Immediate grassroots action is needed RIGHT NOW to oppose the bad AER
bill because the Pharma Dominated NPA (Natural Products Assn)
(formerly NNFA) just sent a HUGE E-Blitz out to every vitamin
company, and every health food store in the country to try to push
this TROJAN HORSE legislation.

This huge push by NPA threatens to blow the innovative sector of the
supplement industry SKY HIGH, and you MUST contact congress per the
alert below AND network this info for ALL YOU'RE WORTH!!

Please call your family, friends, neighbors about this and URGE them
to join you in taking action! Copy the article below. Take it to
every health food store within a 50 mile radius of your home and
strongly urge the owner to QUIT NPA (formerly NNFA). Use your
strongest powers of persuasion to get all the staff in the health
food stores to read Byron's superb article below.

If you lack time right now to read it, at least skim through to the
part where with ONE MOUSE CLICK you can TAKE ACTION, then print it
out and keep it by the toilet so you can read it while sitting on the
throne... but PLEASE READ IT- this one is a MUST READ.

Donations needed to send IAHF back to DC: IAHF needs to return to DC
after the lame duck session to continue opposition to the bad AER
bill and also for ongoing work against the FDA's Trilateral
Cooperation Charter. For $25. we'll send a copy of Byron's book Fight
for Your Health- Exposing FDA's Betrayal of America. For $50. we'll
send the book, plus Kevin Miller's documentary film "We Become
Silent" about the Codex vitamin issue.For $100. we'll send the above
+ an IAHF Bumper Sticker. For $500. we'll send the above + an
autographed photo of John Hammell swimming in a hole cut in the ice
of a frozen pond. Please help us get back to DC so we can do our
work! IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd., Point Roberts WA 98281 or via
paypal : [url=http://www.iahf.com]http://www.iahf.com[/url] click to
enter site, see paypal link on top of scrollbar inside the site.

[url=http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron16.htm]
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron16.htm[/url]

BIG PHARMA TROJAN HORSES PERMEATE SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY

By Byron J. Richards, CCN

December 5, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

Today I received an e-mail from the Natural Products Association
(NPA) asking me to support the Dietary Supplement and Non-
Prescription Drug Consumer Protection Act (the "AER bill").
Apparently they do not know I am one of the most outspoken critics of
this legislation. I have already posted two articles on this topic
for NWV, one in July and one in November. The NPA, formerly the NNFA
(National Nutritional Foods Association), is the largest trade
association for ingredient suppliers and health food stores. This
group, along with CRN (the Council for Responsible Nutrition) has
been taken over by Big Pharma and is selling out the supplement
industry.

You as a consumer must weigh in on this subject before it is too
late. Your options for effective natural solutions are in serious
jeopardy. Immediate action is required to defend health freedom and
your right to have therapeutic choices in natural health options.

Unfortunately, it is up to "we the American people" to save the
supplement industry from traitorous groups pretending to be on your
side. There is a serious attempt underway to push this bill through
prior to the close of the lame duck session (apparently to end on
December 8). Click here to take action now, tell your congressional
leaders to vote no on S. 3546/H.R. 6168.

This is what the December 4, 2006, NPA e-mail stated:

We're contacting you because an important bill may soon be voted on
in Congress. This legislation, which the Natural Products
Association – along with the other leading dietary supplement trade
groups – supports, is, S. 3546 in the Senate and H.R. 6168 in the
House of Representatives.

Yes, these are the names of the bills and they are rotten to the core
for consumers and the supplement industry.

Contrary to what you may have heard, this legislation will not affect
the availability of dietary supplements or lead to closures of health
food stores.

Wrong, an outright lie! This legislation may drastically reduce the
availability of therapeutic supplements by linking them with adverse
effects actually caused by drugs. True, health food stores are not
likely to close. They will keep selling the lower quality Big Pharma
brands, like One-A-Day (Bayer) and Centrum (Wyeth). About 80% of the
supplement market is not really concerned about your health; this
includes big box stores, most network marketing companies, drug
stores, super markets, and internet fly-by-night operations. Big
Pharma knows these brands pose no competition to their monopolistic
drug cartel. Rather, Big Pharma wants all effective nutrition off the
market – the really great products that fix diabetes, resolve
depression, prevent heart disease, enable weight loss, fix
fibromyalgia, and help a person survive cancer treatment. Big Pharma
wants a sick America and will do anything to keep people in poor
health and on m ultiple toxic drugs.

It's also important to remember that the legislation would require
only serious – such as life threatening– experiences, not just any
complaint, to be reported. And keep in mind that the government
already tracks adverse experiences that could be related to dietary
supplements.

The FDA is currently unable to properly track adverse events caused
by drugs and does not even know which drugs are safe. Over 100,000
Americans are killed each year by drugs, and at least 3 million are
injured so severely it requires hospitalization. The FDA already has
an adequate MedWatch reporting system for serious adverse events for
dietary supplements. The proposed bill calls for supplement
manufacturers to keep track of all complaints any person reports,
serious or not, a standard far stricter than truly dangerous drugs!
This is absolutely absurd.

If such legislation becomes law it will be used as a vehicle for the
FDA to remove supplements from the market based on hearsay data.
There is no mechanism in place for any supplement company to collect
health information on the person reporting, including existing
medications or health history. This means the legislation can and
will be used as a witch hunt against effective natural options for
health. Certainly, the lawyers at NPA and those supporting this bill
are licking their chops at all the business this legislation will
generate for them.

What's new is that manufacturers who get reports of consumers being
seriously harmed by their products can't keep them secret. While we
believe such occurrences are extremely rare, if they do happen,
reporting is the right thing to do.

True serious adverse events from dietary supplements are extremely
rare and already covered by MedWatch. Any medical doctor or patient
believing a supplement has injured them can easily fill out a
MedWatch form. No one has any objection to serious AER reporting.
That is not what this bill is really all about. It is about gutting
DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994), the
legislation that enables American consumers to have more options for
health than in any other country in the world. By implying there is a
safety problem (which there isn't) and making supplement companies
defend themselves, the burden of proof is shifted from the FDA to
supplement companies, thereby drastically changing existing law in
favor of Big Pharma and away from access to natural health options
granted by DSHEA. The FDA already does what it can to discriminate
against < font face="georgia,palatino" size="4">small and innovative
companies.

If H.R. 6168 and S. 3546 are passed and become law, they will amend
the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to require the reporting
of "serious" adverse events for both over the counter (OTC) drugs and
dietary supplements to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

That is true. However, there is no way to differentiate between drug-
drug interactions, drug-nutrient interactions, or food poisoning,
meaning there is no way to accurately judge what is causing a
problem. Furthermore, the real issue is the safety of drugs, not
supplements. Until the FDA has a working system for drug safety,
there is no way for the FDA to judge supplement safety. There is a
reason the Institute of Medicine reported that the FDA is
dysfunctional and not able to protect Americans from harm. Its
drugs!!!! – not vitamins.

While the Natural Products Association understands that the mandatory
reporting requirements of the AER bill will add to manufacturers'
record keeping responsibilities, we believe the bill will benefit the
industry in the long run.

This opinion must be coming from the lawyers that stand to make a
fortune defending supplement companies from frivolous attacks
relating to non-serious adverse events. Also, doctors will attempt to
blame vitamins for the devastating side effects of their commonly
prescribed medications. Dangerous drugs, like statins, are in
widespread use and making many Americans very ill and even causing
premature death. When someone has heart failure from taking statins,
doctors will try to blame it on vitamin E. It would be a major
travesty to pass legislation that allows the side effects of
dangerous drugs to be reported in such as way as to remove safe and
effective supplements from the market. The Big Pharma goal is to
maintain its monopoly at any cost. It is an agenda based on drug
sales and a callous disregard for human life.

First, by helping to change the perception by critics of the dietary
supplement industry that it is not well regulated.

This is the Big Lie. The truth is that supplements are safer than
food. Supplements are not drugs. Critics of the dietary supplement
industry are all getting a pile of money from Big Pharma and they
pretend to be upset about network marketing companies making bogus
health claims, companies with a history of paying off Senators Hatch
and Harkin for protection. Since most of these companies that
seemingly cause problems are members of CRN and NNFA, why don't these
junk trade organizations clean up their own members? There is no need
to put out of business the many nutritional companies providing a
true quality service to millions of Americans in true need of real
help, unless of course you are simply trying to put your own
competition out of business.

Second, over time, the recordkeeping and reporting requirements will
substantiate what many in the industry have been saying all along –
that the safety record of dietary supplements is exemplary,
especially when compared to other health-related products.

Obviously, true serious AERs will be very infrequent, unlike the
several thousand people dying each week at the hands of Big Pharma.
However, the recordkeeping requirement for non-serious adverse events
opens the door for unlimited FDA harassment of any company. Since the
FDA is currently bought and paid for by Big Pharma, that is a huge
problem.

Ultimately, safety reporting is the right thing to do for a
responsible industry that puts consumers first.

In a world where Big Pharma and the FDA have spent decades trying to
obliterate competition, such a naïve statement is designed to appeal
to "reasonableness" and "political correctness." NPA has no concept
of integrity to the US Constitution or what makes America great. If
anyone wants to believe the utopian garbage put forth by NPA, try to
get the statement to apply to Big Pharma.

The e-mail is then signed by the Natural Products Association. Yes,
not one person in this pathetic group had the nerve to put their name
on this embarrassing e-mail. I wonder who wrote it. Was it Senator
Hatch's younger son who works at NPA? Was it Senator Hatch's older
son who lobbies for NPA? Or was it one of the Big Pharma members
sitting on the NPA board? Companies supporting this horrid
legislation and the related anti-American globalization agenda of
Codex Alimentarius include Mannatech, Herbalife, Shacklee, Now Foods,
Dr. Weil Vitamins, Jarrow, and many more.

Besides faxing, phoning, and e-mailing Congress to vote no on S.3546,
any person purchasing supplements should demand that whomever they
buy supplements from is not a member of CRN or NPA. Health food
stores and ingredient suppliers should withdraw from these bogus Big
Pharma pro-globalization organizations. If you need more facts to
convince you of the magnitude of this problem, read my book Fight for
Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America. If you buy
supplements from such companies or stores then answer this simple
question: why are you paying money to be shot in the back?

© 2006 Truth in Wellness, LLC - All Rights Reserved

For Health Freedom, John C. Hammell, President International
Advocates for Health Freedom 556 Boundary Bay Road Point Roberts, WA
98281-8702 USA [url=http://www.iahf.com]http://www.iahf.com[/url]
[Email]jham@...[/Email] 800-333-2553 N.America 360-945-0352 World