Feds eye control of vitamins, supplements – even water!
FDA looks to regulate natural substances as drugs, with prescriptions from doctors

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Posted: April 24, 2007 9:30 p.m. Eastern

By Bob Unruh

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© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

FDA Commissioner Andrew von Echenbach

The Food and Drug Administration says vitamins, supplements, herbs and other natural substances, including water when it is used to "treat" dehydration, should be classified as drugs, and opponents have only until April 30 to express their concern about the proposals under Docket No. 2006D-0480.

The government agency under the direction of Andrew C. von Eschenbach, who became commissioner in 2006, also has put its "Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration" on a fast track for implementation.

But parents' groups, natural remedy interests, food and herb businesses and others are horrified. A group called Gentle Christian Mothers alerted its constituency in no uncertain terms.

"Please Read!!! The FDA is trying to regulate all things that are considered by them to be treatment for disease. They want to regulate vitamins, herbs, alternative therapies (things like hot stone therapy), even down to juices and holy water," the warning said. "It might mean having to go to a doctor or medical professional for vitamins."

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The website noted that among likely developments if the FDA has its way:

 

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

   

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

   

• Vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug.

   

• Weight machines will be regulated as "medical devices" and require FDA approval before being sold or used.

   

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

   

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

   

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

   

• Foods, supplements, vitamins and homeopathic remedies will disappear from store shelves, pending FDA "review."

   

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

"This could be potentially devastating, not just to my business but to any business relating to supplements," Sophy Winnick, a Felton, Calif., mother of four who has been selling Youngevity products for 10 years, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. "People better get on the horn about this."

The FDA's "draft guidance" on the issue first appeared in December, but federal officials said it was printed in the Federal Register on Feb. 27, prompting the growing storm of protest.

The FDA has reported that approximately one-third of all adult Americans have reported participating in or using some form of "complementary and alternative medicine" and officials estimate nutritional supplement sales total about $5 billion a year in America.

On the NewsTarget website, self-described "Health Ranger" Mike Adams posted one of the alerts.

"What this means to consumers, according to the proposal as outlined in FDA Docket number 2006D-0480, is that things like vitamins and herbs would be controlled by the FDA, and could possibly require prescriptions from a naturopath, herbologist or some other physician, all of which would require you to pay a health insurance company and contribute to the already back-breaking cost of healthcare in America," he wrote.

"There are those who do not trust the U.S. government to act in the interest of its citizens over the interests of pharmaceutical companies and health insurance providers," he said. "Those people have good reason to feel this way, and the amount of dangerous – DEADLY, even – pharmaceutical drugs that get recalled … is testament to the fact that human beings can be used as guinea pigs because the FDA allows the pharmaceutical industry to release drugs that haven't been properly tested."

As WND recently reported, Merck and Co. had been donating to state legislators across the nation who in return were working to require young girls to be given Merck's $400 vaccine that prevents a virus that is spread only through sexual contact.

WND also has reported on the mandatory anthrax shots for members of the military, even though they had not been fully tested, and the possibility that government officials also could order civilians to be vaccinated.

"This [new] proposal would allow the FDA to control your access to 'alternatives' to the broken, profit-driven, corrupt pharmaceutical industry here in the U.S.," Adams wrote.

"When it comes to health freedom, this is the FDA's end game," he said. "They tried to sneak this under the radar, but word got out and now the natural health community is up in arms over this rule.

"This move by the FDA is designed to once and for all destroy the 1994 DSHEA law that has made supplements 'legal' while eliminating nutritional supplements and natural medicine from the United States, ensuring monopoly profits and control by drug companies and the FDA," he said.

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

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

For example, he cited wording directly from the FDA plans: "…if a person decides to produce and sell raw vegetable juice for use in juice therapy to promote optimal health … [and] if the juice therapy is intended for use as part of a disease treatment regiment…, the vegetable juice would also be subject to regulation as a drug."

Keep in mind, he said, the FDA is the agency that "openly allows the mass poisoning of the public with cancer-causing food additives such as sodium nitrite."

According to his website, Adams suffered from degenerative disease, was nearly obese and diabetic by 30. He became a student of nutrition and natural therapies and gave up all pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter drugs, caffeine and pursued a natural foods diet with exercise.

He lost 50 pounds, his diabetes symptoms vanished and his blood pressured reached 105/60, so he began a writing and teaching career on his own transformation.

An essay by Roger Wicke at Rocky Mountain Hi Herbal noted, "The unstated purpose of the FDA, and similar organizations in many other countries, is and always has been the protection of major pharmaceutical company profits. Expensive testing protocols act as a way to keep drugs and herbs within the control of the international cartels. While such tests may make sense for newly synthesized drugs with no track record in cultural tradition or popular usage, they are inappropriate for herb and food products, especially those with a long history of usage."

The FDA, in its announcement, said the federal government has been investigating and monitoring "complementary and alternative medicine" since 1992. It also said "depending on the … therapy or practice, a product used … may be subject to regulation."

Secondly, it noted, the law does not exempt alternative medicine products from regulation.

Alan Stang, writing on etherzone.com, was a little more blunt.

"Recently we wrote about the 72-year-old Florida grandmother whom the Food and Drug Administration Nazis are charging with a couple of felonies and some misdemeanors for helping cancer victims get the laetrile (Vitamin B-17) they need," he wrote. "Now here come these same offspring of unmarried female canines, with a scheme that may outlaw dietary supplements…"

He said where such laws already have kicked in, Echinacea, which recharges the immune system, used to cost $14 a bottle, but now is $153. "Because they work, they have now become 'drugs,'" he said.

"Not content to dominate the drug trade and send your prescription drugs into the $tratosphere, the Food & Drug Administration is now trying (yet again) to take over the entire health food and nutritional supplement industry so they can shut it down forever, leaving expensive FDA-approved drugs – with their myriad side effects – as your only option for treating anything from Alzheimer's to zits," wrote Jim Rutz, in a WND column.

"The FDA hacks are pooh-poohing the significance of the new guidelines as toothless suggestions that merely 'clarify' and 'change nothing.' Yeah, right. In truth, they're following the classic procedure for passing outrageous laws that wouldn't have a chance without an incremental, camel-nose-under-the-tent approach," he said.

"In reality, 2006D-0480 would eventually change everything, including your life expectancy. The FDA realizes that alternative medicine has far, far more solutions to chronic diseases than mainline medicine does ... and that panics them…"

WND also has reported on an agreement by the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission to a Trilateral Cooperation Charter with counterparts in Canada and Mexico under the auspices of NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America that will elevate the crackdown on public access to food supplements and vitamins.

"The purpose is to make an end run around any domestic law that interferes with food and drug multi-national corporate profits," John Hammell, a critic of the plan, told WND.

Hammell is the founder of International Advocates for Health Freedom, an advocacy group created to fight globalists' efforts to regulate alternative health treatments, including herbs, dietary supplements, and vitamins.

"A key goal of the Trilateral Cooperation Charter is to limit the public's access to food supplements and vitamins that are fundamental to many types of alternative medicine," Hammell said. "The Trilateral Cooperation Charter is determined to attack the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 by moving to merge our food and drug regulations with those of Canada and Mexico, both of whom are far more restrictive on dietary supplements."

He believes the agenda of the Trilateral Cooperation Charter reflects a globalist desire to advance the interests of the large pharmaceutical companies by reining in the food supplements industry worldwide.

He points to efforts such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission that was created in 1963 by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization, both official groups within the United Nations.

"The Codex Alimentarius Commission claims that their main purpose is to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair trade practices in the food trade worldwide," Hammell explained to WND. "But the truth is that the Codex Alimentarius Commission is dominated by corporate multi-national interests that do not have as their primary concern the health interests of the people they claim they are in business to protect, not if that health interest is better served by alternative food supplements and alternative medicine. They have a business with disease – it's not in their best interests that people be healthy."

Comments can be submitted in writing to: Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.