Red Alert - Call For Action

[Enviro Girl]

This is not political - this is a threat. For us. Right now.

Please take action!

McCain bill threatens access to vitamins and supplements

McCain bill threatens access to vitamins and supplements
Friday, February 26, 2010 by: Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
See all articles by this author
Email this author




Email this article to a friend Printable Version FREE Email Newsletter

Articles Related to This Article:
• The inside scoop: Natural Health Products Expo West industry event

• NaturalNews emerges as top truly independent natural health news site

• NaturalNews readers making waves across the natural health, natural living markets (opinion)





NaturalNews Store Specials:
• Revolutionary new Hurom Slow Juicer at the lowest price on the 'net + FREE shipping!

• Certified Organic Nutiva Hemp Seeds at a huge discount (+ FREE bottle of hemp oil)

• Omega-3 rich Chia Seeds at under $5 / lb.

See more at the NN store...



(NaturalNews) Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has introduced a new bill called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010 (S. 3002), that, if enacted, would severely curtail free access to dietary supplements. Cosponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), the bill would essentially give the FDA full control over the supplement industry.

Most of the industrialized world has incredibly restrictive laws governing supplements. People worldwide often purchase supplements from the U.S. because they are freely available at low costs.

All of this could change, however, if DSSA passes. DSSA would change key sections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), undoing protections in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, effectively eliminating free access to supplements.

The importance of DSHEA
The passage of DSHEA resulted from millions of Americans who worked hard to reinforce their freedom to buy and sell supplements. At the time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was alleging that nutrients like CoQ10 and selenium were dangerous and should be pulled from the market.

Though weak in some areas, DSHEA established a foundation upon which free access to dietary supplements would be protected from attacks by drug companies and the FDA.

What prompted DSSA?
McCain's DSSA bill emerged in response to illegal steroid use among Major League Baseball players. Likely instigated by pharmaceutical interests, the bill is being posited as necessary to prevent supplement adulteration.

The FDA already has the power to pull supplements from the market that are contaminated but it has not been doing its job. DSSA is not only unnecessary, but it would actually reward the FDA for its failures. DSSA would also strip DSHEA and give full control of the supplement industry to the FDA.

Registration requirements
DSSA would mandate that all supplement companies register with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA. Any company that refuses to register and comply with HHS would be subject to hefty fines, the classification of its products as "adulterated", and their removal from the market. The new system would burden manufacturers with significant new costs that would cause supplement prices to increase. A new taxpayer-funded bureaucracy would also be created to conduct inspections and oversee compliance.

Reporting requirements
DSSA would require all "non-serious adverse events" received by supplement companies to be reported to the government, regardless of whether or not the events are related to the supplements for which they are submitted. Pharmaceutical companies would have access to these reports which they could use to petition the FDA to have supplements removed from the market. The FDA could also arbitrarily pull supplements from the market if it believes it has "reasonable probability" that there may be a problem.

FDA would decide which supplements are legal
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of DSSA is that it would allow the HHS Secretary to establish a list of permitted supplements. Reversing common law, which assumes all is legal unless restricted, DSSA would allow only what is permitted to be legal.

In a nutshell, DSSA would increase supplement costs for consumers, grant incredible new power over the supplement industry to the FDA, and drastically limit the availability of supplements. Drug companies could also use the bill to remove supplements from the market, patent them, and sell them as drugs!

It is absolutely critical to contact your Congressmen and oppose this bill. LifeExtension Magazine has a convenient "Action Alert" page in which to do so.

Sources:

Senator McCain Files New Bill That Attacks Your Access to Supplements and Repeals Key Sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act - Alliance for Natural Health

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 - Senator John McCain

New Bill Seeks to Ban Consumer Access to Dietary Supplements - Life Extension Foundation

Share1254 Buzz up!40 votes



About the author
Ethan Huff is a freelance writer and health enthusiast who loves exploring the vast world of natural foods and health, digging deep to get to the truth. He runs an online health publication of his own at Wholesome Herald.

[Enviro Girl]

Dietary

http://www.capwiz.com/lef/issues/alert/?alertid=14665781&type=CO

Supplement Safety Act of 2010 Seeks to Ban Consumer Access to Dietary Supplements - Life Extension

Legislative Action Center
New Bill Seeks to Ban Consumer Access to Dietary Supplements
By William Faloon

A bill has been introduced to the Senate that would drive up the cost of dietary supplements and restrict your access to them. This bill seeks to give the FDA arbitrary control over what supplements you are allowed to have.

This bill proposes to squander tax revenue, while burdening the private sector with oppressive laws that will hinder scientific advances and increase costs. The net effect will be to take away your free access to dietary supplements.

Pharmaceutical interests are obviously behind this latest effort to legislatively force more Americans towards expensive prescription drugs and away from natural ways of preventing degenerative disease.

Please use our convenient legislative action center to e-mail your Senators and Representatives to protest against this dangerous piece of legislation.

(Note: This communication is not an attack on any elected official. Many Senators would have been deceived by pharmaceutical lobbyists, as you will soon read.)

The bill represents the kind of federal regulation that is not only ineffective, but also suffocates innovation in ways that inflict permanent damage to this nation’s economic vitality.

The bill supposedly originates from the controversy surrounding the use of steroids by Major League Baseball players. Since some unethical companies illegally sold steroid drugs as “dietary supplements,” certain members of the Senate appear to have been deceived into believing that the FDA needs to be given additional power to ban dietary supplements across the board.

The fact is that the FDA has all the legal authority it needs to remove supplements that contain illegal drugs from the market. The FDA has failed to do its job, and there are companies selling dietary supplements that contain prescription drugs. If the FDA continues to fail to do its job, then these companies will continue to sell drug-tainted supplements no matter what new laws are created by Congress.

The outrage over this bill expressed by so many supplement consumers is that it gives the FDA broad and arbitrary new powers to remove natural products from the marketplace. Since the FDA (and Congress) is dominated by large pharmaceutical interests, this bill will effectively enable drug companies to control which supplements you have access to.

You may recall the FDA’s ban last year of a more effective form of vitamin B6 (pyridoxamine) because a pharmaceutical company wants to have it approved as an expensive new prescription drug to treat diabetic kidney failure.

If this bill is passed, it will make it far easier for pharmaceutical companies to file use patents on what are now inexpensive dietary supplements and convert them into outrageously priced “drugs.” Just look at the cost of prescription drug fish oil that so many cardiologists are prescribing to their patients. It costs about seven times more than the same amount of EPA/DHA fish oil you can buy as a dietary supplement. Just imagine if the FDA was given arbitrary power to ban omega-3 dietary supplements!

In order to mislead the public about the true nature of this bill, it has been named the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (DSSA). It purports to protect consumers, but the question arises, from what?

According to a published report by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, no one died in the year 2008 as a result of taking a dietary supplement.1 The facts are that legitimate reports of deaths caused by dietary supplements in this century are virtually non-existent.

Despite this safety track record, this bill would give the FDA authority to draw up a list of allowed and disallowed supplements (and supplement potencies). This alone would destroy your free access to supplements. But there is more.

There is no real world rationale for this legislation. Yet this bill would automatically cause any dietary supplement to be classified as “adulterated” if it is “manufactured, packaged, held, distributed, labeled or licensed by a dietary supplement company not registered with the Secretary.” The “Secretary” in this case is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the department of the federal government that oversees the FDA.

The registration requirements would add layers of overhead costs to manufacturers who are already fully compliant with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and are inspected by the FDA. It would also create an entire new category of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats who would oversee this hideous expansion of federal control over dietary supplement access.

The registration process would require paperwork to be submitted to the federal government for every new formulation, re-formulation, new ingredient, etc. The effect will be to take what are now low-cost natural supplements and force the paperwork requirements to be more closely aligned with those of unaffordable prescription drugs.

These burdensome registration requirements also mandate voluminous paperwork submissions for new ingredients that give the FDA more power to DENY the “approval” of a natural ingredient. This clause of the bill would further reduce the availability of new dietary supplements coming to the market…effectively giving pharmaceutical companies a monopoly over what new health products you are allowed to use. Any new products that make it to market will carry the higher cost associated with complying with this bill’s new obstructive mandates.

The FDA already requires manufacturers to maintain records of serious adverse reaction reports. This bill would require that all “non-serious adverse events” be submitted to the federal government. The problem is that when a large group of people take any product, there are always coincidental adverse reactions. This means that for any given product, the FDA can arbitrarily take the list of adverse reports submitted to it and use it as a basis to remove the product, even if there was not a single valid adverse reaction! Once again, pharmaceutical companies would be able, under the Freedom of Information Act, to gain access to coincidental reports of adverse reactions and petition the FDA to REMOVE the supplement from the market. (There are of course millions of cases of serious adverse reactions—including many deaths—on file with the FDA about the drugs they approve, but of course these drugs are virtually never withdrawn from the marketplace by the FDA.)

The FDA already has broad powers to remove dangerous products. This legislation would enable the FDA to ban anything if they have only “reasonable probability” that there is a serious problem with a product. This kind of discretionary authority gives the FDA tyrannical power to ban supplements, a power they have not hesitated to use when they’ve had it.

Recall that in the early 1990s, the FDA declared that many of the supplements used today, including CoQ10, selenium, and chromium, were inherently dangerous. The public’s revolt against the FDA’s absurd proclamation led to passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. This is the law that protects consumers’ rights to access low-cost dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) would largely eviscerate the protections afforded by DSHEA.

Just imagine owning a pharmaceutical company and hearing from physicians that patients are refusing to take your expensive side effect-prone drugs. Instead you learn they are switching to low-cost dietary supplements that you cannot patent.

Since you control a large percentage of Congress, the logical solution is to have legislation enacted that will enable the FDA (that you also control) to remove supplements that compete with your drugs. That is exactly what the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (DSSA) will accomplish if Big Pharma has its way.

The greatest economic challenge this country faces is how to deal with runaway disease care costs (they call it “health care” when it isn’t). What few understand is that there is no real medical cost crisis. Medical care is so expensive today because it has been so corruptly over-regulated. Disease care costs, in other words, are egregiously hyper-inflated compared to what their free market price would be.

FDA Failure, Deception and Abuse is the title of a new book that documents that disease care costs are a result of endless legislation passed by Congress that enables those in conventional medicine to earn obscene profits, while the nation’s economy collapses under the burden of outlandish prices for dangerous and minimally effective therapies.

The proposed Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 is an egregious example of how this kind of insidious legislation comes into being, and how the public is deceived into thinking that Congress is seeking to “protect” them (in this case from nothing), when the real purpose of the legislation is to further enrich the entrenched drug cartel that long ago bought and paid for most of Congress and the FDA.

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 is a blatant example of how Congress undermines free markets and decimates private sector innovation.

The encouraging

[Enviro Girl]

Life Extension Foundation -- Oppose the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 bill

[belle9]

Supplements need to stay in the hands of the consumers. This is big pharma at its worst trying to make a greater profit. Who is a better friend to them than McCain? I am in Georgia and can't get any results from my Congressman or the two crazy Senators. I hope you folks in California can do something.

[Enviro Girl]

My apologies on the poor display of skills w/the article posting/one got chopped, if the links do not work and you want to view the complete article, please LMK.

[Enviro Girl]

OVER 2.2 MILLION EMAILS IS A GROWING ROAR FOR HEALTH AND FOOD FREEDOM! ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE FREEDOM ROAR NOW!
Health Freedom Action Thanks! Now send this Action item to every person you can reach asking them to take action and then pass it on in the same way. After all, everyone eats so this is everyone's battle. We're making this issue "go viral": that's how we turn "Push Back" into "Take Down!"_____________________________________
Urgently Important Health Freedom Action eAlert Action Items -
Health Freedom Movement turning "Push Back" into "Take Down" - And Natural Solutions Foundation is Leading the Way, As Always
We are pleased to report that a number of health freedom groups who are, generally, so fragmented and ineffective that they trip all over each other, are once again taking their cue from our Action Items and offering a Citizens Petition for Health Freedom. We say: "Good for them! And Good for us all!" We believe that the Globalist agenda must die the "death of the thousand cuts" and that every opposition to it is one of those cuts. Therefore, in addtiion to taking our Food and Supplement Freedom Action Item,
Health Freedom Action and our urgent call to Ban ALL GMOs immediately,
Health Freedom Action Please also take this new Action Item to sign the Health Revolution Petition, created by other members of the Health Freedom world as they followed our lead once again. The more voices, the bigger the swell -
Health Freedom Action
You may remember our Open Letters to other folks in the Health Freedom Movement and the absolutely underwhelming response they received. This time, however, it would appear that things may have shifted for the better. We hope to see, and bring you, many more such good followership items from other Health Freedom activists! Let this be a major sea change!
The Natural Solutions Foundation firmly believes that the more we work together, the easier it will be to move from Push Back to Take Down on issue after issue! This petition is a moderately good recounting of the health freedom issues. While not exhaustive, there are a number issues enumerated here which we have brought to you previously in what we believe to be effective tactics for real change.
We don't all agree on all the items in the list, but the activists who drafted it are mostly good people and mostly allies, so we are happy to seek additional signatures to the Health Revolution Petition. While a laundry list of items of this sort may not bring about administrative, legislative or judicial changes as our far more targeted Action Items can and do, it will serve as notice to TPTB (the powers that be). For that reason, we suggest that you sign this petition to serve yet another notice that we care - deeply - about these issues.
Featured Videos
To understand Monsanto and the threat that it, and its Food "Safety" Bill S. 510 pose to you, and why you must take the Action Item opposing it and pass it along so many, many others can do the same, you need to watch this video about the impact of Agent Orange all these decades after the Vietnamese War,

YouTube - Agent Orange

and then recall that according to Monsanto, its newest version of Roundup© is comprised of 70% Agent Orange. Sprayed on food, washed into the water and digested in our bodies, what do you think the result will be on you and yours?
If you need a reminder of why Sen. McCain's S. 3002 is such a good ploy to get nutrient restrictions matching Codex into the US, watch this video

YouTube - The Theatre of the Absurd: Codex Report...

and recall that these Nutrient Reference Values are supposed to tell consumers what they need of a particular nutrient on labels first and then they will become the maximum permissible upper level. How low are they? Low enough to mandate under nutrition which guarantees increased chronic, deadly degenerative diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity just as we have been warning was the next step since 2005.
But just exactly what is Codex? How does it work and what are its vulnerabilities? Watch "Rome Codex Deconstruction"

YouTube - Report from Codex Commission Meeting -...

Brain in a whirl? Does it feel like it is all too much? Is age taking a toll on your memory or that of someone you care about?
You must watch Gen Bert and Dr Rima on "Cognitive Enhancement"

YouTube - Natural Solutions Cognitive Enhancement...

Then try these amazing products. I personally KNOW how amazing they are. You may find that you are amazed after trying them.
And, last, but certainly not least, here is the news that you have been waiting for: The exceptional 2010 Health Freedom War Council is now available for download. If you have already paid to attend this webinar, you will be getting your link in just a few days! If you do not want to miss out on this exceptional opportunity, click below, donate $99 and we will send the link to you shortly:
Donate to Support HealthFreedomUSA.org – Health Freedom “Money Bomb”
________________________________________
NEW: Dr. Rima Network: Dr. Rima Network, www.DrRima.net, Natural Solutions Foundation, Rima E Laibow MD, Cognitive Enhancement, Nano Silver
Why should you care? Because the manifest dangers of conventional medicine, already known to kill hundreds of thousands of people each year WHEN USED PROPERLY are getting worse. Not only are vaccines increasingly dangerous, everything that conventional medicine does - or touches - is getting more dangerous.
Consider this article :
foodconsumer.org - Overlooked Contaminant Found in Donated Blood…
This level of incompetence and deadly carelessness is by no means rare. One has to wonder if it is, in fact, an accident at all.

Now consider that half of the drugs cleared for public sale by the FDA are quietly removed from the market (or greatly restricted) in 5 years or less because of their dangerous and deadly effects. Hundreds of people die each month (!) from Avianda alone, for example,
NYT: Diabetes drug harms heart, U.S. concludes - The New York Times- msnbc.com
Now consider, too, the fact that the profits in these wildly dangerous drugs are astronomical. Then consider the fact that their proven potential to generate sales for other drugs once the first drug has been taken (quite an effective business market, as the spread sheets demonstrate) is directly threatened by

1. Natural health options
2. Clean unadulterated food
3. Health Freedom to allow people to reject allopathic solutions to real or imagined problems and use natural ones instead.

Senator McCain's bill, S. 3002, now being justified as "merely to protect against athletes doping" and downplayed as "not likely to get out of committee" is a direct Big Pharma ploy to make sure the supplements you depend upon are taken away from you. This bill is a "stalking horse" for the equally bad "food safety" bill S 510 that your Push Back had stalled in committee. Watch for one or the other to be amended to include the worst provisions of the other and then pushed for a vote.

Will this happen? Not if we continue to Push Back!

Health Freedom Action

If our outrage and vocal response as the Health Freedom netroots keeps these bills in committee, congratulations to us. It may return yet again, from yet another Congressional prostitute... and we will keep pushing it back! Yes, it is, of course, likely that the McCain bill is merely a stalking horse, a diversion, if you will, to allow Sen. Harkin's horrific "Food Safety" [NOT!] Bill to be amended to "satisfy" McCain's interests.

And We Certainly Will Not Let That Happen

It would appear that we have pushed McCain's S. 3002 back into the cesspool from which it emerged through push back. Now let's take down its big brother, S 510. Please click the link below and take action once for each member of your family, then send the Action Item out to your entire list and let them know that their ability to access clean, unadulterated food ends if this "other safety" bill passes.
Health Freedom Action

And, while we are on the subject of clean, unadulterated food, I have two things more to share with you: Genetically Modified Foods, which the FDA approves just, well, just BECAUSE, have no meaningful examination of safety data prior to allowing a patented seed or animal into your food supply. The USDA, headed by Secretary Vilsik, a former Monsanto Executive, exercises no control or restriction over these "foods" whatsoever.

Bayer Crop Sciences' pharmaceutical rice has contaminated the entire Southeastern US rice growers' livelihood. GMO alfalfa will certainly contaminate all alfalfa in the US now that the shamefully inadequate USDA sham environmental impact study has been released by that corporate-controlled agency.
Organic cows eat organic alfalfa (the fifth largest crop in the US) so there may well be no more organic beef or milk production in North America by the time these perennial plants distribute their patented DNA over the North American Continent through the work of wind, bees, birds and animals.
Not OK with you? It's not OK with the Natural Solutions Foundation, either. GMOs of every kind must be stopped and stopped now while we still have a chance of protecting our entire biosphere - including you and your cells, along with your kids and grandkids' cells, as well.
Click the link below NOW to ban all GMOs now and set up a strong scientific agency to determine just how bad the damage has been and what we can do to fix it - right now the answers to both of those questions are totally unknown.
Health Freedom Action

[Kritters]

BRAVO E-girl, for the great compilation of information. I noticed when I received my e-letters about this, it was difficult to sort through where to contact people. Usually, it can be made very easy to accomplish just by filling in (mine auto-fills) your info and they already know where to send it.

Kritts

[Enviro Girl]

Hey Belle! Right on, Lady!

These days, I'm thinking any politician, of any party, lofted into high power is subject to potential Illuminati-funding. They may not even realize when it happens...Either candidate. If not, they don't get put into a power position. Later if they stand up to it, they prolly just get rid of them, one way or another.

It doesn't matter which party this type of bunk legislature attempt comes from, we have to push back.

(Lamb, sincerely: I was not trying to make a right joke, just a joke, because that thread was super intense - I'm sorry if we got off to a bad start w/that/Anna R. Key. I just thought that was sooo funny when Chavez did it, that would have been funny right or left, that's just crazy of him. Who does that?! I still do privately giggle about SOS/Smell of Sulfur...but I have been refraining from using that in posting because I didn't want more squabbling w/TCM or to re-offend you, unintentionally - SOS is really funny though

Maybe their intentions start out good, but corruption will slither in or they'll get another puppet.

I would like to think that the politicians don't realize the hidden, potential threats and are just thinking they are doing good things but my instincts say 'not so much' - it doesn't matter.

It's like the South Park episode about Voting: It's always going to be choosing either a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich. (haaaa!)

We have to watch GOV like babysitting a python - they try to get out of their cage (like w/these bills) and you smack it on the head w/a rake...Vote yourself a nicer pet, next election.

Shorter terms are in order but good luck w/that. Obviously, citizens need more input on every single issue and we have to be on constant alert for all kinds of nonsense. Earmarks and what not.

We have to watch out for even potential problems arising out of legislation, of any party, all of our countries...I thought these folks here were all outrageous at first. I was a big baby and didn't want to believe all this...All the scary things they warn of - Now, I'm glad to know what's up, like a year before it goes down. I'm always going to listen to them now, spread the word...

I saw it myself: Organic Garden PR Party - Tom Vilsnake/Mon$hito-lover 'Healthy School Lunch Program' more fruits and grains in kids' lunches, Swine Flu Vaccine. What spin!

I 'love' that Evil Powers That Be always naming things the opposite of their intention: (UN)Healthy School Lunch Program and the (Ex)Patriot Act are 2 examples that come to mind...That's so wrong you know it's right. That's just ruuuude.

I'm not going to weep for the fate of humanity, anymore. They opened my eyes.

I'm so ultimately going non-profit and making sure we stay protected, no more Illuminati Ills are gonna be silently fed to us. And we'll know what to do if they do ZAP us w/one...

People posted about Awakening and Enlightenment - We're in it, we've been in it, I think.

The Morgellon's war is being won right here: The Illuminati plan to have as many people cursing God's name as possible, writhing in pain - doesn't look like it's winning here.

You can feel the energy because everyone's starting to heal from their different ways and we're winning!

We learn, we share, we protect: We win!

Wishing global Butterflies!,

[Kritters]

With all the mostly natural healing sources that are being presented here and on other sites to combat Morgellons, a disease they won't even acknowledge, they realize that in order to continue to make trillions at the expense of the sick they have to eliminate those natural healing vitamins, herbs, oils, etc.

Sadly, most average people won't care because they don't take them anyway. But I believe there are so many people like us out there today that we will overcome all obstacles.

Kritts

[Enviro Girl]

Kritts - I spammed that 1st warning/how to take action last week to my usual pers email blast list, everybody. This Beefcake Player I tried to date a few times (I did it all for the nookie. Kritts, he thought tired was spelled t-i-e-r-e-d. You'd have voted dude off the island! He is the worst speller and he LOVES to text - that is a bad combo! But back in the day, I was into him: it was like Oh, Bless His Heart, look at him trying to spell. I'd laugh when he txtd and then feel bad for laughing.)

...he texts me back ASAP all upset and confused, I had to get out the crayons and explain: I always knew he was on the Roids!!!

"Time to settle down, dear...One househould doesn't need two good spellers." - Mother Enviro