First of all, let me thank you for your warm response. You have donated nearly $2000 since my last email. Please keep your health freedom battle which we are fighting in mind and, if you haven’t done so yet, support the Natural Solutions Foundation generously. This is your battle, too, if you care about your health and your natural health choices. When was the last time you could fight the good fight and get a tax deduction on it, too!
Dr. Rima
Day 16: June 27, 2006
Today was an email and phone day: since I could not use my cell phone (stolen or lost last weekend) to get emails or make calls, I used the hotel facilities to confirm and solidify our pro health strategy for the Codex meeting. What that meant was internet at more than $10 per hour and phone calls to Africa, Asia, etc. and the US at European hotel rates! Whew! But the reason for the calls and internet connection is a very positive one: we are in the process of making sure that our pro-health allies from around the world are consolidated and coordinated, ready for action at the Codex meeting next week.
You know, some say that Codex cannot be changed from within. But they are wrong. I anticipate that Codex and the Bigs will respond to us if we are effective. I doubt that they will say, “Why thank you! How very nice of you to put things in perspective for us so that we can see how poorly we are serving health!” Rather we can expect some sort of vigorous and unpleasant response. After all, they have the money and have bought themselves the alliances which have allowed them to get this far. But as one of our legal team put it, “People with inconsistent values do not prevail. It is the ones whose values are more consistent who prevail. And the Codex forces want to appear to serve health and human well-being while not doing so. We want to serve those values in a consistent way and so we will prevail!” He is right. But our side is building momentum so we can expect a response which we will have to counter. We don’t know what it will be, but we know that it will come if we are effective.
On a personal note, it is hot and sunny here in Geneva and we found a great Swiss restaurant right next to the ancient armory in the Old City which lies in the middle of Lake Leman (Lake Geneva to everyone but the French). We had Swiss food in a Swiss outdoor bistro (at Swiss prices, I am afraid) and the experience was delightful.
Geneva is home to hundreds of international organizations so the population is richly mixed with people from all over the world enjoying the same lovely atmosphere and physical delights while speaking every imaginable language and wearing every sort of dress. Only 34% of Geneva’s population is ethnically Swiss these days so the city is remarkably cosmopolitan. When I was here 30+ years ago that was not the case and the change is fascinating.
Our hotel is, in itself, a small version of the global community which Geneva serves while a walk around the block takes you past the Kuwaiti, Canadian, Korean, Russian, Croatian permanent missions, headquarters of the WHO, International Labor Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, UN High Commission for Refugees, the International Red Cross and dozens more. Breakfast (included as it usually is in European hotels) is totally, thoroughly and completely Swiss, though. There is muesli, eggs and meats, cheeses and about a zillion types of bread plus fruit and yoghurt. Every day.
Day 17: June 28, 2006
OK. I’ll admit it. We took the day off. After only 3 hours devoted to phone and emails, we went on a tour of Monteux and the Castle at Chillon made famous by George Gordon, Lord Byron (“My head is white, but not with years, Nor grew it white in a single night As men’s have grown from sudden fears….”
Chillon, built on the site of an older castle by the Bernese a very, very long time ago, does contain a (rather sanitized) dungeon where Byron carved his name in a sandstone pillar and a gallows. It also provides a breathtaking glimpse of military dominance in a rugged and difficult country since it was placed to defend its position from both the lake side (the Bernese had longboats with 110 rowers which could load more than 600 fighting men) and the mountain side and succeeded in doing both for many hundreds of years until the Bernese simply decided not to defend their position any longer and left, freeing the prisoners and departing Geneva forever. Perhaps that’s a model we could suggest to Codex but somehow I don’t think they are quite ready to take it.
Just as the Bernese left Chillon only when it became clear to them that they were presiding over a crumbling and grumbling empire for the order to change radically, the Natural Solutions Foundation is helping those who value their food and health freedoms to become an effective force for change. In the US we are supporting the development of a legal and an intellectual challenge to a contaminated food supply. Internationally, we are helping nations to apply protective strategies to the serious health problems posed by Codex.
The Bernese didn’t leave without a struggle but today Chillon (and this part of Switzerland) are no longer occupied territories. The Prisoner of Chillon, Francois Bonivard, was thrown into prison for speaking his mind and then freed by the Bernese in 1536. We need to be freed, too, so that we can pursue our own paths to health and make our own choices in how to stay there. It’s a matter of health and of civil liberty as well.
Day 18: June 29, 2006
Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you to anticipate it! Today we learned that a brilliant voice for health, the environment and freedom has been personally blocked by the hierarchy of Codex from coming to the Codex meeting here in Geneva next week!
Corporations sponsor delegates all the time. For example, all three of the delegates from India to the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) last November in Bonn, Germany, were sponsored by the Nestle Corporation. They represented India but they were heavily influenced by their sponsor’s views on the baby food and formulas of which Nestle is a major manufacturer. IBFAN, the Non Governmental Organization (NGO) focusing on breastfeeding and infant breastfeeding substitutes sponsored delegates to the same meeting who were influenced on the opposite side of the fences to be dealt with at that meeting.
So sponsorship of delegates from countries with limited funds to participate in Codex is an accepted practice and an excellent way to make inroads at Codex since only national delegations have an effective voice. True, NGOs (which may be either industry or civil organizations), if recognized by Codex, may speak, but their voice is very small compared to the voices of countries. Only countries may introduce items, and only countries may call for a vote or carry out other important procedural maneuvers. So friendly national delegates are very important to change occurring.
Thus, we were delighted when a leading African scientist with a long history of fearlessly speaking out for health, the environment and consumer choice agreed to accept Natural Solutions Foundation sponsorship to attend the Codex meeting next week. We were even more delighted when the head of the department for which he works agreed to allow him to attend as a sponsored delegate.
And we were shocked, but not surprised, when we learned today that an absolutely unprecedented event had occurred: the 2006 Chairman of the Codex Alimentarius Commission had written a personal letter to the scientist’s Department Head and FORBIDDEN him to allow the scientist to come as a sponsored delegate since the Natural Solutions Foundation was his sponsor. That means several things:
1. Bulls eye! We are definitely having an effect and our strategy is the correct one. Otherwise there would have been no need for the hierarchy of Codex to try to interfere with it. We are clearly on the right track. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for that confirmation.
2. Codex has just publicly declared itself to be precisely the repressive, autocratic and pro-illness organization the Natural Solutions Foundation has identified it as being. It strikes out to thwart moves to change its direction toward a health-supporting one using primitive and heavy handed interventions and attempts at limiting both debate and information. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for that confirmation.
3. Codex plays dirty. Debate and discussion are not what it wants. Therefore, debate and discussion are most valuable tools. Sharing information inside of, and outside of, the confines of Codex is extremely valuable since it is what Codex fears most. The Natural Solutions Foundation has been providing options and accurate information to decision makers and grass roots in the US and abroad. This is a strategy which builds the constituency for health and health freedom at the national and at the international level. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for that confirmation.
4. We had, of course, Plan A.1 (and have Plans B, C and D) in our vest pockets, so to speak. We anticipated that, if we were on the right track and our Estimate of Situation were correct, Codex would strike out to try to limit or eliminate our effectiveness. Codex has shown us how very important strategic planning and adherence to the Principles of War are (and will be) to win this health freedom campaign. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for that confirmation.
We will miss the intelligent, articulate and consistently audible voice of our scientist friend at this meeting. He is a fearless leader and a deep thinker. His absence will leave a hole. However, we have other delegates who are alerted to the issues and prepared to speak with equally compelling and intelligent voices. Mr. Chairman has not been able to stifle dissent so easily. What each country does remains, like a jury trial, a crap shoot. But we have worked diligently to help build the constituency which can back pro health options inside Codex and beyond. Next week will be another set of milestones in the health freedom battle but this battle will continue regardless of the direct intervention of the Codex hierarchy.
Revolutions are like that. There is a prisoner waiting to be freed here in Geneva. The day? July 4. or thereabouts. The name? Miss Freedom, Miss Health Freedom, to be precise. Let’s wish her well and support the struggle for her freedom all over this green world of ours, shall we?
Day 19: June 29, 2006
This was a strategy day with hours and hours and hours of tactical implementation to support next week’s Codex meeting from our side. After a hard day at the computer and on the phone, we took a walk to the edge of Lake Geneva for a bite of dinner: an interesting amalgam of Swiss and Chinese food concepts rolled into one Peking Duck. It was really very good and quite interesting and made a welcome change from a day inside the hotel room working on documents and options for next week and beyond.
Yes, whatever happens next week, there will certainly be a beyond! Codex is complex and health freedom is even more complex. So the Natural Solutions Foundation will be working on pro-health issues and options for a long, long time to come.
Day 19: June 30, 2006
Today was the start of the Montreux Jazz Festival and, since it is only just a few miles down the lakeshore, I had hoped we would have the time to get there today for some local experiences and some music. However, the actions of the Codex Chairman required a good deal of planning and effort so we did not have the time to get to the opening festivities today. Phone, email, creation of documents, contact with colleagues and more of same. The issues are just too important to leave to chance!
We did go out for dinner to a Singapore restaurant, though, quite close to the bus station. Across the street, next to the bars and bistros, is “The American Market” which sells all the foods we have exported to a receptive world: chips fried in fake and poisoned oils, sodas, endless artificial drinks in colors food never even thought of being, dozens and dozens of candies and cookies and cereals devoid of absolutely any nutritional value and an endless array of other food fakes. And all at a premium since they are high status “foods”. The place was packed with fast food (aka fast death).
Pay the price to eat this stuff and, in the end, you will pay the price of having eaten this stuff.
And who benefits? Why, the people who brought you the fake food and the people who are right there to collect the immense profits your preventable illness and death brings to them. You know their names: I don’t have to tell you who they are.
“The American Market” is, in fact, a prelude of things to come for the entire world’s food supply if Codex wins. That’s why we won’t let it win.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Day 12: June 23, 2006
Today we had another full day of meetings and had the same level of success at each of them in this bustling African commercial capital. What a day! For reasons that you will instantly understand, we cannot tell you exactly where we are but you can be assured that it is hot, difficult to arrange anything, complicated and thrilling. Today, in addition to the editors and reporters from two of the largest newspapers in this country we have seen people who know either nothing or quite a lot about Codex but who have not thought about it from our view point. Each one listens with great interest since each one appears to genuinely care what happens to the nutritional status of his or her countrymen. This is a unique and thrilling aspect of these countries: there are problems which we in the US cannot even begin to comprehend, poverty at breath taking levels, corruption in many places at a level we almost never contemplate and yet civil servents and public advocates, activists and business people, Members of Parliament and Ministers of Health are truly interested in listening to what we are saying and in making changes to further public nutrition!
Of course, we shall see what the actual actions their delegates take are during the Codex meeting. At this level, however, we are dealing with people who genuinely seem to want their countries to do the right thing. We think American can learn a thing or two!
Day 13: June 24, 2006
A major newspaper in this country runs a full page story on the importance of our stand on Codex and health freedom! We will scan it and share it with you AFTER the Codex meeting. It urges the country to take care to protect its access to healthy and natural options! In color, no less!
Then we get word that a major African country has apparently shifted its position to support South Africa’s superb initiative for the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy at Codex. Again, we shall see, but it would appear that the shift is because of the work that we have been doing! We are thrilled: hot, tired, exhausted but thrilled!
I have gotten bitten by at least 3 mosquitoes (all of which are presumed to carry malaria) and so I begin taking Artemesia annua and ionic silver to prevent the development of malaria. No one else got bitten who was near me. That’s the way it usually is, by the way.
Then a large and festive meal with our supporters in this country and off to the airport for a flight to Geneva.
Day 14: June 25, 2006
The flight started out fine but sometime during it I became sicker than I have ever been. Every orifice which could empty itself did so repeatedly. And then again and again. I assume that the problem was food poisoning since I recovered after many, many hours of sleep both in the airport waiting for connecting flights and then in the hotel room. UGH! Bert was fine. Go figure.
Oh, by the way, someone stole my Blackberry from our hand luggage so if you wanted to call me, you can’t!
Day 15: June 26, 2006
After some more extended recovery (that equals sleep), we had a leisurly day during which I went through several thousand emails. If I have not gotten to you, please be patient! We are preparing a White Paper on the Codex issue of national options to hand to the delegates whom we will be continuing to meet with with the help of our outstanding legal team.
Let me tell you, even sitting in a hotel room in Geneva is easier, but the work that we have done in Africa has gone so well that I would gladly do it all over again! Thanks for your letters of support and your donations.
This is a very expensive proposition and if you have not given generously yet, please, please do so.
We have a lot to do before us, but what we have done so far on this trip can, just possibly, change the world!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Don’t forget to sign the Citizen’s Petition and visit www.EatSafeEatSmart.com! REL
Day 4: June 15, 2006
Today we are in the commercial capital of this bustling city meeting with government officials. We meet the Food and Agricultural Number 2 man (who comes from this country) and watch his body language: “I need to entertain these useless people because my boss is too busy to do it. Let’s get it over with!” We listen to his take on Codex (“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”) and wonder whether he really does not think about the policies he participates in implementing or if he is masking his reality with balsamic platitudes. It is hard to tell since he is closed emotionally and verbally.
None the less, we plunge ahead and tell him what we believe Codex has in store for the land that he loves. We tell him about the results of an adulterated food supply and the impact of chronic under nutrition on the already nutritionally vulnerable people of his country. He is shocked and argues with us saying that is not what HIS Codex will bring. Citing specific examples we note that his body language and verbal language as well have changed: he is now leaning forward in his chair seeking more information and asking probing questions. His forehead is deeply furrowed now where before it was smooth. His expression is deeply concerned, too, where before it was smug.
By the time we leave, Mr. FAO is asking how he can help us to protect his country. We give him a hard copy of the Codex eBook (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/resources/books.shtml) and a copy of Nutricide: the DVD (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/aboutcodex/dvd.shtml) and leave with his fervent handshake and promise to spread the word in the government and FAO circles he works in.
Next, the head of the Codex Committee of this country. He is also the head of the Bureau of Standards. He is going to Codex but he does not care about it. He listens to our presentation while looking at his watch, accepts our materials (still looking at his watch) and makes it clear that he is not really interested in much of what we have to say. He will be the Codex Delegate from his country at the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) meeting coming up in Geneva next month (July 3-7, 2006). We leave. He is relieved. So are we.
That afternoon we visit the head of a major humanitarian Foundation in-country who is also a significant cattle rancher and farmer. Codex, food purity, domestic and international standards are of great significance to her. We discuss options and receive her enthusiastic support for our program. She suggests high ranking people whom she will contact on our behalf.
Our guide and networking support person (a beautiful, talented young woman who is working on transforming both women and her country in an inspiring way), tells us that a scientist whom we met at Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (November, 2005, Bonn, Germany) and whom we admired for his intelligence and determination to make his points despite the hostility and intimidation of the Chair) has agreed to meet with us over dinner.
This gentleman had previously not replied to any of our emails and we had given up hope on having him as an ally. When we meet with him that evening he tells us that he was watching to see what we could accomplish without his help. Now that we have made major strides in our goals, he is willing to work with us.
In fact, not only is he willing to work with us, he is willing to bring together a team of countries to support our positions at CAC! And he is in the process of doing just that! Day 4 was a breakthrough day.
Day 5: June 16, 2006
We fly to South Africa to visit with a dear friend and catch up. Dinner, loving conversation, a home cooked meal. Life is good tonight!
Day 6: June 17, 2007
More catch up and dinner with a South African doctor and his lovely wife who believe that Natural Medicine is the answer to his country’s major health problems. He has formulated a spectacular meal in a pouch for HIV positive patients with outstanding results. However, the unscrupulous activities of a German MD in South Africa have made any natural health option highly suspect and his effort is meeting with knee-jerk opposition to its deployment. We discuss possible strategies for developing his advance in clinical nutrition and the significant threat to the needy that harmonization with Codex (for example, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline) would mean to his people.
Also at dinner: a microbiologist and her husband. Her work is on the benefits and importance of probiotics and we discuss her struggle to get recognition for their central role in health and recovery from illness. She, too, has developed a remarkable set of products and we talk about how important these two advances are for all immunocompromised patients, HIV/AIDS and other and, as usual, the impact of Codex on them internationally and, through harmonization, within South Africa unless both are modified.
Our materials leave after dinner in their hands and it is clear that we have new allies in the health and health freedom struggles! And they are people you really want to have dinner with!
Day 7: June 18, 2006
Another dinner, this time with a husband and wife who are representatives of a very large, very influential Chinese nutrient company. We discuss in some detail how their company and our Foundation see our challenges and opportunities with Codex and realize that we have very close alignment. The Chairman of this company will now receive our materials and will be informed of how close our visions and issues are so that we can talk together about developing a common communication strategy either by our going to China or by our coming back to South Africa if his visit and our schedule coincide. Another set of materials walks out the door and we have new comrades in arms (and dinner companions for the future, too).
Day 8: June 19, 2006
We wake up at 4:30 AM to leave the house so that we can catch a very early flight to Capetown, South Africa. We make the plane but the plane doesn’t make the landing. Hours later, we have circled long enough to use up our gas and landed to refuel because Capetown sits in a bowl surrounded by steep mountains on all sides but the sea and, although the surrounding area is totally clear, Capetown is socked in by thick fog. I fell asleep during this circling in a holding pattern and woke up when we landed. I asked where we were and the lady across from me said, “East London”. I was terribly confused: How could I have been asleep long enough to fly to the UK and not know it? No, no! East London, South Africa, only halfway back to where we had taken off!
More fuel, more circling and then we are in Capetown, only half a day late along with 12 other plane loads of people who could not land until then, too. Bags? Luggage carts? Not easily had.
Finally we emerge with our luggage and meet the people who have come to collect us: a farmer with a passion to feed his country with supplemented, healthy, clean food and a highly influential traditional healer who is also an MD (or perhaps an MD who is also a traditional healer).
We detail exactly what Codex is and what it means to them and their people. They are appropriately concerned and, material in their hands, the day ends with new friends and new allies. These are influential decision shapers and are important in our efforts to spread the word about health and health freedom into new communities. Both understand that Codex is a threat to nutrient based health strategies and are willing to work hard to protect their people and their families. And they are a delight to have dinner with, too!
Day 9: June 20, 2006
We are still in Capetown and we are picked up from the in-town home of the farmer by a brilliant analytic chemist who is also an MD (or is it the other way around?). He is an expert on the precise evaluation of food components which are related to allergies like genetically modified DNA from GMO foods and we have a tour of his lab and meet his staff. Over lunch we discuss Codex and its allegedly “Science Based” standards and guidelines. We agree that under nutrition and an adulterated food supply are major health threats presided over by Codex although we also agree that there are aspects of Codex which can be utilized to help humanity (which as the appropriate upgrading of lab standards and facilities).
The proprietor of the lab drives us to the airport and agrees that he, too, needs to spread the word of what is happening to health freedom. This time the air portion of the day is uneventful.
We are met by the representatives of the Chinese company from two days before and returned to our host’s home bone weary, but enlivened from the excellent conversations and commitments we have participated in.
Day 10: June 21, 2006
We fly to a huge, populous and highly influential African country where we are met by a physician whom we came to know only 1 month ago at a seminar in New York! He said that he would bring us to members of the Government of this country who would take our cause up in Codex and make a difference. In this case, we are deeply concerned about the importance of implementing the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health in a manner consistent with South Africa’s 11 principles for doing just that.
We hope for the best and get nearly no sleep because we have to leave the hotel long before dawn to fly to the capital city to meet with ministers and other high ranking officials tomorrow.
Day 11: June 22, 2006
BINGO!!!!! Ministers, Senators and Members of the House of Representatives meet us. Codex representatives who work for the Food and Drugs Board but who believe in natural medicine as essential to national health meet us. The Chairmen of the House and Senate Committees on Health and Public Health meet us. The most powerful politician in the government meets with us. Virtually all of these men are physicians who, surprisingly to those of us from the US, really understand the crucial role of nutrition and are duly horrified by what Codex can mean to their people.
The Consumer Protection Agency Director General (who reports directly to the highest authority in the country) meets with us along with her legal advisor and really, really get it! They are members of the National Codex Committee and promise to bring our material and our information to that body.
We give them each of them our materials and they all willingly promise that they will take the Global Strategy very carefully at the Codex Committee Meeting prior to the CAC next month. They were unaware of how important the Global Strategy was to them and promised to examine that very carefully.
Then off to the airport to fly back to the commercial capital of this country from its political capital. Well, that’s the theory, anyway. Hours and hours later, we get on the plane (dinner? lunch? breakfast? Don’t be ridiculous! I was packing a few power bars and we shared them as we dashed from one fabulous meeting to another. )
We wait and we wait and we wait. And we sweat. It is unbelievably hot and humid. I hate heat. I hate humidity. It does not really matter. We need to be here doing this and I can get cool next January, if I am lucky, I suppose.
General Stubblebine is wilting, too, in business attire. Hot, sticky, no air conditioning, no food, but a day of nearly unbelievable success.
We get on the plane at last and there is no air-conditioning. In fact, there is no air moving at all. We sit there dripping and wondering what is going on when the pilot cranks the engine. RRRRRR, RRRRR, RRRR, RR, R, no power and the engine dies. More brutal heat and humidity, another series of unsuccessful cranks and, wonder of wonders, it catches. Let me tell you, flying on a plane under those conditions made us all sweat even when the temperature cooled down.
We land, stagger off to our hotel for a few hours’ sleep and begin again: we are up very, very early because we have an interview with the first of the two leading newspapers in the country. We do an interview and the editor and reporter are mesmerized and promise to run the story right away.
(Breakfast? Did I mention breakfast? No? Guess why!)
Then off to interviews with highly significant people (including the Codex Point of Contact of this nation). Her body language (like that of the FAO man in another country) was closed when we began but, by the end of our several hours together, we were laughing, considering, and working together on a profound redefinition of the problems posed by Codex which had never presented themselves clearly at this level because the problem areas are so beautifully wrapped up in shiny gift wrapping with “Science Based, Science Based” printed on it. They are tied up with a bow tied by the PR skills of the multinational interests but, pulling on the strings, we show what is inside and neutrals and enemies reorient to become friendlies and allies.
Tomorrow we fly off again. Stay tuned. Codex will, this year, be attended by national representatives who just might act as a coalition and make a difference that can benefit every man, woman and child on the planet!
Stay tuned! There’s a lot more to come!
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
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
Let’s not get confused here. The prize that the Natural Solutions Foundation has its eye firmly fixed on is nothing short of victory in the complex and multi-sided war on our Health Freedoms, all of them. Keeping your eye on the prize means remembering that the members of our team, all of them, are NOT the enemy. But our team, the Health Freedom team, frequently spends our precious resources (time, effort and credibility) on diversions (e.g, turf battles and uncivil, nasty nonsense and meaningless attacks). Our team’s effort should be totally focused on defeating the enemy, not turning allies into enemies. It’s sort of like “Dallas comes to Health Freedom”.
And now, for something completely different, let me propose a level of civility heretofore unknown by a number of the members of our team: wasting time attacking each other is NOT useful in winning the war, even when another member of the team disagrees with a position you might hold dear.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, that’s great. It means that the tempest in the turf teapot has not reached you. Don’t even bother reading further: your eye has not been distracted from the prize and you are marching in the correct direction.
If, on the other hand, you are tired of getting e-whipsawed by a flow of intellectual sewage, please read on. You won’t find any such attack or defamation here: the Natural Solutions Foundation will continue to take the highest road. What you will find, however, is a discussion of what civility and meaningful discourse means and what it does not.
On June 16, 2005 I wrote to Jonathan Campbell, (http://www.cqs.com/) and introduced the Natural Solutions Foundation to him, writing,
While searching the web for material for my blog I encountered your site and the excellent piece “50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods” by Nathan Batalion. I am very impressed by your site and the material on it and I would like the opportunity to make contact with you and see how we might support the work that each of us is doing.
He responded the next day, saying “I agree with you 100% and I will do what I can to spread the word to my clients and my lists.” So far so good. Building bridges is a good thing and I believe that our side is only strengthened by alliances and mutual support. Concering the most negative of the Health Freedom activists (who irrationally attacks others continually if they commit the sin of disagreeing with them in any way), Jonathan writes “….how unfortunate. He can’t see his own sectarianism drives people away, and he thinks his little website is going to stop CODEX. Slightly short-sighted, and politically very naive.”
Then the next day, Jonathan wrote to tell me that while he agrees with part of what we are doing, he has misunderstood to whom the Citizen Petition is intended and therefore does not understand its import but thinks that by opposing CAFTA/FTAA we will solve the Codex problem. I wrote back explaining why I did not share this analysis.
Now here is an important point: in my mind this is perfectly OK: we disagree on our analysis of the problem and we are in a respectful dialogue about it. As I keep saying, this is a really big playing field and there is room for lots of different players using different strategies to deal with the immense Health Freedom assaults coming at us from many different directions.
On 10/23/05 I published a newsletter called Good News About Pandemic Flu in which I included a number of immune enhancement strategies which came from many, many different sources. Jonathan wrote me stating that a few of the items which I recommended were, in fact, published on his site and demanded a citation. My suggestions, which included various amino acids, Olive Leaf Extract, High Dose Vitamin C, garlic, Oil of Oregano, elderberry extract, etc., and which cited numerous references, were more diverse than his reccomendations. I did not even know that any of them had come from Jonathan since I received an email from a correspondent with some recommendations, but with no citation. Those with which I agreed I added to my list because they made sense and were easily available materials which could be added to a regimen with good effect.
I wrote back to Jonathan and told him that while I did not know he was the author of the regimen from which I drew some items (and still don’t, by the way, despite his claim), the next time I wrote about health issues I would mention that Jonathan asked to be cited as the source for the use of these particular items. Of course, I am not aware that he has done the basic research on these items and, as far as I can tell, did not cite the research from which their recommendation came but, none the less, as a courtesy, I have no problem indicating that the proximate source for the information on the inclusion of a few of these items was Jonathan’s website.
Since my newsletter contained items not contained in his article, Jonathan demanded an attribution for, I suppose, those parts for which he claims ownership. I have no problem with this: assuming that he really did publish these nutritional suggestions before anyone else, he should receive credit for that publication.
That is where things stood until several of our correspondents sent us an absolutely astonishing, widely disseminated letter written by Jonathan in which he, on the one hand, complements my effective writing style and on the other hand, libels me by absurd accusations that I am using some nasty, nefarious and underhanded technique of which I had, in fact, never heard AND that I learned this technique from, of all places,the US Army via, he says, my husband, a retired Army officer. Just in case there is any doubt, this is nonsense: I never learned any technique in any area from the US Army (or any other military organization from here or elsewhere, for that matter). Never.
As a College English Major who intended to write the Great American Novel (never dreaming that I would write the Great American Polemic instead) and takes pride in my writing skills, I am flattered. I guess my writing style derives from Mrs. Feaster, my 6th grade teacher and from Dr. Wilson, my college advisor, but the Army?
My writing style is far more graceful and fluid than my husband’s: I write in sentences, he writes in bullets (what else?)
A little substantiation would do nicely here, Jonathan, thank you. In fact, it would provide a welcome relief and a refreshing change from the assertions, allegations, smear and slander, to say nothing of the libel, flung at those of us who are effective in this Health Freedom advocacy. I suppose that if there were no intentional dissemination of dissent in this field, Big Pharma would have to invent it. Have they?
It is tempting to wonder whether that might account for some of the nastiness and distraction in this arena or whether personal pettiness and dysfunction are sufficient to account for it without outside influence.
Back to the specific matter at hand, though: Having taken, as usual, the High Road of civil response to civil discourse and ignoring anything else, I was shocked to receive the following rather astonishing (and factually inaccurate) email from Jonathan today:
Dr. Laibow,
It has now been some time since you published a copy of my avian flu preparation regimen without attribution, and you agreed that you would send a notice of attribution to your subscribers. You have acknowledged that you obtained from someone and re-published it without checking out the source or doing a simple google search, and that is an infringement of my copyright. I have not seen your acknowledgement sent to your list. I now request that you do so, and will contact my lawyer if you do not do so within 10 days.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
So, Jonathan, you have had an acknowledgement of the fact that I unintentionally incorporated something that you claim to have originated into a larger article, although I do not have any substantiation of the fact that you are, in fact, the author of the protocol you published. (And do not understand how doing a “simple google search” would prevent a violation of your copyright.” My protocol differs in substantial areas from yours but that is, as far as I can tell, a good thing. Here my civil and fact-based questions to you:
1. Where is the substantiation of the allegations which you have made about me and my writing techniques? Please provide it to me.
2. When can I expect your public acknowledgement of the fact that you have publicly defamed and libeled me? Should I give you a deadline threatening to contact my lawyer if you do not provide it? Is that how you prefer to carry out discourse?
3. What is your motivation for this defamation and liable?
4. What possible positive outcome does publicaly attacking another member of our team serve when I had already assured you that I was prepared to cite your material when I next wrote about the topic? Are you looking to create trouble, get your ego stroked or do you, in fact, have another agenda in mind?
5. Your sudden switch in attitude and cooperation suggests that you have been compromised by “disinformation”. Since there is more than enough disinformation going around from a number of different sources (with a number of different agendas driving it), I suggest that the members of our team develop the habit of scrupulous accuracy rather than witting or unwitting dissemination of it. Is there a reality-based reason for the sudden switch that you want to make public or is it a private matter? If public, please supply the information, if private, why would you impose a private issue on the general public?
I suggest that you (and other members of the Health Freedom team) refrain from public assault on those of us who form the Health Freedom team. Given your early high praise for our work before you decided that you could not tolerate any dissent from your position on CAFTA/FTAA (which we oppose but do not see as a major health freedom threat: Codex is the threat: CAFTA/FTAA are, from a health freedom perspective, derivitive problems) and our earlier civility, I would suggest a return to that mode of behavior.
I know that is the path I have chosen. There’s plenty of room up here on the High Road. Y’all come.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director