Reprinted from https://caivn.org
Senator John McCain proposes unbridled FDA control over dietary supplements
by Chris Hinyub
Sat, Feb 27th 2010
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) is proposing legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new authority over the dietary supplement industry. If passed into law, The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010 would dramatically drive up supplement costs, allow the FDA unchecked discretion on which supplements to allow on the market and thus severely limit access to existing non-prescription disease remedies.
Senator McCain purportedly composed DSSA in response to the recent professional sports doping “scandal” after several athletes admitted to taking steroids sold under supplemental labels. Important to note is that the FDA already has the legal power to examine and remove any “adulterated” (drug-tainted) supplements on the market. If the agency failed in their job of quality control (and has a vested interest in suppressing the health claims of natural supplements), how does it help the situation to deny Americans access to non-synthetic drugs altogether?
Any sober analysis of our current condition as a nation will tell you we are fraught with degenerative disease epidemics while trying to maintain a stressed disease-care infrastructure. Just as more Americans are coming to the realization that they must take their health into their own hands or lose it to the powers that be, the pharmaceutical industry is diligently lobbying Congress to keep Americans from discovering disease prevention through dietary supplementation. The true aim of S 3002 is to make such personal healthcare choices unaffordable.
If made law, the registration requirements of DSSA alone would render dietary supplements cost-ineffective for most Americans. According to Ethan Huff, writing for Natural News, such mandates would “add layers of overhead costs to manufacturers who are already fully compliant with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and are inspected by the FDA. It would also create an entire new category of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats who would oversee this hideous expansion of federal control over dietary supplement access.”
Supplement makers would be required to register with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The volumes of paperwork required to keep existing products on the market would further add to costs of production. These companies will be required to apply for approval of any new natural ingredient they wish to add to their products giving Big Pharma, by way of their well documented leadership exchange program with the FDA, complete control over the introduction of new supplements into the market.
The bill also calls for the mandatory submission to the FDA of all "non-serious adverse events" received by supplement manufacturers and these reports, in turn, would be made available to drug companies. This dynamic would aid pharmaceuticals in their quest to edge out competition through government regulation. Any instance of an “adverse event” would most definitely be used to petition the FDA to ban the supplement in question. Under this legislation, all the FDA would need is “reasonable probability” that there is a serious threat posed by any supplement to make it illegal to sell.
Imagine such tyrannical power being given to a federal agency that routinely approves the sale of deadly drugs such as vioxx. According to the CDC, poisoning from prescription drugs is now the second largest cause of unintended death in the nation. Compare that to the safety record of dietary supplements: zero confirmed fatalities.
What the pharmaceutical industry is really after are the proprietary rights to the main ingredients of dietary supplements. These are the naturally occurring compounds isolated in the forms of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. When the FDA bans a supplement, it no longer is afforded the legal protections that currently save it from being patented and sold by drug companies as an “FDA approved drug.” Such reformulated supplements carry with them a significant markup at retail.
It's telling that this bill comes only months after the World Health Organization's deadline for compliance with the regulations of Codex Alimentarius – an Orwellian international trade agreement heavily influenced by pharmaceutical and international commodity trading concerns. The proposed legislation would be a giant leap towards Codex compliance as it provides the FDA with the arbitrary authority of making a list of “permitted” supplements along with a maximum threshold for their nutritive potencies. The guiding philosophy of Codex is that all nutrients are toxins and that any food or diet related product containing said toxins must be positively codified with upper limits for nutrient concentrations. You did not misread that.
The DSSA embodies a complete rejection of our common law and Constitutional traditions wherein everything is permissible unless expressly restricted for the common good. Giving the secretary of HHS complete discretionary control over personal dietary choices is, simply put, fascism.
The FDA tried this same Napoleonic approach to the law in the early 1990s when they declared several essential nutrients as intrinsically harmful. The passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 was the public's response to the agency's outrageous claims. Senate bill 3002 will effectively repeal key components of DSHEA, a law that, although imperfect, has worked to protect Americans' rights to access free market valued dietary supplements. If DSSA finds its way into federal code, California should prepare legislation to nullify its enforcement.
katmaddo 10 hours ago
WHAT CAN WE DO TO PREVENT THIS BILL FROM PASSING? I am in the process of writing EVERY SENATOR on senate.gov in protest of this crazy bill ! The FDA has screwed with MY health long enough. They knowingly ALLOW toxins and poisons to be put into my cosmetics, shampoos, cleaning supplies, even my milk, meat and chicken! When is it enough? We NEED supplements to counter the affects of all these toxins that the FDA has us putting into our bodies. PLEASE tell us how we, the people, can help STOP this bill from passing. Kathy in Minnesota (where I need BOTTLED sunshine).
chrishinyub 9 hours ago in reply to katmaddo
Kathy,
There are several organizations who exist to fight legislation that attack our health freedom. https://www.healthfreedomusa.org/ is a good start. There is an action alert link on the main page to stop this senate bill. To gain a better perspective on what we are up against, I suggest you watch Dr. Laibow's dissertation on Codex Alimentarius (a link to which I've provided in my story). But calling and writing your Senators is an essential start.
katmaddo 8 hours ago in reply to chrishinyub
Is someone working to contact actors, and Big name personalities who rely on supplements ... like Ellen Degeneres, Oprah, Jim Carry, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, etc....
Get some big names on it ... especially Oprah ... since she has an inside to the White House ... and I know she is big on supplements.
BJ 5 hours ago in reply to katmaddo
These people will have all the supplements they desire. They are the ruling elite. We need a million citizens to speak up.
ACTION ALERT! Your RIGHT to Supplements is under Attack!
I wrote to my rep yesterday.
McCain in particular needs to be put out to pasteur. That isn't a political statement. Dems and Republicans alike hate supplements for the most part. It may be the one issue in D.C. both parties agree on: Supplements Bad.
"Save the Children" - Ban suppplements.
Forget that national debt, nobody can find work, afford food thing...
McCain in particular needs to be put out to pasteur. That isn't a political statement. Dems and Republicans alike hate supplements for the most part. It may be the one issue in D.C. both parties agree on: Supplements Bad.
"Save the Children" - Ban suppplements.
Forget that national debt, nobody can find work, afford food thing...
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dracotdrgn
- Posts: 349
- Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:05 pm
- Location: Tacoma, Washington
Why is that Gov't officials feel the need to protect us from ourselves ?
Helmet laws - exist in some states for motorcycles and I can understand the whole Safety thing but shouldn't this be an individual's choice ? Yep, except that insurance rates go up so when the $$$ gets involved so do the laws. This helmet protection thing has trickled down so that now kids on bicycles have to wear them. It went so far that when one kid was injured snow sledding the parents tried to get legislation passed to make people have to wear helmets when children play in the snow (again I understand the safety thing OK) The choice should be up to the parents not some Gov't or law. This example is to show how twisted it can get.
Booze and cigaretts are legal drugs which can be sold freely because they tax the s^(t out of um.
I agree with Rob, that there are way more important items on the agenda which deserve higher priority. It simply breaks down to $$$ if you ask me and the Gov't is attempting to gain control to manage it for us. Greed is an evil thing. McCain has got to go.....
Helmet laws - exist in some states for motorcycles and I can understand the whole Safety thing but shouldn't this be an individual's choice ? Yep, except that insurance rates go up so when the $$$ gets involved so do the laws. This helmet protection thing has trickled down so that now kids on bicycles have to wear them. It went so far that when one kid was injured snow sledding the parents tried to get legislation passed to make people have to wear helmets when children play in the snow (again I understand the safety thing OK) The choice should be up to the parents not some Gov't or law. This example is to show how twisted it can get.
Booze and cigaretts are legal drugs which can be sold freely because they tax the s^(t out of um.
I agree with Rob, that there are way more important items on the agenda which deserve higher priority. It simply breaks down to $$$ if you ask me and the Gov't is attempting to gain control to manage it for us. Greed is an evil thing. McCain has got to go.....
RobRegish wrote:A few clicks gets your voice heard...
https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Ad ... ion&id=510
Thanks for the link, I have sent my messages to the proper people.
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dracotdrgn
- Posts: 349
- Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:05 pm
- Location: Tacoma, Washington
McCain and Dorgan Continue to Attack Dietary Supplements...
Battle Rages: Make your voice heard!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/56 ... _KEY=26714
The recent apparent demise of Senator McCain's bill, S.3002, which was designed to kill access to high potency supplements, was trumpeted in the health freedom world as a triumph. We urged caution, saying that while Senator McCain's abandoning his own bill sounded good, we were quite certain that the dangerous provisions of the bill would be incorporated into Senator Harkin's S. 510, a genuine food fascism bill. Many said, as they usually do, that we were alarmist and had missed the point of this triumph.
Well, unfortunately, the Natural Solutions Foundation was on target again. Earlier today a letter was released from Senators McCain and Dorgan, sponsors of DSSA (that's pronounced "DISS-sa" as in "disappoints") the so-called "Dietary Supplement Safety Act" S.3002. This letter to Senators Harkin and Hatch confirmed in writing what had been rumored for a few days: they were abandoning their ill-considered bill to gut the law that protects Americans' access to high potency nutrients, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). That law was adopted by a unanimous Congress responding to strong pressure from the Health Freedom Movement. The McCain/Dorgan bill has just died due to very powerful PUSH BACK from a more mature and even more effective Health Freedom Movement, led by over 390,000 emails to the Senate and decision makers through Health Freedom USA's Action Item. Sounds like a triumph for the pro health freedom forcers, right?
But this battle for the survival of high potency nutrients is not over yet. The letter asks Harkin and Hatch to import some of the worst provisions of S.3002 into another pending fake "safety" bill, S.510... literally imposing the Codex Alimentarius "approved dietary supplement list" instead of the consumer's right to choose, protected in current law. Remember, the United States is the ONLY high potency nutrient country in the world. The globalizing forces have long had their eyes set on the destruction of this legally granted freedom to choose high potency nutrients, each of which cuts into the huge profitability of Big Pharma products. Each of these dangerous bills is designed to control more and more of your freedoms around food and supplements and, finally, control them out of existence.
This battle is between your freedom to control your own body and how you use it and those who take all such freedom from you. It is, truly, the "Mother of all Battles" wth regard to supplements and other dietary strategies to be well or get that way.
Read more about this development here: https://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4805
Critically Important Action item: Continue to send messages to your Senators:
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/56 ... _KEY=26714
Index
Battle Rages: Make your voice heard!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/56 ... _KEY=26714
The recent apparent demise of Senator McCain's bill, S.3002, which was designed to kill access to high potency supplements, was trumpeted in the health freedom world as a triumph. We urged caution, saying that while Senator McCain's abandoning his own bill sounded good, we were quite certain that the dangerous provisions of the bill would be incorporated into Senator Harkin's S. 510, a genuine food fascism bill. Many said, as they usually do, that we were alarmist and had missed the point of this triumph.
Well, unfortunately, the Natural Solutions Foundation was on target again. Earlier today a letter was released from Senators McCain and Dorgan, sponsors of DSSA (that's pronounced "DISS-sa" as in "disappoints") the so-called "Dietary Supplement Safety Act" S.3002. This letter to Senators Harkin and Hatch confirmed in writing what had been rumored for a few days: they were abandoning their ill-considered bill to gut the law that protects Americans' access to high potency nutrients, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). That law was adopted by a unanimous Congress responding to strong pressure from the Health Freedom Movement. The McCain/Dorgan bill has just died due to very powerful PUSH BACK from a more mature and even more effective Health Freedom Movement, led by over 390,000 emails to the Senate and decision makers through Health Freedom USA's Action Item. Sounds like a triumph for the pro health freedom forcers, right?
But this battle for the survival of high potency nutrients is not over yet. The letter asks Harkin and Hatch to import some of the worst provisions of S.3002 into another pending fake "safety" bill, S.510... literally imposing the Codex Alimentarius "approved dietary supplement list" instead of the consumer's right to choose, protected in current law. Remember, the United States is the ONLY high potency nutrient country in the world. The globalizing forces have long had their eyes set on the destruction of this legally granted freedom to choose high potency nutrients, each of which cuts into the huge profitability of Big Pharma products. Each of these dangerous bills is designed to control more and more of your freedoms around food and supplements and, finally, control them out of existence.
This battle is between your freedom to control your own body and how you use it and those who take all such freedom from you. It is, truly, the "Mother of all Battles" wth regard to supplements and other dietary strategies to be well or get that way.
Read more about this development here: https://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4805
Critically Important Action item: Continue to send messages to your Senators:
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/56 ... _KEY=26714
Index
The very fact that he's still trying to back door this garbage DESPITE being shamed out of it the first time tells us what?
That the powers behind this have him (and likely many of our reps/congressmen) in their back pocket. They will use the "Patriot" Act to do this. Mark my words...
It is time for a revolution. And nothing less than that is going to stop it.
That the powers behind this have him (and likely many of our reps/congressmen) in their back pocket. They will use the "Patriot" Act to do this. Mark my words...
It is time for a revolution. And nothing less than that is going to stop it.