Cherry industry to stop making these claims. The Cherry Industry is fighting back in the courts claiming that the FDA is violating their First Amendment Right to free speech. Efforts are underway to get a bill through congress called the Health Freedom Protection Act to stop this FDA censorship.
The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA's of Canada, the USA and Mexico have no USE for national laws that "interfere" with Pharma's efforts to block the use of natural products. They have no USE for the US Constitution and its First Amendment. They have no use for laws like DSHEA, or the Health Freedom Protection Act so they're all in FAVOR of ABOLISHING AMERICA and forcing all 3 countries together into the planned NORTH AMERICAN UNION, where we'd have much less input into the legislative process than we do now and everything would be dictated to us.
This is why IAHF needs your help to pressure congress into holding OVERSIGHT HEARINGS for the purpose of STOPPING the FDA from continuing to violate the law.
CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR MSSG TO CONGRESS & THE MEDIA WITH ONE MOUSE CLICK
HOW IS THIS A THREAT?
We must never forget how the FDA and their international counterparts define "health fraud."
The world's FDA's function as trade associations for pharmaceutical companies. They are paid millions of dollars in fees from the pharmaceutical companies to put Rx drugs thru their less than scientific "approval process." Furthermore, there is a revolving door between the drug companies and the FDA as many leave the FDA to go to work for the drug companies.
The FDA's defines "health fraud" to encompass any health claim made about any non patentable natural substance, regardless of how true it is, if it cuts into the sale of Rx drugs. They also consider health fraud to include any non mainstream, alternative medical approach (any approach not involving the use of patented prescription or OTC drugs that have been thru their so called "approval" process.
Read "Why is the FDA Picking on Cherries?" and you'll see the the FDA is currently attacking the Cherry Industry, threatening to start raiding cherry orchards, unless the industry stops making health claims about the therapeutic effects of Cherries that are endorsed by the US Department of Agriculture.
"The FDA does not want the cherry industry to tell people that recent studies show that cherries contain substances that are potentially 10 times stronger than aspirin or ibuprofen for relieving pain. It does not want the public to know that substances in cherries may kill cancer cells and prevent cancer. It makes no difference whether these statements are true. What's important is that the public not be told that a natural substance (cherries) has been shown to work as well as or better than an unnatural one (ibuprofen)."
"Only drugs, according to the FDA's legal doctrine, can prevent, treat, mitigate, or cure disease. If something does those things, it's a drug. And if it's a drug, it has to be tested for its ability to do those things. In this double-speak world, no natural substance can do anything significant against disease-that is, unless it undergoes testing as a drug. Attempts at slaying this many-headed monster of convoluted truths have only made it grow new heads."
The FDA is claiming that statements made by the Cherry Industry on their websites are an extension of the labelling of their products, and they're pressuring the Cherry industry to stop making these claims. The Cherry Industry is fighting back in the courts claiming that the FDA is violating their First Amendment Right to free speech. Efforts are underway to get a bill through congress called the Health Freedom Protection Act to stop this FDA censorship.
The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA's of Canada, the USA and Mexico have no USE for national laws that "interfere" with Pharma's efforts to block the use of natural products. They have no USE for the US Constitution and its First Amendment. They have no use for laws like DSHEA, or the Health Freedom Protection Act so they're all in FAVOR of ABOLISHING AMERICA and forcing all 3 countries together into the planned NORTH AMERICAN UNION, where we'd have much less input into the legislative process than we do now and everything would be dictated to us.
This is why IAHF needs your help to pressure congress into holding OVERSIGHT HEARINGS for the purpose of STOPPING the FDA from continuing to violate the law.
CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR MSSG TO CONGRESS & THE MEDIA WITH ONE MOUSE CLICK