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

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(Canada) Bill C-420 is is an issue that demands your attention

 

 

 

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:52:40 -0000

 

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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