Health action alert: FDA extending its powers

2007-04-22

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.newstarget.com/021789.html

Originally published April 11 2007

Health freedom action alert: FDA attempting to regulate supplements, herbs and 
juices as "drugs"

by Mike Adams

When it comes to health freedom, this is the FDA's end game. A new FDA 
"guidance" document, published on the FDA's website, reveals plans to reclassify
virtually all vitamins, supplements, herbs and even vegetable juices as 
FDA-regulated drugs. Massage oils and massage rocks will be classified as 
"medical devices" and require FDA approval. The document is called Docket No. 
2006D-0480. Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative 
Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA is accepting public comments on the docket until April 30th. They tried 
to sneak this under the radar, but word got out and now the natural health 
community is up in arms over this rule. If you wish to protect your access to 
nutritional supplements, herbs, essential oils, homeopathic medicine or any 
other "complementary" or "alternative" modality, it is crucial that you take 
action to post your comments with the FDA right now and write your 
representatives in Washington to put a stop to this outrageous effort to destroy
natural medicine. (And be sure to really write them. Just sending an email has 
virtually no impact compared to writing a physical letter in your own words.)

Click here for the direct link to the FDA's comment posting page for this 
docket.

This move by the FDA is designed to once and for all destroy the 1994 DSHEA law 
that has made supplements "legal" while eliminating nutritional supplements and 
natural medicine from the United States, ensuring monopoly profits and control 
by drug companies and the FDA. It is the latest action item by the FDA / Big 
Pharma conspiracy that will not stop until health freedom has been abolished, 
drug companies rule the nation, and every citizen is diagnosied with a 
fictitious disease and drugged up on monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals.

FDA "experts" will decide what's a drug or medical device

Under these proposed guidelines, FDA "experts" (the same corrupt officials who 
reapproved Vioxx after it killed over 50,000 Americans) will decide whether 
herbs, supplements, vitamins or simple devices like massage stones are to be 
regulated as drugs and medical devices. If the FDA experts, in their infinite 
wisdom, decide that these things are to be reclassified, they will essentially 
be outlawed, stripped from the shelves, and regulated out of existence. Anyone 
who dares to manufacture, promote or sell such products may be branded a 
criminal and rounded up by armed FDA agents who have a well established history 
of suppressing natural medicine.

I've documented much of the criminal history of the FDA in my recent book, 
Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them,
which suddenly seems even more relevant today than when I wrote it. In that 
book, I documented the FDA ordered book burnings, the raids on vitamin shops, 
the kidnapping of natural health practitioners, the threats, intimidation and 
oppression tactics that have been used to suppress natural medicine for nearly a
hundred years now. And now, with this CAM Products Regulation effort, the FDA is
about to deal a final, fatal blow to the alternative medicine industry, 
outlawing nutritional supplements, functional foods, homeopathy and natural 
therapies all at once.

This is not a drill. It really is time to be alarmed. Nothing else I've written 
about this year is as important as this sinister plot to destroy natural 
medicine and force the American population to resort to dangerous prescription 
medications sold at monopoly prices under a system of medical tyranny.

Your access to vitamins, supplements, herbs, and even energy medicine modalities
is now directly threatened, and you have until April 30 to make your voice 
heard.

Action items
First, read the document yourself. Click here for the PDF version.

Take special care to notice the following text, taken directly from the FDA's 
own document: (italicized text is from the FDA, with my own translation 
following)

"...a product used in a CAM therapy or practice may be subject to regulation as 
a biological product, cosmetic, drug, device, or food (including food additives 
and dietary supplements) under the act or the PHS Act. Second, neither the act 
nor the PHS Act exempts CAM products from regulation."

Translation: Anything used in any system of medicine may now be regulated as a 
drug or medical device by the FDA. This includes a biofeedback machine, 
acupuncture needles, a cup of herbal tea, massage oil, a glass of vegetable 
juice or even a bottle of water.

"...if a person decides to produce and sell raw vegetable juice for use in juice
therapy to promote optimal health... [and] if the juice therapy is intended for 
use as part of a disease treatment regimen instead of for the general wellness, 
the vegetable juice would also be subject to regulation as a drug under the 
Act."

Translation: Raw vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug and must be FDA 
approved as a drug if it has any health effect whatsoever. Handing a cup of raw 
vegetable juice to someone and telling them it's good for the detoxification of 
their liver will get you arrested for practicing medicine without a license and 
promoting an "unapproved drug."

..."biologically based practices" includes, but is not limited to, botanicals, 
animal-derived extracts, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, proteins,
prebiotics and probiotics: whole diets, and "functional foods". ...a botanical 
product intended for use in treating a disease would generally be regulated as a
drug." ..."functional foods" may be subject to FDA regulation as foods, dietary 
supplements, or drugs under the Act.

Translation: All foods, supplements, superfoods and functional foods may be 
reclassified as drugs by the FDA, then regulated off the market.

If... the manipulative and body-based practices involve the use of equipment 
(such as massage devices) or the application of a product (such as a lotion, 
cream, or oil) to the skin or other parts of the body, those products may be 
subject to regulation under the Act."

Translation: Massage oils and creams will be regulated as "drugs" and 
acupuncture needles as "medical devices." Taking this absurdity one step 
further, massage therapists who use their fingers to touch patients may have 
their fingers regulated as "medical devices" and be accused of practicing 
medicine for merely touching patients.

Things that will be regulated out of existence

It is very clear that the FDA is intending to regulate and ultimately destroy 
the entire CAM industry (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Based on the 
explanations in the FDA's own document, the following things are likely to 
occur:

€ All vitamins, nutritional supplements and functional foods will be stripped of
their structure & function claims, reducing them to empty labels where virtually
nothing at all is allowed to be stated.

€ Vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug. Raw juice retreats will be raided
or shut down.

€ Growing and selling common garden herbs will get you arrested as a drug 
dealer.

  € Massage oils and handheld massagers will be regulated as "medical devices."

€ Yoga props, pilates machines and weight machines will be regulated as "medical
devices" and require FDA approval before being sold or used.

  € Raw sprouts and other anti-cancer foods will be regulated as drugs.

  € Bottled water that "treats" dehydration will be regulated as a drug.

€ Massage therapists who use hot rocks as part of their therapy will have the 
ROCKS regulated as medical devices! (It's true. The FDA will actually look at a 
pile of rocks and declare, "Those are medical devices!")

€ Functional foods, supplements, vitamins and homeopathic remedies will 
disappear from store shelves, pending FDA "review." (The only things remaining 
will be processed junk foods and pharmaceuticals, which is exactly what Big 
Business wants.)

€ Therapeutic tea products, such as green tea, will be outlawed and confiscated.

€ Vitamin store owners will be arrested and prosecuted for "practicing medicine 
without a license."

€ Citizens owning personal inventories of "unapproved drugs" (vitamins and 
herbs) may have their homes raided at gunpoint and their inventories confiscated
by armed law enforcement agents.

€ The importation of herbs and functional foods from all countries may be 
banned.

Keep in mind that the FDA is the same agency that:
  € Wants to label irradiated foods as "pasteurized."
€ Voted to put the deadly drug Vioxx back on the market after tens of thousands 
of deaths, even after its own manufacurer pulled it from pharmacies.

€ Raided a church at gunpoint, confiscating biofeedback machines and charging 
that they were "practicing medicine" by counseling church members on issues like
depression.

€ Openly allows corrupt, "on the take" experts to vote on new drug approvals, 
even when those experts are taking money from the same companies impacted by 
their votes.

€ Refuses to legalize stevia, the safe, natural herbal sweetener that's used 
virtually everywhere else in the world. The agenda? Protect the profits of 
aspartame and other chemical sweeteners.

€ Openly allows the mass poisoning of the public with cancer-causing food 
additives such as sodium nitrite.

€ Refuses to enforce its own laws regarding unsafe chemical toxins in personal 
care products, allowing perfume and lotion companies to continue poisoning the 
public with cancer-causing chemicals that don't even have to be listed on the 
label, nor proven safe.

€ Ordered the destruction of recipe books that mentioned stevia. (A campaign to 
keep the public ignorant of the herb.)

€ Does everything in its power to protect drug company profits, including 
discrediting herbs, supplements and alternative medicine.

Does anyone honestly believe that this criminal organization has any capacity 
whatsoever to act in the public interest? Even many Senators are fed up with the
FDA's unprecedented level of corruption and criminal behavior.

Action items, continued...
Read Jon Barron's comments on this rule at the JonBarron.org website

Next, lodge your complaint against the FDA by commenting on this docket through 
the FDA's docket comment form.

And finally, write your Senator or Congressperson about this issue and let them 
know, in blatant language, that you will not stand by and allow the criminals 
running medicine today to take away your access to vitamins, supplements, herbs 
and homeopathic medicine. Write the letter in your own words, even if it's just 
two sentences. Individual letters have a hundred times the impact of form 
letters.

Medical wasteland USA

Everything is at stake here. If the FDA gets its way, the United States will 
become a medical wasteland, dominated by corporate drug company interests, where
the naturopaths are imprisoned and their products destroyed. Supplements and 
herbs will become contraband, and gardeners who grow their own medicinal herbs 
may be raided and arrested by DEA agents wielding assault rifles. Simply selling
dried broccoli sprouts as being "good anti-cancer foods" may land you in prison,
and running a vitamin shop could result in you being arrested for "practicing 
medicine."

Imagine a nation where Whole Foods stores are stripped of all herbs and 
supplements, where vitamin shops are emptied and abandoned, where books that 
promote herbs are bulldozed into large piles and burned, where natural healers 
are rounded up and "disappeared" into incarceration centers. This is the future 
that will become reality if the FDA has its way. The plan has been explained to 
us in plain language. Any agency that openly states "vegetable juice will be 
regulated as a drug" has quite simply lost its marbles. We're are now clearly 
being regulated by clinically insane bureaucrats.

With this desperate proposal by the FDA -- clearly designed as a last-ditch 
effort to save the failing conventional medical industry from a massive public 
shift towards natural medicine -- the war against health freedom has reached our
shores, and the FDA is plotting a 9/11-style attack to bring down the towers of 
health freedom in one swift motion.

This is the same agency that currently represents the greatest threat to the 
health and safety of the American people, far outweighing the threat of real 
terrorism. This agency, we have seen, will do ANYTHING to protect the profits 
and power of drug companies. It will lie, steal, accept bribes, hide scientific 
evidence, distort statistics, commit scientific fraud, break federal laws, 
threaten its own drug safety scientists, conspire with drug company executives, 
intimidate American citizens and use terror-style tactics to achieve its goals 
of complete domination over foods, drugs and health.

Why do Americans tolerate terrorism in their own government?

It is time we put a stop to this home-grown tyranny. We have fought too hard for
freedom in the United States to allow us all to be steamrolled by a criminal 
front group covertly working for Big Pharma. The FDA has declared war on natural
medicine and the American people, and we will lose our family members, children,
brothers and sisters as casualties of this war if we don't stand up now and 
demand radical changes. It's time to stop this terrorist organization from 
destroying the lives of yet more U.S. citizens.

Make your voice heard now, or forever surrender your access to supplements, 
herbs, superfoods and functional foods. By the time the FDA is done with this 
country, we'll all be eating medication for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Action reminders:

1. Lodge a complaint with the FDA by clicking here. MAKE SURE you include the 
docket number 2006D-0480. But don't trust this to be enough. The FDA will 
probably simply delete half the complaints it receives, so don't trust your 
complaint to actually count. It's important to continue...

2. Send a strongly-worded letter to your representatives in Washington. Be sure 
to cite Docket No. 2006D-0480. Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and 
Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug 
Administration. Tell them you support open access to vitamins, herbs, and 
supplements, and you do not want CAM to be regulated by the FDA.

3. Send this story to everyone you know. Spread the word. Raise the alarm. With 
enough public support, the FDA will be forced to back off this insane proposal.

And stay tuned to NewsTarget for more news, analysis and action alerts on health
freedom. Even though we're under constant attack by criminal organizations 
trying to disrupt our servers and take us off line, we're still here, beating 
the drum for health freedom, and hoping that we have enough sane-minded 
Americans remaining to save this country from its government.

Actual FDA quote is gobbledygook
Here's an actual FDA statement from the CAM Guidance report:

For example, naturopathic cranberry tablets might be labeled for use to maintain
the health of the urinary tract. In this example, the cranberry tablets 
generally would be regulated as "dietary supplements" ...if they were labeled 
for use to "maintain the health of the urinary tract" rather than "prevent 
urinary tract infections." The cranberry tablets would be regulated as "drugs" 
...if they were labeled for use to "treat urinary tract infections" even if they
were labeled as dietary supplements.

Additional phone numbers as listed in the FDA document
Sheryl Lard-Whiteford at 301-827-0379
Daniel Nguyen at 301-827-8971
Ted Stevens at 301-594-1184
Wayne Amchin at 301-827-6739

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