Canada- Why Bill C-420 Saves Supplements- 3rd Category Sinks Them

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Why Bill C-420 Saves Our Supplements and the Third Category Sinks

Them

by Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and Helke Ferrie

 

 

Common Ground Magazine: www.commonground.ca. April 1, 2005

 

North America is run by Big Business and Big Pharma is the biggest

business. We wonder why drugs that kill are allowed to be heavily

marketed, while safe supplements are being lambasted by poison press

articles. Big Pharma, which manufactures drugs as well as all the

cancer and chronic-disease causing pesticides, herbicides and

fungicides, controls most of life and death in North America, indeed

this business is larger than the car industry. The more people use

dietary supplements the less they need drugs: it's that simple. No

wonder, that recently Hoffman-LaRoche was fined close to a billion

dollars for artificially creating a shortage of the un-patentable

vitamin B3 raw material in order to increase sales of their patented

cholesterol-lowering drugs; the vitamin is absolutely safe and more

effective than the synthetic drug. Recent polls show that 60 to 70%

of North Americans now use dietary supplements and complementary

medicine. *

 

Big Pharma is lobbying heavily to keep our supplements in the drug

category and prevent the passing of Bill C-420 which had the

unanimous support of all parties on second reading on March 9th. If

Bill C-420 becomes law, it would reverse the illegal regulation that

was enforced, without parliamentary debate or public knowledge, in

January 2004: it made our food-based supplements into drugs, thereby

requiring their assessment and availability to be controlled by

Health Canada in the same way as pharmaceuticals. Health Canada's

track record regarding safety is by now so abysmal as to make Health

Canada itself into the greatest health hazard of all. Worst of all,

the amendments to the legislation governing Health Canada, which are

currently being considered by our government, would remove all

accountability for their regulatory process. With regard to

supplement regulation this would mean that the public would not be

privy to the reasons why any given supplement was deemed " toxic " , or

what " scientific " standard or source was used to determine maximum

and minimum dosages. For details, see the February 2005 publication,

Ill-Health Canada by Michael McBane published by the Canadian Centre

for Policy Alternatives (613-233-1458 ccpa )

 

Remember Dr. Shiv Chopra? He was and is Health Canada's most severe

critic, having been employed by them for almost 40 years; he saved

Canadians from having carcinogenic bovine growth hormone secretly

added to our milk supply. In his view, Health Canada's regulatory

system routinely relies on what he refers to as " tobacco science "

which industry hacks produce by manipulating the data in the interest

of profits. For a magisterial overview of this world of deception we

recommend The Truth About The Drug Companies (Random, 2004) by Marcia

Angell, the former editor of the world's most prestigious medical

journal, The New England Journal of Medicine.

 

Listen to:

 

A Conversation with Dr. Marcia Angell, author of The Truth about the

Drug Companies (Sept 12/04)

 

Dietary supplements are safer than the food chain. MP Colin Carrie

stated that fact in parliament on March 9, 2005 in support of Bill

C-420.

 

Critics of Bill C-420 argue that we need good manufacturing practices

enforced. Well, the regulatory authorities handling supplements

ignore the overwhelming mainstream scientific evidence when it comes

to supplements marketed by Big Pharma, such as the known neurotoxin

and carcinogen aspartame. The stated primary intent of the Food and

Drugs Act was to protect the public against food adulteration, yet

adulteration with known toxic synthetic substances is now the norm in

the food industry: nobody is protecting the public against fast foods

that were shown in the documentary SuperSize Me to lead to a 25 pound

weight gain in one month, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides,

dangerously elevated liver enzymes and blood pressure.

 

Do we really want vitamins, minerals, and probiotics evaluated by

those same regulators who consistently bend to industry demands and

allow these toxic supplements into our food? Can these regulators be

trusted to even know the difference between what supports and what

destroys health?

 

Two audits of Health Canada carried out in the 1980's bears this fact

out when on each occasion they exposed Health Canada for wasting too

much time, money and personnel regulating the health food industry

which gives Health Protection the least amount of problems regarding

health and safety issues and too little attention towards " Big

Pharma " where the greatest problems arise in death and damage. Since

1997 to the present - 14 drugs and a vaccine have had to be removed

form the market because of death and damage. - Croft Woodruff

 

Until we have a regulatory system that works, abides by the published

and verifiable scientific evidence, is fully transparent and

accountable to the public in its decisions, and cannot be intimidated

by Big Pharma, it would be suicide to allow the products of our

supplement industry to be " regulated " by that oxymoron known as

Health Canada.

 

Everyone seems to agree that Bill C-420 is important because it would

repeal sections 3.1 and 3.2 of the Food and Drugs Act. These sections

prohibit telling the truth in informational and advertising as

published by mainstream science about the effectiveness of food

supplements in the treatments of a wide range of health conditions,

all of which are the so-called Schedule A: it includes most known

diseases. Schedule A is enforceable under criminal law, as happened

to the Strauss Herbal Company recently - Health Canada lost. The

courts can understand medical evidence – Health Canada apparently

can't.

 

See: HEALTH CANADA - ELEMENTS OF COERCION DEALT CRUSHING BLOW

 

In a new book, Death by Modern Medicine, Dr. Carolyn Dean reports for

example, that the billion dollar drug advertising machine is

supported by a mere 6% of actual, verifiable scientific research.

Only 10 to 20% of all standard drug therapy, surgery, and

chemotherapy, which form the basis of the entire modern medical

system, have been found to be supported by any published science.

These findings come from the leading peer reviewed medical journals.

*

 

See: The Medical Mafia rules:

 

The public is dying to the tune of 106,000 per year due to properly

prescribed drugs in hospital and 784,000 annually due to modern

medical practices. These are the reported U.S. figures which,

according to former FDA director David Kessler, are bound to be much

more numerous. If the most heavily regulated industry on the planet

­the drug industry - is killing so many people, plainly regulation

doesn't work. The situation has become so absurd that the US

government has established a new, independent office for drug safety

charged with overseeing the overseers, namely the FDA's drug

regulators. In Canada we continue to maintain the illusion that

Health Canada is protecting the public interest. The really big

question is: Why do supplements, proven a thousand times over in the

vast medical literature to be safe and effective, need to be

regulated like drugs, which are acknowledged even by their

manufacturers to be toxic? Supplements have never needed the medical

tap dance known as " weighing the benefits against potential harm "

which every doctor executes routinely when dealing with the drugs of

his trade.

 

The demand for regulation of food-based supplements with medicinal

properties is a monumental deception. Just follow the money - someone

is obviously going to make a killing (pun intended) if Bill C-420

does not pass or the pro-Pharma lobby succeeds in instituting that

so-called Third Category.

 

Big Pharma is poised to take over the dietary supplement industry.

The larger companies in the dietary supplement industry are being

wined and dined (literally) and told how lucky they are to get a

place at the table with the Big Boys. They, too, can have publicly

traded companies and­make big money. What ever happened to real

quality, the common good, real health, and freedom of consumer

choice? Health Canada's own business impact survey coolly predicted

that 80 % of small- to medium-sized businesses will be bankrupted by

the current regulatory environment that legislates food supplements

as drugs. In the full knowledge of their own survey, Health Canada

went ahead and legislated dietary supplements as drugs anyway – also

totally against the will of Canadians: at least 245,000 Canadians

signed petitions that were taken to parliament to register your

desire to have supplements regulated as foods.

 

This Third Category looks and sounds so sweetly fair, yet it would

have the same negative impact on smaller businesses and on the

availability of innovative products. The net effect would be the

systematic decline in quality and availability of dietary

supplements. Those smaller businesses are forced into bankruptcies

or selling out to larger companies which are within the Big Business

network, not because their products are unsafe or inferior.

 

Market control is the name of the game in Big Business and its agenda

is to turn the health food industry into a carbon copy of Big Pharma.

It wants to market synthetic supplements at low doses, as recommended

by the official reports created by Big Pharma's " scientists " for

Codex, that international trade commission which signed agreements

with the World Trade Organization to ensure its guidelines will be

enforced by the WTO's (secret) courts, when necessary. Canada is a

member of both Codex and the WTO. Codex started out as a United

Nations commission affiliated with the World Health Organization

which took control of Codex in 1995. So, while the UN does not and

never could enforce anything Codex does, the WTO can and will.

 

The Third Category option does not alter this fact because it is at

its core fraudulent: the Natural Health Products Regulations tell us

plainly on page 1573 that: " Natural Health Products are drugs at the

level of the Foods And Drugs Act " . So, while these regulations also

state on page 1574 that " the NHP definition allows for a full range

of health claims " , Health Canada reserves the right under the Foods

and Drugs Act to bring any natural product under its drug

regulations – as they did with Vitamin K and Folic Acid. The former

is prescription only, the latter requires it for dosages above 1 mg –

for no scientifically supported reason whatsoever. The Third

Category is an illusion because the fine print further ensures that

the current medical paradigm remains inviolate: Health Canada and

the NIH in the USA both are mandated only to investigate dietary

supplements for prevention of deficiencies, NOT for therapeutic use!

In both countries the notion that a person, without consulting a

doctor, may decide what works best to restore health, is absolute

heresy.

 

Bill C-420 would protect natural health products from Health Canada

control by making it impossible for this agency to exercise its

arbitrary powers, sweep aside scientific facts, ignore public demand,

and protect us all against our wills and to do so regardless of the

missing body-count. However, this is only step one: after we have

succeeded in protecting our dietary supplements through Bill C-420,

then we must chip away at Codex and protect our supplements from the

interlocking international trade agreements, including the WTO.

Anything that you may have read ( usually emanating from Health

Canada) about saving food supplements from the power of Codex by

putting them into the drugs category, is totally untrue.

 

Dr. Dean attended the last Codex meeting in November 2004 and knows

first-hand that Codex is happy to support genetically engineered

foods, irradiation and synthetic vitamin E. Indeed, they want the

world to take only Centrum­the synthetic multiple vitamin that our

bodies are unable to metabolize and which, in addition to doing

nothing for a person's health, causes serious clogging problems in

our sewage treatment plants. When supplements are defined as foods,

they are at least out of the reach of Codex as long as international

trade agreements don't kick in: Codex can regulate international

trade of pineapples or maple syrup, but it can't tell Jamaicans and

Canadians how much of these to consume at home. A few days in

Germany will prove where we are headed without Bill C-420: there are

no health foods stores as we know them, no vitamin shops, no free

access to useful potencies in vitamins need for therapeutic effects.

 

What do you need do? Run - don't just walk! - to your nearest MPs

office and demand that for your own good, for the public's good, and

for the MPs good (their personal and political longevity) they must

vote for Bill C-420 and absolutely not allow any bastardization of

this bill into that phony Third Category. Hundreds of thousands of

Canadians made it clear to Health Canada in 1997 that we do not want

that Third Category, that we no longer trust our regulatory system,

and that we want food-based supplements to stay in the food category

where they belong. We must make it clear to them again.

 

 

The sources on all acts mentioned in this article are in two new

books:

 

Death by Modern Medicine by C. Dean MD, ND and T. Tuck, March 2005,

call 613-968-3007, greg; retailers:

www.tucksdiscountvitamins.com, practitioners: www.curesnaturally.com

wholesalers: www.cureswholesale.com.

Helke Ferrie's Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health,

Kos, 2004, 1-877-567-6337 or 519-927-1049, Helke, visit

www.kospublishing.com

 

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