Health Freedom Threats: Hit ‘Em High, Hit ‘Em Low!
Right now the American Public is being whipsawed: first the dangerous FDA CAM Guidance (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine/Modalities) which threatens to turn all health practices into medicine which only physicians could practice and the foods and supplements supporting natural health into unlicensed drugs – and, yes, there is a real danger to your health freedom despite a good deal of internet chatter to the contrary!) and now the sudden advancement of Senator Ted Kennedy disastrous bill, S 1082 (“the FDA Revitalization Act of 2007”, plus the identical House bill) from Committee to the floor of the Senate for a vote in the immediate future without public hearings.
It would be easy to succumb to “health freedom vigilance fatigue”, which is, I believe, exactly what the intended effect is supposed to be. There is even speculation that Senator Kennedy moved this bill forward so rapidly BECAUSE the American public responded so vigorously to the CAM Guidance and are presumed to be preoccupied with it. (By the way, we have already sent xxx comments on this dangerous extension of the law by the Office of Policy and Planning and the public comment period has been extended to May 29, giving us lots more time to get lots more comments in.) But, while we were busy with that assault, it looks like the Big Pharma folks decided to sneak this one through. And, by the way, although the Senate version is up for an immediate vote, it is the members of the House who will either vote it up or down ultimately so giving these elected officials your direction is critical NOW.
Who cares? You do. Kennedy’s dreadful bill could get the FDA into the business of not only regulating drugs and medical devices, which is does now very, very badly, but also into the business of licensing and selling them, too. Contained in the same bill is the opportunity for this agency (already thoroughly corrupted by its dependency on lucrative “user fees” from drug companies which provide a substantial portion of the FDA’s operating budget now) to increase these fees and, thus, increase its unsavory, unethical and all-too-often deadly reliance on the drug companies’ financial support of an agency which is mandated to be their watch dog but which has become their lap dog. This bill increases the financial incest between the regulated and the regulators. Given the corruption of the FDA and the fact that mainstream medicine-document reality that properly prescribed drug are the principal killers in every developed country in the world, this bill threatens to make a disastrous situation even more fatally toxic.
The FDA is already the governmental marketing branch of Big Pharma. What ever has possessed Senator Kennedy to make matters worse? Although there is are small sops to consumer well-being like forbidding advertising of new drugs until they have been in use for two years, the provisions of this bill are, in general, significantly hostile to FDA agency health and US public health. Read about S 1082, then take action.
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Now for the report on today’s Codex Working Group on Production, Processing, Marketing and Labeling of Organic Foods
April 29, 2007 Ottawa, Ontario
What do you think? Should the definition of “organic” include crops grown with a fertilizer produced by surface-mining a rock (environmental degradation, non renewable resource) from Chile (non local resource), pulverizing it, (environmental degradation), soaking it in water to dissolve the nitrates out and crystallizing it after evaporation (highly processed material) and then applying that to soil where is absorbed very rapidly so that soil microbes do not get a chance to act on it and turn the nitrate into a mineral source from organic biomass?
The debate between Chile (the major producer of inorganic natural sodium nitrate) and everybody else was hot, heavy and highly emotional. Damage to the soil (Thailand), better options closer to the soil (EU), lack of organic integrity (Norway), rejection by the public (Switzerland) and a host of other arguments ranged passionately against Chile’s position that although it was derived from a ground-up rock from far away, it should be organic anyhow until, finally, the Chairwoman decided that despite lack of consensus the recommendation would be made to the full Codex Committee on Food Labeling to not allow Chile’s sodium nitrate to be used as an organic fertilizer. Chile was very unhappy with this decision, of course.
Then, in almost the next breath, New Zealand’s proposal that the use of synthetically derived ethylene gas be permitted to ripen kiwi fruits was approved. Hmmmm. You cannot use a synthetic fertilizer (although plants need nitrogen to grow) but you can use a synthetic gas to ripen fruits since plants make a small amount of it shows a wild inconsistency. There was no more consensus (what ever that means) for the first decision than there was for the second but the deal was apparently done before the discussion took place.
IFOAM, the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements, tried using science to make the point that Chile’s fertilizer was not OK but did not bother to even try to do so for the use of a synthetic gas to ripen a supposedly organic fruit. What the hot debate was about on ethylene was whether the approval should be put in paragraph 82 or table 4 or section 3 of table 2 or……
Net result: it is OK to ripen kiwi fruit synthetically and pretend that they are organic. Stay tuned next year for permission to ripen all tropical fruits that way since, as Brazil said, the process of gas ripening makes the tropical fruit trade economically viable. But does that make the fruit organic? Not in my book.
Tomorrow the Codex Committee on Food Labeling begins its formal work. There are several really dangerous provisions up for discussion (all supported by the US through the FDA, of course. But there are a growing number of countries that are not so sure about the wisdom of just following the multinational’s best friend around the block any more. I will keep you posted. Stay tuned.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
