Day 2
June 13, 2006
In this hot, dusty Africa country, the seat of government is not the same city as the seat of commerce. One lands at the city where business is conducted for the whole region. But Parliament meets in the other city. And they are 500 km (415 miles) apart.
That’s 415 miles on an unfinished road, by the way, with unpaved detours, no roadside amenities or service stations during most of the run and huge oil and cargo lorries barreling down upon you in the other of the two lanes (which you are in to pass the barely moving car in front of you).
So there is a good deal of adrenal workout on an ordinary drive.
ital just before that time and walked into a dark, empty set of corridors with heavy padlocks on white painted wrought iron gates over every office door and one open door: the Minister’s.
I won’t tell you about the unbelievable conditions we passed, nor the fact that when we ran out of gas along the way and pulled into a dilapidated and disserted gas station (whose two goats were the only living creatures we could find), nor about stopping by the desolate side of the road and having 4 or 5 men magically appear with a large jerry can and hose and begin to fill up the tank with illegal gas using an illegal and dangerous method: pouring leaking gas into the gas tank while all of them smoked and the engine was running. I won’t tell you how they gathered around us in a frightening demand for money (and more) when suddenly they recognized the NGO Facilitator as the National Beauty Queen and simple smiled to be seen with her. We got back in the car and whizzed off toward the Capital. I also won’t even begin to tell you about the toilets. You really, really do not want to know.
But when we got to the Minister’s office we found a direct, sincere, humble and decent human being, an American trained Gastroenterologist, who had never heard of Codex but listened with deep attention and growing distress as we explained both the past and present, and then added the future of Codex to the discussion. He took our materials (Nutricide, the DVD, which you can have, too, by going to (http://drrimatruthreports.com/aboutcodex/dvd.shtml) and the hard copy version of the Codex eBook, available at http://drrimatruthreports.com/aboutcodex/dvd.shtml). We explained that the eBook demonstrated the application of our International Strategy for correcting every problem raised by Codex and for protecting the health of his people. We explained, too, that we are facing a great opportunity: South Africa’s “Ottawa Beachhead” in which the 11 point guidelines for the implementation of the pro-health “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health” gave Codex for the first time a potential focus on Optimal Health needs to be supported and adopted at the upcoming Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting, July 3-7, 2006 (Geneva). We asked the Minister of Health to help make sure that his country’s voice was raised loud, clear and firmly in favor of these principles at this meeting.
His answer? “You have caught my attention. I will certainly read your materials but you understand that I am not able to make policy on my own. I will consult with the appropriate people and contact you!” It was a highly successful and positive meeting with a thoughtful and careful policy maker who did not brush us off and took us very seriously. Tomorrow we meet with the Codex Committee of the country to further this effort here.
But wait! There’s more to this adventure! By now it was late and there was no way that it was safe to drive the road back to the commercial center both because of the brigands we did not meet, but were much more likely to meet after dark and because of the sheer physical danger of the road at night. (Shoulders? Don’t be absurd! Road accidents, by the way, are a hugely significant cause of death here.)
But when we started out we were told that there was a very important ceremony in the Political Capital that day and that the one decent hotel in town would be filled with both the Members of Parliament and with the dignitaries gathered for the ceremony. We had clearly seen on the way to the Capital that there was nothing even vaguely resembling a hotel, let alone one that we would consider staying in.
So we left the Minister’s office very pleased for the intermediate term but very concerned for the immediate one. Nonetheless, we drove to the hotel and made inquiries. Yes, there was a double room for the General and the Doctor. Yes, there was a double room for the lovely young lady and yes, the driver and our contact could share a single bed in the last room. “NO!” was the reply from our contact so, magically, although it was unavailable just moments before, the 4th room materialized and we checked in.
During and after dinner, our lovely, capable and well-known NGO facilitator greeted Member of Parliament after Member of Parliament. She introduced us to them and we told them about the reason for our visit. In an hour or so we met a dozen Members of the Parliament of this dynamic nation and introduced them to the Codex issue. Several of them wanted to talk about it more deeply and so we did, leaving our materials with them as well. We lobbied the MP’s to think about Codex and how they could protect their people while preventing trade sanctions from the World Trade Organization while doing so. To say that they were interested is a woeful understatement.
Then, on to our room where we found a triangular frame hanging from the ceiling over the bed with a circle of steel suspended over the bed from which hung a very large mosquito netting which was wound up into a series of knots hanging over the center of the bed and a large table fan attached to the ceiling. Spread the netting out (which did not have fist size holes in it like the netting we encountered in Adama, Ethiopia earlier this year which we stuffed with underwear), turn on the fan because the netting blocks all movement of air which is not very forceful (making sleeping unbearable if the air does not move inside the net) and dropped off to sleep.
And then the phone (which does not work in this country) rang at 4 AM local time. It was a US product manufacturer who wanted me to be a spokesperson for his products. They are not organic. I declined and asked him not to call at 4AM again. After I hung up I realized that he must have been pretty puzzled since where he was calling from (the East Coast), it was 2 in the afternoon!)
Day 3
June 14, 2006
Good news! The Minister of Energy and Mining wants to meet with us about Codex! Be ready at 8 AM because he has a meeting just after that and he can give us only 5 minutes. Right! Ready! Prepared! And frustrated: No car, no driver, nobody but the NGO facilitator and us. About 45 minutes later, a government truck drives up and we are told to get in at once! Off we go to the Minister’s office for a quick cup of coffee and a very quick discussion. Again, the kind and straightforward Minister told us that he had never heard of Codex and it was clearly not his responsibility but he would read our material carefully because when it came to a Cabinet discussion he wanted to be informed to help guide his country to health.
And then back to the hotel, gather our bags up and prepare for the drive back to the seat of commerce for a crucial meeting with the Codex Committee of this country. YES!
No! You have forgotten about the car and the driver, haven’t you? Well, we certainly did. Where were they? Who knows? Certainly not in front of the hotel waiting to drive we back to the commercial city at a reasonable pace (or at any pace, for that matter). MIA: Missing in Action.
So we waited, watching the precious minutes tick away while our crucial meeting began to evaporate. And that is exactly what happened. The bad news is that they could no longer wait for us because we started off so late that no amount of insane speed could make up for the delay (whose cause is still not known to me).
Oh, did I mention that we had air conditioning for about 12 minutes on the trip and then a ball bearing in the air conditioning unit (?) went out on us (don’t you just hate it when good bearings go bad?) and we were back to open windows with no possibility of breathing because of the dust or no possibility of surviving with the windows closed because of the heat. We vacillated back and forth between the two options for that whole long, terrifying drive. Neither option was satisfactory.
So we missed the appointment. Not to worry, though, we will meet with them tomorrow, we are told. We have asked to leave at 9:30 SHARP, SHARP, SHARP. But this is Africa. We will see what time is like tomorrow.
At any rate, we had time (AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHH!) because of the missed appointment so we went into the only store here that is believed to sell organic food. The company is South African so a good deal is imported from there. But the produce is primarily gown in this country. It is not labeled as either organic or not and when we asked the manager, she told us that pesticide and other chemicals are virtually unknown in this country. Farmers use traditional means of growing their crops and, in the main, cannot afford the chemicals. This is a country, after all, where less than 10% of the population has access to electricity, let alone spare cash to buy chemicals.
I also took a look around beyond the produce area. The meat counter had locally gown and produced meats in the same kind of packaging we are used to. It also had meat for which a premium was charged: South African meat. It was grey. It had been irradiated. The local meat was, of course, satisfyingly red.
When I explained to our companions the fact that irradiation of food creates huge free radical concentrations which are, in the absence of sufficient anti oxidants, significantly toxic to human beings and the animals which are also fed these toxic meats. Without adequate anti-oxidants (made inaccessible by the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and the extention of it by World Health Organization to all nutrients) there is no way to neutralize these dangerous metabolic fires which will damages pancreases, brains, eyes, lungs and the immune system. I also found myself explaining that the fats in meats can be transformed by the irradiation process itself into cancer-causing compounds like benzene.
Together we asked ourselves how many “excess cancer deaths” do we need to calculate before we look at the biochemical information on the dangers of free radical excess whether or not Codex wants it?
Then back to the hotel for an outstanding, and inexpensive, seafood buffet dinner.
Tomorrow, the missed appointments! I hope!
In the meantime, the General is already asleep and I will finish my report to you and join him.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director
The medical industry has allowed itself to become the drug distribution system of the Pharmaceutical industry. And the prestigious and supposedly neutral medical journals are prime tools in that distribution system since they appear objective and are consulted by doctors for trustworthy and accurate information which they can rely upon to guide the treatment of patients. It is therefore both dangerous and ominous to consider the profound lack of objectivity and corruption which permeate even the most respectable of medical journals.
Advertising revenues for drugs keep them in business. Peer reviewers (who are supposed to keep the system honest) have considerable financial ties with pharmaceutical companies – the more revered the reviewer, the more lucrative the ties. “Research studies” are funded by the companies that stand to benefit from positive outcomes with predictable results. In fact, in many cases, senior authors put their names to research they did not conduct and articles written by company ghost writers. To make matters worse, the data of the studies are owned by contract not by the author (as the case used to be) but by the funding organization so results can be manipulated by the funder despite what the did or did not show.
FDA committee and task force members, too, have significant financial ties to industry. Drug related objectivity is, for the most part, in the mind of the beholder since it is not in the bank account of either the journal or the scientist.
Is it any wonder, then, that highly prestigious and [supposedly] objectivemedical journals participate in propagating the on-going poison press designed to wear away America’s allegiance to natural health options?
Our $20 billion per year supplement spending means that people don’t buy as many expensive and dangerous drugs as they would if they were not protecting their health naturally. That is a real problem for the illness care industry since healthy people are bad customers for the illness industry. That means that our supplement habit must be broken for current profits and the future. The Codex agenda is to making nutrients available only at doses so small they have no impact on any human being is to be brought to the US.
You see, the will of the American people and their legislators to keep DSHEA (the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act) intact has to be broken, too. DSHEA says that nutrients are considered as foods and, as such, have no upper limit. The Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline says that nutrients are to be considered only in terms of their risk; the WHO guidance on the matter says that ANY CHANGE IN A BIO-MARKER (e.g., anything that can be measured) CAUSED BY A NUTRIENT IS AN ADVERSE EVENT!
The propaganda war is on, big time. Read what Peter Chowka, long time health journalist, has to say about the latest participation by the medical journals.
Saturday, Apr. 15, 2006
Recent Negative Studies of Alternative Medicine:
Bad Medicine or Bad Reporting?
© By Peter Barry Chowka
(April 15, 2006) In recent weeks, the news hasn’t been good for alternative medicine. First came the stories, reported prolifically in the mainstream media, that low-fat diets don’t help to prevent breast or colon cancer or heart disease. This reporting was based on three studies that were published in the February 8, 2006 issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), one of the world’s leading medical journals. That same week, another prestigious scientific publication, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), in its February 9 issue published a study contending that one of the most commonly used herbs, saw palmetto, was no better than placebo for the treatment of benign prostatic hypertrophy or enlarged prostate.
That article was the opening salvo in a new, ongoing series of critiques of alternative medicine in the pages of the NEJM. In the February 16 issue, two studies called into question the effectiveness of using vitamin D and calcium to reduce the risks of bone fractures and colorectal cancer – conditions that have been found in previous studies to benefit from calcium and vitamin D supplementation. The following week (the February 23 issue of the NEJM) another study appeared, proclaiming the uselessness of the nutritional supplements glucosamine and chondroitin for osteoarthritis.
What these negative studies have in common is that the diets or supplements that were being tested have all been previously studied or subjected to review, with consistently positive findings. In fact, a list of the positive studies and references indicating the benefits of low-fat diets, calcium, vitamin D, saw palmetto, glucosamine, and chondroitin sulfate would be quite extensive.
But typically, as soon as the media catch wind of (or read a press release about) a negative study, they tend to exhibit selective amnesia, forgetting or ignoring all of the positive studies that preceded it.
The recent negative studies may have attracted the media’s attention because they appear to go against previously held beliefs – particularly in regard to the presumed benefits of low-fat diets and calcium/vitamin D supplementation. If the results of a new study had indicated instead that low-fat diets prevented heart disease or calcium supplements provided bone protection, they would probably never have made it on the nightly network TV newscasts or in wire service stories. Such news would have been met with a ho-hum, “What else is new?” shrug from most mainstream media producers and editors.
As in the case of any scientific study, however, the published results of these recent negative ones were not as black and white as the media portrayed them to be. The inaccurate or incomplete reporting is partly the result of the limitations of the sound-byte driven news business and also accountable to the somewhat misleading way that the researchers reported the conclusions in several of the studies.
Low-fat Diet Effects on Heart Disease and Cancer
The Women’s Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial (which began in 1991), the source of the conclusions in the February 8 JAMA articles, was designed to determine the potential long term effects of a low-fat diet on the risk of heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, and colon cancer in 48,835 postmenopausal women, ages 50-79. The study goal was to decrease total dietary fat to 20% and increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables to five servings daily and whole grains to six servings daily. The dietary intervention group was then compared to a control group of women who were not asked to make dietary changes but who were given diet-related educational materials.
This type of study is problematic for many reasons. In the real world, an individual’s dietary changes are usually made gradually, over a long period of time. In fact, in the JAMA articles, by the sixth year of the study the participants in the low-fat dietary intervention group had only decreased their fat intake by 8.2% and the saturated fat intake (the fat most often associated with heart disease) by only 2.9%. In addition, in the low-fat group there was an average daily increase of only 1.1 servings of fruits and vegetables and 0.5 servings of whole grains. Even with these somewhat subtle dietary changes, however, there was a trend toward decreased heart disease and breast cancer incidence in the study participants who consumed the lowest levels of saturated- and trans-fats and in the ones who ate at least 6.5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. These positive trends are important since the protective or preventive effects of a low-fat diet can take many years, if not several decades, to be fully realized.
Another significant problem with the negative JAMA studies is that the participants in the dietary-change groups were asked to reduce total dietary fat to 20%. Such a blanket recommendation does not take into account the fact that there are “good fats” and “bad fats.” Thus, this group may have been decreasing heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, such as the ones in salmon and other cold water fish. These same fatty acids have been found in numerous studies to help prevent cancer.
Saw Palmetto and Enlarged Prostate
The New England Journal of Medicine kicked off its latest series of articles on alternative medicine on February 9, 2006 with the publication of a study on the herb saw palmetto for the treatment of enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH). The study’s design looked good, the dosage of saw palmetto seemed appropriate, and the herbal product that was used appeared to be of high quality. The study may have been compromised from the outset, however, by the choice of study participants – men with moderate-to-severe prostate enlargement. Previous studies on saw palmetto have usually looked at men with mild-to-moderate BPH.
The design of the February 9 NEJM study brings to mind an earlier one, published in 2002 in JAMA, on St. John’s wort for moderately severe major depression in which the dosage used was one that had been found in previous studies to benefit people with mild-to-moderate depression. Rather than confirm these findings in a group with milder depression or increase the dose to one that had been noted in clinical reports to benefit people with more severe depression, the researchers used the lower dose and then concluded that St. John’s wort was useless for the treatment of depression. A similar negative conclusion (including the failure to indicate that the study was in men with moderate-to-severe benign prostatic hyperplasia) was drawn by the saw palmetto researchers: “In this study, saw palmetto did not improve symptoms or objective measures of benign prostatic hyperplasia.” This conclusion, of course, is the bottom-line one that was fed to the media, most of whose representatives no doubt did not read or carefully analyze the study itself.
It is not unusual for the conclusions of a medical journal’s article or study, or the press release issued by the publication promoting it, to be negative, while the details of the complete study suggest a more nuanced, inconclusive, or even positive picture.
In the case of the NEJM saw palmetto study, it seems doubtful that men who have found that the herb helps to keep them from having to get up five times a night to urinate will stop taking it because of this single study. But the negative reporting will likely deter others who might have experienced benefits from using this safe and effective herbal alternative.
Calcium and Vitamin D for Decreasing
Fracture Risk and Preventing Colon Cancer
The fact that calcium and vitamin D are important to bone health is fairly well established accepted. Less widely known, but supported by significant positive research, is the fact that both calcium and vitamin D appear to offer protection against certain types of cancer, including colon cancer. Therefore, it was surprising when the news reported that a study in the February 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine had concluded that calcium and vitamin D do not prevent colorectal cancer or bone fractures.
One of the more questionable reports in the print media about the February 16 study was published in The New York Times on February 15. The Times article, “Study Finds Calcium Supplements Don’t Prevent Broken Bones,” opened with the following statement: “Calcium and vitamin D supplements increased the risk of kidney stones but did not prevent broken bones or colorectal cancer in middle-aged and elderly women, according to an extensive study whose results are to be published Thursday.”
It’s not hard to understand why the media would get it so wrong since the concluding statement in the official abstract of the published study, “Calcium plus Vitamin D Supplementation and the Risk of Fractures,” states: “Among healthy, postmenopausal women, calcium with vitamin D supplementation resulted in a small but significant improvement in hip bone density, did not significantly reduce hip fracture, and increased the risk of kidney stones.”
A closer look at this study reveals that it was also part of the Women’s Health Initiative (described above in the section on the low-fat diet studies). The bone fracture-colon cancer study included 36,282 postmenopausal women, ages 50-79 years. They were randomly assigned to receive either 1,000 mg of calcium in the form of calcium carbonate and 400 IU of vitamin D or placebo pills. The study’s protocol was confusing and the conclusions raised more questions than they answered.
Many of the women (16,089) were also enrolled in the hormone replacement arm of the study, confounding the results because hormone replacement can have a significant effect on bone density. Women in both the calcium/vitamin D group and the placebo group were also allowed to take personal calcium supplements (up to 1,000 mg daily) and vitamin D supplements (up to 600 IU daily – 1,000 IU daily after 1999) outside of the study as well as other medications for bone health.
Despite all of these significant variables, the study resulted in a 12% overall lower rate of hip fracture in the calcium and vitamin D treated group compared with the placebo group. The study’s authors deemed this result to be not statistically significant. However, when the supplement group was analyzed for compliance it was determined that participants in the group who took at least 80% of the assigned supplements had a 29% decrease in hip fractures. A major question is why non-compliers were even included in the final analysis. In addition, when the women were stratified according to age, those age 60 and older – the group most likely to suffer from hip fractures – experienced a 21% decrease in hip fractures, even when the study didn’t remove the non-compliers.
The calcium/vitamin D group had a 17% greater likelihood of kidney stones. While the increase in kidney stone rate was reported widely, none of the positive results reached the attention of the mainstream media, even though the increased likelihood of kidney stones was less than the improvement in the hip fracture prevention rate. It should also be noted that the form of calcium used in the study was calcium carbonate, one of the more poorly absorbed forms of calcium. Had the researchers used a more absorbable form of calcium, for example, calcium citrate, they would probably have gotten better results and even decreased the risk of kidney stones, since citric acid (citrate) has been found to help prevent the most common type of kidney stone.
Since this same group of people was analyzed for the effects of calcium and vitamin D on colorectal cancer, some of the same problems with the study design apply – for instance, the fact that the placebo group was also allowed to take significant amounts of personal vitamin D and calcium. In addition, the study lasted seven years and, due to the length of time it takes for cancers to develop, this may have been too short a period to observe a truly beneficial effect of vitamin D and calcium in preventing cancer – a fact that was acknowledged by the researchers (but not in most media reporting).
Glucosamine and Chondroitin for Arthritis
In the study on glucosamine and chondroitin published in the February 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, these two commonly used nutritional supplements for arthritis were compared to the anti-inflammatory medication celecoxib or to placebo. The study randomly assigned 1,583 people with osteoarthritis of the knee to receive 1,500 mg glucosamine HCl, 1,200 mg chondroitin sulfate, a combination of glucosamine and chondroitin, 200 mg celecoxib, or placebo for 24 weeks. People in all groups were allowed to take up to 4,000 mg acetaminophen (Tylenol) daily if necessary. The groups were further divided according to pain severity with 1,229 in a group with mild pain and 354 in a group with moderate-to-severe pain.
The study design was reasonable, although one might ask why glucosamine HCl was used, rather than glucosamine sulfate, since the majority of positive studies of glucosamine for arthritis used the sulfate form. The results reported by the researchers seemed accurate and relatively unbiased, and included the following conclusions: “Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate alone or in combination did not reduce pain effectively in the overall group of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Exploratory analyses suggest that the combination of glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate may be effective in the subgroup of patients with moderate-to-severe knee pain.”
In fact, the combination supplement was significantly effective in the group of participants that needed it most – the ones with the most severe pain. On the scales used to analyze benefit, those taking the combination of glucosamine and chondroitin experienced significant benefit – 24.9 percentage points higher than placebo. This improvement was compared to the effects observed in the group taking the anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib that resulted in only 15.1 percentage points improvement over placebo. Yet, the mainstream media reportage on this study was simply that glucosamine and chondroitin don’t work for arthritis. There was no mention that it does work in those who need it most or that celecoxib may not work so well, either.
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.
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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!
Let’s not get confused here. The prize that the Natural Solutions Foundation has its eye firmly fixed on is nothing short of victory in the complex and multi-sided war on our Health Freedoms, all of them. Keeping your eye on the prize means remembering that the members of our team, all of them, are NOT the enemy. But our team, the Health Freedom team, frequently spends our precious resources (time, effort and credibility) on diversions (e.g, turf battles and uncivil, nasty nonsense and meaningless attacks). Our team’s effort should be totally focused on defeating the enemy, not turning allies into enemies. It’s sort of like “Dallas comes to Health Freedom”.
And now, for something completely different, let me propose a level of civility heretofore unknown by a number of the members of our team: wasting time attacking each other is NOT useful in winning the war, even when another member of the team disagrees with a position you might hold dear.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, that’s great. It means that the tempest in the turf teapot has not reached you. Don’t even bother reading further: your eye has not been distracted from the prize and you are marching in the correct direction.
If, on the other hand, you are tired of getting e-whipsawed by a flow of intellectual sewage, please read on. You won’t find any such attack or defamation here: the Natural Solutions Foundation will continue to take the highest road. What you will find, however, is a discussion of what civility and meaningful discourse means and what it does not.
On June 16, 2005 I wrote to Jonathan Campbell, (http://www.cqs.com/) and introduced the Natural Solutions Foundation to him, writing,
While searching the web for material for my blog I encountered your site and the excellent piece “50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods” by Nathan Batalion. I am very impressed by your site and the material on it and I would like the opportunity to make contact with you and see how we might support the work that each of us is doing.
He responded the next day, saying “I agree with you 100% and I will do what I can to spread the word to my clients and my lists.” So far so good. Building bridges is a good thing and I believe that our side is only strengthened by alliances and mutual support. Concering the most negative of the Health Freedom activists (who irrationally attacks others continually if they commit the sin of disagreeing with them in any way), Jonathan writes “….how unfortunate. He can’t see his own sectarianism drives people away, and he thinks his little website is going to stop CODEX. Slightly short-sighted, and politically very naive.”
Then the next day, Jonathan wrote to tell me that while he agrees with part of what we are doing, he has misunderstood to whom the Citizen Petition is intended and therefore does not understand its import but thinks that by opposing CAFTA/FTAA we will solve the Codex problem. I wrote back explaining why I did not share this analysis.
Now here is an important point: in my mind this is perfectly OK: we disagree on our analysis of the problem and we are in a respectful dialogue about it. As I keep saying, this is a really big playing field and there is room for lots of different players using different strategies to deal with the immense Health Freedom assaults coming at us from many different directions.
On 10/23/05 I published a newsletter called Good News About Pandemic Flu in which I included a number of immune enhancement strategies which came from many, many different sources. Jonathan wrote me stating that a few of the items which I recommended were, in fact, published on his site and demanded a citation. My suggestions, which included various amino acids, Olive Leaf Extract, High Dose Vitamin C, garlic, Oil of Oregano, elderberry extract, etc., and which cited numerous references, were more diverse than his reccomendations. I did not even know that any of them had come from Jonathan since I received an email from a correspondent with some recommendations, but with no citation. Those with which I agreed I added to my list because they made sense and were easily available materials which could be added to a regimen with good effect.
I wrote back to Jonathan and told him that while I did not know he was the author of the regimen from which I drew some items (and still don’t, by the way, despite his claim), the next time I wrote about health issues I would mention that Jonathan asked to be cited as the source for the use of these particular items. Of course, I am not aware that he has done the basic research on these items and, as far as I can tell, did not cite the research from which their recommendation came but, none the less, as a courtesy, I have no problem indicating that the proximate source for the information on the inclusion of a few of these items was Jonathan’s website.
Since my newsletter contained items not contained in his article, Jonathan demanded an attribution for, I suppose, those parts for which he claims ownership. I have no problem with this: assuming that he really did publish these nutritional suggestions before anyone else, he should receive credit for that publication.
That is where things stood until several of our correspondents sent us an absolutely astonishing, widely disseminated letter written by Jonathan in which he, on the one hand, complements my effective writing style and on the other hand, libels me by absurd accusations that I am using some nasty, nefarious and underhanded technique of which I had, in fact, never heard AND that I learned this technique from, of all places,the US Army via, he says, my husband, a retired Army officer. Just in case there is any doubt, this is nonsense: I never learned any technique in any area from the US Army (or any other military organization from here or elsewhere, for that matter). Never.
As a College English Major who intended to write the Great American Novel (never dreaming that I would write the Great American Polemic instead) and takes pride in my writing skills, I am flattered. I guess my writing style derives from Mrs. Feaster, my 6th grade teacher and from Dr. Wilson, my college advisor, but the Army?
My writing style is far more graceful and fluid than my husband’s: I write in sentences, he writes in bullets (what else?)
A little substantiation would do nicely here, Jonathan, thank you. In fact, it would provide a welcome relief and a refreshing change from the assertions, allegations, smear and slander, to say nothing of the libel, flung at those of us who are effective in this Health Freedom advocacy. I suppose that if there were no intentional dissemination of dissent in this field, Big Pharma would have to invent it. Have they?
It is tempting to wonder whether that might account for some of the nastiness and distraction in this arena or whether personal pettiness and dysfunction are sufficient to account for it without outside influence.
Back to the specific matter at hand, though: Having taken, as usual, the High Road of civil response to civil discourse and ignoring anything else, I was shocked to receive the following rather astonishing (and factually inaccurate) email from Jonathan today:
Dr. Laibow,
It has now been some time since you published a copy of my avian flu preparation regimen without attribution, and you agreed that you would send a notice of attribution to your subscribers. You have acknowledged that you obtained from someone and re-published it without checking out the source or doing a simple google search, and that is an infringement of my copyright. I have not seen your acknowledgement sent to your list. I now request that you do so, and will contact my lawyer if you do not do so within 10 days.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
So, Jonathan, you have had an acknowledgement of the fact that I unintentionally incorporated something that you claim to have originated into a larger article, although I do not have any substantiation of the fact that you are, in fact, the author of the protocol you published. (And do not understand how doing a “simple google search” would prevent a violation of your copyright.” My protocol differs in substantial areas from yours but that is, as far as I can tell, a good thing. Here my civil and fact-based questions to you:
1. Where is the substantiation of the allegations which you have made about me and my writing techniques? Please provide it to me.
2. When can I expect your public acknowledgement of the fact that you have publicly defamed and libeled me? Should I give you a deadline threatening to contact my lawyer if you do not provide it? Is that how you prefer to carry out discourse?
3. What is your motivation for this defamation and liable?
4. What possible positive outcome does publicaly attacking another member of our team serve when I had already assured you that I was prepared to cite your material when I next wrote about the topic? Are you looking to create trouble, get your ego stroked or do you, in fact, have another agenda in mind?
5. Your sudden switch in attitude and cooperation suggests that you have been compromised by “disinformation”. Since there is more than enough disinformation going around from a number of different sources (with a number of different agendas driving it), I suggest that the members of our team develop the habit of scrupulous accuracy rather than witting or unwitting dissemination of it. Is there a reality-based reason for the sudden switch that you want to make public or is it a private matter? If public, please supply the information, if private, why would you impose a private issue on the general public?
I suggest that you (and other members of the Health Freedom team) refrain from public assault on those of us who form the Health Freedom team. Given your early high praise for our work before you decided that you could not tolerate any dissent from your position on CAFTA/FTAA (which we oppose but do not see as a major health freedom threat: Codex is the threat: CAFTA/FTAA are, from a health freedom perspective, derivitive problems) and our earlier civility, I would suggest a return to that mode of behavior.
I know that is the path I have chosen. There’s plenty of room up here on the High Road. Y’all come.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
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