USA URGENT: SOS Save Our Supplements! Grass Roots Action

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USA URGENT: SOS Save Our Supplements! Grass Roots Action

Needed IMMEDIATELY To Oppose Bad AER Bill During Lame Duck Congress

Session This Week!!

 

 

Tue, 5 Dec 2006 14:56:03 -0000

IAHF.COM

Tuesday, December 05, 2006 10:18 AM

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.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 " AER bill " ). 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 and one

in November. 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 " we the American people " 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.

 

This is what the December 4, 2006, NPA e-mail stated:

 

We're contacting you because an important bill may soon be voted

on in Congress. This legislation, which the Natural Products

Association – along with the other leading dietary supplement trade

groups – 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 – 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's also important to remember that the legislation would require

only serious – such as life threatening– 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's new is that manufacturers who get reports of consumers

being seriously harmed by their products can't 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't) 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.

 

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 " serious " 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!!!! – not vitamins.

 

While the Natural Products Association understands that the

mandatory reporting requirements of the AER bill will add to

manufacturers' 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, 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. 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't 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

– 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 " reasonableness " and " political correctness. " 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's younger son who works at NPA? Was it Senator Hatch's 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's Betrayal of America. 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 -

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

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[Guest guest]

As one who has had some serious damange from presciption drugs . I

urge the members of this group to take action. let your representatives

Know where you stand. Vince