Another article on drugs being promoted as "good"
for you while supplements may be bad *if not
regulated by the government.

"It's all about words" (below)is a good way to
summary what is happpening to politics too in
general, those few second sound bits on
politicians and policies before Congress (like
medicare reform)played OVER AND OVER again.
Slick marketing practices coming out of Harvard
and Wharton being used on television not only
selling Ivory soap but also now selling the
President, our Congresspeople and the legislation
they want to pass, promoting it directly to The
People, via television, as a paid-for ad, hoping
The People will in turn press the issue with
their Congressman, and they do.

There is legislation right now before Congress
and also in Europe to bann our access to vitamin
supplements through regulating industry through
FDA. Problem is the FDA hasn't been doing a good
job for the *public with drugs, allowing Serzone,
which has killed teens causing liver failure and
other lapses of judgement.

Words

By Mary Starrett
July 2, 2004
NewsWithViews.com
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug
used by mankind" --
Rudyard Kipling

Listen closely. Read between the lines. You are
being convinced,
slowly and deliberately that vitamin supplements
are dangerous and
that pharmaceutical drugs are always your best
bet.

Perhaps you've become aware of this upside-down
logic. If not, I
offer you a few examples of how the masses are
being systematically
brain-washed. Keep these examples in mind , it
won't be long before
you're noticing some yourself.

Recently ABC News ran a rather lengthy piece
about how "dangerous"
certain common herbal supplements are. The case
in point was woman
who'd had a kidney transplant. She took an herbal

supplement
containing the age-old Black Cohosh root and
whammo! She became
deathly ill. What ABC didn't discuss was that
people who've had an
organ transplant have compromised systems that
even too much water or
table salt plays havoc with. Never mind that. The

not -so-subtle
point the network was making was this: Be afraid,

be very afraid of
anything the pharmaceutical companies don't make
a profit from!

This past week The Wall Street Journal screamed
out headlines: "Watch
Out For Serious Interactions When Taking Drugs,
and Herbs".

The story reported " a wave of recent studies is
sparking concern
about the dangers of taking herbal supplements"
The article went on
to list the dangers of combining common herbal
supplements with
prescription drugs. Instead of pointing out that
pharmaceuticals
cause the deaths each year of over 100,000
people, media attention
focuses on the "dangers" of herbs people have
been taking to help
heal their bodies for centuries.

What is perhaps most telling about why these
types of stories are
hitting print and broadcast with greater
frequency is simply this:
Vitamins and herbal supplements bring in well
over $20 billion
dollars a year (my inclusion: explosive since
people have been swapping stories about being
helped by then over the internet). The drug
companies want a piece
of the action (in insertion: it is taking money
out away from drug companies because people are
switching from their high prices drugs to herbs
as an alternative).
Therefore, expect to see more and more attention
focused on
the "danger"' of vitamins. The next logical step
will be the
prescribing of these natural substances to better

"protect" the
consumer. Once this happens, as it has in several

other countries,
what were once easily-available non-prescription,

age-old healing
substances like Ginko Biloba or St. John's Wort
or even Vitamin C
will then become available only if a doctor
prescribes them. Since
the vast majority of medical doctors in the
United States hold little
store by the less-invasive natural remedies this
does not bode well
for those of us who subscribe to the belief that
the body can and
will heal itself if given the right nutritional
support.

The Wall Street Journal story said "the growing
interest in herb-drug
interactions comes as more Americans are popping
herbal
medications." "Popping."

That's an interesting choice of words. In an era
where we are
encouraged to take a pill ("pop" one, if you
will) for everything
from heartburn ("esophageal reflux disease") to
shyness ("social
anxiety disorder") to normal childhood energy
levels ("attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder") it seems odd
that taking SUPPLEMENTS
should be referred to as "popping." Why is it
that term is never used
to describe the taking of prescription drugs?

Bayer (the pharmaceutical company now in the
midst of trying to
settle unprecedented numbers of wildly expensive
lawsuits over deaths
related to its cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol)
now labels its
(potentially toxic) antibiotic Cipro with
cautions against pairing
the drug with calcium-fortified orange juice! It
would seem the
public would be better served all around with
honest assessments of
the dangers inherent in these drugs themselves-
with or without the
juice chaser!

While anything paired with anything (grapefruit
juice and certain
heart medications) can be dangerous, the big
picture is that all of a
sudden "studies" showing the danger of things
like Vitamin C
(recently debunked) and Ginseng are substantively

disingenuous.

What is at the core of these misleading "studies"

and the media
frenzies that inevitably follow is a commission
established 40 years
ago by the World Health Organization to set
"upper limits" of
supplements. In other words a world-wide goon
squad is now working on
determining just how much Vitamin C you should be

allowed to take.
The Codex Alimentarius gang isn't working on
getting the word out
about how damaging (FDA approved!) food additives

like Aspartame and
MSG areno! Neither are they alerting consumers
to the horrific side
effects of mercury-containing vaccines, or the
very real possibility
of having a stroke while taking Hormone
Replacement Therapy. Codex is
working on making sure you won't have access to
too much Vitamin
Cwithout a prescription.

The Dear Abby advice column (now written by
Jeanne Philips, daughter
of the late columnist Abigail Van Buren) today
printed a letter from
a reader (uh huh) that went like this:

"Dear Abby, Our marriage was wonderful until my
wife cut back on her
Premarinnow her libido is shot. I'm really
sufferingis there an
alternative to splitting up?"

It was signed: "Desperate in Arizona" Dear Abby,
like Peter Jennings,
like countless other media sock puppets are
nothing more than
mouthpieces for a highly-propagandizing
pharmaceutical industry. This
wasn't even a disguised attempt at spin- damage
control for a drug
(manufactured from PRE(gnant) MA(re) u RIN(e).
That's right , the
drug Premarin ( a hormone replacement drug in a
class of drugs shown
to cause serious risk of stroke in menopausal
women) is in fact made
from horse urine.

The reason this little "letter" made it into an
advice column with
wide readership? It's elementary. Recently the
drug companies
suffered a major setback when news of the
life-threatening side
effects associated with HRT came out.

You may also have seen similar damage control
stories on the network
news which purported to "debunk" studies showing
dangers of suicide
and suicide ideation among those who take
antidepressants.

It's all about protecting the billions the drug
giants make by lying
to consumers. It starts to make even more sense
when you read about
President George Bush's initiative to "screen"
Americans for mental
illness .Called New Frontiers, the object of the
game here is to give
the pharmaceutical companies more market share.
In a most unholy
political-pharmaceutical alliance, the drug
companies have been
highly-connected to the Bush family for 3
generations. The elder Bush
served on the board of Eli Lily and President
Bush appointed an Eli
Lily CEO (Sidney Taurel) to the Department of
Homeland Security. How
the initiative works is simply to convince more
people they need to
be on psychiatric medication. The well-
documented dangers inherent
with these types of drugs, for obvious reasons,
aren't being
discussed in The Wall Street Journal or on ABC
News.

It shouldn't surprise you to note that the
television networks and
newspapers running stories about ' killer' herbs
and vitamins are
chock-full of ads for prescription drugs.

Rudyard Kipling was right Words are, indeed the
most powerful drug
used by mankind Add newspeak to the mix and what

was healthful has
now become "dangerous" what is inherently toxic
has now become good
for you.

And it's all about the $20 billion.

2004 Mary Starrett - All Rights Reserved


There is legislation now pending in both Europe
and the US to put vitamin/mineral/herbal
supplements under the control of the FDA. If you
get a chance, write to your Congressperson and
tell them that you don't want these supplements
put under FDA control.






__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail