Public Response to a Mindless Critic

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Sun, 27 Feb 2005 09:21:05 +0100

 

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Public Response to a Mindless Critic

 

IAHF List: See my response to Jack Konrath below. Through my response

you will see exactly where I am coming from. Also realize that this is

not going to be a sunday stroll in the park- this Codex vitamin issue is

just the TIP of a MUCH larger iceburg....

 

Konrath said:

 

I've been following this Codex debacle for the last six months and find

it totally unacceptable. However, there is no way I would ever use the

moronic letter you suggest in this email. The tone is wrong, the spirit

is evil and the grammar is third grade at best. The whole thing has a

" sour grapes " stink to it, induced mostly by your direct reference to

being " kicked off " the 2000 Codex delegation. Why not just stick to the

facts and forget about the hyperbole? Don't you think the facts speak

loudly enough? Of course they do. Don't waste the time and money of the

people who believe in your cause by coming on as a disgruntled wus. You

are on the side of right. You don't need to stoop to foul play to win

this fight. You DO need to keep everyone on your side and the way to do

that is to be big. Do you really think that your suggested letter is

the best way to do that? If I were Bush, I'd crumble your letter up into

a little ball and toss it in the circular file. If that's the outcome

you seek, you're on the right track.

 

Jack Konrath

 

IAHF RESPONSE:

 

" The spirit is evil " ? It is " evil " to attempt to stop a global eugenics

program?

 

Explain yourself.

 

I was kicked off the US Codex Delegation to the CCNFSDU prior to the

2000 meeting in Berlin because at the '98 meeting in Berlin I videotaped

the first half hour of the meeting (til Grossklaus, the German chair of

the meeting stopped the meeting to force me to shut my camcorder off),

and for pushing very hard for congressional oversight having witnessed

illegal acts by Dr.Yetley of the FDA.

 

The German government banned my future participation at Codex meetings

because I not only attempted to make these non transparent meetings

more transparent by filming the meeting, but because I digitized the film

I shot which showed them forcing me to shut my camera off, and I put it

on the web in order to show the total non transparency of these rigged

proceedings.

 

I had serious death threats for attempting to get congressional

oversight on this issue, and was forced to move from South Florida to

a very

remote location in the mountains of Virginia (where I have since moved

from again) due to my efforts.

 

What I said about Cheney in my letter is true: his life WAS saved just

before the election by chelation therapy administered at Bethesda Naval

Hospital and by consuming dietary supplements.

 

If he cares about defending his own life, he and Bush will pay heed to

what I am saying. Personally, I don' t think they have the BALLS to do

the right thing here.

 

It is true that the FDA is part of the Executive Branch.

 

Everything in my letter was protected first amendment speech. You are

free to use it, to not use it or to edit it and send your own version,

but I do not appreciate your highly offensive comments especially given

that I have been risking my LIFE to address this issue since being the

first to call it to global attention in 1996 via my article in Life

Extension Magazine.

 

This sad fact remains: Even if we could get a legal injunction against

the FDA over ratification of the standard, and we BLOCKED the FDA from

ratifying it, we're STILL roped in to harmonizing to it due to our

membership in the WTO.

 

Last time a member of Congress attempted to get us OUT of the WTO was

in 2000 when Congressman Ron Paul tried via HJ Res 90. He got body

slammed for his efforts which went NOWHERE.

 

Face it, we're up against a Congress of whores which has a eugenics

agenda.

 

My advice to people to join Gun Owners of America, the NRA and JPFO was

very well founded, especially given the constant efforts we're up

against to impose gun control legislation which is part of an effort to

render us defenseless against this eugenics agenda.

 

You don't like the " tone " of my letter? Write your own, but don't tell

me what to send out to MY email distribution list which you OPTED ONTO.

You signed yourself on, you can sign yourself OFF at any time. Any time

you want to start your OWN health freedom organization, you are more

than free to do so. Personally, I think another revolution is long

overdue.

 

John Hammell, President

International Advocates for Health Freedom

 

 

 

At 11:02 PM 2/26/05, you wrote:

IAHF Webmaster: Codex Emergency, All Countries, Breaking News, What to

Do

 

IAHF List: No matter what country you live in, please join IAHF in

sending email to President Bush and to the US Congress demanding that

Bush

reign in Christine Lewis-Taylor of the FDA who is " on loan " to the (so

called) World Health Organization, where she is in charge of the (so

called) " Nutrient Risk Assessment " workshop which in May will proceed to

" fill in the blanks " on allowable potency levels at CODEX. (If you live

outside the USA, please copy your letter to Bush to your elected

officials).

 

There has been zero transparency in how Taylor (a Dietician and former

assistant US Delegate to the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for

Special Dietary Uses) has gone about selecting the 18 people who will

be making these determinations as to what the allowable potency levels

for vitamins and minerals will be. (All applicants on our side have been

rejected by Taylor including Robert Verkerk, PhD, Exec Dir of the UK

based Alliance for Natural Health despite his having made just one of 16

submissions to WHO on this issue.)

 

See the NY Times article below (at end) about the rampant corruption at

FDA wherein Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra were fraudulently approved

despite serious safety concerns by a panel of people which included

scientists who had worked in the past for Merck, and Pfizer, makers of

these

dangerous drugs.

 

Christine Lewis-Taylor of FDA is threatening to murder people all over

the world via her actions. Your own life could well hinge on her

actions (as does mine.) The FDA is answerable only to the Executive

Branch of

the US Government.

 

Taylor was on the US Codex Delegation in 2000 when I was kicked off as

a whistle blower attempting to put her and Yetley under a congressional

microscope. I had death threats for my trouble, and the oversight

hearing I pushed for for 5 years was whitewashed on March 20, 2001.

Pharma

elements which have penetrated the vitamin trade associations figured

prominently in the whitewashing of the hearing as did pharma plants on

congressman Dan Burton's staff.

 

Please copy and past the message below into an email and sent it to

President Bush (no matter what country you are in) and to members of

Congress (if you are an American). If you live outside the USA, please

ask

your own government to put pressure on Bush over this as Taylor's

actions at WHO are threatening people's lives world wide and she

should be

put into Guantanamo along with US Codex Delegate Barbara Schneeman.

 

IAHF is taking actions behind the scenes to try to turn this horrible

situation around. We're not fully at liberty to discuss all that we're

doing, but donations are urgently needed for travel expenses related to

ongoing public speaking in an effort to sound an urgent alarm.

Please forward my article at

http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/emergency_update_020705.htm widely

along with this alert:

 

President

 

The Honorable George W. Bush

 

Re: Need to Fire Christine Lewis-Taylor from FDA and to Stop US

Participation in the 28th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission

in Rome

(July 4-9, 2005) vis a finalization of a Global Trade Standard for

Vitamins and Minerals.

 

Dear President Bush:

 

With great alarm I have read the New York Times article below about the

gross conflicts of interest inherent in the FDA Advisory Panels which

fraudulently approved Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra for human use. I

demand that you institute immediate reforms, because this is murder,

plain

and simple. Thousands of people have been murdered by these dangerous

drugs.

 

Under the circumstances, I am OUTRAGED that you have allowed the FDA to

commission the National Academy of Sciences to generate a totally

unecessary 505 page book titled " Dietary Supplements: A Framework for

Evaluating Safety " .

 

This outrage is coupled with the FDA's sending Dietician Christine

Lewis-Taylor to the World Health Organization where she is chairing their

(so called) " Nutrient Risk Assessment " program which in May will be

" filling in the blanks " on allowable potencies of vitamins and

minerals at

CODEX, with CODEX meeting in July to ratify a global trade standard

which FDA has obviously set us up for harmonization to.

http://www.who.int/ipcs/highlights/nutrientraproject/en/

 

Just as there is zero integrity and total conflicts of interest in the

FDA Advisory Panels that fraudulently approved Vioxx, et al, for human

use, there is ZERO TRANSPARENCY in how Taylor selected the 18

participants in WHO's " Nutrient Risk Assessment " workshop and we

demand that you

fire Taylor and put her in Guantanamo for she is clearly a terrorist.

Ditto for Dr.Barbara Schneeman, author of the aforementioned book, and

current US Delegate to the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for

Special Dietary Use.

 

We understand that the only reason Dick Cheney is alive today is that

he had numerous chelation treatments at Bethesda Naval Hospital and that

he has been put on a vigorous program of vitamin supplementation.

 

Unless you don't mind being labelled Eugenicists, we demand that you

and Cheney defend consumer access to dietary supplements world wide by

reigning in Taylor, Schneeman, and the REST of the murderers at the FDA.

They are terrorists and belong in Guantanamo along with the executives

of Merck and Pfizer.

 

To not do reign Taylor in, and stop the FDA's genocidal actions in our

view, would constitute not only HIGH TREASON, but also CRIMES AGAINST

HUMANITY.

 

Please let me know how you intend to handle this matter and know that I

am joining Gun Owners of America, the NRA, and Jews for the

Preservation of Firearm Ownership out of total distrust of your

administration. We

realize that politicians prefer unarmed peasants, but we're not

interested in living in the global equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto.

 

With Serious Concern,

(Name, Address, and Date) and cc it to your senators, congressmen, or

if outside the USA to your elected officials demanding that they block

your countries Codex delegate from ratifying the Codex vitamin and

minerals standard in Rome at the 28th General Session in Rome from July

4-9th, 2005. ----See NY Times article below and include it in what you

send to Bush.

 

 

The New York Times (February 25, 2005)

 

10 Voters on Panel Backing Pain Pills Had Industry Ties

By GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON

 

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued

marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx

have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to

disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

 

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have

voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx

should not return to the market. The 10 advisers with company ties

voted 9

to 1 to keep Bextra on the market and 9 to 1 for Vioxx's return.

 

The votes of the 10 did not substantially influence the committee's

decision on Celebrex because only one committee member voted that

Celebrex

should be withdrawn.

 

Eight of the 10 members said in interviews that their past

relationships with the drug companies had not influenced their votes.

The two

others did not respond to phone or e-mail messages.

 

Researchers with ties to industry commonly serve on Food and Drug

Administration advisory panels, but their presence has long been a

contentious issue.

 

The agency has said it tries to balance expertise - often found among

those who have conducted clinical trials of the drugs in question or

otherwise studied them - with potential conflicts of interest.

 

Several of the panel members flagged with conflicts said most or all of

the money went not to themselves but to their universities or

institutions.

 

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group in

Washington that maintains a large database of scientists' industry ties

culled from disclosures in medical journals and other public documents,

analyzed the panel members' affiliations at the request of The New York

Times.

 

The center has been a frequent critic of the F.D.A. and of the

pharmaceutical industry. The center's analysis may understate the

industry ties

of the panel participants because some ties may not have been

previously disclosed publicly.

 

 

 

Dr. Sheldon Krimsky, a science policy expert at Tufts University, said

such conflicts were common on F.D.A. advisory panels. The agency often

conceals these conflicts, and studies have shown that, taken as a

whole, money does influence scientific judgments, Dr. Krimsky said.

 

He added, " F.D.A. has to work harder to fill panels with people without

conflicts, and if they feel they have the best committee, they at least

ought to make it transparent. "

 

But Dan Troy, a Washington lawyer who was until last year the agency's

general counsel, said that finding knowledgeable experts without

financial conflicts was difficult. Suggesting that such conflicts skew a

panel's decisions " buys into an overly conspiratorial view of the world, "

Mr. Troy said.

 

A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said no one at the agency would comment on

specific panel members' industry ties.

 

Before each of three meetings of the advisory board last week, an

agency secretary read a statement absolving panel members of conflicts of

interest because the committee's agenda involved " issues of broad

applicability and there are no products being approved. "

 

The secretary also said, " The Food and Drug Administration acknowledges

that there may be potential conflicts of interest, but because of the

general nature of the discussions before the committee, these potential

conflicts are mitigated. "

 

But the committee took nine votes, three for each drug, on whether

Celebrex, Bextra or Vioxx hurt the heart, should continue to be marketed

and, if so, under what restrictions. These votes were deeply important to

the three companies - Merck, Pfizer and Novartis - that came before the

committee.

 

Indeed, shares of Merck and Pfizer soared last Friday after the panel's

votes.

 

Ten members of the panel have worked in some capacity in recent years

for Merck, the maker of Vioxx; Pfizer, the maker of Celebrex and Bextra;

or Novartis, which is applying to sell Prexige, a very similar pill

discussed by the panel, according to the public disclosures.

 

An 11th panel member, Dr. Jack Cush, a rheumatologist at Presbyterian

Hospital in Dallas, said a disclosure that he once consulted for Pfizer

was incorrect, so he was excluded from the analysis.

 

Of the 30 votes cast by the 10 panel members on whether Celebrex,

Bextra and Vioxx should continue to be marketed, 28 favored the drugs.

Among

the 66 votes cast by the remaining 22 members of the panel, just 37

favored the drugs.

 

Dr. Steven Abramson, a rheumatologist at New York University School of

Medicine who was on the panel, has consulted for Pfizer and Novartis.

" The F.D.A. is looking for people who understand the science behind

these medicines, " and such an understanding often results from working

with

drug makers, he said.

 

Dr. John Farrar, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania who

has received research support from Pfizer and is a panel member, agreed.

" I think F.D.A. would have a hard time finding people who are good at

what they do who never spoke to a pharmaceutical company, " he said.

 

But Dr. Curt Furberg, a panel member and an epidemiologist at Wake

Forest University who had no ties to any of the drug companies, said

he was

" uncomfortable with the Pfizer-friendly undertone " at the meeting. And

he worried that Pfizer's financial relationships with some panel

members might have played a role in setting that tone.

 

Joan Wainwright, a spokeswoman for Merck, said the company had had no

role in choosing any of the scientists on the panel.

 

Merck has made no decision on whether it will reintroduce Vioxx, Ms.

 

Wainwright

 

said. " We look forward to discussing the outcomes of the meeting with

the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities, " she said.

 

Andy McCormick, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company had no plans

to withdraw Bextra from the market. He also said that Pfizer had played

no role in helping to choose the panel.

 

Critics of the drug industry said they were not surprised that the

panel's decisions would have been different if scientists with financial

ties to the companies had recused themselves from the votes.

 

" My employees usually vote for me as well, " said W. Mark Lanier, a

lawyer in Houston who represents people who have sued Merck after taking

Vioxx and suffering heart attacks or strokes.

 

Some lawyers and Wall Street analysts said last week that the panel's

decision would help to protect Merck and Pfizer from lawsuits. But

juries will be more skeptical of the decision after they learn about the

composition of the panel, Mr. Lanier said.

 

Christopher A. Seeger, a lawyer in New York with many Vioxx clients,

said the fact that scientists had not recused themselves simply

highlighted the close ties between the drug industry and academic

researchers.

He said researchers were afraid to say anything negative about new drugs

because doing so might jeopardize their chances of participating in

clinical trials and publishing papers.

 

Several panel members said the important split on the committee was not

so much between those with industry ties and those who did not have

those ties but between experts who treat arthritis patients and those who

do not.

 

Dr. Cush was angry that the voices of the panel's rheumatologists were

nearly drowned out by statisticians and others who do not have to cope

with anguished patients every day.

 

Dr. Furberg said clinicians often wanted access to therapies without

understanding the devastating public health consequences of their

prescribing decisions. Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have never been

proved in

clinical trials to cure pain any better than ibuprofen or more than a

dozen other, older pain pills.

 

" Fifty patients a day probably die from those drugs, and who is

speaking for them? " Dr. Furberg said.

 

Dr. Alastair Wood, an associate dean at Vanderbilt University and the

panel's chairman, said he was disappointed that the F.D.A. failed to

disclose the financial conflicts of the panel's participants before each

day's meeting.

 

" I'm a great believer in letting it all hang out, " he said.

 

Still, Dr. Wood said that even with its conflicts the panel was a tough

critic of the drugs. Many of the panel members who were among the

narrow majorities approving continued marketing of Bextra and Vioxx

did so

only with the stipulation that severe restrictions be imposed on their

uses, he noted.

 

He said he expected that the uses of the drugs would be confined to

very limited patient populations.

 

-----

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

800-333-2553 N.America

360-945-0352 World

 

_________