Natural Means Cure
Congress mandated, in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), that all bottles of vitamins and other dietary supplements include the following disclaimer:
"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
In recent days, with the "Ebola Outbreak" breaking out into an "epidemic" and perhaps soon, a "pandemic" the words "treat, cure or prevent..." have been bandied about in the blogisphere and on the mass media. People are rightfully concerned about this increasingly virulent disease.
We at Natural Solutions Foundation have been accused in some quarters of verging on promoting "bogus cures" for the hemorrhagic viral diseases due to Dr. Rima's forthright championing of the virtues of Nano Silver to those who would voluntarily follow her advice. [1] Even that most establishment of all media, the NY Times, castigated Dr. Rima and has refused to retract factually erroneous statements.[2]
So what if we claim that "Natural means can cure disease."? Why should that statement not have the same speech protection that any other expressive association statement that Dr. Rima might make? Such as, "Vaccines contain dangerous toxins and can trigger autism or infertility." Why is the first statement about a "bogus cure" while the second is just an opinion?
Is it because in the first, Dr. Rima has the means to effect change, namely, the very Nano Silver that was tested through the Defense Threat Research Agency in vitro against Ebola.[3] Does Dr. Rima's name and recommendation on The Silver Solution label render her subject to prior censorship by the FDA under authority from Congress? In the second example above, there is no Dr. Rima Recommends product. Does that make any difference? I don't read the First Amendment to make any exceptions for the injunction that "Congress shall make no law..."
What authority does Congress have to mandate certain speech about voluntarily chosen health choices? Does that authority change when Congress is concerned about a "dangerous" (at least when inhaled) substance such as tobacco? Or a supposedly "harmful" substance such as THC hemp? Foods are generally deemed safe when used as directed.
Although the courts have tried to parse a convoluted line between "permitted" speech and something else ("un-permitted speech"? "commercial speech"? "obscene speech"?...) they have never found any qualifying language in the First Amendment that might make "no law" mean something else.
Thus in my humble opinion, Congress has no authority to mandate or censor speech. Or as a retired jurist of my acquaintance put it: "The sine qua non of compelled speech is truth..." Congress may have power to compel speech, but it must be true factual speech. Congress has no constitutional authority to compel me to express an opinion I do not have, such as for what use I may "intend" a particular nutrient.
The Supreme Court may be moving in that direction. Consider the 2002 case of Thompson vs Western States. There the issue was whether Congress could censor what Compounding Pharmacists said about their products. Here is what the Court said:
"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last - not first - resort."
"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."
"Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring each compounded drug to be labeled with a warning that the drug had not undergone FDA testing and that its risks were unknown."
In 1995 I handled the DHEA cases [4], when two Life Extension Foundation members were accused of importing a supposed "controlled substance" when they bought DHEA from Europe. In the case that completed the litigation over the issue the Judge issued an order that DHEA, which is indigenous to the human body, was not a controlled substance. Thus we can conclude that nutrients like silver or cannabidiol, which occur naturally in the body, are not subject to police power restrictions.
If an educated professional like Dr. Rima chooses to assert that Nano Silver "cures" Ebola, it is not within the power of Congress to forbid her speech. It just so happens that we've been careful to avoid medical-legal "terms of art" (like "treat" and "cure") that might cause discontent among the public health authorities. But even our careful use of language, by referring not to "treating" but rather to "therapies" [5] that may benefit seems to be interpreted by some as offering "bogus cures."
Maybe, therefore, it is time to reassert the right of every individual to speak their own truth about health. It's time to "take back" the word "cure."
Pharmaceutical drugs do not "cure." They poison enzyme systems to suppress disease symptoms. Natural means, to the contrary, support the body's native ability to defend against invasion. If a person is in good health and has proper nourishment and rest, absent toxins, stress and other deleterious circumstances, we generally can overcome health challenges.
That is why a representative group of Health Freedom Advocates met in 2000 to state, in the Wilton Declaration (and expanded in subsequent Declarations):
The time has come for healers and those they seek to help to... Assert our right to heal and be healed... We declare our independence from bureaucratic restrictions on our fundamental human rights ... To defend these basic human rights and the healers, physicians and other practitioners alike, who we freely choose to help us achieve and maintain health. . ." [6]
The time has more than come... with what General Bert Stubblebine has called the "perfect storm" [7] of toxic assaults on our health, of which the emerging viral diseases may be a result, our lives and the future of our species on this world depend on it.
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Important Legal Disclosures Here.
[1] http://drrimatruthreports.com/the-power-of-ten-nano-silver-ebola-and-you/
[1] http://drrimatruthreports.com/the-power-of-ten-nano-silver-ebola-and-you/
