The GMO Animals Are Coming!

 

By Nurse Mark

 

GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) are a fact of life – the genetic genie has been let out of the bottle and big business is loathe to see him put back – the profit potentials are just too huge for them.

For every reason, Dr. Myatt and I urge everyone who can to consider either raising their own organic foods or to buy locally grown organic foods. Even city-dwellers can raise a small garden for fresh organic vegetables or can keep a few chickens in a backyard “chicken tractor” (no foolin’ – search that term in google!) to ensure a steady supply of wholesome, clean eggs. Your local farmer’s market can provide you with wholesome, pure foods if you will support it.

This just in to us from The Alliance For Natural Health :

Action Alert: Genetically Modified Frankenfish!

Coming to you soon—and you probably won’t know that you’re eating it.

Genetically modified salmon—the first GMO animal for human consumption—is reaching the final stages in its approval. Most terrifying: they might not have to tell us if our fish is GM or not!

I urge you to visit the Alliance For Natural Health website where you can read this article in it’s entirety and there is a link there that will allow you to send an Action Alert Message to the FDA.

Waxman Amendment Fails – You Win!

 

By Nurse Mark

 

Many of you will remember a recent article in HealthBeat News where we talked about the danger being posed by what was being called The Waxman Amendment – an amendment, inserted by Rep. Henry Waxman into the so-called “Wall Street Reform” bill HR 4173 which would give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) important new powers that could be used to circumvent key supplement protections in DSHEA – the legislation that currently protects your access to dietary supplements.

It appears that Waxman’s attempts have been foiled. This note arrived in my mailbox yesterday, sent by The Alliance For Natural Health USA:

Congressman Henry Waxman (D, CA) made a strong last ditch effort to save his Federal Trade Commission (FTC) power expansion provision in the finance bill.  He also had the support of powerful Congressman Barney Frank (D, MA).  The Conference committee deliberations went until 3:00 am this morning.  Fortunately, the provision was not accepted and will therefore not be in the bill that is submitted to both the House and Senate.  Our concern was that based on its prior actions, the FTC would have used expanded powers to restrict access to supplements.

Thank you for making this outcome possible by taking action and sending a strong signal to Congress.  They heard you!

We will have a full report Tuesday in our regular newsletter.  

Sincerely,

Alliance for Natural Health USA

To those of you who contacted your representatives to object to this odious attempt at a federal power-grab by Waxman, thank you! To those who didn’t contacted your representatives, please offer a word of thanks for those who did “step up to the plate” on this issue. We collectively dodged a bullet on this one.

HEALTH FREEDOM ALERT – URGENT ACTION NEEDED!

 

The “WALL STREET REFORM” bill (H.R. 4173) has nothing to do with vitamins or supplements – right?

 

WRONG!

 

An amendment, inserted by Rep. Henry Waxman, would give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) important new powers that could be used to circumvent key supplement protections in DSHEA – the legislation that currently protects your access to dietary supplements.

Here is information from the Alliance For Natural Health:

Anti-Supplement Measure Slips into “Reform” Bill Passed by the House; Please Take Action to Prevent Same in the Senate

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), recently passed in the House of Representatives, includes language going far beyond finance inserted by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). This language could be used for an end run around the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the legislation that governs dietary supplement regulation by the FDA.

ANH-USA has been on alert to see how Waxman would use his chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee to strike at DSHEA.  He is clever tactician and we knew a covert attack was a possibility.  In this case, Waxman has left DSHEA alone, and has instead inserted language in the Wall St “reform” bill that gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) important new powers that could be used to circumvent key supplement protections in DSHEA.

Specifically, the Waxman provision would return to the FTC powers that Congress had stripped away in the 1980’s because of abuses, powers to create new regulations without prior Congressional approval. We know that the FTC would like to use such powers to impose new and crippling requirements on supplement companies. For more on the FTC’s thinking on this, and why the Agency is likely to turn any new legislative authority against supplements, see our full report.

Please tell your senators not to support any amendments that give FTC unchecked power to over-regulate areas they don’t understand, including dietary supplements.

 

Please click on this link to go to the Alliance For Natural Health webpage that will quickly and easily let you send a message to your senators.

It’s really, really easy to do – I tested it myself and it works.

And it is really, really important if you want to keep your access to natural supplements and vitamins.

Please contact your senators – right now – before it’s too late.

By Nurse Mark

 

Vitamins And Supplements To Be Outlawed

 

No vitamins or supplements without a prescription if Senators McCain and Dorgan and their buddies in Big Pharma get their way!

 

If you want to continue to enjoy the freedom to have the vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary supplements that you enjoy now, you MUST fight this proposed bill!

I wrote about this in our last issue of HealthBeat News: Dietary Supplements In The Political Crosshairs Again! Action Alert! I hope you have all acted on the recommendations there to contact your political representatives – remember, they work for you!

This letter, from a respected doctor, arrived in my mailbox today:

Hello,

There is some BAD legislation in Congress right now that could harm our access to supplements …

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have cosponsored a new bill misleadingly called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). DSSA would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), signed into law by then-President Clinton.

This legislation would change current regulation for dietary supplements. It could make many prescription only, limit what is on the market, offer patents to drug companies and in many other ways severely limit access to dietary supplements.

A wide variety of organizations, working together with ANH-USA, have swung into action to stop John McCain’s new bill that threatens dietary supplements. Already thousands of messages are on their way to Capitol Hill in protest. Please be sure that your message is among them. I encourage you to act now to send a message to your Senator or Congressman. If you have not already done so, please take action now: http://www.anh-usa.org/new_site/?p=2326

DSHEA protects supplements 1) if they are food products that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If a supplement fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug. DSHEA provides the framework for effective regulation of dietary supplements by the FDA.

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) would eliminate the supplement protections contained in DSHEA and allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) arbitrary authority to draw up a list of what supplements can be sold and at what potency levels. Europe is currently limiting both supplements and potencies to ridiculous levels. If DSSA passes, the FDA, beholden as it is to drug interests, would move to do the same in the US.

So please act now and write to your Senator and Congressman to oppose this legislation.

Thank you.
Mark Hyman, MD

 

You can find and sign an on-line petition here: Click Here For The Online Petition

Here is a suggested letter if you prefer to write your representative: Click Here For A Suggested Letter

Remember, these people work for you – never let them make you feel like you are a bother to them or that they somehow have more important things to do than to listen to what you have to say. YOU are the most important thing in their world because if it were not for YOU they would not have a job – you ARE their job!

Once again, here is how you can contact your representatives in the senate:

Senator McCain
              Office phone number: (202) 224-2235
              E-mail Senator McCain: http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
Senator Dorgan
             Office phone: (202) 224-2551
              E-mail address: http://dorgan.senate.gov/contact/contact_form.cfm

U.S. Senators:  http://www.senate.gov

Contact Information to E-mail Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

The Senate main telephone number is (202) 224-3121

Click on the following link below for individual mailing addresses for letter writing and other contact info for Congress Members:

111th Congress and Senate Contact Adresses

Dietary Supplements In The Political Crosshairs Again – A Call To Action!

This press release, issued by the National Health Federation, recently arrived on my desk and I felt it was important to share it with you. Rather than comment directly on it I’m  going to reprint it here in it’s entirety, including the links where you can take action. This is a very bad bill

PRESS RELEASE

TAKE ACTION NOW

TO PROTECT YOUR SUPPLEMENTS!

February 4, 2010

         They are at it again!  This time, it is Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) who are trying to gut the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 by introducing a new bill (as yet unnumbered) with the misleading title of the “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010.”  This bill has as much to do with safety as pigs with space travel.

         Senator McCain just held a press conference to announce that he was co-sponsoring his Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 with Senator Dorgan.  The draft bill can be found on the National Health Federation’s website at http://www.thenhf.com/press_releases/10_0202_Dietary_Supplement_Safety_Bill.pdf  The bill will be introduced shortly in the Senate.

         As Scott Tips, the president of the National Health Federation, stated, “This bill strikes at the heart of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was passed unanimously by the U.S. in 1994, and which took away the Food and Drug Administration’s arbitrary powers over supplements.  Now, this bill would create a Euro-style ‘positive list’ of ‘acceptable’ new dietary ingredients.  And by ‘acceptable,’ the bill means acceptable to an appointed bureaucrat.  This is completely unacceptable.  Failure to comply would result in punitive fines upon such a company selling or distributing a product not being ‘accepted.’”

         “Just as bad,” Mr. Tips continued, “would be the proposed change in the definition of an adverse event to be reported to the FDA concerning any supplement.  As we first predicted when the AER bill was introduced (and unfortunately supported by too-many dietary supplement companies), this adverse event reporting bill was only to be the camel’s nose in the tent.  More would follow, NHF predicted. And this new bill proves that we were right.  McCain and Dorgan want to change the events to be reported from ‘serious adverse’ events to any ‘adverse’ events!  This is totally unacceptable since supplements already have the safest track record of any consumable on the planet.  It is just once again politicians using a special-interest group to advance their own pro-pharmaceutical agenda against natural health products.”

         Lee Bechtel, the NHF lobbyist, also said, “These two Senators want to make a law based on NFL players who took weight loss supplements.  Supplements have other healthy benefits, and access of millions of consumers of dietary supplements should prevail over six highly paid football players, who cannot read the labels on supplement products.”

         The reason put forth by Senator McCain for his advancing this bill was that the government needed to protect athletes who are often surprised by positive drug tests, believing that the supplements they are taking are safe, legal, and free of banned substances.  He declared that all Americans have a right to know what ingredients are in the supplements they use, and that FDA should have the authority to regulate the safety of dietary supplements.

         This is complete nonsense.  You don’t take a hammer such as this and destroy a safe industry just to help a few consumers, who have clear-cut alternatives anyway. As they already do today, athletes can share information about which companies make which products that are safe for them to take so as to pass drug tests.  A sane person does not destroy an entire industry for reasons such as this one.

         We urge everyone to join with the National Health Federation in killing this bill before it even takes its first breath.  Telephone Senators McCain’s and Dorgan’s offices to tell them in no uncertain terms how strongly you are opposed to their ridiculous, power-grabbing bill.  Then, send them an e-mail saying the same.  Then write them a letter telling them exactly what you think of them and where they can shove this bill.  Be polite, but be persistent and vocal.  Be sure to write and telephone both of your Senators to register the same complaint.

(Click Here For The Online Petition)

(Click Here For A Suggested Letter)

Senator McCain
              Office phone number: (202) 224-2235
              E-mail Senator McCain: http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
Senator Dorgan
             Office phone: (202) 224-2551
              E-mail address: http://dorgan.senate.gov/contact/contact_form.cfm

********************

Click on this address to find your U.S. Senators:  http://www.senate.gov

Contact Information to E-mail Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

The Senate main number is (202) 224-3121

Click on the following link below for individual mailing addresses for
letter writing and other contact info for Congress Members:

Senate

********************

As the oldest and best-respected health-freedom group on Capitol Hill, the NHF continues to be the credible source of objective assessment of, and proactive actions on, Congressional legislation and FDA matters that have material impact upon our freedom-of-health choices and access to dietary supplements and nutritional foods.

********************

Click here for the permanent link to this press release, use this link to inform others.

National Health Federation: Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is a consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals’ rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without unnecessary government restrictions. The NHF is the only such organization with recognized observer-delegate status at Codex meetings. www.thenhf.com
P.O. Box 688, Monrovia, CA 91017 USA ~ 1 (626) 357-2181 ~ Fax 1 (626) 303-0642

Website: www.thenhf.com                    E-mail: contact-us@thenhf.com