I just did something that I can’t wait to share with you! One of our challenges in a grass roots, global village is finding each other. We now have a sophisticated electronic way to hook up with other people in our own locals in the same way that we can via the internet. It’s called meetup.com (URL: http://www.meetup.com/) Go there and enter “Health Freedom”. You will be directed to The Health Freedom Meetup. If you join the Meetup in your town, let me know and we will help you organize it.
Here’s how it works: if you would like to have a Health Freedom Meetup in your area (even if you don’t know anyone else to invite to your Meetup), look for a Health Freedom meetup in your area (you’ll be asked for your zip code). Go to “Fnd a Meetup Group” and enter “Health Freedom”. If there isn’t one in your area, become an organizer. It’s simple and it’s easy. That let’s you organize a Meetup on the same day and at the same time as all the other Health Freedom Meetups (or at another time if you can’t make that one although it is best if we all meet on the same day).
Meetup.com let’s us all communicate with one another, organize events that are bigger than our local meetings and share information and experience, fliers, ideas, etc. with each other. Privacy is assured and no one needs to travel long distances to meet with people who care about health freedom, too. Ask your local Starbucks or similar site if you can meet there once a month (or more often as the need arises). Make your meeting short, focused and to the point and let us know what happens so we can help coordinate what you are doing with others around the countries who are doing the similar things.
An urgent priority is getting people in your Meetup active so that they and everyone they know tells their Congressmen and women to attend the Congressional Codex Briefing, September 20 (time TBA) Room 2220 Rayburn by going to our email engine, http://tinyurl.com/c5jmw. (I’m now including URLs because when the email gets forwarded, sometimes the link does not transmit).
There is a $19 per month Meetup fee which people can help the organizer cover through dues (payable by paypal). I would suggest a meeting fee of $19 divided by the number of people at the Meetup for starters.
I am really excited about using global electronic communication to help us act locally and keep America Codex free!
Let me know that you are having a Meetup and we will provide material which will make your task easier and more effective. So let’s Meetup on Tuesday, September 13 at 7:30PMshall we? See you then!
Yours in health and well-met freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
We get to tell our story to Congress on September 20, 2005 and you are invited! The Natural Solutions Foundation will participate in a Congressional Briefing on Codex Alimentarius in room 2220 in the Rayburn Building. We would love to see you there. We would also love to see Congress there! They will come if you tell them that you, their constituent, urge them to go. That’s how it works. This is a critical opportunity to make the pro-health side of the Codex story clear to Congress since it is Congress that can protect or overturn DSHEA and it is Congress that can allow or prevent harmonization with other Codex standards here in the US.
Congress is our bulwark and Congress knows almost nothing about Codex. The Natural Solutions Foundation has called and written to every member of Congress and spoken to their health aides (or tried to). There are a few Congressmen who “get” Codex like Representatives Ron Paul, Peter DeFazio, Dan Burton, Dana Rohrabacher and others.
The vast majority of Congress, however, has either never heard of Codex or only has the “Consumer Protection” line to hold on to. We know, of course, that consumer protection has nothing to do with Codex. We know that you cannot trust Codex with either your health or your wallet. Congress, by and large, has no idea about the real nature of Codex. So we will tell them.
Here’s your part: there are lots of Congressional briefings. Congressmen and their staff members only go when they have a reason to go. The most compelling reason to go is because you tell them to!
Here’s what you need to send them (you can cut and paste this letter or write your own):
It is urgently important that you and your staff attend the Congressional Briefing on Codex Alimentarius on September 20, 2005 in room 2220 in the Rayburn Building. Codex Alimentarius has the potential to eliminate access to high potency vitamins currently protected by DSHEA, lower the quality of food due to significant adulteration and, as a consequence, increase preventable disease and deaths in this country.
Despite inaccurate information to the contrary, Codex Alimentarius is not protective of consumer needs, rights or interests. Instead, it is a form of global corporate welfare with dire consequences to the health and well being of America’s people and environment.
I do not trust Codex with my health or my wallet and I look to you to protect my them for me since you are in a position to do so.
Thank you in advance for your attendance at this vitally important briefing. I particularly want you to hear what Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, has to share during this briefing.
Thank you,
your name
your address
Cut and paste that into the form that you will reach by following this link: Contact Congress , enter your zip code and click on “Elected Officials”. Your Congressional Delegation and the President of the US will get the email you send.
Please ask everyone on your email list join you in urging Congress to attend this briefing. Give them the link and the instructions above and suggest that they send a letter like the one above to Congress, too. Only grass roots will win this battle. But grass roots CAN win it!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Wall Street biotech insider gets No. 2 job at the FDA
I don’t know Scott Gottlieb, (in fact, I never heard of him before tonight) when I read that this man of many talents had gone from a Wall Street Biotech specialist to the number 2 guy at the already disastrously Pharma and Biotech Friendly FDA.
As if we did not have enough problems with the FDA, the opportunity to appoint a pro-health, rather than a pro-corporation number 2 person has, at least in this go around, been lost. According to The Seattle Times, Scott Gottlieb is a physician, an internist a biotech industry analyst. He apparently holds pro-industry beliefs which, if implemented, will make the Pharma Friendly FDA even more prone to take positions to support and assist the pharmaceutical iand biotech industry (to the steady detriment of the people of this country). For example, he believes that if early results in an experiment show that a drug is endangering people, that information should not be released early despite the harm that the clinical trial is doing. Not good for people, I would say!
It is no news to anyone that the FDA is hostile to natural medicine, trumping up imaginary “dangers” of natural products while turning a blind eye, a deaf ear and a silent tongue to the deadly side effects and toxicity of patent medicines, better known as drugs. Approximately 200, 000 people die from drugs in America each year at a minimum. The real figure is probably several times higher, by the way.
Biotechnical innovations like genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are dangerous, too, but their dangers are more subtle. All that the FDA asks of a corporation is a voluntary evaluation to make sure that a genetically modified something-or-other has “substantial equivalence” to the un-engineered something-or-other. If it does, on to the market it goes. We find out later that it is bad for the environment or that fatal allergies result from breathing its pollen or …..To Be Determined. The corporation-enamored regulatory agency in which Gottlieb has taken the number 2 job probably needed a health advocate, not an industry analyst.
Gottlieb’s interests are clearly focused on corporate issues. And I expect him to carry out the real mission of the FDA beautifully: to promote and protect the pharmaceutical (and biotech) industry . People will undoubtedly die because of the regulatory actions he will carry out but he will be right in line with the rest of FDA policy.
Now, that’s not what the FDA likes to tell you about its mission. No, they say it is to promote and protect the public health. But if you had to determine its actual mission from its behavior in suppressing natural treatments and protecting dangerous drugs (think Vioxx and then think of the 40% of drugs which are recalled within 5 years of being put on the market after the dangers which their manufactures’ and, often, the FDA itself, knew about before they were allowed on the market, subsequently killing people.) what would you conclude?
Looking at its behavior objectively, whom would you say the FDA is bent on protecting? Yours or Big Pharma’s? Whose interests are promulgated? Yours or Big Biotechna’s?
Even the AMA has finally gotten the idea: an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association calls for reform of the FDA since it can not be trusted to take care of our interests. Although the AMA reportedly has over $10M of its retirement fund invested in the drug industry, its editorial states ” “It is unreasonable to expect that the same agency that was responsible for approval of drug licensing and labeling would also be committed to actively seek evidence to prove itself wrong.”
I agree. What I don’t agree with is the choice of a person to fill the powerful number 2 slot who is clearly interested — and apparently, quite expert — in focusing on the economic impact and corporate issues of the biotechnical industry. Is that what the American people need in the wake of disaster after disaster caused by the absolute disregard of what is good for people in favor of what is good for companies?
How committed to what is good for us will Dr. Gottlieb turn out to be? Let’s watch closely.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
OK, you know that you have power with your Congressional members. You also know that there are really, really serious threats to health freedom and Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) afoot because of CODEX, the confluence of the major corporate interests of the Bigs: Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Agrabiz, Big Biotechna and Big Medica. You know that they can buy and sell political influence six ways to Sunday because of their legal and illegal influence peddling and limitless budgets. They are powerful, but they are not invincible, by any means! One of the things that they cannot stand is strong public pressure. Let’s give it to them!
Here is my question to you: Are you, a Little like me, ready to use the power we have to counter the Bigs? I sure am. That is exactly what I am doing when I battle CODEX with radio shows, articles, blogs, lectures, etc., etc. Remember the lobbyist’s advice: “This is a winnable battle if you can mobilize the grass roots. Get groups of people to visit the members of Congress in their local offices and let them know you mean business”.
Organizing a grass roots effort is a big, big task. We will help you. I will provide you with organizing outlines, flow charts and methods, conference calls, etc. to make it easy and successful to organize your fellow voters and get them involved in defeating CODEX.
But the way I figure it, every movement needs music and pity, memorable slogans to bring its message home to the hearts as well as the minds of the millions who will listen and join us. So here is my challenge: This is YOUR campaign every bit as much as it is mine! It’s your health, your longevity, your wellness we are talking about. I invite you to help design this campaign. Here’s how:
Music: If you have a link that plays a piece of music that you would like to share with the Health Freedom audience, send me a link in an email with your permission to post it and we will do exactly that! No obscenity, please. CODEX is quite obscene enough!
Slogans: We need strong, memorable and direct slogans to get people’s attention and give them a mental and emotional hook they can hang their well informed passion about CODEX upon. The Natural Solutions Foundation is fortunate enough to have a group I call our “War Council”. We meet often by phone and I know that I am deeply fortunate to have the diverse and wise council of this august group (not just in August, of course!) While we were talking about this very problem this evening we came up with a bunch of slogans. Picture them on signs in front of the White House and you get the feel for what we need very quickly.
As we were discussing the idea and developing the slogans when it suddenly occurred to me that YOU should be on the phone during this conversation, each one of you! Why? Because your passion, your humor, your creativity and your slant on the issues are vital to the ground swell of support that we are building. So send me your slogans, your suggestions for a theme for the grass roots campaign and your creative thoughts and we will post the ones that we believe we can use. In your email to me at rima.laibow@healthfreedomusa.org, along with the ideas they include a statement that you give us permission to use them, please.
This is a work in progress and I invite your participation. Here are the slogans we came up with in our brainstorming session. Tell us which ones work for you, which ones don’t and send us yours:
Pharma Fed = Pharma Dead
I’m Pharma Phed Up!
My Health – My Choice!
Drugs Kill – Vitamins Don’t!
My Way? DSHEA!
Americans Choose Health Not Drugs!
Health By Vitamins
or
Death by Drugs?
Death By CODEX!
CODEX: Latin for “Death”
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director
I am putting the “PS” right up front today because it is so important:
PS: Please make sure that you listen to our August 10 radio show, FREE U.S./FREE US!, the Voice of Health Freedom ™ tonight, 7-8 PM at www.FICAAL.com. Our guest is Grace Jackson, MD, one of the bravest doctors you will ever hear! She told the Navy that she would no longer give deadly and damaging psychiatric drugs while she was an active duty Navy Psychiatrist and lived to tell about it. Listen to her story with us!
OK, now to today’s blog:
Did you ever get an email that made your whole day bright and sparkly? Well I did. I get about 1000 emails a day and I answer every one myself (so sometimes I get a little behind) but I try to read them all the day they come in even if it takes me a couple of days to get the answer out. Well, today’s inbox had a treat for me.
My treat was an email from a lady who wrote to tell me about the health freedom advocacy group that she runs in her state with local units that have a regular program of contacting their legislators on a regular basis on health freedom issues and making regular trips to visit their legislators.
They have a program of development with manageable goals for fund raising, for new members, for legislator contacts and for information dissemination. I was thrilled and asked her if she would like me to be present by speakerphone for the next meeting so the people present and I could interact with questions, suggestions, etc.
That’s exactly what we need: local meetings in homes, stores, offices of practitioners, etc, with an easy and manageable organization providing goals and materials for touching each and every senator and representative in his or her home district by phone, mail to their district offices, emails to their DC offices and, perhaps most important, visits to see them in their home offices. When you visit your Congressmen and women, you can look them in the eye and they can see that you are 1. Well informed, 2. Serious about the issue, 3. A real person, not a concept with no face and 4. A voter with friends and the conviction to vote on what you believe.
So let’s do it: home health freedom parties with a mission: to develop local units of politically effective voters. Write to me and let me know that you are willing to make a difference this way and I will make sure that you have all the support that the Natural Solutions Foundation can give you:
Materials
Networking strategies
Speakerphone support
And, if you set up a rally, I will be there with you! I promise!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director