Congress is at it again: those who are paid by the people are doing the people’s work. Those who are paid by Big Pharma are doing the drug companies’ dirty work. There are bills that we need to kill and bills that we need to support. This blog is a guide to the current crop of health-related bills

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. Jefferson said it so well! And we need to remind ourselves of it often. There are now bills that we have to support and bills that we must kill. Below you will find a list of the relevant bills which impact health freedom. You can read these bills for yourself by entering the bill number or a keyword or you can do the Cliff Notes version and read my summary below. In either case, it is important that you take the tools of democracy in your mouse and use our email engine to send your Congressional Delegation your strong instructions. You can write your own letter or use the one we provide.

The reason it is so important for you to take this action now (and take it again when more legislation is introduced, as it will be) is that if the pro-pharma, pro-illness industry can destroy our legal protections, DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act) and FDAMA (FDA Modernization Act), then there is NOTHING at all standing in the way of our harmonization with the deadly CODEX standards and guidelines. That is what they want. We are not about to let them have it. Here are the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good:

HR 2352 Consumers’ Access to Health Information Act
Introduced by Ron Paul reverses the FDA’s gag action on nutrients and “permits the accurate label and labeling claims of the curative, mitigation, treatment and prevention effects of foods and dietary supplements on disease and health-related conditions”. This is a very important piece of legislation and should be supported vigorously.

The Bad:

SA 1379 attached to S 1042
Sponsored by Durbin and Feinstein would create an adverse event reporting requirement for supplements (remarkably safe, no deaths) while none exists for pharmaceuticals (remarkably dangerous, hundreds of thousands of deaths annually). It also bars the sale of stimulants on military bases except caffeine containing liquids! Oppose this bill.

S 3 Protecting America in the War on Terror Act of 2005
Introduced by Gregg, First, Sessions, Dewine, Allen, Santorrum, McConnell and Dement is filled with dangerous and harmful provisions including the removal of meaningful restitution for persons harmed by vaccines and shameless immense tax-payer funded corporate welfare for vaccine and drug manufacturers. There are a number of other serious defects in this legislation. Please oppose it.

HR 2485 DSHEA Full Implementation and Enforcement Act of 2005
Introduced by Burton and Pallone appropriates $175M between now and 2010 to give the FDA more money to enforce regulations which are highly detrimental to supplement manufacturers and would expose them to more stringent regulatory requirements than those faced by the pharmaceutical industry. This is not a pro-health bill and should be opposed.

HR 2510 Dietary Supplement Regulatory Implementation Act of 2005
Sponsored by Pallone is an even worse version of HR 2485. In addition to the above, it provides for the by-now-all-too-familiar adverse event reporting system for supplements, but not drugs, an additional $10M to “educate” physicians and consumers about dietary supplements and forbidding ephedrine alkaloids altogether. This is HR 2510 on steroids and must be defeated.

The Ugly:

HR 3156 Dietary Supplement Access and Awareness Act
Introduced by Susan Davis and co-sponsored by Waxman and Dingell is a strongly pro-pharma, anti-health bill that must be defeated. It not only provides for burdensome, expensive and unnecessary post market surveillance by supplement manufacturers, it creates the supplements-only-no-drugs-allowed adverse event reporting system common to so many of these bills, and, most dangerously, permits the FDA to ban any nutrient which has any degree of risk associated with it – no matter how small – even in the absence of any harm from that substance. In other words, it gives the FDA a green light to ban all nutrients. Fascinatingly, Ms. Davis’ bill was introduced on June 30, just days before the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline was ratified by CODEX. This bill excludes vitamins and minerals. Clearly, the assumption was that CODEX would take care of them so Davis would take care of the amino acids, essential fatty acids, etc. This bill must be soundly defeated.

Is this a lot of information? Yes. But it is the most important information of the day for a health-loving American. Folks, these bills are direct attacks against the American people. They have nothing to do with our “protection”, “well-being”, or any other lame excuse. We must take action against these bills. And we will be asking you to take action again because the pro-illness forces will come back with more bills when we defeat these. But that is the price Jefferson cautioned us about: eternal vigilance.

So please click here to tell Congress we are serious about our health freedom.

From where Congress sits, one constituent voice equals the 13,000 others who have not made their identical opinions clear. Speak out now for health freedom and tell everyone you know that they need to speak out now, too!

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation