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Latest Update: July 30, 2013

Urgent Action Alert! Revised Compounding Bill Vote Possible Tomorrow!

 

A reworked version of the bill S959 is nearly four times longer—and is even more of a threat to your access to bioidentical hormones, non-standard thyroid medications, and other compounded medications that millions of people rely on.  Action Alert!

S.959, the compounding bill we’ve been telling you about, has been rewritten, and it’s now 189 pages long, up from its original 50 pages. It’s technically a substitute bill in the form of an amendment. This means that when the old bill comes to the floor of the Senate, there will be a motion to substitute this new version. It will likely all happen very quickly—as early as tomorrow. There is a big push to get it through the Senate before the August recess on Friday. That’s why your immediate action is urgently needed!

Read the full article here: http://www.anh-usa.org/compounding-bill-vote-possible-tomorrow/

Or just click the green button below and give your representative an earfull!

 

 

An update to the continuing threat posed by S.959 — the Pharmaceutical Compounding Quality and Accountability Act

 

By Nurse Mark

 

With the revelations of the nepotism, cronyism, and incestuous relationships involved in the battle for market share and profits in the drug industry, S.959 — the Pharmaceutical Compounding Quality and Accountability Act is being pushed hard with legislators calling for a quick vote, presumably so they can get it passed before too many people notice the foul stink that surrounds it.

This bill would give the FDA, which has been historically biased against supplements and integrative medicine, far too much ability to ban compounded drugs such as thyroid medications and estriol and other hormones.

The big pharmaceutical companies, still smarting from the loss of profits suffered when their conventional hormone treatments were proven to cause heart disease and cancer, are determined to shut down custom compounded bioidentical hormones, making theirs the only hormones available to people like you.

This is purely about profit, and these big boys are playing hardball.

The main player, a specialty pharmaceutical company called TherapeuticsMD has admitted (boasted?) that they see these hormones as a $10 to $12 billion market which they want to control by offering an FDA-approved drug.

This bill is being pushed hard by powerful former politicians now working for the drug industry. There are extensive political connections including a key lobbyist who is married to a key Senate staffer. There is no shortage of conflicts of interest in this affair!

More information about this whole sordid mess can be found at the Alliance for Natural Health – including a detailed breakdown and expose of the interrelations of the various businesses, lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians. Learn more here: http://www.anh-usa.org/compounded-medications/

Here is an excerpt from the ANH-USA website on this subject – please use the “Take Action” button to send a message to your legislators:

Action Alert! Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is calling for a vote on S.959 as quickly as possible. Even if you sent Congress your message on S.959 previously, please write them again. We have added new information to the Action Alert letter, and it’s vital that we fight with all our strength against the powerful lobbyists and deep-pocketed drug companies to preserve our right to safe, inexpensive, effective compounded medicines. Please take action immediately!

 

And about that profit thing…

Is there any question left in anyone’s mind that the big drug companies could care less about your health? They sell an insanely profitable chemical – just like any crack or meth dealer does – and profit, not altruism or the love of mankind or a desire to make the world a better place, is their focus. To that end the lives shattered by their poisons are simply another notation on their profit and loss sheets.

Here are a couple of excerpts from a Bloomberg article of last year…

Pfizer Inc. (PFE), the world’s largest drugmaker, said in a securities filing that it has paid $896 million to resolve about 60 percent of the cases alleging its menopause drugs caused cancer in women.

Pfizer has now settled about 6,000 lawsuits that claim Prempro and other hormone-replacement drugs caused breast cancer, and it has set aside an additional $330 million to resolve the remaining 4,000 suits, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

and

More than 6 million women took Prempro and related menopause drugs to treat symptoms including hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted their links to cancer. Wyeth’s sales of the medicines, which are still on the market, exceeded $2 billion before the release of the Women’s Health Initiative, a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

 

But instead of showing any concern for the women affected by this debacle, here is what one “fund manager” had to say about the affair:

“Resolving these cases gives investors one less thing to worry about.”

 

Touching… the warmth, concern, and humanity shown… (pardon my sarcasm!)

Just how much profit does it take for a drug company to be able to set aside billions of dollars to settle the inevitable lawsuits that are a cost of doing business?

It appears that Senator Dick Durbin simply will not be satisfied until he has destroyed your freedom to have the vitamins and other dietary supplements of your choice. He has a long history of proposing laws that would give the FDA sweeping new powers based on vague language, and his latest proposal is more of the same.

This bill MUST be stopped.

Here is more information from The Alliance For Natural Health – the original article can be found here.

Sen. Durbin’s disingenuous “Dietary Supplement Labeling Act,” which we told you about last week, needs to be defeated. Please contact your senators!

The bill, S.1310, is finally available for viewing by the American public. It exploits the Lazy Cakes incident, where a rogue food company decided to put melatonin into brownies and allowed them to be sold to children. But that case was about the illegal actions of a food manufacturer, whereas this bill is simply another attempt to limit your access to dietary supplements.

The proposed law trusts the FDA and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to decide what levels and combinations of dietary ingredients are considered safe and what aren’t. Given the FDA’s profound bias against supplements, and the skewed, anti-science recommendations of the IOM’s recent vitamin D report, these are hardly trustworthy sources of guidance!

If the bill is passed, neither the FDA nor the IOM will even be subject to any clear standards. They can just make it all up as they go along. Their judgments can be completely arbitrary.

The whole thrust of British and American constitutional history is telling the government it can’t just do anything it likes. There must be written standards and rules encoded in law. The government must follow those standards and rules like anyone else. It can’t just be arbitrary.

Durbin’s bill in other sections just reinvents the wheel, authorizing the FDA to do what it is already authorized to do, but with vague new language that could prove troublesome later. This isn’t needed. The FDA is fully empowered to enforce the many laws and regulations which already exist—provided by DSHEA, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, and Good Manufacturing Practices guidelines.

Sen. Durbin’s bill needs to be defeated. Period. That said, it’s a bill that modifies the procedures set forth by DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. And any bill that modifies the procedures set up by DSHEA should have at least two elements that are not in Durbin’s bill. It must:

• uphold the right to free speech about the science and health benefits of dietary supplements, and
• create a new agency under Health and Human Services dedicated to overseeing nutritional supplements.

FDA is supposed to be concerned with food and drugs; supplements are their own category, utterly different from either food or drugs, so they should not fall under the same agency’s administrative power. This is especially important since the FDA is so hostile to supplements and so beholden to drug companies.

Both the Durbin bill and the dangerous FDA’s proposed NDI guidance (see our new article on NDIs in this issue) seek to give the FDA broad new authority to disapprove supplements or supplement ingredients on totally arbitrary grounds, with no rules or standards. If allowed to stand, over time this will drastically reduce the number of supplements and supplement potencies, raise prices substantially, injure our ability to take care of our health, raise healthcare costs, stifle supplement innovation, and cost millions of jobs in the supplement industry.

For now, though, the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act needs to be defeated. S.1310 has been referred to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for further deliberation. If you have not done so already, please contact your senators and representative to voice your opposition to this bill. Please take a moment to send your message now.

TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS:

Click THIS LINK to go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.