Die In

[Guest guest]

Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, a pioneering practitioner of leading edge

nutritional medicine in the United States, has taken a strong stand

on the CAFTA bill currently being considered in the House of

Representatives. He promises that, if CAFTA passes, is signed into

law, and winds up limiting the ability of Americans to get high dose

nutritional supplements, many of his cancer patients will sit in at

their Congressmen's offices " until they die. "

 

In his private practice in New York City, Gonzalez treats patients,

most of them with cancer, exclusively with nutrition, supplements,

and detoxification, avoiding conventional therapies and so-called

integrative approaches that attempt to combine orthodox treatments

with complementary adjuncts. In 1999, after publishing a pilot study

in a medical journal on the success of his treatment on advanced

pancreatic cancer patients, Gonzalez received an unprecedented $1.4

million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a

prospective clinical trial of his therapy. That trial is still

underway.

 

On July 15, 2005, Gonzalez wrote letters to his Congressman, Rep.

Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and the Speaker of the House of

Representatives, Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The subject was Gonzalez'

vehement opposition to H.R. 3045 CAFTA, the Central American Free

Trade Agreement which is scheduled to be voted on by the House before

the end of the month. CAFTA has already passed the U.S. Senate by a

close vote.

 

Gonzalez provided me with copies of his letters and gave me

permission to publish and comment on them.

 

Gonzalez critiques CAFTA and its potential to limit Americans'

freedom to access nutritional supplements. In addition, he informs

the two members of Congress that if CAFTA passes the House, is signed

into law, and results in supplement freedom being curtailed, his

patients will sit in at their Congressmen's offices " until they die. "

In the letter to Hastert, Gonzalez adds, " That will include your

office, incidentally, since they perceive you as being in charge of

the House. "

 

CAFTA, along with NAFTA, GATT, activities of the United Nations' (UN)

WHO (World Health Organization), FAO (Food and Agriculture

Organization), and CODEX, is one of an alphabet soup of policies,

programs, and highly bureaucratized and unresponsive international

agencies that, in the context of an increasingly globalized one world

economy, are coming together to change the way of life and impact

personal freedom in individual nations, including the United States.

As has become clear only recently, CAFTA represents a potentially

serious threat to Americans' (that is, residents of the United

States') ability to purchase nutritional supplements, especially at

therapeutic (high) dose levels.

 

For almost a decade, a relatively small number of analysts, medical

professionals, journalists, consumer organizations, and activists has

been monitoring developments re: CODEX and how CODEX might affect

freedom to buy and use a range of nutritional supplements in the U.S.

and other countries. The CODEX issue has been particularly difficult

to unravel and to educate and mobilize consumers around - very much

unlike earlier struggles regarding nutritional supplements, which

always involved a single piece of legislation in the U.S. Congress

that was identified as either bad or good by proponents of

nutritional medicine and freedom of medical choice.

 

This summer, a number of developments, involving CODEX, CAFTA, a

decision by a court of the European Union (EU) on regulating

supplements in the EU member countries, etc., are accelerating the

recognition that limitations on nutritional supplement freedom in the

US are fast approaching. Previously, that dire scenario may have

seemed unlikely to come to pass, but in fact, as Gonzalez contends,

It can happen here.

 

© By Peter Barry Chowka

p.b.chowka

members.aol.com/pbchowka/gonzalez-cafta.html