The State of Health Freedom in this Election Year

Also posted at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=730

Natural Solutions - Your Health, Your Choice

Introduction

Many Americans are concerned by continuing government threats to their Health Freedom and their right to choose what they eat and what therapies, treatments or prevention they choose for their health concerns. They understand that recent moves by international agencies, like the World Food Code (Codex Alimentarius), the North American Union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), aided and abetted by the US government through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are immediate threats to their right to buy the nutrients they want or to patronize the advanced, alternative and complementary healthcare providers they choose for the health options in which they personally believe.* [Natural Solution Foundation offers education and information about natural solutions to social and policy issues; it does not support specific candidates nor lobby.]

Part of the educational mission of the Foundation is to show that government intervention in our health care choices leads to bad health care decisions and to propose protection of personal Freedom as the better choice. The solutions to threats to our health and freedom are natural solutions.

Preserving Health Freedom

Many patriotic Americans have been in the forefront of preserving and defending Health Freedom. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, for example, called the FDA draft CAM Guidance “…an abuse of FDA power…” He opposed increasing the FDA’s legal powers when he voted against HR 2900 because he knows the FDA has consistently failed to protect the public from dangerous drugs, a leading killer of Americans even when properly used. FDA’s policies waste taxpayers money while attacking foods and dietary supplements that US law says should be considered safe and which have no credible deaths associated with them!

We agree with Dr. Paul’s Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2117 which assures Americans that they can receive truthful health information about supplements and natural remedies. The FDA wants to eliminate the rights of Americans to have that information. Libertarians like Dr. Paul have been fighting for American health freedoms for decades. In 1994 Millions of Americans joined Dr. Paul and forced an unwilling Congress to unanimously pass DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act), a law which said supplements, because they are foods, should be generally regarded as safe and which led to a great increase in the availability of high quality and high potency supplements and remedies.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – a failed agency

Today the Big Pharma funded and controlled FDA is working diligently to curtail information and access to herbs and supplements, and to suppress safe, effective alternatives for deadly, debilitating and dangerous diseases. It has failed to protect our food supply and continues to degrade our access to good nutrition and natural dietary supplements.

A recent study of the FDA concludes:

1) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.
2) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability.
3) The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate.
4) FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.
5) The development of medical products based on “new science” cannot be adequately regulated by the FDA.
6) There is insufficient capacity in modeling risk assessment and analysis.
7) The FDA science agenda lacks a coherent structure and vision, as well as effective coordination and prioritization.
8) The FDA has substantial recruitment and retention challenges.
9) The FDA has an inadequate and ineffective program for scientist performance.
10) The FDA has not taken sufficient advantage of external and internal collaborations.
11) The FDA lacks the information science capability and information infrastructure to fulfill is regulatory mandate.
12) The FDA cannot provide the information infrastructure support to regulate products based on new science.

[From: the November 2007 Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, FDA Science and Mission at Risk]

It is time to consider divesting the pharmaceutical industry dominated FDA of its food oversight authority. Did Congress make a mistake in the 1930s when it created one agency to oversee foods, drugs and medical devices? It is time to correct that mistake.

Genetically Modified and Other Product Labeling

The Foundation notes the strong public support for genetically modified organism GMO) labeling.

The FDA is conducting the world’s largest experiment on the American people — without either their knowledge or consent. in the absence of any safety testing or review, it permits unlabeled genetically modified (GM or “Frankenfood”) in America’s food supply and explicitly refuses to allow it to be labeled as such since it says that the truth would be “false and misleading” to the majority of US consumers who want GM labeling and say they would not eat GM food if they had a choice about it**. GM food is highly questionable scientifically.

By withholding information on what is, and what is not genetically modified, the FDA is simultaneously adulterating America’s food supply (which may be 60% GM foods) and taking away the right of Americans to choose whether they want to be part of an experiment for which they have not signed up and which may, in the long run, cost them their lives, the ability to have children, give them cancer and poison the environment for all future generations. Not only is the FDA’s biotech-friendly decision dangerous, it is also illegal since withholding this information is against the law in this country. As the Supreme Court said in the landmark Thompson case,

“We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making bad decisions with the information.”

(Thompson v. Western States Medical Center - 01-344, decided on April 29, 2002 - 535 U.S. 357)

Should the government prevent truthful and not misleading labeling of GM ingredients and GM Free products? We think not.

The FDA permits the unlabeled irradiation of all foods in supposed compliance with Codex. Americans should have the right to chose non-irradiated foods if they want to avoid the known health hazards associated with so-called “cold pasteurization”. Without labeling, they do not have this right. We therefore call upon the government to stop preventing truthful and not misleading labeling of irradiated free products.

Complementary and Alternative Health Care Options

Many Americans understand that natural “wellness care” therapies are safe, effective and inexpensive compared to pharmaceutical “illness care” options and demand the right to purchase advanced therapies for cancer, arthritis, diabetes, attention deficit disorder, depression, and other conditions and diseases, without FDA interference. People demand the right to choose thei own health care options and take their own responsibility for those choices.

Forced Vaccinations

Americans are shocked over recent state and federal moves to mandate ever more multiple vaccinations (with untested interactions). They reject the CDC (Center for Disease Control) position that the pharmaceutical industry does not have to list mercury and other harmful vaccination ingredients which remain in even so-called “mercury free” vaccines in “trace” amounts that the World Health Organization (WHO) says are dangerous even in trace amounts.

We note horrid spectacle of thousands of children and parents forced into the court house in Prince Georges County, Maryland, November 2007, where the children were vaccinated (sometimes a second time since the schools had lost their records) by a state’s attorney who uses Maryland’s exemption laws for his own children’s protection, to assure that county school system higher federal and state aid. With police lines and police dogs and armed guards (but no doctors to ask if the children had previous adverse reactions) many Americans were shocked and this event has given rise to a national movement to protect and enhance religious and philosophical vaccination exemption laws.

See, for example, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination/

Health Freedom advocates support the broadest exemption laws for all Americans.

They reject the uninsurable risk of mandated vaccination and the Federal government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program which taxes parents to protect pharmaceutical profits and has paid over $2 billion dollars to the families of children who have been killed and maimed by mandated vaccinations.

Personal Privacy

Americans understand that government agencies increasingly invade personal decisions, taking custody of children away from parents who do not want to vaccinate or medicate them and forcing drugs on the elderly and other vulnerable populations.

They resent secret government access to their medical records under HIPPA and homeland security provisions which allow the government to invade their lab results and other records, checking up on diabetic’s blood sugar levels, for example and identifying doctors who do not prescribe drugs as “practicing substandard care” while paying them less money for their supposedly “substandard” treatment.

Americans are angry that the FDA and EPA have canceled their right of informed consent about human experimentation for special populations (e.g., prisoners, children in foster care) and whole populations — as long as there is secret notification of local police forces 30 days before exposing Americans to radiological, biological, frequency chemical or other experimental hazards.

The American people know that radio frequency identification (RFID) and implantable chips are planned for them. They do not want to be forced to accept RFID and chipping intrusions which would reveal all of their medical and financial information to anyone with a swipe device.

They demand a return to traditional American values of personal privacy and health care choice.

Health Freedom is an Individual Right

Health Freedom is an issue that is supported by a majority of Americans. They want a new pro-freedom policy at the FDA, EPA and other government agencies which are currently threatening both the health and the freedom of Americans.

A pro-health freedom public policy would mean that America would no longer be forced into compliance with international agencies serving private corporate agendas (this is euphemistically called “harmonization”).

Americans will, once again, lead the world toward greater personal choice in Health Care by the example of the freedoms our people will enjoy.

Health Freedom Blog – 07/18/08
Prepared by Ralph Fucetola JD
Trustee – Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
ralph.fucetola@usa.net
www.vitaminlawyer.com

* See: www.HealthFreedomUsa.org

** April 2008 CBS – NY Times Poll, showed 87% want GM labeling; 57% do not want to eat GM products - http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm.