Alert: McCain Bill Attacks Supplements

[Guest guest]

McCain Bill Attacks Supplements

 

 

 

 

 

Senator McCain Files Bill That

Attacking Supplements

and Repealing Key

Sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act

TAKE ACTION

AND TELL YOUR SENATOR NOT TO CO-SPONSOR THIS BILL

https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display & page=UserAction & id=510

 

Senator

McCain’s bill is called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). It

would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act

(DSHEA). DSHEA protects supplements if 1) they are food products that have

been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as

supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If a supplement

fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug.

These

protections are far from perfect. They discourage companies from

developing new forms of supplements. New supplements may be arbitrarily

banned by the FDA or adopted by drug companies in a way that precludes their

further sale as supplements.

McCain’s

bill would wipe out even the minimal protections contained in DSHEA. It would

give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of

supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others.

Everyone

knows that the FDA is friendly to drug companies (which pay its bills and

provide good revolving door jobs) and hostile to supplement companies. Under

this bill, this same Agency could quite arbitrarily ban any supplement it

wished or turn it over to drug companies to be developed as a drug and sold

for multiples of its price as a supplement.

The

FDA will like this because it believes that it can more easily control a few

industry giants. But isn’t it more likely that the industry giants will

eventually gain control over the FDA?

The

FDA is already misusing the adverse event reporting process that exists.

Drugs rack up thousands of adverse event reports without any action. Just

recently, the FDA yanked from the market a supplement product based on just a

couple of alleged adverse event reports without even allowing the company (an

old and respected firm) to provide any counter-evidence or counter-argument.

The

bill also allows the FDA to yank a product (at the company’s expense)

if there is a “reasonable probability” that it is

“adulterated” or “misbranded”. Let’s remember

that “adulterated” could mean there is a minor record keeping

error on the producer’s part and “misbranded” can mean that

the producer simply tells the truth about the product. An “adulterated”

and “misbranded” supplement in Orwellian FDA speak may actually

be both completely safe and effective.

We

must prevent this bill from gaining traction! Protect your access to

supplements by contacting your senators today and asking them NOT to

co-sponsor the Dietary Supplement Safety Act but rather to oppose it.

TAKE ACTION  https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display & page=UserAction & id=510

 

 

McCain’s

Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) appears to be supported by the US

Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) which is funded by major league sports teams

including baseball, football and others. The recent suspensions of NFL and

other professional sports figures is much in the news, and the goal of the

sports industry appears to be to shift the spotlight from their players to

the supplements industry. In his comments, Senator McCain cited six NFL

players recently suspended for testing positive for banned substances and

purportedly exposed to these substances through dietary supplements.

The

problem here of course is one of illegal sale and use of steroids. So why

dismantle the supplement industry in order to control already illegal

substances?

The

FDA currently has complete and total authority to stop illegal steroids and,

more broadly, to regulate dietary supplements. If the agency were doing its

job, it could and would have prevented the sale of illegal steroids. The

answer to this problem is not to give FDA more power. The Agency simply needs

to do it’s job.

TAKE ACTION  https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display & page=UserAction & id=510

 

 

Why

would a bill be offered to solve an illegal steroid problem that does not

really address the steroid problem but instead gives the FDA complete and

arbitrary control over all supplements? The answer is simple.

There

are a lot of vested interests which are threatened by supplements. Drug

companies do not like them because they represent a low cost, safer, and

often more effective alternative to drugs. The FDA does not like them because

supplements do not come through the FDA approval process and therefore do not

support the FDA budget.

Why

not simply require that supplements be brought through the FDA’s drug

approval process? Wouldn’t that create a level playing field?

That

is probably the argument that Senator McCain has been sold. But it is a

completely false argument. The FDA drug approval process costs as much as a

billion dollars. It is not economically feasible to spend such vast sums on

substances that are not protected by patent, and natural substances cannot

legally be patented.

This

is the great “Catch 22” of American medicine. The FDA, which is

supposed to guard and promote our health, is hostile to the kind of natural

medicine—based on diet, supplements, and exercise—that represents

the real future of healthcare. The Agency has either been captured by drug

interests or is trapped in a catastrophically expensive, toxic, and

ineffective patented-drug model.

Senator

McCain has no doubt offered this bill in good faith. But he has been sold a

bill of goods by special interests. And he has been naïve enough not to know

that he is being used.

TAKE ACTION  https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display & page=UserAction & id=510

 

 

This

exceptionally bad bill also requires the reporting of all minor adverse

events related to supplements. This is in addition to the already existing

requirement to report adverse events. This will further stack the deck

against small supplement companies by creating new, unnecessary, even more

cumbersome, and of course very expensive administrative hurdles. The result:

the consolidation of the supplement industry into a few big companies.If

passed, this bill will likely result in the disappearance from store shelves

of many supplements currently on the market. In addition to fewer

supplements, there would likely be much lower doses available. Unbridled

authority would be handed to the FDA, an agency that needs a top to bottom

overhaul, not ever more power over our lives.

If

McCain’s bill passes, we can look to Europe

for a snapshot of what we may be in for: EFSA, the European Food Safety

Authority, has sharply reduced the list of available supplements and is in

process of reducing potencies to ridiculous levels, such as less beta

carotene than can be found in half of a large carrot. Europeans already look

to the US

to obtain their dietary supplements. If this bill passes, where will we

obtain ours?

Please take action immediately. https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display & page=UserAction & id=510

 

Tell

your senators NOT to co- sponsor this legislation and to do everything in

their power to defeat it. Then forward this to your friends and family and

ask then to do the same!

Gretchen DuBeau

Legal Director, ANH Int.

Executive Director, ANH-USA