CODEX

[Guest guest]

This MD uses natural treatments and gets much better

results from cancer than conventional docs. Here is

his view.

 

GB Khalsa

 

Leading Innovative Cancer Doc

Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. Warns Congress on CAFTA:

If the House Votes 'Yes' And Access to Nutritional

Supplements Is Limited,

Cancer Patients Will Sit In At Your Offices

Until They Die

© By Peter Barry Chowka

(July 17, 2005) Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. , a pioneering

practitioner of leading edge nutritional medicine in

the United States, has taken a strong stand on the

CAFTA bill currently being considered in the House of

Representatives. He promises that if CAFTA passes, is

signed into law, and winds up limiting the ability of

Americans to get high dose nutritional supplements,

many of his cancer patients will sit in at their

Congressmen's offices until they die.

 

In his private practice in New York City, Gonzalez

treats patients, most of them with cancer, exclusively

with nutrition, supplements, and detoxification,

avoiding conventional therapies and so-called

integrative approaches that attempt to combine

orthodox treatments with complementary adjuncts. In

1999, after publishing a pilot study in a medical

journal on the success of his treatment on advanced

pancreatic cancer patients, Gonzalez received an

unprecedented $1.4 million grant from the National

Institutes of Health to conduct a prospective clinical

trial of his therapy. That trial is still ongoing.

 

On July 15, 2005, Gonzalez wrote letters to his member

of Congress, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and the

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis

Hastert (R-IL). The subject was Gonzalez' vehement

opposition to H.R. 3045 CAFTA, the Central American

Free Trade Agreement which is scheduled to be voted on

by the House before the end of the month. CAFTA has

already passed the U.S. Senate by a close vote.

 

Gonzalez provided me with copies of his letters and

gave me permission to publish and comment on them.

 

Gonzalez critiques CAFTA and its potential to limit

Americans' freedom to access nutritional supplements.

In addition, he informs the two members of Congress

that if CAFTA passes the House, is signed into law,

and results in supplement freedom being curtailed, his

patients will sit in at their Congressmen's offices

"until they die." In the letter to Hastert, Gonzalez

adds, "That will include your office, incidentally,

since they perceive you as being in charge of the

House."

 

CAFTA, along with NAFTA, GATT, activities of the

United Nations' (UN) WHO (World Health Organization),

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), and CODEX, is

one of an alphabet soup of policies, programs, and

highly bureaucratized and unresponsive international

agencies that, in the context of an increasingly

globalized one world economy, are coming together to

change the way of life and impact personal freedom in

individual nations, including the United States. As

has become clear only recently, CAFTA represents a

potentially serious threat to Americans' (that is,

residents of the United States') ability to purchase

nutritional supplements, especially at therapeutic

(high) dose levels.

 

For almost a decade, a relatively small number of

analysts, medical professionals , journalists,

consumer organizations, and activists has been

monitoring developments re: CODEX and how CODEX might

affect freedom to buy and use a range of nutritional

supplements in the U.S. and other countries. The murky

CODEX issue has been particularly difficult to unravel

and to educate and mobilize consumers around - very

much unlike earlier struggles regarding nutritional

supplements, which always involved a single piece of

legislation in the U.S. Congress that was identifiable

as either bad or good by proponents of nutritional

medicine and freedom of medical choice.

 

This summer, a number of developments, involving

CODEX, CAFTA, a decision by a court of the European

Union (EU) on regulating supplements in the EU member

countries, etc., are accelerating the recognition that

limitations on nutritional supplement freedom in the

US are fast approaching. Previously, that dire

scenario may have seemed unlikely to come to pass, but

in fact, as Gonzalez contends, It can happen here.

 

 

--

 

A copy of the Gonzalez letter to Maloney:

 

 

--

 

July 15, 2005

 

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney

1651 Third Avenue #311

New York, New York 10128

 

Dear Congresswoman Maloney:

 

I am writing with some desperation to express my

strong opposition to CAFTA which is soon coming up for

a vote in the House of Representatives. I sincerely

hope someone in your staff reads this letter, as the

lives of my patients could be in jeopardy should CAFTA

pass and become law.

 

I am a physician who lives in your district, and

practices in Manhattan. I have a very traditional

medical education background (AB Brown, postgraduate

work at Columbia, MD at Cornell, fellowship in cancer

immunology). Since I was a medical student, first

under the direction of the then President of the Sloan

Kettering Institute, I began researching intensive

nutritional approaches to the treatment of advanced

cancer. Though in the past my work has been considered

controversial, in recent years I have received

significant academic support. In 1993, the National

Cancer Institute invited me to present my work to a

senior level group in Bethesda, and at their

suggestion I pursued my first clinical trial, an

evaluation of my approach in the treatment of

inoperable pancreatic cancer, considered the most

deadly of cancers. The results of that effort, which

went beyond anything previously documented for the

disease, were published in 1999 in the research

journal Nutrition and Cancer. As a re

sult of that study, the National Cancer Institute

awarded me a large grant to support further clinical

trials of my work, currently being conducted at the

Columbia University College of Physicians and

Surgeons. My current approach involves the use of high

dose pancreatic enzyme and nutritional therapy in the

treatment of advanced malignancies, and does not

involve the use of chemotherapy. All the supplements

we prescribed are considered nutritional supplements;

though we have full FDA approval for the study, none

of these supplements required a prescription. I want

to mention that my research has been strongly

supported by both Republicans and Democrats,

particularly Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Dan

Burton, both of whom have met with me to discuss my

work.

 

What does this have to do with CAFTA? Everything,

since should CAFTA pass in the US, by the definitions

of CAFTA, my therapy, the clinical trial itself, could

become illegal.

 

Few Congressmen and certainly few Senators realize

that CAFTA requires harmonization with existing

European legislation regarding food and dietary

supplements under the CODEX regulations. This is the

genesis of the potential problem. The pharmaceutical

industry has in Europe mounted a relentless campaign

to use CODEX to virtually eliminate the over the

counter sales of most nutritional and herbal

supplements, and turn them into prescription items

which could then be sold at much higher prices,

completely under the control of drug companies.

 

Currently, as you probably know, nutritional

supplements are available over the counter in this

country, and do not require a prescription. I believe

as a physician and scientist that this easy

availability of such products has been of great

benefit to millions of Americans, as a substantial and

ever increasing amount of scientific literature

supports the beneficial effects of many nutrients that

are too often inadequately provided in food.

 

CAFTA, if passed, would require the US harmonize its

dietary supplement legislation with that of CODEX,

forbid the over-the-counter sale of the great majority

of useful supplements, and destroy the valuable US

supplement industry. Since my therapy utilizes only

nutritional supplements, should CAFTA pass, and CODEX

supercede American protection of their availability,

my treatment would come to an end, my promising

research would be dismantled, and many hundreds of my

patients whose lives depend on this treatment will

die. I am not exaggerating, and any of your staff are

invited to come to my office to discuss these critical

issues with me.

 

Nutritional supplements have a long history of safety

except in very rare cases when misused; their safety

profile is far more impressive than that of many over

the counter drugs such as aspirin, which yearly is

responsible for several hundred deaths. Nutritional

supplements as currently available offer many benefits

in terms of disease prevention and good health, as

documented clearly in the extensive nutritional

literature, and they are a subject about which

millions of Americans are passionate. You may not be

aware, but for 30 years the pharmaceutical industry in

the US has sought to gain complete control of what

they perceive as a lucrative industry, by turning

nutritional supplements into prescription items. Their

attempts, often hidden beyond sacred tenets of

"consumer protection from dangerous supplements," have

little to do with the consumer and everything to do

with industry control.

 

Many of my own patients are desperate, as they learn

the dangers of CAFTA and CODEX to their lives. But

that's just the beginning; within the past few weeks,

millions of Americans, including many who feel their

health depends on the availability of their

supplements, have started to organize. The political

ramifications are enormous. I have scores of my

advanced cancer patients who have already said should

CAFTA pass and their supplement supply be compromised,

they will picket the offices of any Congressman and

Senator who voted for CAFTA, and they plan to stay and

die right in front of the offices. [emphasis added.]

 

I have been rather amazed that so many politicians

seem unaware of what CODEX is, how the drug companies

have used it to infiltrate CAFTA, and its true origins

from the pharmaceutical industry who have failed for

thirty years to get control of the supplement

business.

 

I hope you believe that I am not exaggerating when I

tell you a vote for CAFTA is a vote for the death of

my patients.

 

For your information, I do have a website with rather

extensive discussions about me and my work. The

address is:

 

www.dr-gonzalez.com <http://www.dr-gonzalez.com>

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D.