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
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
To
Sometimes the best way to make a serious point is with humor and wit. Richard Brodie has made that clear. After I wrote a blog (Help Shape the Grassroots Campaign) asking for suggestions for slogans to capture the imagination of America, many of you wrote in with wonderful suggestions. Richard went one further: first, he wrote a limerick for us:
There were “Food Rules” once, very nefarious,
With which Bayer intended to bury us.
But we said “Go to hell!”
To Big Pharma’s cartel,
And “Screw you, Codex ALIMENTARIUS!”
But wait! There’s More! Then he wrote a side splittingly funny annotated version of Susan Davis’ devastatingly bad bill, HR 3156 Davis bill is funny? No, but the annotation is wonderful and it is funny. Best of all, it makes the point beautifully.
Once you read it, share it widely via a link in your emails to the Natural Solutions Foundation guide to important Congressional bills, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/bills
And share Richard’s limerick, too. CODEX is a bloated, pompous beast! Laugh at it and watch it deflate to a manageable size!
Yours in health and freedom (and laughter, too),
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
OK, you know that you have power with your Congressional members. You also know that there are really, really serious threats to health freedom and Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) afoot because of CODEX, the confluence of the major corporate interests of the Bigs: Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Agrabiz, Big Biotechna and Big Medica. You know that they can buy and sell political influence six ways to Sunday because of their legal and illegal influence peddling and limitless budgets. They are powerful, but they are not invincible, by any means! One of the things that they cannot stand is strong public pressure. Let’s give it to them!
Here is my question to you: Are you, a Little like me, ready to use the power we have to counter the Bigs? I sure am. That is exactly what I am doing when I battle CODEX with radio shows, articles, blogs, lectures, etc., etc. Remember the lobbyist’s advice: “This is a winnable battle if you can mobilize the grass roots. Get groups of people to visit the members of Congress in their local offices and let them know you mean business”.
Organizing a grass roots effort is a big, big task. We will help you. I will provide you with organizing outlines, flow charts and methods, conference calls, etc. to make it easy and successful to organize your fellow voters and get them involved in defeating CODEX.
But the way I figure it, every movement needs music and pity, memorable slogans to bring its message home to the hearts as well as the minds of the millions who will listen and join us. So here is my challenge: This is YOUR campaign every bit as much as it is mine! It’s your health, your longevity, your wellness we are talking about. I invite you to help design this campaign. Here’s how:
Music: If you have a link that plays a piece of music that you would like to share with the Health Freedom audience, send me a link in an email with your permission to post it and we will do exactly that! No obscenity, please. CODEX is quite obscene enough!
Slogans: We need strong, memorable and direct slogans to get people’s attention and give them a mental and emotional hook they can hang their well informed passion about CODEX upon. The Natural Solutions Foundation is fortunate enough to have a group I call our “War Council”. We meet often by phone and I know that I am deeply fortunate to have the diverse and wise council of this august group (not just in August, of course!) While we were talking about this very problem this evening we came up with a bunch of slogans. Picture them on signs in front of the White House and you get the feel for what we need very quickly.
As we were discussing the idea and developing the slogans when it suddenly occurred to me that YOU should be on the phone during this conversation, each one of you! Why? Because your passion, your humor, your creativity and your slant on the issues are vital to the ground swell of support that we are building. So send me your slogans, your suggestions for a theme for the grass roots campaign and your creative thoughts and we will post the ones that we believe we can use. In your email to me at rima.laibow@healthfreedomusa.org, along with the ideas they include a statement that you give us permission to use them, please.
This is a work in progress and I invite your participation. Here are the slogans we came up with in our brainstorming session. Tell us which ones work for you, which ones don’t and send us yours:
Pharma Fed = Pharma Dead
I’m Pharma Phed Up!
My Health – My Choice!
Drugs Kill – Vitamins Don’t!
My Way? DSHEA!
Americans Choose Health Not Drugs!
Health By Vitamins
or
Death by Drugs?
Death By CODEX!
CODEX: Latin for “Death”
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Medical Director