09/19/08 – UPDATE: NJ Assembly vote postponed until October (6th or 23rd).., maybe it was the 1,000 person parade permit requested from the Trenton PD! Return here for updates & new rally date. See Action Steps below, for all States.
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Say No to Restrictions on Nutritional Free Speech!

09/18/08 – I was on the Gary Null radio show – http://www.garynull.com/ – earlier today alerting tri-State listeners to an urgent issue. For the first time in the decade since then NJ Governor Christy Todd Whitman vetoed it, as not adding anything to consumer protection, the State Legislature is about to adopt nutritionists licensing law that will put a stop to all discussions of nutrients, advanced health care and everything we have been trying to accomplish. This evil bill must be stopped or NJ will go the way of Ohio… where people are prosecuted regularly for daring to speak. A protest is planned. Read on:

Yes I know, we used to have a First Amendment. We even have a Supreme Court that told us in 2002, in Thompson v Western States, in the powerful words of Justice O’Connor:

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last – not first – resort. … We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making [even] bad decisions with the information.”

The “Registered Dietitian Licensing” Bills, A2933 and S 1941 ignore all that…

You can contact your NJ legislator at: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/

Take Action in All States: ask your Legislators to oppose all restrictions on Nutritional Free Speech!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25929

So here is the scoop from Nutritionist Dian Freeman:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE HEALTH SHOPS GONE?

Trenton is voting on nutritional censorship bills
masquerading as dietitian licensing bills

NJ Senate Bill S1941 and Assembly Bill A2933 Propose
A Ban on All Current Sources of Holistic Health Information
about Food, Diet, Weight-Loss, Nutrition and Supplements

Please help stop the passage of these Bills

JOIN US FOR A MARCH ON TRENTON

Thursday, September 25, 2008

This is the day the Assembly will vote on Bill A2933

Contact all state legislatures to say you oppose
NJ Senate Bill 1941 and Assembly Bill 2933

These bills interfere with our freedom of speech, civil rights,
our right of informed choice and it creates a
medical monopoly over all nutritional information

This Bill will license and allow only medically trained registered
dietitians to practice, lecture, and advise regarding
health, food, weight-loss, supplements and nutrition

These bills designate the American Dietetic Association (ADA) as the only legal entity allowed to set nutritional standards. They choose the foods served in schools, hospitals & nursing homes. Among their sponsors are: Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, PepsiCo, Crisco, Hershey’s, etc. Are these the nutritional sources you seek?

Contact Us if you can Join Our March on Trenton -Thursday, September 25, 2008 – We need a head count!

Please share this information and contact Us
If you can help and if you can attend our rally

Dian Freeman – (973) 267-4816 – abouthealth@att.net

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Where Have All the Health Shops Gone? Long Time Passing…
Testimony before
The Committee of Health and Senior Services
of the New Jersey State Assembly
by Dian Freeman, MA
Certified in Clinical Nutrition and Holistic Health
Doctoral Candidate in Medical Humanities, Drew University

Today, health freedom choices in New Jersey include medical care, natural alternative care or a combination of both. This will come to an end if Assembly Bill 2933 is passed.

Masquerading as a “Registered Dietician Licensing” Bills, A2933 and an identical bill in the Senate, S1941, will name dieticians as nutritionists while allowing no other to teach, consult or advise about health, nutrition, supplements, diet, food or food materials. This will BAN all natural and alternative health practitioners from calling themselves nutritionists or disseminating information about natural food, holistic health and medical alternatives.

The justification for these Bills is that the New Jersey State legislature, being so much wiser than the federal government (which protects civil rights), believes that the people are too incompetent to know what is good for them. This bill is proposed in the name of protecting “the People” from making “wrong” decisions about their nutrition. This bill wishes to delineate for the poor confused populace who is the correct person to see about nutrition and that this correct person is one who is medically trained in food science. Thus the attempt in this bill to rename those who are ordinary dietician to now be know as the only “nutritionists’ that are medically approved.

They use the fact that doctors are licensed to justify licensing in general. The licensing of doctors does not exclude other doctors, those who have a PhD in nutrition or are naturopaths, NDs, or those who are Ayurvedic doctors form practicing. Licensing should not exclude the competition to the potential licensee.

We, the nutritionists, holistic health practitioners, herbalists, naturopathic doctors, Ayurvedic doctors, doctors of Nutrition, etc., who have worked hard to build businesses in the natural health field do not wish to prevent dieticians from being licensed. We believe in free information and choice. But, we do not believe that in a free country health information and options should be excluded through the licensing of dieticians.

We ask that the newly added exclusionary portion of the Dietician’s Licensing Bill be deleted. This is the portion that excludes all other practitioners from remaining in their natural health businesses. To exclude a group in favor of another is an unconscionable and discriminatory act unbecoming to those governing in a free society.

The obligatory 12 Points in opposition to Senate Bill 1941
1. As currently written, this bill would censor information that is neither understood nor endorsed by the medical establishment. Information should be freely available in a free society. Therefore, the crux of the issue with this bill is multiple violations of civil rights, i.e., freedom of speech, the right to have fully informed choice and the basic right to make our own personal health decisions. This bill is also questionable relative to anti-trust laws against creating business monopolies. As it is written, Bill S1941 favors the medical establishment in New Jersey.

2. This bill, if passed, will disallow the public to be educated about natural health options and choices. Dieticians have no training or interest in natural and holistic alternatives and wish to be known as “medical nutritionists”. An oxymoron if ever there were one. Medicine and nutrition have been at odds for centuries.

In the Sixteenth Century, as in the Twentieth Century, licensed physicians and surgeons were going to the British Parliment to ban the activities of the alternative practitioners of their day, herbalists. Parliament ordered an end to this misuse of the Parliament to enforce licensure, thereby protecting the nutritionists from “suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of their goods…” (see attachment 7- The Herbalists Charter). http://home.earthlink.net/~lifespirit23/herbcharter.htm

The obvious aim of senate bill 1941 is once again the age old attempt to silence by licensure all alternatives to modern medicine and to render historically valuable health information extinct. This is knowledge that is valuable in both a historical and a practical sense. We ask the New Jersey legislators to stop this atrocity of justice and abuse of civil rights. We hope that this legislature, to paraphrase the Herbalist Charter, will order an end to this misuse of the New Jersey Legislature to enforce licensure, thereby protecting we nutritionists from “suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of our goods… to a medical monopoly. This charter protecting herbalist was taken as law by New Jersey and remains on the books today.

3. In every culture the perception of a people weighs as reality. The perception by the people about nutritionists and natural health practitioners is of those who would advise about eating organic food, traditional common-sense health practices, balancing and healing diet programs, effective supplement protocols and recommendations on other alternative choices that are complementary to a holistic approach to health. Dieticians are trained in none of these aspects of nutrition because doctors are not trained in them. Dieticians are by their own admission, medical. They are taught to mirror the medical establishment’s disrespect for holistic alternatives. This medical attitude, based on ignorance and fear, is unfortunate. Without the option to seek information from an alternative viewpoint, many will be misled by dieticians masquerading as nutritionists.

To designate dieticians as nutritionists is both to redefine the common perception of a nutritionist, which is propagating a lie upon the public, and to destroy a vast and growing industry by creating a medical monopoly.

4. These Bills deny the public access to holistic health information, thereby eliminating any possibility of a person to make an informed choice regarding their health and violating the American Medical Association’s dictate of 1999 which says, “Informed consent can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an intelligent choice.” Permitting only one side of a story does not lend itself to providing an informed consent.

5. Among the sadder consequences of these Bills would be the inevitably contradictory and probably intentional misinformation dispensed by the medical science community on diet and food. This would lead to confusion among the public as to what their truly healthful choices are. Natural practitioners can clear up much of this misinformation today by helping those who are confused to sort it all out.

Without the dissemination of natural health information and if natural health dialogue is censored by the passage of this bill, the ancillary businesses that depend on natural health information will decline and eventually vanish. This may be the true intention of this bill. The pharmaceutical and medical industries appear to be using their vast resources and influence to get the legislators of New Jersey to eliminate those seen as competition.

The businesses that will decline with the passage of this bill will be small farmers, organic foods, health shops, herbal and natural supplement suppliers, Dan doctors who council on diets for the autistic, natural health publications, etc. Voters will not be happy with those who take away their supplements. The natural heath field is a large industry. A industry of voters. Large enough to be of significant competition to the medical and pharmaceutical industry.

6. Of course, dieticians have a right to be licensed if they so choose. Removing the clause from these Bills that criminalizes the people who have been practicing, learning and teaching holistic nutrition would be the logical solution for this dilemma. Allowing nutritional guidance and the dissemination of natural health information by those other than dieticians would give dieticians their license without infringing upon the freedoms of others.

7. The bill proposes to designate registered dieticians as “nutritionists” a designation they did not have before and do not have the training for. It would also deem it illegal for any person who is not a medically trained dietician working inside the medical “box” to address or share information relating to food, diet, nutrition and health including doctors of nutrition and those nationally certified and conventionally trained as nutritionists.

8. Dieticians have traditionally been perceived as the food preparers in institutions. They have training in the constituents that make up a food thus they prepare the nutritional panels on food packaging. Memorizing food nutrients does not provide for understanding the nutritional value of food. Dieticians advocate the use of processed foods probably because the chemical constituents they memorized seem the same whether processed or fresh. In his article “Corporate Potluck” (attachment 6), Jacob Wheeler describes a dietician at the 2007 American Dietetic Association’s Annual Food and Nutrition Expo in Philadelphia as “promoting Taco Bell’s new Fresco Style line…” Wheeler notes that among the many sponsors present were PepsiCo, Heshey’s, Crisco, Taco Bell and McDonalds,” and he asks. “When did PepsiCo become an advocate for health?” A nutritionist does not advocate such food. A dietician does.

9. Dieticians choose the foods served in public schools, hospitals and nursing homes. All three the butt of many common jokes within the nutritional field as well as among everyday people. Nutritionists believe if people regularly ate the food recommended by dieticians, most people would end up, sooner than later, in hospitals and nursing homes, which may be part of a larger plan. It is dieticians that choose pizza, hot dogs and french fries as a wholesome school lunch with ketchup seen as a valid serving of vegetables. The moms of New Jersey will think their legislators have gone nuts when they hear that they are considering naming the perpetrators of such food atrocities as valid nutritionists.

10. Dieticians also recommend the diets of the American Diabetic Association and the American Heart Association and hand them out in doctor’s offices and hospitals. In study after study, these diets are reported to be less healthy for the diseases that they target than the Atkins diet is! There is not one major study that supports the effectiveness of these medical diets. Looking at the statistics, we see that diabetes and heart disease have not diminished one iota in America over recent decades, rather, they are growing to epidemic proportions. Medical-model diets seem not to work and authentic nutritionists reject them. As a result, with real nutritional guidance people are getting well eating the right foods and taking effective and appropriate supplements.

11. As I mentioned before, perception is often read as reality. The fact that this bill so strongly favors the medical establishment and is sponsored mainly by those who are medical doctors, work in the medical field or work for medical foundations does not leave much room for the perception of the impartiality or fairness of the sponsors or the legislature.

The legislators who sponsor this bill and those who vote for it will be perceived as bent on outlawing all competition to the medical model. By denying their voters the many healthy alternatives available they will be forced to adhere to the medical industry’s two “health” options: drugs and surgery. There may be a perception that New Jersey legislators have no compunction about violating the civil rights of their constituents in favor of their own special interest and agenda.

This is a perception that will be brought to the mind of New Jersey voters repeatedly, state-wide, district-by-district by holistic health proponents each time a legislator who votes for these Bills comes up for re-election. American can be tenacious when it comes to the loss of their freedoms.

12. If passed in New Jersey, a precedent will be set for similar legislation to pass in other states. This will lead to a nation-wide, state-by-state ban on the dissemination of all holistic information. This effort will accomplish what the combined forces of the pharmaceutical and medical industries, with the help of the FDA, have been unable to accomplish on a federal level. Even though they have been trying for years to outlaw holistic practices in Washington D.C., that ol’ Constitution keeps getting in their way.

The proposal of such legislation reeks of a paternalistic government behaving with an obnoxiously elitist attitude giving the appearance of questionable ties to the special interest of the pharmaceutical and medical industries.

They want us to believe that they think it is up to our government, our legislators, to protect us from natural wholesome advice, supplements and information in favor of the FDA approved products and procedures of the medical/pharmaceutical industries.

These are the products and procedures that nearly caused me my life. And no wonder, the FDA recently requested an internal assessment of whether it could do its job (attachment 5). The result of this massive audit found that the FDA cannot fulfill its mission because “its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.” They admit they are inept.

These are facts that we in the natural health field have long been aware of. Many practitioners, like me, were damaged by modern medicine when we healed or cured ourselves naturally it became out passion to dedicate our lives to sharing that information with those who seek it out. There must be alternative choices for those who do not choose modern medicine and for those who wish to use a little of both. We Americans have the right to health self-sufficiency not to a “big Brother” government that makes our health choices for us.

In actuality, modern medicine, working without the natural health wisdom of the ages, is not doing so well for the people. Jama has named doctors as the third leading cause of death (attachment 1) and a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund of western countries has determined the U.S. comes in “dead last” in “providing timely and effective healthcare to its citizens” while France came in first. France mixes traditional and natural health practices with modern medicine as most of the other industrialized countries in the study (attachment 2). In addition, the associated press last year reported that the U.S. lags behind 41 nations in life span projections, “as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles (attachment 3).” Dieticians and their fast food sponsors will not be of any help to the U.S. in improving the nutrition and lifestyle of its citizens.

These trends could be reversed if modern medicine in the U.S. joined with traditional and natural health practitioners in changing the diet and lifestyles of Americans. Until then and with the help of dieticians, the U.S. will lead the western world only in the expanding numbers of cases of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.