From: IAHF.COM
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 10:18 AM
Subject: SOS Save Our Supplements! Grass Roots Action Needed
IMMEDIATELY To Oppose Bad AER Bill During Lame Duck Congress
Session This Week!!
IAHF List:[See Byron Richard's article below my comments]
Immediate grassroots action is needed RIGHT NOW to oppose
the bad AER bill because the Pharma Dominated NPA (Natural
Products Assn) (formerly NNFA) just sent a HUGE E-Blitz out
to every vitamin company, and every health food store in the
country to try to push this TROJAN HORSE legislation.
This huge push by NPA threatens to blow the innovative
sector of the supplement industry SKY HIGH, and you MUST
contact congress per the alert below AND network this info
for ALL YOU'RE WORTH!!
Please call your family, friends, neighbors about this and
URGE them to join you in taking action! Copy the article
below. Take it to every health food store within a 50 mile
radius of your home and strongly urge the owner to QUIT NPA
(formerly NNFA). Use your strongest powers of persuasion to
get all the staff in the health food stores to read Byron's
superb article below.
If you lack time right now to read it, at least skim through
to the part where with ONE MOUSE CLICK you can TAKE ACTION,
then print it out and keep it by the toilet so you can read
it while sitting on the throne... but PLEASE READ IT- this
one is a MUST READ.
Donations needed to send IAHF back to DC: IAHF needs to
return to DC after the lame duck session to continue
opposition to the bad AER bill and also for ongoing work
against the FDA's Trilateral Cooperation Charter. For $25.
we'll send a copy of Byron's book Fight for Your Health-
Exposing FDA's Betrayal of America. For $50. we'll send the
book, plus Kevin Miller's documentary film "We Become
Silent" about the Codex vitamin issue.For $100. we'll
send the above + an IAHF Bumper Sticker. For $500. we'll
send the above + an autographed photo of John Hammell
swimming in a hole cut in the ice of a frozen pond. Please
help us get back to DC so we can do our work! IAHF 556
Boundary Bay Rd., Point Roberts WA 98281 or via paypal: http://www.iahf.com click to
enter site, see paypal link on top of scrollbar inside the
site.
http://www.iahf.com/
htt
p://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron16.htm
BIG PHARMA TROJAN HORSES PERMEATE SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY
By Byron J. Richards, CCN
December 5, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
Today I received an e-mail from the Natural Products
Association (NPA) asking me to support the Dietary
Supplement and Non-Prescription Drug Consumer Protection Act
(the 1CAER bill 1D). Apparently they do not know I am one
of the most outspoken critics of this legislation. I have
already posted two articles on this topic for NWV, one in
July
http
://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron1.htm
and one in November
htt
p://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron14.htm
The NPA, formerly the NNFA (National Nutritional Foods
Association), is the largest trade association for
ingredient suppliers and health food stores. This group,
along with CRN (the Council for Responsible Nutrition) has
been taken over by Big Pharma and is selling out the
supplement industry.
You as a consumer must weigh in on this subject before it is
too late. Your options for effective natural solutions are
in serious jeopardy. Immediate action is required to defend
health freedom and your right to have therapeutic choices in
natural health options.
Unfortunately, it is up to 1Cwe the American people 1D to
save the supplement industry from traitorous groups
pretending to be on your side. There is a serious attempt
underway to push this bill through prior to the close of the
lame duck session (apparently to end on December 8). Click
here to take action now, tell your congressional leaders to
vote no on S. 3546/H.R. 6168.
http://www.thenhf.com/oppose_S3546_nhf_call_to
_action_nov_2006.htm
This is what the December 4, 2006, NPA e-mail stated:
We 19re contacting you because an important bill may soon be
voted on in Congress. This legislation, which the Natural
Products Association 13 along with the other leading
dietary supplement trade groups 13 supports, is, S. 3546 in
the Senate and H.R. 6168 in the House of Representatives.
Yes, these are the names of the bills and they are rotten to
the core for consumers and the supplement industry.
Contrary to what you may have heard, this legislation will
not affect the availability of dietary supplements or lead
to closures of health food stores.
Wrong, an outright lie! This legislation may drastically
reduce the availability of therapeutic supplements by
linking them with adverse effects actually caused by drugs.
True, health food stores are not likely to close. They will
keep selling the lower quality Big Pharma brands, like
One-A-Day (Bayer) and Centrum (Wyeth). About 80% of the
supplement market is not really concerned about your health;
this includes big box stores, most network marketing
companies, drug stores, super markets, and internet
fly-by-night operations. Big Pharma knows these brands pose
no competition to their monopolistic drug cartel. Rather,
Big Pharma wants all effective nutrition off the market 13
the really great products that fix diabetes, resolve
depression, prevent heart disease, enable weight loss, fix
fibromyalgia, and help a person survive cancer treatment.
Big Pharma wants a sick America and will do anything to keep
people in poor health and on multiple toxic drugs.
It 19s also important to remember that the legislation would
require only serious 13 such as life threatening 13
experiences, not just any complaint, to be reported. And
keep in mind that the government already tracks adverse
experiences that could be related to dietary supplements.
The FDA is currently unable to properly track adverse events
caused by drugs and does not even know which drugs are safe.
Over 100,000 Americans are killed each year by drugs, and at
least 3 million are injured so severely it requires
hospitalization. The FDA already has an adequate MedWatch
reporting system for serious adverse events for dietary
supplements. The proposed bill calls for supplement
manufacturers to keep track of all complaints any person
reports, serious or not, a standard far stricter than truly
dangerous drugs! This is absolutely absurd.
If such legislation becomes law it will be used as a vehicle
for the FDA to remove supplements from the market based on
hearsay data. There is no mechanism in place for any
supplement company to collect health information on the
person reporting, including existing medications or health
history. This means the legislation can and will be used as
a witch hunt against effective natural options for health.
Certainly, the lawyers at NPA and those supporting this bill
are licking their chops at all the business this legislation
will generate for them.
What 19s new is that manufacturers who get reports of
consumers being seriously harmed by their products can 19t
keep them secret. While we believe such occurrences are
extremely rare, if they do happen, reporting is the right
thing to do.
True serious adverse events from dietary supplements are
extremely rare and already covered by MedWatch. Any medical
doctor or patient believing a supplement has injured them
can easily fill out a MedWatch form. No one has any
objection to serious AER reporting. That is not what this
bill is really all about. It is about gutting DSHEA (Dietary
Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994), the
legislation that enables American consumers to have more
options for health than in any other country in the world.
By implying there is a safety problem (which there isn 19t)
and making supplement companies defend themselves, the
burden of proof is shifted from the FDA to supplement
companies, thereby drastically changing existing law in
favor of Big Pharma and away from access to natural health
options granted by DSHEA. The FDA already does what it can
to discriminate against small and innovative companies.
htt
p://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron12.htm
If H.R. 6168 and S. 3546 are passed and become law, they
will amend the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to
require the reporting of 1Cserious 1D adverse events for
both over the counter (OTC) drugs and dietary supplements to
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
That is true. However, there is no way to differentiate
between drug-drug interactions, drug-nutrient interactions,
or food poisoning, meaning there is no way to accurately
judge what is causing a problem. Furthermore, the real issue
is the safety of drugs, not supplements. Until the FDA has a
working system for drug safety, there is no way for the FDA
to judge supplement safety. There is a reason the Institute
of Medicine reported that the FDA is dysfunctional and not
able to protect Americans from harm. Its drugs!!!! 13 not
vitamins.
While the Natural Products Association understands that the
mandatory reporting requirements of the AER bill will add to
manufacturers 19 record keeping responsibilities, we believe
the bill will benefit the industry in the long run.
This opinion must be coming from the lawyers that stand to
make a fortune defending supplement companies from frivolous
attacks relating to non-serious adverse events. Also,
doctors will attempt to blame vitamins for the devastating
side effects of their commonly prescribed medications.
Dangerous drugs, like statins
htt
p://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron15.htm
are in widespread use and making many Americans very ill and
even causing premature death. When someone has heart failure
from taking statins, doctors will try to blame it on vitamin
E. It would be a major travesty to pass legislation that
allows the side effects of dangerous drugs to be reported in
such a way as to remove safe and effective supplements from
the market. The Big Pharma goal is to maintain its monopoly
at any cost. It is an agenda based on drug sales and a
callous disregard for human life.
First, by helping to change the perception by critics of the
dietary supplement industry that it is not well regulated.
This is the Big Lie
http://en.wikipe
dia.org/wiki/Big_lie
The truth is that supplements are safer than food.
Supplements are not drugs. Critics of the dietary supplement
industry are all getting a pile of money from Big Pharma and
they pretend to be upset about network marketing companies
making bogus health claims, companies with a history of
paying off Senators Hatch and Harkin for protection. Since
most of these companies that seemingly cause problems are
members of CRN and NNFA, why don 19t these junk trade
organizations clean up their own members? There is no need
to put out of business the many nutritional companies
providing a true quality service to millions of Americans in
true need of real help, unless of course you are simply
trying to put your own competition out of business.
Second, over time, the recordkeeping and reporting
requirements will substantiate what many in the industry
have been saying all along 13 that the safety record of
dietary supplements is exemplary, especially when compared
to other health-related products.
Obviously, true serious AERs will be very infrequent, unlike
the several thousand people dying each week at the hands of
Big Pharma. However, the recordkeeping requirement for
non-serious adverse events opens the door for unlimited FDA
harassment of any company. Since the FDA is currently bought
and paid for by Big Pharma, that is a huge problem.
Ultimately, safety reporting is the right thing to do for a
responsible industry that puts consumers first.
In a world where Big Pharma and the FDA have spent decades
trying to obliterate competition, such a naïve statement is
designed to appeal to 1Creasonableness 1D and 1Cpolitical
correctness. 1D NPA has no concept of integrity to the US
Constitution or what makes America great. If anyone wants to
believe the utopian garbage put forth by NPA, try to get the
statement to apply to Big Pharma.
The e-mail is then signed by the Natural Products
Association. Yes, not one person in this pathetic group had
the nerve to put their name on this embarrassing e-mail. I
wonder who wrote it. Was it Senator Hatch 19s younger son
who works at NPA? Was it Senator Hatch 19s older son who
lobbies for NPA? Or was it one of the Big Pharma members
sitting on the NPA board? Companies supporting this horrid
legislation and the related anti-American globalization
agenda of Codex Alimentarius include Mannatech, Herbalife,
Shacklee, Now Foods, Dr. Weil Vitamins, Jarrow, and many
more.
Besides faxing, phoning, and e-mailing Congress to vote no
on S.3546, any person purchasing supplements should demand
that whomever they buy supplements from is not a member of
CRN or NPA. Health food stores and ingredient suppliers
should withdraw from these bogus Big Pharma
pro-globalization organizations. If you need more facts to
convince you of the magnitude of this problem, read my book
Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA 19s Betrayal of
America
http://www.newswithviews.com/HNB/Hot_New_Books32.htm
If you buy supplements from such companies or stores then
answer this simple question: why are you paying money to be
shot in the back?
© 2006 Truth in Wellness, LLC - All Rights Reserved
http://www.truthinwel
lness.com/
For Health Freedom, John C. Hammell, President International
Advocates for Health Freedom 556 Boundary Bay Road Point
Roberts, WA 98281-8702 USA http://www.iahf.com jham iahf.com
800-333-2553 N.America 360-945-0352 World
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