Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth is trying to make your influence disappear. You see, Wyeth has a problem: 50, 000 irate consumers who have written comments to the FDA to make it clear what they think about Wyeth throwing its weight around and using the FDA to shore up their failing market in deadly synthetic hormones by making safe, natural bio-identical ones illegal. The response was so strong that they actually amended the original Citizens Petition to try to make it seem as if they were not doing exactly what they were doing: trying to kill a natural health option to protect their market share for a group of dangerous and ineffective drugs. And, as long as they were at it, they decided that they would kill the profession of compounding pharmacy. Those are the specially trained pharmacists who custom make personalized prescriptions for patients on the order of their doctors. Instead of counting out pills into bottles, they compound exactly what a particular patients needs.
Since compounding pharmacists can create what a patient needs, not what a big company decides to market, these advanced pharmacists are your doctor’s partners in bringing safe, natural and personalized formulations to patients. Millions of women depend on their skills to provide their individualized doses of the natural female hormones which they need. Many of them used to take synthetic hormones like Wyeth’s Prempro (C), imitation progesterone mixed with Wyeth’s horse urine (honest!) from pregnant mares, Premarin (C).
For many years, the dogma of conventional medicine was that menopausal women needed to take hormones and stay on them for the rest of their lives since doing so would prevent the heart disease which so often afflicts women after the end of their reproductive years. It was also supposed to protect them from senile dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, osteoporosis, wrinkles, dry mucosa (especially vaginal dryness) and on and on and on.
Remembering to forget that hormones are tiny molecules which act at ultra low concentrations on every single cell of the body and that they are highly structurally specific (so a single atom’s difference could mean the difference between safe and wildly dangerous), doctors pushed with all their might for women to take structurally altered synthetic hormones made by companies like Wyeth. The fashion — or perhaps the rage — as to get women on the synthetic versions and either dismiss or skip any mention of the natural alternatives which some doctors prescribed for women. These natural hormones were prescribed by a small number of doctors who understood the importance of using molecules which are identical to those that nature makes inside the body. Patients appear to experience fewer side effects from taking them and, critically important, fewer deadly problems like cancer.
But natural molecules cannot be patented so they are quite cheap. And natural molecules therefore do not generate the revenue to create fancy advertisements and expensive medical courses and glossy brochures, and expensive dinners for doctors and desk toys and calendars and pens and attractive drug reps and trips and…. and…. and …. In fact, even compounded for each patient, they are still considerably cheaper than synthetic hormones.
And then the 2002 shock that sent millions of reeling women looking for a doctor who knew how to prescribe natural hormones: a huge 15 year National Institute of Health study involving 168,000 + women called “The Women’s Health Initiative”, designed to establish the protective impact of Wyeth’s synthetic hormones Premarin (c) and Prempro (c) was shut down nearly 3 years early because these synthetic chemicals, either alone or together, increased women’s risks for heart attacks, breast and uterine cancers, senile dementia and other deadly diseases. Nearly as bad, the supposed protection against these and other catastrophic conditions was just not there.
Wyeth’s market share of the “Premarin Family” of drugs plummeted by more than 60%.
After letting the dust settle a bit, Wyeth decided to fight: On October 5, 2005 they entered a Citizens Petition to compel the FDA to put compounding pharmacists into the dust bin of history (despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that the FDA has no jurisdiction over this profession) AND ban the molecules that compete with their deadly drugs: estrogen and progesterone. The original 6 month comment period was set to expire on April 4, 2006. When health freedom activists asked people to register their opinion with the FDA, the outpouring was so great that the FDA server, we understand, was overwhelmed. For that reason or for some other reason, the comment period was extended by 30 days until May 4, 2005.
More than 50,000 comments have been registered with the FDA. If you have already written a comment in support of your right to make your own health decisions and do what you and your doctor believe is best for you, thank you.
If, on the other hand, you have not yet done so, now, now, NOW is the time. Simply click here (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3356) to let the FDA know that your health freedom is important to you!
Wyeth’s amended Citizens Petition attempts to put a very different spin on what it trying to do. But, regardless of the PR dance, killing the competition and calling it “consumer protection” strikes me as corrupt as disease mongering by making up diseases and selling dangerous compounds that consume precious resources and expose people to iatrogenic (doctor caused) side effects up to and including preventable death.
Here is what Andy Komuves, R.Ph.of the International Association of Compounding Pharmacists has to say about Wyeth’s Citizens Petition and amendment:
Wyeth Backtracks; But Second Verse Same as the First
On Tuesday, Wyeth issued a press release announcing that it recently filed supplemental comments on its petition. The new Wyeth comments attempt to reframe the BHRT issue and to create the impression that those opposing the petition are merely confused about Wyeth’s intentions.Wyeth is feeling the heat. We’ll stop nothing short of complete victory, but we’re encouraged today that we’ve got Wyeth’s PR team on its heels. They’re trying to revise history and say that their petition isn’t what we say it is: an attempt to rob women of access to bioidentical hormones.
According to news service Reuters, Wyeth filed supplemental comments with FDA this month and issued a press release to respond to some of the “misunderstandings,” as Wyeth calls them, about its citizen petition. You can read the Reuters article here.
Six months after it filed its initial comments, Wyeth finds itself up against about 50,000 people mostly patients and physicians who are upset with what the company is doing. So it’s no surprise that Wyeth feels compelled to re-frame its position.
They’ve just put lipstick on a pig. It’s a kindler, gentler attack on pharmacy compounding. Wyeth’s PR team drafted some platitudes about the value of compounding to adorn its supplemental filing, but the underlying legal theory is no less restrictive and harmful to patients than the original petition.
And its motives definitely haven’t changed. Wyeth is still seeking a political solution to a business problem to remove from the market an alternative to its flagging products.
If you haven’t written to FDA to oppose Wyeth’s comments or if your patients or their physicians haven’t either it’s not too late. Make sure there’s no misunderstanding at FDA: Wyeth’s petition will harm patients and must be rejected. … Tell the FDA to protect patient health, not Wyeth’s wealth.
Health freedom is not good for big pharma but it is good for you. Please send this blog to everyone you know and urge them to send a comment to the FDA urging them to protect their right to make natural health choices for themselves.
Thanks for your activism,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Recently the Wall Street Journal published the most outrageous print attack yet on your health and mine. This ordinarily respected newspaper chose to tout highly questionable science to tell us that vitamins pose dangers to our health and chances of survival. BALDERDASH
I hope that the article that follows will spur you to take vitamins and minerals to protect your health and well being. Please be aware that the level of under nutrition which follows from bad science like this and treating vitamins and minerals as dangers the way the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline does, is the best way I know of to insure that you will develop otherwise preventable serious diseases, get sick and stay that way. The propaganda machine is working hard to convince you that nutrients are somehow bad for you. This is part of the effort to soften you up to accept a “harmonized” approach to Codex. That way, when you can’t get effective nutrients you won’t miss them because the big lie (“Nutrients are dangerous since they cause changes in the human body”) has become the way most people have been trained to view things. Those who lament their loss will be marginalized by mass media propaganda pieces like the one in the Wall Street Journal. Never mind that they are based on bad (or no) science. They are part of a magnificently orchestrated campaign to make optimal nutrition (which I believe requires nutrient supplementation in a toxic world) a non-option for you and your family.
Just as I was sitting down to write a response to this poppycock, I received an email which contained an excellent summary of why this is bad science and very, very poor public policy. This article was written by Jean Carper and forwarded to me by Elwood Richard, a long time supporter of health and health freedom.
I include the complete article here: it is well worth reading and sharing with your friends and those in your circle of influence.
Special Report : The media strikes again
A report in the Wall Street Journal unfairly attacks vitamins as doing more harm than good, adding more fuel to the vitamin wars and getting many facts wrong. Here’s the real truth.
http://www.stopagingnow.com/pages/specialreport/wsj
The WSJ’s Fictitious “Case Against Vitamins”
By Jean Carper
Vitamin opponents’ efforts to steer you away from supplements have taken a frightening new direction. Attacks on vitamins are escalating from allegations of merely “useless” to “extremely dangerous.” This alarming message is central to “The Case Against Vitamins,” in the Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2006. The subhead sets the tone: “Recent studies show that many vitamins not only don’t help. They may actually cause harm.”
Should you throw away your vitamins? No. In assembling its “case,” to scare people away from vitamins, the WSJ said much that is not scientifically accepted and left much unsaid. It cites carefully selected and sometimes outdated studies without proper perspective; misses or omits studies that contradict the premise, and fails to give a fair analysis by respected vitamin experts, choosing instead, sources of lesser expertise, credibility and credentials. Whether the bias is careless or reflects a mindset friendly to extensive pharmaceutical advertising, is impossible to tell.
Here’s how the Wall Street Journal got it completely wrong about vitamins E, A and C, on which they based the major part of their “case.”
Vitamin E in Wonderland
You might suspect the fix is in when the first person quoted by the WSJ is cardiologist Edgar R. Miller, author of one of the most criticized and denounced studies ever done on vitamin E. Eminent vitamin E researchers called his analysis, claiming common doses of vitamin E boosted death rates 4% to 6%, a case study in the misuse of statistics with laughable conclusions. If it were true, this absurd conclusion means taking vitamin E is more deadly than smoking, points out Jeffrey Blumberg, chief of antioxidant research at Tufts University. Dr. Blumberg and other vitamin E luminaries were so appalled, they signed a full page ad that ran in the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today, denouncing Miller’s assertions that vitamin E was unsafe.
Dr. Blumberg also teamed up with 12 other international authorities to refute that vitamin E is unsafe at doses under 1600 IU a day, in the April, 2005 issue of the prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Among those condeming Miller’s conclusions are world-renowned antioxidant and vitamin E researchers, Lester Packer PhD, University of Southern California, and Maret Traber, PhD, Oregon State University and authority on vitamin E toxicity for the National Academy of Sciences. NIH’s head of alternative and complementary medicine also told me he didn’t believe the study.
Miller’s study, in fact, was exposed as bogus soon after it came out, its credibility destroyed by a major NIH study that found NO serious adverse effects, let alone death, in 40,000 women who took 600 IU of vitamin E every other day for ten years! If vitamin E was harmful or deadly, it surely would have shown up in this largest, longest vitamin E test ever done. Such a massive clinical trial overwhelmingly trumps previous studies like Miller’s, and is irrefutable testimony to the utter safety of vitamin E at common doses, says Dr. Traber.
More remarkable, contrary to Miller’s false predictions of death from vitamin E, the NIH study revealed it as an astonishing lifesaver. “It’s the most exciting findings about vitamin E in 10 years!” said Dr. Traber.
The truth is heart deaths dropped 24% in women who took vitamin E. And it gets better. In women 65 and over, prime targets of heart attacks, vitamin E slashed death rates an incredible 49%–nearly in half!, the NIH study showed. This means taking vitamin E might save over 200,000 women a year from heart disease deaths, figures Dr. Traber.
Imagine. If a drug did that, it would be heralded as a miracle cure; doctors would wildly prescribe it, and its stock would soar, says Traber. But without huge drug money behind it, vitamin E is unfairly trashed as dangerous by the press and blacklisted by doctors, all to the detriment of people who could benefit greatly from it.
The Vitamin A Tales:
After repeating the widely-published hazards of high doses of beta carotene for current smokers, the WSJ “Case Against Vitamins,” takes on vitamin A as cause of hip fractures, citing a 2002 Harvard nurses’ study, that “associated” high vitamin A from foods, multivitamins and supplements, with a 48% higher risk for hip fractures. It is naive to use this study to slam supplements, since the greatest vitamin A threat came from consuming too much liver, not supplements. Nor was vitamin A a fracture hazard to women on estrogen, suggesting more complex factors than vitamin A.
Nor is the Harvard indictment of vitamin A the last word on the issue. Much research contradicts it. A 2004 large-scale, 9.5-year study of 34,703 postmenopausal women by the University of Minnesota, cleared vitamin A, in both supplements and food, of promoting fractures. Specifically researchers made clear there was “no evidence” that women who took the highest doses of vitamin A supplements were most apt to break a hip. (Lim LS, Osteoporos Int, 2004 Jul;15(7):552-9)
Most important, better-designed studies overshadow and refute the 4-year-old Harvard study that the WSJ relied on to build its anti-vitamin A case, and even suggest the opposite: that higher vitamin A, surprisingly, may also be tied to fewer fractures.
The difference comes from the way the study is designed. More current sophisticated research compares an individual’s actual blood level of vitamin A with his or her bone density and fracture history. The Harvard study simply asked women what foods they ate, then estimated their vitamin A intake based on food-nutrient tables, and compared this with the number of fractures in the women. Obviously, this is a crude and unreliable measure of vitamin A status, compared with actual blood tests.
In several studies using blood tests, the vitamin A threat disappears or is turned upside down. At least, three recent studies that sampled blood for vitamin A content, either find no bone-hazard from vitamin A–or a LOWER risk of fractures.
British researchers at the University of Sheffield, scrutinized the blood of some 1200 women over age 75, searching for evidence that vitamin A induced fractures. No such thing. Women with the highest blood levels of vitamin A were 15% LESS apt to suffer a fracture of any bone, including the hip, than those with the lowest blood vitamin A. Women taking multivitamins (including vitamin A) or vitamin-A-dense cod liver oil were even better off–24% less apt to break a bone. (Barker ME, J Bone Miner Res.2005 Jun;20 (6):913-20.
At New York’s Columbia University, a similar 22-year long study of 2799 American women ages 50 to 74, found that fracture risk nearly doubled in women with both the lowest and highest blood concentrations of vitamin A, adding more confusion and controversy to the debate. (Opotowsky AR, Am J Med 2004 Aug 1;117(3): 169-74)
In a side note, a recent Italian study showed that women with osteoporosis had lower blood levels of vitamin A, as well as vitamin C and E, suggesting lower antioxidant defenses against free radical damage may be involved in bone destruction and accelerated aging. (Maggio D.,J clin Endocrinol Metab 2003 Apr;88(4):1523-7).
Bottom Line: The issue of vitamin A and bones is unsettled and highly debatable. The evidence is conflicting and confusing. The WSJ’s black and white “Case Against Vitamins,” gave no indication of this. It presented vitamin A as a bone-hazard, case closed, hyping a fear of vitamin A among readers, when that is not an accepted scientific finding by any stretch. The jury is still out, and it could go several ways.
Vitamin C as Villain? Amazing
“Like other vitamin studies, research into vitamin C has been disappointing,” recites the WSJ’s Case Against Vitamins” saying it might not prevent colds or fight cancer, as Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling promised it would 30 years ago. To press the point further, the WSJ article resurrects studies, asserting vitamin C can promote cancer and even death.
On the contrary, a new Japanese study says taking 500 mg of vitamin C daily cut odds of getting three or more colds over 5 years by 66%.
But that’s of small consequence compared with dazzling new research identifying vitamin C as a promising new cancer drug. Excitement over the anticancer properties of vitamin C is dramatically escalating, rather than diminishing, among top-drawer scientists. It’s hard to fathom how the Wall Street Journal missed this fact, since a quick search turns up dozens of studies of vitamin C’s remarkable abilities to stop cancer.
Far from encouraging cancer growth, as the Wall Street Journal’s outdated information asserted, vitamin C selectively targets and kills cancer cells, leaving normal cells unharmed, says groundbreaking research by Mark Levine, MD at the National Institutes of Health. High doses of vitamin C rapidly killed 100% of human lymphoma cells, reports Levine, as well as 9 other cancer cells, including breast, ovarian, lung, kidney and colon.
Moreover, Levine notes that some doctors already give high- dose intravenous vitamin C to help stop cancer. The evidence for increased survival and safety is so impressive, even in advanced late-stage cancer, that Levine has called for a “re-evaluation of vitamin C as cancer therapy.”
Levine explains that for years researchers missed Pauling’s point and failed to understand precisely how vitamin C destroys cancer cells and why very high doses are needed. In original studies, Pauling administered 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day intravenously to terminal cancer patients for about 10 days, and then high oral doses of C afterward. Those on vitamin C improved and survived longer. When Mayo Clinic researchers set out to verify Pauling’s findings, they gave high oral doses, not intravenous doses, and concluded it didn’t work. However, it is impossible, Levine notes, to raise vitamin C blood levels to cancer-lethal doses orally. The vitamin C vanishes too quickly. Doses deadly to cancer cells can be achieved only intravenously by jacking up blood levels of vitamin C 25 times higher than oral doses do.
For example, doctors at the University of Kansas gave two women with stage 3 ovarian carcinoma 60,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously twice a week, as well as conventional chemotherapy. Their tumors vanished and they showed no signs of cancer 3 1/2 years later. The doctors are now conducting a randomized test of high vitamin C (and other antioxidants) along with chemotherapy in women newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
More amazing: Dr. Levine and NIH colleagues personally documented three cases of advanced cancer in which vitamin C shrank tumors, dramatically increasing survival.
• A 49-year-old man diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer in 1996 declined chemotherapy in favor of high-dose vitamin C infusions. Nine years later he is alive and cancer-free.
• A 66-year-old woman with an aggressive lymphoma and a “dismal prognosis” in 1995, also rejected chemotherapy, but had radiation, and intravenous high-dose vitamin C. She, too is alive 10 years later.
• A 51-year-old woman with kidney cancer that had spread to her lungs, opted for alternative therapy, including high-dose intravenous vitamin C given twice weekly for 10 months. Two months later, scans showed the tumors were gone. Her cancer remained in remission for four years. A smoker, she died of lung cancer that did not respond to the same therapy.
The Wall Street Journal is correct in saying that many doctors oppose use of antioxidants, including vitamin C, during chemotherapy, fearing interference with treatment. But experts point out the idea is only “theoretical,” and has no evidence to justify it. The WSJ assertion that antioxidants may “promote some cancer and interfere with treatments,” is without scientific merit. The one study that tested the theory found no difference in outcome–and certainly no worsening from antioxidants.
The latest evidence from the top experts at the National Institutes of Health not only rebuts the fictitious danger of vitamins to cancer patients, but shows that antioxidants, notably vitamin C, have the power to shrink cancer, produce remissions and dramatically extend life of even advanced cancer patients. Although it is still unclear how effective lower doses of vitamin C may be in preventing or fighting cancer, it is implausible that they could be harmful, considering that massive doses are not and, in fact, are so beneficial.
Should we hold our collective breath for the WSJ to do a major story on the ascent of vitamin C as a potentially powerful, inexpensive and incredibly safe cancer “drug?” Imagine the impact of that on pharmaceutical profits.
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In the US we have a precious (and much attacked) law called DSHEA (the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act passed in 1994) which holds that nutrients are foods and, as such, can have no upper limits set upon them. Codex holds the opposit: the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline says that nutrients should have upper limits assessed by Risk Assessment, a technique designed to determine just how high a toxic dose can be before it produces changes in your body and then set limits 100 lower than that.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently produced a Workshop document to help [sic] Codex with the application of Risk Assessment to nutrients. This document defines an
as ANY change in ANYTHING that can be measured in a human (a biomarker). So any change, whether positive or negative, which is brought about by a nutrient is an adverse event under Codex!
What to do? Several things.
First, inform yourself. Make sure you watch “Nutricide: the DVD” and tell your friends about it or arrange a public showing in your church, club or school. Download a copy of the highly informative Codex e-Book which was presented to decision makers in Africa last month. It contains a wealth of information on the solution to the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline and an in-depth essay on nutritional medicine you need.
Second, take action. Sign the Citizens Petition and join the thousands of others who are challenging the US Government’s Codex policy. Then “Ride the Freedom Mouse” to let Congress know that your health and health freedom is really important to you.
Oh, yes, one more action step: send a letter to the FDA and one to Congress to prevent Wyeth from smashing the competition that natural molecules offer to toxic synthetic hormones. You see, pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (which makes Premarin and Prempro) is attempting to pressure the FDA to ban its competitors, Bio-Identical Hormones. Premarin (synthetic estrogen made from pregnant mares urine) and Prempro (the synthetic estrogen plus synthetic progesterone called “progestin”) are so toxic that a National Institutes of Health drug trial using these two hormones which involved 168,000 menopausal women was halted early (2002) to protect women from the increased risks of heart disease, breast cancer, blood clots, blindness and strokes which they carry with them although they have no clinical benefit whatsoever.
Millions of women got the message and switched to safe, natural hormones which do protect them but don’t carry the risks of the synthetic hormones. Now, four years later, Wyeth has hijacked the Citizens Petition process to work its corporate magic: wave a wand and take away safe, inexpensive options leaving only dangerous, expensive drugs.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Codex to me.
Not happy with this turn of events? Support the Natural Solutions Foundation with your contribution or monthly pledge (donate $50 or more and we will send you a letter for your tax records stating the contribution is tax deductible).
Thanks. Your activism is essential to our success.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
PS: More on Africa to follow. I’ve been really, really swamped!
What do the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, BioRenew and Freedom Club USA have in common?
Each organization has taken a bold step that you can take, too. Each one of them has endorsed
-the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline which when ratified, will overturn the deadly impact of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline.
These endorsements are extremely important and I urge you to read the Citizen Petition, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (we’ve provided a marked up copy so you can easily see the difference between the Codex guideline, which mandates under-nutrition, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline“>Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which pushes for optimal nutrition).
Here’s the strategy: If countries are not Codex compliant (that is, their domestic laws do not match Codex regulations), they will loose in the World Trade Organization Dispute Resolution process if another country accuses them of creating a barrier to trade by violating a Codex guideline, standard or regulation. If they loose, the penalties are enormous: trade sanctions can run several hundred million dollars per year or more until the country caves in. Not only that, the sanctions are imposed on any economic sector it pleases by the prevailing country. If the two countries are competitors in, say, electronics, although the dispute was about, for example, turkey breasts, the sanctions could be applied to that contested electronics industry to do the most economic harm to the loosing country.
Is it any wonder, then, that the nations of the world are racing to adopt the Codex standards as fast as possible, despite the terrible impact it will have on health and longevity?
Our Codex working group, was greatly assisted by two brilliant and dedicated lawyers, Jim Turner and Jim Fucetola examined just what makes a country compliant and came up with a unique and powerful approach: we have created the first of a series of Revised Codex documents which, when adopted by a country, keeps the country in Codex compliance but stands the destructive impact of the Codex version on its head. In other words, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline extends the principles of DSHEA world-wide and makes them the global strategy, rather than a localized American anomaly. The impact on world hunger and disease will be staggeringly positive.
I urge you to read and compare the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which is based on the premise that nutrients are toxins, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which states that biochemical individuality is crucial for optimal nutrition and that individual requirements vary widely and must be permitted. Countries which are not tied to the Pharmaceutical Death Apparatus (the real PH D A) are searching for a way to protect their people and avoid the enormous sums of penalty money the WTO keeps nations in line with. Adoption of the Revised VMG allows them to do just that.
Other Revised Codex standards, etc. will follow.
Public support gives this strategy “legs” as they say in Congress, in two ways
1. Every person who signs the join-in letter counts as 13,000 constituents in the mind of Congress. So although you may believe that your voice has no weight or meaning, it is not true. Hundreds of thousands of letters will send a clear message to Congress: these people are serious and their health freedom is a serious concern to them. I’d best listen up! Remember, this is not a simple grocery store petition. This is a serious legal challenge to the United States Government position and policy on Codex.
2. Endorsements by individuals though joining the legal challenge known as the Citizen Petition or by organizations which pass resolutions of support for the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline tells Congress here at home and countries friendly to health freedom that there is a movement which has power and strategic thinking behind it with which they can safely align themselves.
Can Codex counter attack? Of course they can. Will they? Probably. But with a growing constituency of support both at home and abroad, the terrible damage done by mandating chronic under-nturition world-wide is averted. The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline does that.
General Stubblebine and I are leaving later today to attend the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses in Bonn, Germany.
You can bet that we will be following up with the people we met in Rome who, when asked if they understood what using Risk Assessment would mean to their pregnant women, their elderly, their cancer rates, etc., did not. We explained that Risk Assessment is a discipline of toxicology designed to determine doses so low that they have no discernable impact on humans. We further pointed out that Codex has declared nutrients to be toxins and treats them as such. They quickly saw, when it was presented that way, that the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline has nothing to do with promoting health but everything to do with promoting widespread illness with its resultant dependence on expensive, dangerous and ineffective drugs to treat the chronic degenerative diseases of under-nutrition. And then, to a man or woman, they asked for help.
The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is the first part of that help. We need public support to generate Congressional support. We need Congressional Support to generate international support.
So please, get active, get your groups active (churches, coops, ladies clubs, student clubs, professional clubs, all are welcome!)
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
Up for some good news? The Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott (what to buy, not what not to buy!) is nearly ready. Your source of GMO-free, organic products with just a click is nearly hear. We have a great selection of products from chocolate to deodorant for you to chose from. This site is meant to please you so we are taking the unusual step of asking you to help us put the finishing touches on it.
Just go to www.EatSafeEatSmart.com and take a look at the site. Then tell me at info@healthfreedomusa.org what you like and what you don’t like about it. Let me know if there is something we forgot or a whole product line you love and feel should be there. Tell us if the format works for you and tell us what doesn’t work for you.
We’ll change it and make it right so you can have a site which offers you the best in Safe, Smart food and products!
Thanks in advance for your input!
Oh, yes. One other thing: Please go to our website and sign the Citizens Petition. Even if you signed before, since it has been revised and now contains the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, we invite you to sign again and get everyone you know on board. Thanks.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Five days is not much time to see results when you change your diet. So the remarkable study by Chensheng Lu of Emory University in Atlanta is all the more astounding. Lu and his colleagues recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle which had children between 3 and 11 years old and showed that in just 5 days on organic foods, the levels of deadly pesticides in the children dropped so low they were undetectable! Prior to the study, all of the children ate conventionally grown and produced food (that includes produce with 5 number codes on the little tags that begin with either a “4” [grown with pesticides] or “8” [genetically modified]).
The study consisted of 5 days during which the 23 test families and their children, between 3 and 11 years old, substituted organic fruits, vegetables, fruit juices, cereals and pastas for conventional ones. The families made the same meals that they would have with conventional foods and followed the same dietary habits, just substituting the organic foods supplied by Lu and his team.
The results showed that in those 5 short days, the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides became undetectable in the children’s urine. Parents collected two daily urine samples from their children to allow researchers to see what the impact of the change in diet was on the pesticide levels. Both before and after the test period, when they were eating conventional food, the pesticides were detectalbe in the children’s urine.
The researchers were interested in the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides routinely used in food, called “malithion” and “chlorpyrophos” which are, unfortunately, legal in this country for use on conventional food crops. Organophosphates have numerous well established, serious negative impacts on health including profound and often irreversible neurological, psychological, immunological and skin problems. Malathion, for example, is neurotoxic: “The main target of malathion toxicity in children is the nervous system, the same as in adults.
So when children were given a rest from pesticides for just 5 days, their bodies were able to detoxify and get rid of those dangerous chemicals. Perhaps it would take adults longer, since these toxins build up in fats, but doesn’t it seem reasonable to cut down the toxic burden of your body when you know that the toxins are poisonous, nerve poisons, in fact?
Is organic food worth the approximately 25% price premium? You tell me: what is your Central Nervous System worth? How about your child’s (or your mother’s or your brother’s) brain and nerves? And given that the cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other epidemics which are making us so sick and killing us so rapidly are primarily the result of toxins in the food supply and environment, doesn’t it seem reasonable to eat as much clean, safe, smart food as possible? Think of what you will save on medication and hospital co-pays later on!
Of course, that means that the organic food supply must be worth spending that extra money on. We pushed back the degraded organic standards shamefully being pushed by the major corporate interests in the Organic Trade Association last week. The OTA wanted a rider attached to the Agricultural Spending Bill which would have allowed many, many contaminants in the organic food supply with no notification to consumers about what they were buying or consuming. Our letters and those of other activists succeeded, with the help of Sen. Patrick Leahey of Vermont, in putting the matter before the Secretary of Agriculture “for further study”. Let’s help with that study: write a quick letter to your Congressional delegation and let them know how important maintaining organic standards is to you.
And take a suggestion from a doctor who knows what the health impact of organophosphate pesticides is: spend the extra money on organic food. It’s your life, your body, your health and your choice! Do it before there’s a diagnosis of cancer, heart disease, dementia, seizures, etc. in your family. Prevention really is the best medicine. And if there is already a health problem for you or a loved one, going organic will make things better by lowering the toxic burden the body has to struggle with.
Watch for our new website, www.EatSmartEatSafe.info to help you make those healthy choices!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director