Codex has some new rules: the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Exercise and Health (GS) IS going to be implemented, despite the efforts of Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, pro-illness Chairman of the important Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses.
This week, the South African delegate to Codex, Antoinette Booyzen, suceeded in introducing a series of principles which compell Codex to implement GS whether it wants to or not. It was a great potential victory for our side BUT if we do not get our ducks/resources/strategy in line pretty quickly, we will loose this opportunity.
We’ve got a huge up hill climb ahead of us, but with the new Codex implementation of the Global Strategy forced upon it, and shaped by South Africa’s courageous delegate to the Codex Committee on Food Labeling this week in Ottawa, the terrain just changed in our favor. Now is the time for action.
Here are 5 steps which I hope that you will take right now and tell your friends and contacts about, too. We have an unparalled opportunity. Let’s take it!
1. Raise Natural Solutions Foundation’s rank in the search engines. Put this link on all of your websites (remove the fifteen * signs in this link before you mount this link. They have been added to prevent link from becoming active in this format):
*< *p*>*< *a href*=*"http://drrimatruthreports.com"*>*Stop Codex Alimentarius and Protect Health Freedom!< */*a>*< */*p>*
2. Become an information source.
a. Download the highly informative Codex eBook and learn how the protective International Strategy works.
b. Watch Nutricide: the DVD and recommend it to your friends
3. Join the legal challenge to US Codex Policy on supplements. Sign the Citizens Petition and ask your friends to do the same
4. Make a generous tax deductable gift to the Natural Solutions Foundation so we can continue protecting your health freedom. Consider a regular monthly donation so we can anticipate our income.
5. Purchase your organic snacks, chocolate, Zeolite, cosmetics GMO free products from our sister site, www.EatSafeEatSmart.com. When you do you are supporting organic, GMO-free products AND the Natural Solutions Foundation at the same time. Every purchase helps support us. Tell your friends, too!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth is trying to make your influence disappear. You see, Wyeth has a problem: 50, 000 irate consumers who have written comments to the FDA to make it clear what they think about Wyeth throwing its weight around and using the FDA to shore up their failing market in deadly synthetic hormones by making safe, natural bio-identical ones illegal. The response was so strong that they actually amended the original Citizens Petition to try to make it seem as if they were not doing exactly what they were doing: trying to kill a natural health option to protect their market share for a group of dangerous and ineffective drugs. And, as long as they were at it, they decided that they would kill the profession of compounding pharmacy. Those are the specially trained pharmacists who custom make personalized prescriptions for patients on the order of their doctors. Instead of counting out pills into bottles, they compound exactly what a particular patients needs.
Since compounding pharmacists can create what a patient needs, not what a big company decides to market, these advanced pharmacists are your doctor’s partners in bringing safe, natural and personalized formulations to patients. Millions of women depend on their skills to provide their individualized doses of the natural female hormones which they need. Many of them used to take synthetic hormones like Wyeth’s Prempro (C), imitation progesterone mixed with Wyeth’s horse urine (honest!) from pregnant mares, Premarin (C).
For many years, the dogma of conventional medicine was that menopausal women needed to take hormones and stay on them for the rest of their lives since doing so would prevent the heart disease which so often afflicts women after the end of their reproductive years. It was also supposed to protect them from senile dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, osteoporosis, wrinkles, dry mucosa (especially vaginal dryness) and on and on and on.
Remembering to forget that hormones are tiny molecules which act at ultra low concentrations on every single cell of the body and that they are highly structurally specific (so a single atom’s difference could mean the difference between safe and wildly dangerous), doctors pushed with all their might for women to take structurally altered synthetic hormones made by companies like Wyeth. The fashion — or perhaps the rage — as to get women on the synthetic versions and either dismiss or skip any mention of the natural alternatives which some doctors prescribed for women. These natural hormones were prescribed by a small number of doctors who understood the importance of using molecules which are identical to those that nature makes inside the body. Patients appear to experience fewer side effects from taking them and, critically important, fewer deadly problems like cancer.
But natural molecules cannot be patented so they are quite cheap. And natural molecules therefore do not generate the revenue to create fancy advertisements and expensive medical courses and glossy brochures, and expensive dinners for doctors and desk toys and calendars and pens and attractive drug reps and trips and…. and…. and …. In fact, even compounded for each patient, they are still considerably cheaper than synthetic hormones.
And then the 2002 shock that sent millions of reeling women looking for a doctor who knew how to prescribe natural hormones: a huge 15 year National Institute of Health study involving 168,000 + women called “The Women’s Health Initiative”, designed to establish the protective impact of Wyeth’s synthetic hormones Premarin (c) and Prempro (c) was shut down nearly 3 years early because these synthetic chemicals, either alone or together, increased women’s risks for heart attacks, breast and uterine cancers, senile dementia and other deadly diseases. Nearly as bad, the supposed protection against these and other catastrophic conditions was just not there.
Wyeth’s market share of the “Premarin Family” of drugs plummeted by more than 60%.
After letting the dust settle a bit, Wyeth decided to fight: On October 5, 2005 they entered a Citizens Petition to compel the FDA to put compounding pharmacists into the dust bin of history (despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that the FDA has no jurisdiction over this profession) AND ban the molecules that compete with their deadly drugs: estrogen and progesterone. The original 6 month comment period was set to expire on April 4, 2006. When health freedom activists asked people to register their opinion with the FDA, the outpouring was so great that the FDA server, we understand, was overwhelmed. For that reason or for some other reason, the comment period was extended by 30 days until May 4, 2005.
More than 50,000 comments have been registered with the FDA. If you have already written a comment in support of your right to make your own health decisions and do what you and your doctor believe is best for you, thank you.
If, on the other hand, you have not yet done so, now, now, NOW is the time. Simply click here (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3356) to let the FDA know that your health freedom is important to you!
Wyeth’s amended Citizens Petition attempts to put a very different spin on what it trying to do. But, regardless of the PR dance, killing the competition and calling it “consumer protection” strikes me as corrupt as disease mongering by making up diseases and selling dangerous compounds that consume precious resources and expose people to iatrogenic (doctor caused) side effects up to and including preventable death.
Here is what Andy Komuves, R.Ph.of the International Association of Compounding Pharmacists has to say about Wyeth’s Citizens Petition and amendment:
Wyeth Backtracks; But Second Verse Same as the First
On Tuesday, Wyeth issued a press release announcing that it recently filed supplemental comments on its petition. The new Wyeth comments attempt to reframe the BHRT issue and to create the impression that those opposing the petition are merely confused about Wyeth’s intentions.Wyeth is feeling the heat. We’ll stop nothing short of complete victory, but we’re encouraged today that we’ve got Wyeth’s PR team on its heels. They’re trying to revise history and say that their petition isn’t what we say it is: an attempt to rob women of access to bioidentical hormones.
According to news service Reuters, Wyeth filed supplemental comments with FDA this month and issued a press release to respond to some of the “misunderstandings,” as Wyeth calls them, about its citizen petition. You can read the Reuters article here.
Six months after it filed its initial comments, Wyeth finds itself up against about 50,000 people mostly patients and physicians who are upset with what the company is doing. So it’s no surprise that Wyeth feels compelled to re-frame its position.
They’ve just put lipstick on a pig. It’s a kindler, gentler attack on pharmacy compounding. Wyeth’s PR team drafted some platitudes about the value of compounding to adorn its supplemental filing, but the underlying legal theory is no less restrictive and harmful to patients than the original petition.
And its motives definitely haven’t changed. Wyeth is still seeking a political solution to a business problem to remove from the market an alternative to its flagging products.
If you haven’t written to FDA to oppose Wyeth’s comments or if your patients or their physicians haven’t either it’s not too late. Make sure there’s no misunderstanding at FDA: Wyeth’s petition will harm patients and must be rejected. … Tell the FDA to protect patient health, not Wyeth’s wealth.
Health freedom is not good for big pharma but it is good for you. Please send this blog to everyone you know and urge them to send a comment to the FDA urging them to protect their right to make natural health choices for themselves.
Thanks for your activism,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Recently the Wall Street Journal published the most outrageous print attack yet on your health and mine. This ordinarily respected newspaper chose to tout highly questionable science to tell us that vitamins pose dangers to our health and chances of survival. BALDERDASH
I hope that the article that follows will spur you to take vitamins and minerals to protect your health and well being. Please be aware that the level of under nutrition which follows from bad science like this and treating vitamins and minerals as dangers the way the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline does, is the best way I know of to insure that you will develop otherwise preventable serious diseases, get sick and stay that way. The propaganda machine is working hard to convince you that nutrients are somehow bad for you. This is part of the effort to soften you up to accept a “harmonized” approach to Codex. That way, when you can’t get effective nutrients you won’t miss them because the big lie (“Nutrients are dangerous since they cause changes in the human body”) has become the way most people have been trained to view things. Those who lament their loss will be marginalized by mass media propaganda pieces like the one in the Wall Street Journal. Never mind that they are based on bad (or no) science. They are part of a magnificently orchestrated campaign to make optimal nutrition (which I believe requires nutrient supplementation in a toxic world) a non-option for you and your family.
Just as I was sitting down to write a response to this poppycock, I received an email which contained an excellent summary of why this is bad science and very, very poor public policy. This article was written by Jean Carper and forwarded to me by Elwood Richard, a long time supporter of health and health freedom.
I include the complete article here: it is well worth reading and sharing with your friends and those in your circle of influence.
Special Report : The media strikes again
A report in the Wall Street Journal unfairly attacks vitamins as doing more harm than good, adding more fuel to the vitamin wars and getting many facts wrong. Here’s the real truth.
http://www.stopagingnow.com/pages/specialreport/wsj
The WSJ’s Fictitious “Case Against Vitamins”
By Jean Carper
Vitamin opponents’ efforts to steer you away from supplements have taken a frightening new direction. Attacks on vitamins are escalating from allegations of merely “useless” to “extremely dangerous.” This alarming message is central to “The Case Against Vitamins,” in the Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2006. The subhead sets the tone: “Recent studies show that many vitamins not only don’t help. They may actually cause harm.”
Should you throw away your vitamins? No. In assembling its “case,” to scare people away from vitamins, the WSJ said much that is not scientifically accepted and left much unsaid. It cites carefully selected and sometimes outdated studies without proper perspective; misses or omits studies that contradict the premise, and fails to give a fair analysis by respected vitamin experts, choosing instead, sources of lesser expertise, credibility and credentials. Whether the bias is careless or reflects a mindset friendly to extensive pharmaceutical advertising, is impossible to tell.
Here’s how the Wall Street Journal got it completely wrong about vitamins E, A and C, on which they based the major part of their “case.”
Vitamin E in Wonderland
You might suspect the fix is in when the first person quoted by the WSJ is cardiologist Edgar R. Miller, author of one of the most criticized and denounced studies ever done on vitamin E. Eminent vitamin E researchers called his analysis, claiming common doses of vitamin E boosted death rates 4% to 6%, a case study in the misuse of statistics with laughable conclusions. If it were true, this absurd conclusion means taking vitamin E is more deadly than smoking, points out Jeffrey Blumberg, chief of antioxidant research at Tufts University. Dr. Blumberg and other vitamin E luminaries were so appalled, they signed a full page ad that ran in the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today, denouncing Miller’s assertions that vitamin E was unsafe.
Dr. Blumberg also teamed up with 12 other international authorities to refute that vitamin E is unsafe at doses under 1600 IU a day, in the April, 2005 issue of the prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Among those condeming Miller’s conclusions are world-renowned antioxidant and vitamin E researchers, Lester Packer PhD, University of Southern California, and Maret Traber, PhD, Oregon State University and authority on vitamin E toxicity for the National Academy of Sciences. NIH’s head of alternative and complementary medicine also told me he didn’t believe the study.
Miller’s study, in fact, was exposed as bogus soon after it came out, its credibility destroyed by a major NIH study that found NO serious adverse effects, let alone death, in 40,000 women who took 600 IU of vitamin E every other day for ten years! If vitamin E was harmful or deadly, it surely would have shown up in this largest, longest vitamin E test ever done. Such a massive clinical trial overwhelmingly trumps previous studies like Miller’s, and is irrefutable testimony to the utter safety of vitamin E at common doses, says Dr. Traber.
More remarkable, contrary to Miller’s false predictions of death from vitamin E, the NIH study revealed it as an astonishing lifesaver. “It’s the most exciting findings about vitamin E in 10 years!” said Dr. Traber.
The truth is heart deaths dropped 24% in women who took vitamin E. And it gets better. In women 65 and over, prime targets of heart attacks, vitamin E slashed death rates an incredible 49%–nearly in half!, the NIH study showed. This means taking vitamin E might save over 200,000 women a year from heart disease deaths, figures Dr. Traber.
Imagine. If a drug did that, it would be heralded as a miracle cure; doctors would wildly prescribe it, and its stock would soar, says Traber. But without huge drug money behind it, vitamin E is unfairly trashed as dangerous by the press and blacklisted by doctors, all to the detriment of people who could benefit greatly from it.
The Vitamin A Tales:
After repeating the widely-published hazards of high doses of beta carotene for current smokers, the WSJ “Case Against Vitamins,” takes on vitamin A as cause of hip fractures, citing a 2002 Harvard nurses’ study, that “associated” high vitamin A from foods, multivitamins and supplements, with a 48% higher risk for hip fractures. It is naive to use this study to slam supplements, since the greatest vitamin A threat came from consuming too much liver, not supplements. Nor was vitamin A a fracture hazard to women on estrogen, suggesting more complex factors than vitamin A.
Nor is the Harvard indictment of vitamin A the last word on the issue. Much research contradicts it. A 2004 large-scale, 9.5-year study of 34,703 postmenopausal women by the University of Minnesota, cleared vitamin A, in both supplements and food, of promoting fractures. Specifically researchers made clear there was “no evidence” that women who took the highest doses of vitamin A supplements were most apt to break a hip. (Lim LS, Osteoporos Int, 2004 Jul;15(7):552-9)
Most important, better-designed studies overshadow and refute the 4-year-old Harvard study that the WSJ relied on to build its anti-vitamin A case, and even suggest the opposite: that higher vitamin A, surprisingly, may also be tied to fewer fractures.
The difference comes from the way the study is designed. More current sophisticated research compares an individual’s actual blood level of vitamin A with his or her bone density and fracture history. The Harvard study simply asked women what foods they ate, then estimated their vitamin A intake based on food-nutrient tables, and compared this with the number of fractures in the women. Obviously, this is a crude and unreliable measure of vitamin A status, compared with actual blood tests.
In several studies using blood tests, the vitamin A threat disappears or is turned upside down. At least, three recent studies that sampled blood for vitamin A content, either find no bone-hazard from vitamin A–or a LOWER risk of fractures.
British researchers at the University of Sheffield, scrutinized the blood of some 1200 women over age 75, searching for evidence that vitamin A induced fractures. No such thing. Women with the highest blood levels of vitamin A were 15% LESS apt to suffer a fracture of any bone, including the hip, than those with the lowest blood vitamin A. Women taking multivitamins (including vitamin A) or vitamin-A-dense cod liver oil were even better off–24% less apt to break a bone. (Barker ME, J Bone Miner Res.2005 Jun;20 (6):913-20.
At New York’s Columbia University, a similar 22-year long study of 2799 American women ages 50 to 74, found that fracture risk nearly doubled in women with both the lowest and highest blood concentrations of vitamin A, adding more confusion and controversy to the debate. (Opotowsky AR, Am J Med 2004 Aug 1;117(3): 169-74)
In a side note, a recent Italian study showed that women with osteoporosis had lower blood levels of vitamin A, as well as vitamin C and E, suggesting lower antioxidant defenses against free radical damage may be involved in bone destruction and accelerated aging. (Maggio D.,J clin Endocrinol Metab 2003 Apr;88(4):1523-7).
Bottom Line: The issue of vitamin A and bones is unsettled and highly debatable. The evidence is conflicting and confusing. The WSJ’s black and white “Case Against Vitamins,” gave no indication of this. It presented vitamin A as a bone-hazard, case closed, hyping a fear of vitamin A among readers, when that is not an accepted scientific finding by any stretch. The jury is still out, and it could go several ways.
Vitamin C as Villain? Amazing
“Like other vitamin studies, research into vitamin C has been disappointing,” recites the WSJ’s Case Against Vitamins” saying it might not prevent colds or fight cancer, as Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling promised it would 30 years ago. To press the point further, the WSJ article resurrects studies, asserting vitamin C can promote cancer and even death.
On the contrary, a new Japanese study says taking 500 mg of vitamin C daily cut odds of getting three or more colds over 5 years by 66%.
But that’s of small consequence compared with dazzling new research identifying vitamin C as a promising new cancer drug. Excitement over the anticancer properties of vitamin C is dramatically escalating, rather than diminishing, among top-drawer scientists. It’s hard to fathom how the Wall Street Journal missed this fact, since a quick search turns up dozens of studies of vitamin C’s remarkable abilities to stop cancer.
Far from encouraging cancer growth, as the Wall Street Journal’s outdated information asserted, vitamin C selectively targets and kills cancer cells, leaving normal cells unharmed, says groundbreaking research by Mark Levine, MD at the National Institutes of Health. High doses of vitamin C rapidly killed 100% of human lymphoma cells, reports Levine, as well as 9 other cancer cells, including breast, ovarian, lung, kidney and colon.
Moreover, Levine notes that some doctors already give high- dose intravenous vitamin C to help stop cancer. The evidence for increased survival and safety is so impressive, even in advanced late-stage cancer, that Levine has called for a “re-evaluation of vitamin C as cancer therapy.”
Levine explains that for years researchers missed Pauling’s point and failed to understand precisely how vitamin C destroys cancer cells and why very high doses are needed. In original studies, Pauling administered 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day intravenously to terminal cancer patients for about 10 days, and then high oral doses of C afterward. Those on vitamin C improved and survived longer. When Mayo Clinic researchers set out to verify Pauling’s findings, they gave high oral doses, not intravenous doses, and concluded it didn’t work. However, it is impossible, Levine notes, to raise vitamin C blood levels to cancer-lethal doses orally. The vitamin C vanishes too quickly. Doses deadly to cancer cells can be achieved only intravenously by jacking up blood levels of vitamin C 25 times higher than oral doses do.
For example, doctors at the University of Kansas gave two women with stage 3 ovarian carcinoma 60,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously twice a week, as well as conventional chemotherapy. Their tumors vanished and they showed no signs of cancer 3 1/2 years later. The doctors are now conducting a randomized test of high vitamin C (and other antioxidants) along with chemotherapy in women newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
More amazing: Dr. Levine and NIH colleagues personally documented three cases of advanced cancer in which vitamin C shrank tumors, dramatically increasing survival.
• A 49-year-old man diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer in 1996 declined chemotherapy in favor of high-dose vitamin C infusions. Nine years later he is alive and cancer-free.
• A 66-year-old woman with an aggressive lymphoma and a “dismal prognosis” in 1995, also rejected chemotherapy, but had radiation, and intravenous high-dose vitamin C. She, too is alive 10 years later.
• A 51-year-old woman with kidney cancer that had spread to her lungs, opted for alternative therapy, including high-dose intravenous vitamin C given twice weekly for 10 months. Two months later, scans showed the tumors were gone. Her cancer remained in remission for four years. A smoker, she died of lung cancer that did not respond to the same therapy.
The Wall Street Journal is correct in saying that many doctors oppose use of antioxidants, including vitamin C, during chemotherapy, fearing interference with treatment. But experts point out the idea is only “theoretical,” and has no evidence to justify it. The WSJ assertion that antioxidants may “promote some cancer and interfere with treatments,” is without scientific merit. The one study that tested the theory found no difference in outcome–and certainly no worsening from antioxidants.
The latest evidence from the top experts at the National Institutes of Health not only rebuts the fictitious danger of vitamins to cancer patients, but shows that antioxidants, notably vitamin C, have the power to shrink cancer, produce remissions and dramatically extend life of even advanced cancer patients. Although it is still unclear how effective lower doses of vitamin C may be in preventing or fighting cancer, it is implausible that they could be harmful, considering that massive doses are not and, in fact, are so beneficial.
Should we hold our collective breath for the WSJ to do a major story on the ascent of vitamin C as a potentially powerful, inexpensive and incredibly safe cancer “drug?” Imagine the impact of that on pharmaceutical profits.
< < END
In the US we have a precious (and much attacked) law called DSHEA (the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act passed in 1994) which holds that nutrients are foods and, as such, can have no upper limits set upon them. Codex holds the opposit: the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline says that nutrients should have upper limits assessed by Risk Assessment, a technique designed to determine just how high a toxic dose can be before it produces changes in your body and then set limits 100 lower than that.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently produced a Workshop document to help [sic] Codex with the application of Risk Assessment to nutrients. This document defines an
as ANY change in ANYTHING that can be measured in a human (a biomarker). So any change, whether positive or negative, which is brought about by a nutrient is an adverse event under Codex!
What to do? Several things.
First, inform yourself. Make sure you watch “Nutricide: the DVD” and tell your friends about it or arrange a public showing in your church, club or school. Download a copy of the highly informative Codex e-Book which was presented to decision makers in Africa last month. It contains a wealth of information on the solution to the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and an in-depth essay on nutritional medicine you need.
Second, take action. Sign the Citizens Petition and join the thousands of others who are challenging the US Government’s Codex policy. Then “Ride the Freedom Mouse” to let Congress know that your health and health freedom is really important to you.
Oh, yes, one more action step: send a letter to the FDA and one to Congress to prevent Wyeth from smashing the competition that natural molecules offer to toxic synthetic hormones. You see, pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (which makes Premarin and Prempro) is attempting to pressure the FDA to ban its competitors, Bio-Identical Hormones. Premarin (synthetic estrogen made from pregnant mares urine) and Prempro (the synthetic estrogen plus synthetic progesterone called “progestin”) are so toxic that a National Institutes of Health drug trial using these two hormones which involved 168,000 menopausal women was halted early (2002) to protect women from the increased risks of heart disease, breast cancer, blood clots, blindness and strokes which they carry with them although they have no clinical benefit whatsoever.
Millions of women got the message and switched to safe, natural hormones which do protect them but don’t carry the risks of the synthetic hormones. Now, four years later, Wyeth has hijacked the Citizens Petition process to work its corporate magic: wave a wand and take away safe, inexpensive options leaving only dangerous, expensive drugs.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Codex to me.
Not happy with this turn of events? Support the Natural Solutions Foundation with your contribution or monthly pledge (donate $50 or more and we will send you a letter for your tax records stating the contribution is tax deductible).
Thanks. Your activism is essential to our success.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
PS: More on Africa to follow. I’ve been really, really swamped!
The weather here in Bonn, Germany has been cold, wet and damp. But the weather inside the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) turned icy on a couple of fascinating occasions and was so windy on a couple of others that it is hard to understand why the papers did not blow off our desks.
Dr. Grossklaus took his seat rather grandly and presided quietly while the official meet-ers and greet-ers welcomed us to opening session of the 27th session of the CCNFSDU on behalf of this and that group.
The first greeter, from the German government, pointed us toward several interesting items which did not seem to fit completely with the way Dr. Grossklaus saw things. After noting that the next CCNFSDU meeting (2006) next year would be in Thailand, he predicted that, because of our work, Codex will become even more important in the future. Then he said, “As you know, the revision of the standards of the mandates and terms of reference was high on the committee agenda in July.” That refers to the demand by the World Health Organization (WHO) representative on Thursday, July7, 2005 that Codex either redefine the terms of reference (e.g., mandate) of the CCNFSDU and Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) to include nutrition for health or find another committee, task force or group to do it. No mention was publicly made of these other two options so it looks like “determining whether Codex has relationship to nutrition and, if so, what that relationship is” will be undertaken by the CCNFSDU. General Stubblebine and I are waiting with baited breath to find out if nutrition actually does have a relationship to nutrition and, if so, what it is. Or what Dr. Grossklaus will let it be. You couldn’t tell much about the relationship between Codex and nutrition today except to say that they are having a pretty big spat. WHO appeared to have its hackles up as Dr. G. ignored it repeatedly, but Dr. G. was significantly dismissive and argumentative towards that organization.
During his obviously un-cleared-by-Dr.-Grossklaus speech, the government participant noted that CCNFSDU needed to determine what role the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy for Diet, Physical Exercise and Health was going to play in CCNFSDU and what role CCNFSDU would play in its implementation. You will recall that last July the WHO representative severely chastised Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) for not making a significant contribution to human health in its 42 years of existence and then, the next day, demanded that Codex participate in implementing the WHO Global Strategy. Dr. Slorach, the CAC Chairman, ended the discussion of both issues peremptorily and there was no further consideration of the topics at that time. He also asked for a document from WHO stating what it wanted Codex to do to bring about this implementation.
So after a couple of greetings from a couple of folks, we got down to business. The WHO representative (names to follow tomorrow when the list comes out) told the CCNFSDU that she would convene an electronic forum to allow people from CCNFSDU to work with WHO to develop a meaningful way to implement the WHO Global Strategy. This sounded reasonable enough to me but the course of this matter was not smooth. There were objections from several people who did not like the agenda item. Dr. Grossklaus put the discussion off in a number of different ways, some bureaucratic and some procedural. Ultimately, he assigned the whole discussion to Agenda Item #10, the last substantive item of the meeting. This had the advantage of serving as a double edged sword: forcing people to race through the other items on the agenda so that there would be no time for the detailed discussion earlier agenda items required and then, at the last part of the schedule there would be insufficient time for the apparently unwelcome WHO Global Strategy discussion.
Several delegates objected to this ploy, including the UK, Consumers International (a Non Governmental Organization) and India who demanded that the important topic of the WHO global strategy be given adequate time. Dr. G. was having none of it! Item 10 he said and item 10 it stayed.
The WHO representative seemed to ignore Dr. G. and gave a detailed history of the WHO Global Strategy, Codex’s involvement and the mechanism for decision making process by CCNFSDU. Dr. G. rudely cut her off and sent the discussion careening into a direction much more to his liking.
But there was a mini-mutiny on Dr. G.’s hands at that moment, it would seem. A rapid-fire free-for-all broke loose in which people were calling out their pet projects and issues with no particular rhyme or reason that we could see:
Norway demanded that the addition of sugar to baby cereal was dangerous and wanted to discuss it right away. Postpone the discussion, said Dr. G, until later.
IOCFA (an infant formula GMO) stridently ordered the Codex regulations to do nothing to hurt the babies. Dr. G. ignored her completely.
Then IBFAN (another baby feeding NGO) demanded that the WHO Global Strategy on Infant Feeding be implemented, Not a nod from Dr. G.
Consumer International noted that it supported the points made by the previous speakers but that we must discuss advertising and how food is communicated to consumers and so on. And so it went for a while with a lot of topics brought forward and no productive discussion of any of them.
While that was pretty interesting, things heated up quite a bit during the cereal based infant food and gluten-free discussions. Dr. G made statements like, “Our mandate is to determine nutrition claims, not health claims” and “Nutrition labels are not about labeling for health, they are about labeling for trade purposes.”
The big event of the day, far and away, was agenda item
No. 4: Discussion Paper on the Proposals for Additional or Revised Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for Labeling Purposes. South Africa had produced a report via an Electronic Working Group which addressed the need to reevaluate the Nutrient Reference Values established by the Helsinki Consultation (September, 1988). The report stated that the “label was a source of nutrition information”, “… based on an amount sufficient to promote optimum health” and “the promotion of better health for the world through optimum nutrient intake, would be in line with the WHO/FAO’s request that Codex, specifically the CCNFSDU and CCFL, implement the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Exercise and Health”.
Poor Dr. G! He just could not get away from the WHO Global Strategy.
The Discussion Paper segregated people into age, gender and condition groups (e.g., infants, children under 4, pregnant women, etc.) listing a group of 32 vitamins and minerals, noting “initially only vitamins and minerals will be dealt with”.
Dr. Grossklaus was NOT amused. He ripped into the delegate from South Africa viciously. Here is part of what he said before sending the South African delegate back to the drawing board to come up with something he liked better while ranting (verbatim quote:)
“Let’s stick to the basic issues: IT IS ABOUT LABELING, NOT NUTRITION.
The Helsinki paper, the purpose of NRVs as established in the Helsinki paper, was about serving nutrient labeling so that consumers world wide should know about a food containing a significant amount of calcium, not about finding a maximum health value of that nutrient.
….This committee should stick to its original terms of reference. Let us first agree on the general terms for establishing the values for nutrient NRVs.
The [WHO] Global Strategy does not form part of this. Maybe that is not fair, but this is about labeling, not about providing them with optimum food. This is about global trade in products offering vitamins and minerals. That is our mandate. That’s it. This is about trade.”
The South African delegate did not have anything to say.
There were other enlightening moments today, as when Dr. G. (in response to the delegate from Tanzania who called for good listening in the spirit of consensus)
condescendingly made it clear that while it was an African tradition to listen to what everyone had to say he was “not going to take the time to listen to what everyone has to say since I am not wearing my African tie today. I promise I will wear it tomorrow!”
Not a fun day. However, the good news is that we spoke with numerous delegates and discussed with them the fact that our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline can be passed by their countries, leaving them Codex Compliant so that they avoid the wallop of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade sanctions and allow them to serve the real nutritional needs of their people, instead of, as Dr. G. so eloquently put it, “[making decisions which are] about labeling, not about providing them with optimum food!
What can you do? Ride the freedom mouse: take a few minutes to send a few letters AND send a join in letter on the Citizen Petition to provide strong leadership for protecting our health freedom and assuming an international leadership role in protecting it around the world to end world hunger and promote world health. Our Citizen Petition with the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline as part of it does all that.
Oh yes, one other thing: please donate generously. Every penny goes for the freedom fight. Join us. Things are just getting interesting.
Come back tomorrow: I’ll let you know what’s cooking.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
On Saturday, November 19, 2005 I attended the Codex Working Group on Infant Formulas which operates as part of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU).
It was a fascinating day (if you like watching decision made which will potentially impact negatively on every single child on the planet who is not breast fed. This working group is setting standards which all manufacturers who ship formula internationally must follow AND which those countries unwise enough to pass these regulations as their own domestic laws on infant formula must follow, too.
Here is the highlight of the day:
Dr. Barbara Schneeman, Director of the Dietary Supplements Department of the FDA urged the Working Group to allow fructose in baby formula. Now that is quite fascinating, really, because our own FDA prohibited the use of fructose in the beverage supply of the US because it was high in empty calories, and likely to bring about preventable diabetes, obesity (and with it cancer and cardiovascular disease) and a host of other ill health effects, especially in children and adolescents. Manufacturers, whose bottom line is the bottom line, protested and forced the FDA to abandon its health-protective stance by allowing fructose (also known by names such as “high fructose corn syrup”) into the food supply BECAUSE CODEX ALLOWS FRUCTOSE.
So the FDA knows full well that fructose is associated with a decline in health associated with an increase in obesity and diabetes. Remember, the US is battling an epidemic of juvenile and adult obesity and another [related] one of juvenile and adult diabetes, both preventable disorders.
So why would Dr. Schneeman argue for the inclusion of this health-degrading substance in baby formula? Babies need about 670 calories per 100 grams of formula, according to the working group (older and younger babies do not seem to get special nutritional recognition: perhaps they figure that older babies will just tank up on more fluid in order to get more of what they need). How many of those calories should be from empty, dangerous, insulin-spiking sweeteners for which there is no nutritional requirement whatsoever?
And how many of those calories should be for something that teaches babies to demand sweet foods despite the fact that the perfect baby food, breast milk, does not have fructose in it?
Oh, yes, the fructose generally comes from corn. And, oh, yes, the corn is generally genetically modified (GM). And, oh, yes, the genetically modified corn and anything made from it does not have to be tested for safety before it is released into the food supply. Of course, the Working Group on Infant Formula has already approved GM soy for use in infant formula. The recent study Russian study showing that over 55% of rat pups whose mothers were fed GM soy died after failing to gain weight properly should suggest some caution to a truly “science based” process such as Codex claims to be.
Tragically, it would appear that the only science upon which Codex is based in the science of International Banking.
What can you do about it? Several things. Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and take the following steps:
• Join the Citizen Petition (a legal challenge to the US government policy on Codex. (Do not be misled by those who mistakenly believe its purpose is to “persuade” government bureaucrats since whether they are persuaded or not is irrelevant to the legal process set in motion by the Citizen Petition. The more people who do so, the stronger our case before Congress.
• Tell Congress that you want a Congressional Briefing on Codex and tell them that you want Dr. Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, to help them organize the briefing.
• Write to Congress to support and oppose the bills that will determine your health freedom by using our email engine. Let Congress know that your health and health freedom is important to you!
• Use any (or all) of several methods to support the critical work of the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Do your personal and holiday shopping at www.EatSafeEatSmart.com, your source for GM-free, organic personal products, snacks, foods and products. Every purchase helps to support the Natural Solutions Foundation
o Send your unwanted treasures and collectables (each worth at least $30) to us at the Dump Fund: take the item(s) to any common carrier (Federal Express, UPS, DHL, etc.), (you can have them pack it or do it yourself) and ship it to the D.U.M.P. Fund, at: NSF, 297 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, NJ 07004. Questions? Email us at infor@dumpfund.org. You will get a letter for the sale price of your tax deductible donation for your records.
o Make a donation to us by visiting www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/donate.shtml/.
You can be sure we will keep you posted during the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses this next week. We’ll keep you posted on everything Dr. Grossklaus, the “Dr. Strangelove of Nutrition” does and says.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation