Perhaps you have noticed that this blog has a new appearance and a new name: we’ve changed it from “Daily Codex Update Blog” to “Dr. Laibow’s Health Freedom Blog” for good reason. When the Natural Solutions Foundation began the HealthFreedomUSA Campaign, Codex Alimentarius was virtually unknown to Americans despite the fact that it was 43 years old. So we concentrated on bringing it to America’s conscious level of awareness. Last week, for example, I was on 6 different radio shows talking about Codex to who knows how many people? Codex awareness is jousting with Codex Coma. You know who is in favor of which one! But, as I have said from the first day that I began writing and talking about America’s health freedom, Codex is one big, bad dude but there is a whole posse of bad freedom foes out there. It would be nice if we could ignore all but one until we solve that problem, but that’s not how it works. So the blog, while bringing you all the Codex news that the major media apparently feels is not fit to print, will now be covering all the other important health freedom issues along with Codex.
Our web site, however, will continue to focus heavily on Codex because it is such a complex and confusing issue. (That’s why I had to read so many thousands of pages before I began to get it straight!) If you have not visited www.HealthFreedomUSA.org lately you will find a brand new, updated and reorganized website waiting for you when you do, which I hope will be very soon.
The site has been totally rewritten with pages that are easier to read, large link buttons and an easier to use navigation structure. We have new articles, like the one about the effort to discredit nutrients by a poison press of bogus “science”. We have new sections, too, that we are very proud of and hope you will find useful. We invite your suggestions and comments, of course! Please take a moment to check out our new
Reccomended Books List with convenient direct purchase links to Amazon.com
We have added some new buttons and sections to help make the Health Freedom and Codex issues clearer. You can easily see what the Natural Solutions Foundation stands for and take a quick, 5 minute Codex tour and, if you like, follow that up with a 7 point summary of Codex.
You won’t be surprised that our legislative action page, “Bills to Support and Oppose” is easier to use so you can send a personalized letter on each of the bills your Congressional Delegation with a few mouse clicks. Of course, we will keep this page updated so when new bills are added you can take action right away on them as so many thousands of you do regularly. Thank you, by the way!
And for those of you who need and want more detail, our In Depth Information section will provide an abundant amount of detailed documentation and background for you.
You will find both more and less action on the site. The previous 6 action steps have been reduced to 3 action steps and we have added an Easy Activism page with things to do alone and in your community. Please take time to read and act on all of these options if you can, or, if not, as many as you can. Your health and health freedom really do depend upon it!
And, of course, there’s the Donation page. I know, I know. Everybody asks you for money. We have added a page to let you know how we spend the money you donate and one to let you know what we have accomplished and what we are up to next.
This is an expensive campaign; there is just no way around it. Websites of this caliber cost money. Airfare, hotels, consultations, each has a real life price tag attached. I can promise you that every single penny sent as a donation (and you can use your credit card, Paypal, a check or a money order to support of health freedom by making a secure donation now and, if you can, on a monthly basis.
We are here for you. Won’t you be here for us?
Please show your support now!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Wall Street biotech insider gets No. 2 job at the FDA
I don’t know Scott Gottlieb, (in fact, I never heard of him before tonight) when I read that this man of many talents had gone from a Wall Street Biotech specialist to the number 2 guy at the already disastrously Pharma and Biotech Friendly FDA.
As if we did not have enough problems with the FDA, the opportunity to appoint a pro-health, rather than a pro-corporation number 2 person has, at least in this go around, been lost. According to The Seattle Times, Scott Gottlieb is a physician, an internist a biotech industry analyst. He apparently holds pro-industry beliefs which, if implemented, will make the Pharma Friendly FDA even more prone to take positions to support and assist the pharmaceutical iand biotech industry (to the steady detriment of the people of this country). For example, he believes that if early results in an experiment show that a drug is endangering people, that information should not be released early despite the harm that the clinical trial is doing. Not good for people, I would say!
It is no news to anyone that the FDA is hostile to natural medicine, trumping up imaginary “dangers” of natural products while turning a blind eye, a deaf ear and a silent tongue to the deadly side effects and toxicity of patent medicines, better known as drugs. Approximately 200, 000 people die from drugs in America each year at a minimum. The real figure is probably several times higher, by the way.
Biotechnical innovations like genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are dangerous, too, but their dangers are more subtle. All that the FDA asks of a corporation is a voluntary evaluation to make sure that a genetically modified something-or-other has “substantial equivalence” to the un-engineered something-or-other. If it does, on to the market it goes. We find out later that it is bad for the environment or that fatal allergies result from breathing its pollen or …..To Be Determined. The corporation-enamored regulatory agency in which Gottlieb has taken the number 2 job probably needed a health advocate, not an industry analyst.
Gottlieb’s interests are clearly focused on corporate issues. And I expect him to carry out the real mission of the FDA beautifully: to promote and protect the pharmaceutical (and biotech) industry . People will undoubtedly die because of the regulatory actions he will carry out but he will be right in line with the rest of FDA policy.
Now, that’s not what the FDA likes to tell you about its mission. No, they say it is to promote and protect the public health. But if you had to determine its actual mission from its behavior in suppressing natural treatments and protecting dangerous drugs (think Vioxx and then think of the 40% of drugs which are recalled within 5 years of being put on the market after the dangers which their manufactures’ and, often, the FDA itself, knew about before they were allowed on the market, subsequently killing people.) what would you conclude?
Looking at its behavior objectively, whom would you say the FDA is bent on protecting? Yours or Big Pharma’s? Whose interests are promulgated? Yours or Big Biotechna’s?
Even the AMA has finally gotten the idea: an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association calls for reform of the FDA since it can not be trusted to take care of our interests. Although the AMA reportedly has over $10M of its retirement fund invested in the drug industry, its editorial states ” “It is unreasonable to expect that the same agency that was responsible for approval of drug licensing and labeling would also be committed to actively seek evidence to prove itself wrong.”
I agree. What I don’t agree with is the choice of a person to fill the powerful number 2 slot who is clearly interested — and apparently, quite expert — in focusing on the economic impact and corporate issues of the biotechnical industry. Is that what the American people need in the wake of disaster after disaster caused by the absolute disregard of what is good for people in favor of what is good for companies?
How committed to what is good for us will Dr. Gottlieb turn out to be? Let’s watch closely.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Codex Allows Seven Deadly Pesticides Banned by Stockholm Convention and US Law
A smoking gun in the hand of an enraged man who is looking down at the inert corpse bleeding at his feet is the next best evidence to actually seeing the perpetrator pull the trigger. All of us who understand Codex as a threat (rather than the supposed “consumer protection” creature its apologists claim that it is) know that Codex is a sandbox in which the multinational corporations play their greed need games with no concern for the well-being of those who will pay the price in every coin. Those of use without our own illegal cattle, milk and supplements farms and factories will have no choice but to eat the food Codex has adulterated. We won’t have the nutrients we need when our natural health choices have disappeared because Codex has “protected” us from the “toxic nutrients” we used to take to keep our selves healthy.
What would you say if I told you that I had found Codex’s smoking gun, Codex’s dirtiest secret which is so foul that it makes clear just how far from a consumer protection system Codex is? Consumer protection like the Turks had in 1954-59 when they ate food grown from seeds containing Hexachlorobenzene and 95% of the children who were exposed in the womb died? Or protection like older people got when 14% of them died from the poison. Well, guess what! Hexachlorobenzene is but one of the seven deadly toxins Codex will let the Big Chema poison you with.
Well, we found the smoking gun. But how many consumers must it kill before we take the gun out of the madman’s hand?
If you are like me, you would both rejoice and come close to speechless frustration and outrage at the same time. How could “they” do this? What are they thinking” Where do they think they will raise their grandchildren?
Click here for Codex’s dirty secret: Codex permits 7 of the 9 most deadly chemicals known, all of which are illegal in the US and all of which have been banned by every member of Codex from being used anywhere on the planet.
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants agreed upon a list of the 12 most poisonous chemicals in the world and 176 countries banned them. The US banned them, too. But Codex has a better idea (Smoking gun coming right up). Instead of protecting consumers, Codex says, “Let’s set dangerous pesticide and real toxic residue levels really, really high and let’s pretend that nutrients are toxins (so we can “protect” consumers from food without them, of course) and, best of all, [cock the trigger back: smoke coming up], we will, despite a global ban on the worst chemicals possible, will ignore all of that and pull the trigger!”
“We, Codex, will allow seven of the nine deadliest, nearly universally banned, pesticides known to human kind to be used on your foods! Allow us to protect you, dear consumer, at the point of a smoking gun!”
If we let our Congress know that we are on to Codex and the multinational corporations that are driving Codex and, in fact, pulling the trigger on the smoking gun, we can change the course of history and avoid eating foods poisoned with the seven deadly pesticides.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director
In 2001, the International Community did something right. The came together and created the Stockholm Convention, devoted to removing the 12 deadliest compounds polluting our world. These horrors are all members of the same class of compounds, Persistent Organic Pollutants or POPs. Within a short time every member of the United Nations, including the US, had either signed or ratified (or both) this agreement. They had committed themselves to getting rid of these incredibly dangerous chemicals. These chemicals have names like aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, DDT, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and furans. These chemical are extremely widely used and, among the hundreds of thousands of bad chemicals which disrupt endocrine function, lead to birth defects and cancers, cause serious harm to the environment in every corner of the globe, accumulate in food and degrade the ability of people to lead long, healthy lives, these are the worst of the worst.
The report on POPs in Chile starts with a quote: “The future will depend on our wisdom not to replace one poison with another.” Well, as lovely as that sentiment is, it never reached the people in Codex land. Of the 12 worst POPs in the world, 9 are pesticides. Of those widely used, and wildly toxic POPs, 7, yes, 7, have are permitted by Codex in our food. Sure, you can put these poisons on crops: no problem. Codex has set allowable pesticide residues for 7 of them.
Do any of those names sound familiar to you? How about Aldrin and Dieldrin? They are bio-concentrated by children eating the apple a day we used to eat to keep the Doctor away. Have you ever had your house treated for termites with a foundation treatment? Then you probably already know chlordane pretty well since you’ve been breathing it for a while. How about apples and Aldrin? Heptachlor? The official heptachlor fact sheet says that it should not be permitted to enter the environment and that it is really toxic to people, the aquatic environment and fish. But Codex says we can put it on our food. How about Mirex? It’s been described as “one of the most chronically toxic and slowly degrading compounds ever produced on an industrial scale” But it’s OK to use on food. Codex tells me so.
Can’t you see the hand of the Big Chema in this one? Industry-friendly Codex must have been all too happy to agree to the standards they were asked for by their Big Chema handlers. And the workers who use these pesticides which are so deadly that every member of the UN has agreed to end their use and ban them? And we, who will eat the food from all over the world contaminated with this deadly brew (and hundreds of other poisons? What happens to us and our children and our other loved ones when our food is contaminated with compounds so deadly that every single country in the UN has decided they are too dangerous to use?
But wait! The World Trade Organization uses Codex standards in trade dispute resolution. What happens if a country elects to follow the Stockholm Convention Guidelines and not the Codex ones? Trade sanctions for protecting your people from poisons? What kind of madness are we observing unfold when the interest of industry overwhelms the entire international community’s will?
Is this what we want for ourselves? If not, take action. Go to our legislative action page and let Congress know what is important to you. I’ll bet not one member of Congress has thought about the conflict between the Stockholm Convention and Codex. Tell them. Better yet, make an appointment and take a bunch of your friends to go see your Congressmen and women in their local offices (or in DC if you’d like) and let them know that people with faces and families, voices and votes are rallying around health and health freedom. “Work with us and maybe we’ll let you go back to Congress. Oppose us and your DC days are over. We are the people and we are that strong!”
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
At the present
When you clean out the pig sty you are going to get mud on your clothes. The Natural Solutions Foundation has taken strong public positions to clean out some of the biggest, richest, strongest, dirtiest pig sties in the world. These sties have their own publicists and spin-meisters and we have all seen what they can do when the want you to believe something that is good for them, whether it is true or not. It’s called “propaganda” or “spin” or “lies” or “disinformation” or just plain “advertising”.
Let’s go back a few months: the President of the Natural Solutions Foundation, Maj. Gen. Bert Stubblebine was shocked to learn from the savage attack email of a supposed health freedom activist that he had been featured as a person who had a bunch of irrational beliefs (that he could walk through walls, for example) in a book whose author claimed to have interviewed him. Neither one was true. No walls, no interviews.
He was also identified as being things like a witch and a CIA agent. Again, not true.
(In fact, in Rome, yet another supposed health freedom activist advised people against having their picture taken with us since we were, you know, all those bad things and more!) That’s how rumor and innuendo works: spread it and watch it multiply itself into more and more absurd character assassination.
Then there was the Playboy article repeating the same untruth: I was really amused: my 75 year old husband made it to Playboy! You would think they would have given him the centerfold but, alas, they did not which showed what poor judgment they have. What they did was repeat a the lies the first guy had cooked up with an astonishing lack of fact-checking. They claim that they did fact-check but they got the facts wrong so I’d say they have a little fact problem since they published a passel of lies. The whole thing was still nonsense whether it was in a glossy chick pic mag or not.
Today, though, things got even weirder. The Executive Intelligence Review published Cheney’s ‘Spoon-Benders’ Pushing Nuclear Armageddon which makes you ponder the middle word in the magazine’s title.
In this one, somebody took the information in the book and Playboy article (still wrong) and added a bunch of incorrect assertions and some historical facts and some stuff about 9/11, put them in the intellectual blender and came out with the most astonishing nonsense yet.
Bert, who retired from the Military in 1984 and whose clearances expired when he left defense contracting about 7 years later (1991), and has had zero contact with that world since then, winds up in the article’s mish mash of illogic and is tied up with Cheney, exploding mutilated goats’ hearts, Nuclear Armageddon, The First Earth Battalion, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, torture, 9/11 and international terrorism!
And all that with not a single security clearance or one minute of contact with any one in a position to influence any of those things in 14 years!
Wow! What a guy!
What the publication of these articles and books says to him (and to me, too) is that somebody wants him, and through him, the Natural Solutions Foundation, besmirched and marginalized. So, while he is investigating the possibility of some pretty significant law suits against some pretty major companies and a number of individuals, we are also watching with interest (and some wry amusement) to see what nonsense is next. You know it’s coming, of course.
And we know, too, that the “irrationalists” will pick it up and sling it around. Repetition does not make anything more true if it was wrong the first time. And this stuff was really, really wrong the first (and second and every) time.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
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