Rasa Von Werder Meditating
DRUG COMPANIES LIE THAT ALL OUR MENTAL PROBLEMS ARE “CHEMICAL IMBALANCE” SO THEY CAN DOLE OUT THEIR CHEMICALS
See second article GOVT WANTS TO TAKE AWAY OUR SUPPLEMENTS SO BIG PHARMA CAN BETTER POISON US WITH THEIR DRUGS
Newsletter from Rasa Von Werder Sept. 12, 2011
Rasa says: The govt. is no more than a puppet of money – the corporations, the trillionairs who finance war for profit –the govt. is their handmaiden. They prey on OUR CHILDREN & GRANDCHILDREN & want to swallow up future generations.
THIS IS PATRIARCHY, RULE OF THE HUMAN MALE.
Their control of our planet is based on forcing others to do their bidding. It’s not about caring or nurturing, it’s tyranny for profit. There is no empathy only a pretense of it. If you want to know what they really want to do to you, watch the soldiers who occupy foreign countries at work & play, watch them rape a 14 year old girl, then blow her head off, with no impunity. And there’s worse, read “Against Our Will – Men, Women & Rape,” by Susan Brownmiller.
These articles seem so innocent compared to war, but they are war, part of the same pattern. They take over bit by bit until nothing is left, we become their slaves, with no human rights, we must do as we are told or die. That is their intention.
How dare people say Matriarchy will be Patriarchy upside down? What women rape children in diapers? How many crimes are committed by women, how much violence, as compared to that of men? According to statistics, men commit 98% of crimes & violence, therefore, women commit 2% - but that’s not factoring in WAR! Factor war in, & males commit 99% plus! And that is not just what they are told to do, in their free time, they commit crimes on the citizens of occupied countries, mostly women & children, raping, mutilating & killing them, with no punishment whatsoever!
Am I being extreme? No, they are. They are FORCING DRUGS UPON US, OUR BABIES. They LIE about the need of these drugs, these drugs poison us, destroy our bodies & brains, they are KILLING US with these drugs, & now, for those who are aware of what they are doing, want to stay healthy, practice health controls, THEY WANT TO REMOVE THE TOOLS OF REAL HEALTH so we will be helpless under their thumb, sick & weak, supposedly needing their poisons.
But there is HOPE. Women are rising up exponentially. In America, there are millions more women with college degrees then there are men (& this is rising). What good does this do? It means they will be getting the jobs - that they are rising up from the bottom, now that institutionalized discrimination has weakened. The end of this path is that women will take up more & more leadership positions, & that eventually, they will be the CEO’S of the corporations (& banks) through which the “shadow govt.” rules the world. Indeed this will take a few generations, perhaps one or two hundred years, but we are moving there.
This rise of women IS THE ONE & ONLY HOPE FOR OUR PLANET, & IT IS INEVITABLE.
There is NO MALE SYSTEM that ever has, or ever will, heal the sickness of the world. It has gone from bad to worse. Communism, Capitalism, Oligarchy, Socialism, any ism run by men deteriorates & corrupts, & eventually ends up violent. Remember neutral Switzerland during World War II? Neutral my foot, they were creating the war machinery for Hitler within their factories.
As for religion, many of them have Godlike figureheads at the top – Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Mohammed, Buddha, but in the hands of males, it all deteriorates & sooner or later, males are at the throats of others, depriving their rights, plundering, raping & killing. Why is that? Their INSTINCT IS FOR VIOLENCE, THEY DO NOT TAKE CARE OF OR NURTURE, THEY ARE NOT MOTHERS OR BABY SITTERS, THEY ARE FIGHTERS, DUE TO TESTOSTERONE & A BRAIN FOR WAR, BUT WOMEN ARE THE OPPOSITE. Women are FOR LIFE. They create life, they bear life, they nurture it. Women’s egg is a reproductive cell, the sperm is not, it dies in the petrie dish. Males give DNA information to females to reproduce, they cannot do so. Without females the human race would die out, but without males, life will continue.
Because males are not life givers, nor do they have the BRAIN FOR IT, all their institutions are flawed. Here we see a flawed government & medical system working together, demonic, draconian, tyrannical & DEADLY – their STOCK IN TRADE. Mary Daly pointed out how males create the CULTURE OF DEATH while Matriarchy is the opposite, the CULTURE OF LIFE.
Now these articles point out examples, right before our eyes, of how they work, & how they are depriving us of all that is good, & as I said before, women are the only hope to end all this, do not look to men.
Can Female Power Save the Planet?
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Visit the Mercola Video Library
Story at-a-glance
* Despite what the media and many health “experts” tell you, mental illnesses are not the result of “chemical imbalances” in your system
* Drugs designed to treat these “imbalances” are no more effective than placebos, and can cause alterations in your normal brain function that mimic symptoms of mental illness
* Psychiatric drugs may have changed the course of depression from a self-limiting illness to a chronic condition
* There are five important strategies to consider if you're currently facing depression or other mental illness
By Dr. Mercola
If reading the news and watching TV advertisements for psychotropic drugs makes you wonder if Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, you're not alone. In a New York Times book review, Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, talks about how a shocking 46 percent of Americans now fit a diagnosis for some form of mental illness.
"What is going on here? Is the prevalence of mental illness really that high and still climbing?" she asks. The authors of three books she's reviewed have posed some interesting -- and alarming -- answers.
Mental Illness Not the Result of Chemical Imbalance
Most of you have probably heard that depression is caused by too little serotonin in your brain, which antidepressants are designed to correct. Likewise, schizophrenia is said to be related to too much dopamine, which other psychiatric drugs help lower. Unfortunately for anyone who has ever swallowed these marketing ploys, this is actually NOT a scientific statement.
Instead, these explanations for the "causes" of mental illness were created only after the drugs were found to have these effects.
Says Angell:
"When it was found that psychoactive drugs affect neurotransmitter levels in the brain, as evidenced mainly by the levels of their breakdown products in the spinal fluid, the theory arose that the cause of mental illness is an abnormality in the brain's concentration of these chemicals that is specifically countered by the appropriate drug …
That was a great leap in logic … It was entirely possible that drugs that affected neurotransmitter levels could relieve symptoms even if neurotransmitters had nothing to do with the illness in the first place (and even possible that they relieved symptoms through some other mode of action entirely)."
As Angell states, using this logic you "could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin!"
Unfortunately, the idea that mental illness is the result of chemical balance is a popular one that is now firmly rooted in the conventional psychiatric profession. Not only does it take away the stigma of mental illness, but it gives psychiatrists a solution, one that fits neatly on their prescription pads.
The trouble is, not only do the drugs not work, they may actually cause your brain to function abnormally. Medical journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Robert Whitaker, whom I interviewed in the video above, explains it this way, as Angell reported:
"Prior to treatment, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders do not suffer from any known "chemical imbalance." However, once a person is put on a psychiatric medication, which, in one manner or another, throws a wrench into the usual mechanics of a neuronal pathway, his or her brain begins to function … abnormally."
Are Psychiatric Drugs Making Mental Illness Worse?
Something has changed in the field of diagnosing and treating psychiatric disorders in the last few decades, and that something has led to a 600 percent increase in persons on government (Social Security) disability due to mental illness!
According to Whitaker, it used to be that depression was typically a self-limiting illness. Even in cases severe enough to require hospitalization, people would get better in six or eight months; they would recover and often never relapse, or if they did it would be years down the road and, again, self-limiting.
When antidepressants were introduced, it was with the intent that they would help people recover from depression more quickly. Unfortunately, what we're now seeing, and have been seeing since antidepressants were introduced, is patients recovering faster but relapsing more, or recovering only partially and transitioning into a festering state of chronic depression that never really resolves.
Long-term studies now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long period of time. The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and become chronically depressed.
"By the 1990s, this change in the long term course of depression was so pronounced that finally it was addressed by researchers," says Whitaker. "Giovanni Fava from Italy said, "Hey, listen, the course is changing with antidepressants. We're changing it from an episodic illness to a chronic illness, and we really need to address this."
Not only that, but the depression is sinking into people [on antidepressants] in a deeper way than before."
According to Whitaker's research, this tendency to sensitize the brain to long-term depression appears to be the same both for the earlier tricyclic antidepressants and the newer SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Another famous psycho pharmacologist named Ross Baldessarini at Harvard Medical School also began asking whether or not these drugs may in fact be depressogenic (causing depression).
Unfortunately, the evidence points that way, and the long-term prognosis when taking antidepressants is quite bleak, as this type of drug treatment has a whopping 85 percent chronic relapse rate.
Psychiatric Drugs Cause Alterations in Your Normal Brain Function
Despite what the slick advertisements say, psychotropic drugs have no known measurable biological imbalances to correct -- unlike other drugs that can measurably alter levels of blood sugar, cholesterol and so on.
How can you medicate something that is not physically there?
The answer is, of course, you can't -- and doing so is a dangerous game.
Psychotropic drugs can actually interfere with your neurotransmitters in such a way as to upset the delicate processes within your brain needed to maintain your biological functions normally, leading to side effects that may resemble mental illness! As Angell reported, Whitaker explains:
"It is well understood that psychoactive drugs disturb neurotransmitter function, even if that was not the cause of the illness in the first place. Whitaker describes a chain of effects. When, for example, an SSRI antidepressant like Celexa increases serotonin levels in synapses, it stimulates compensatory changes through a process called negative feedback. In response to the high levels of serotonin, the neurons that secrete it (presynaptic neurons) release less of it, and the postsynaptic neurons become desensitized to it.
In effect, the brain is trying to nullify the drug's effects. The same is true for drugs that block neurotransmitters, except in reverse."
In 1996, neuroscientist Steven Hyman, who was head of the National Institute of Mental Health at the time, and is today Provost of Harvard University, published the paper Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drugs, in which he explains this chain of events. According to Dr. Hyman, once your brain has undergone a series of compensatory adaptations to the drug, your brain operates in a manner that is "both qualitatively and quantitatively different than normal."
Angell continues, explaining how this vicious cycle leads to more diagnoses, prescription drug use and increasing side effects:
"After several weeks on psychoactive drugs, the brain's compensatory efforts begin to fail, and side effects emerge that reflect the mechanism of action of the drugs. For example, the SSRIs may cause episodes of mania, because of the excess of serotonin. Antipsychotics cause side effects that resemble Parkinson's disease, because of the depletion of dopamine (which is also depleted in Parkinson's disease).
As side effects emerge, they are often treated by other drugs, and many patients end up on a cocktail of psychoactive drugs prescribed for a cocktail of diagnoses.
The episodes of mania caused by antidepressants may lead to a new diagnosis of "bipolar disorder" and treatment with a "mood stabilizer," such as Depokote (an anticonvulsant) plus one of the newer antipsychotic drugs. And so on."
Side Effects are What Let Patients Know Antidepressants are "Working"
Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most-prescribed drugs in the United States . Despite all of these prescription drugs being taken, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The statistics alone should be a strong indication that treatment with antidepressants simply is not working, but the research bears this out also.
Studies have confirmed that antidepressant drugs are no more effective than sugar pills. Some studies have even found that sugar pills may produce BETTER results than antidepressants!
Personally, I believe the reason for this astounding finding is that both pills work via the placebo effect, but the sugar pills produce far fewer adverse effects, however research by Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in the UK, and colleagues presents another interesting theory -- that the side effects produced by antidepressants are the reason why they are sometimes perceived to work better.
In Kirsch's book, The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, he describes research he conducted using placebo-controlled clinical trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A review of 42 trials revealed that placebos were 82 percent as effective as antidepressants, which translates to a 1.8-point difference on the Hamilton Depression Scale (which is used to measure symptoms of depression). Though "significant" clinically speaking, this difference would not mean much whatsoever on a treatment level.
Next, Kirsch also found in the research that virtually any pill that produced side effects was just slightly more effective at relieving depression than placebo. This included thyroid hormones, herbal remedies, stimulants, sedatives, and others.
So, the antidepressants did not appear to be unique in this action, since virtually every pill given produced the same results. What was really going on?
Well, the purpose of keeping a study double-blind, meaning neither the patient nor the researcher knows if they're taking an active pill or a placebo, is to prevent bias. It's well known that if a person believes they're taking an active drug, they are more likely to "feel" a benefit. Kirsch reasoned that when a person experienced a side effect, it tipped them off that they were taking an active antidepressant rather than a placebo, and this is what gave them the slight advantage.
To test this, Kirsch then investigated trials involving an "active" placebo, meaning one that causes a side effect, and low and behold there was absolutely no difference found between the antidepressant and the active placebo. Angell reported:
"Everyone had side effects of one type or another, and everyone reported the same level of improvement.
Kirsch reported a number of other odd findings in clinical trials of antidepressants, including the fact that there is no dose-response curve—that is, high doses worked no better than low ones—which is extremely unlikely for truly effective drugs.
"Putting all this together," writes Kirsch, leads to the conclusion that the relatively small difference between drugs and placebos might not be a real drug effect at all. Instead, it might be an enhanced placebo effect, produced by the fact that some patients have broken [the] blind and have come to realize whether they were given drug or placebo. If this is the case, then there is no real antidepressant drug effect at all."
The Truth about the "Chemical Imbalance" Theory
As a family physician I have treated many thousands of depressed patients. Depression was actually one of my primary concerns in the mid 80s when I first started practicing, however at that time my primary tool was using antidepressants. I put thousands of people on these drugs and acquired a fair level of experience in this area.
Thankfully I learned more and was able to stop using all these drugs. It was my experience that the chemical imbalance was merely a massive marketing gimmick to support the use of expensive and toxic antidepressants.
Most of you have probably heard that depression is due to a "chemical imbalance in your brain," which these drugs are designed to correct. As mentioned previously, this is not a scientific statement.. So where did it come from?
The low serotonin theory arose because they understood how the drugs acted on the brain; it was a hypothesis that tried to explain how the drug might be fixing something. However, that hypothesis didn't hold up to further investigation. Investigations were done to see whether or not depressed people actually had lower serotonin levels, and in 1983 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) concluded that
"There is no evidence that there is anything wrong in the serotonergic system of depressed patients."
The serotonin theory is simply not a scientific statement. It's a botched theory—a hypothesis that was proven incorrect.
The fact that this fallacy continues to thrive is destroying the health of millions, because if you take an SSRI drug that blocks the normal reuptake of serotonin, you end up with the very physiological problem the drug is designed to treat–low serotonin levels. Which, ironically, is the state hypothesized to bring on depression in the first place.
In 1996, neuroscientist Steven Hyman, who was head of the NIMH at the time, and is today Provost of Harvard University, published the paper Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drugs, in which he explains this chain of events. According to Dr. Hyman, once your brain has undergone a series of compensatory adaptations to the drug, your brain operates in a manner that is "both qualitatively and quantitatively different than normal."
So, it's important to understand that these drugs are NOT normalizing agents. They're abnormalizing agents, and once you understand that, you can understand how they might provoke a manic episode, or why they might be associated with sexual dysfunction or violence and suicide, for example.
How Did it Ever Get this Bad?
Part of the puzzle explaining why we now have a pill for every emotion and psychological trait is that psychiatrists were originally not considered "real" doctors—they couldn't actually "do" much to help their patients, and they certainly couldn't cure them. They realized that to increase their status, they had to make the field more scientific, and it was this decision that gave birth to the medicalizing and drugging of every conceivable behavioral tendency.
Medical journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Robert Whitaker explains the history of the treatment of those with severe mental illness in his first book, Mad in America . His latest book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America focuses on the disturbing fact that as psychiatry has gained ground, mental illness has skyrocketed.
Part of the problem is that the criteria for diagnosis has expanded exponentially—you can now be diagnosed as being "ill" if you have trouble controlling your shopping habits, and a child who often argues with adults can be labeled according to the diagnostic code 313.81 -- Oppositional Defiant Disorder. A staggering array of normal human experiences now masquerade as "disorders," for which there is a drug treatment available.
Another factor is the fact that psychiatric drugs CREATE more serious forms of mental illness...
What Does the Science Really Say about the Effectiveness of Psychiatric Drugs?
First of all, when looking at the research literature, short-term trials show that antidepressants do NOT provide any clinically significant benefits for mild to moderate depression, compared to a placebo. As you know, all drugs have benefit-to-risk ratios, so if a drug is as effective as a placebo in relieving symptoms, it really doesn't make sense to use them as a first line of defense.
And yet doctors all over America prescribe them as if they were indeed sugar pills!
However, it gets worse. Research into the long-term effects of antidepressants shows that patients are no longer really recuperating from their depressive episodes as was the general norm prior to the advent of modern antidepressants. The depression appears to be lifting faster, but patients tend to relapse more frequently, turning what ought to have been a passing phase into an increasingly chronic state of depression.
Long-term studies now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long period of time. The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and become chronically depressed.
According to Whitaker's research, this tendency to sensitize your brain to long-term depression appears to be the same both for the earlier tricyclic antidepressants and the newer SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
In addition, SSRI 's have been shown to increase your risk of developing bipolar depression, according to Whitaker. Anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of children who take an antidepressant for five years convert to bipolar illness. In adults, about 25 percent of long term users convert from a diagnosis of unipolar depression to bipolar.
This is a serious concern because once you're categorized as bipolar, you're often treated with a potent cocktail of medications including an antipsychotic medication, and long-term bipolar outcomes are grim in the United States . For starters, only about 35 percent of bipolar patients are employed, so the risk of permanent disability is great.
Another risk inherent with long-term use is that of cognitive decline.
What Really Works for Depression and Other Mental Illness?
If antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs don't work and might make you worse, then what are your options? There are five important strategies to consider if you are facing depression or another mental condition. These strategies have nothing but positive effects and are generally very inexpensive to implement.
1. Exercise – If you have depression, or even if you just feel down from time to time, exercise is a MUST. The research is overwhelmingly positive in this area, with studies confirming that physical exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who are depressed. One of the primary ways it does this is by increasing the level of endorphins, the "feel good" hormones, in your brain.
2. Address your stress -- Depression is a very serious condition, however it is not a "disease." Rather, it's a sign that your body and your life are out of balance. This is so important to remember, because as soon as you start to view depression as an "illness," you think you need to take a drug to fix it. In reality, all you need to do is return balance to your life, and one of the key ways to doing this is addressing stress.
Meditation or yoga can help. Sometimes all you need to do is get outside for a walk. But in addition to that, I also recommend using a solid support system composed of friends, family and, if necessary, professional counselors, who can help you work through your emotional stress.
3. Eat a healthy diet -- Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense impact on your mood and ability to cope and be happy, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental health. Avoiding fructose, sugar and grains will help normalize your insulin and leptin levels, which is another powerful tool in addressing depression.
4. Support optimal brain functioning with essential fats -- I also strongly recommend supplementing your diet with a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat, like krill oil. Omega-3 fats are essential for your optimal brain function, and that includes regulating your mood and fighting depression. In fact, the evidence has become so compelling that some experts in the field encourage all mental health professionals to ensure that their patients suffering from depression have an adequate intake of omega-3 fats.
5. Get plenty of sunshine – Making sure you're getting enough sunlight exposure to have healthy vitamin D levels is also a crucial factor in treating depression or keeping it at bay. One previous study found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone to be depressed than those who had normal levels. Vitamin D deficiency is actually more the norm than the exception, and has previously been implicated in both psychiatric and neurological disorders.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` U.S. GOVT. WANTS TO TAKE AWAY OUR SUPPLEMENTS SO DRUG COMPANIES CAN TAKE OVER TO POISON US FOR PROFIT!
From Dr. Mercola The FDA has issued a proposed mandate that represents the greatest threat to dietary supplements since 1994. Back in the early 1990s, consumers were so alarmed by FDA bullying that they staged a massive revolt. The result was that Congress passed a law prohibiting the FDA from banning popular nutrients (as the agency had threatened to do).
There was, however, a loophole in the 1994 law. The FDA was given authority to regulate ingredients introduced after October 15, 1994 .
It has been 17 years, but the FDA just issued draconian proposals as to how it intends to regulate what it now calls "new dietary ingredients". You can find the FDA Draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients (NDI's) here. If implemented, some of the most effective nutrients you are taking will be removed from the market. This includes many fish oil formulas and natural plant extracts. A detailed analysis of the FDA Draft Guidance is available here.
These oppressive rules are exactly what the 1994 law (DSHEA) sought to prevent. The FDA is using its authority in direct violation of Congressional intent.
In order for these ingredients you are using today to return to the market, the FDA will require manufacturers to conduct outrageously expensive studies using absurdly high doses, in some situations multiplied by a "safety factor" up to 2,000-times the recommended dosage on a per product basis.
The FDA defines dietary supplements as being "new" if they were introduced after October 15, 1994 . That means that even certain nutrients that have been safely used over the course of three decades will be subject to the FDA's oppressive policies that mandate costly animal testing.
The FDA Views Supplements in Same Light as Synthetic Food Preservatives
According to the new guidelines, the FDA believes that "new dietary supplements" must be regulated similarly to synthetic food preservatives. The FDA guidelines have modeled the outrageous safety thresholds after those in place for food additives. This appears to be in direct violation of DSHEA, the law enacted in 1994 to protect consumer access to dietary supplements, which classifies dietary supplements as foods, not food additives.The FDA proposes that new dietary supplement ingredients should adhere to aggressive safety margins, which are typically reserved for chemical compounds known to be dangerous in all but the most miniscule concentrations.
Since food additives or preservatives such as aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and sodium nitrate are known to cause cancer or other severe health problems, the FDA has implemented safety guidelines which limit allowable concentrations of these food additives to levels that are supposed to be physiologically inert.
The fact that the FDA is trying to impose the same limits upon dietary supplements seems to be arbitrary and completely unfounded. In fact, when someone takes a dietary supplement, their intent is to positively affect the structure or function of their bodies in some way – limiting dosages of dietary supplements to physiologically inert levels defeats the entire purpose of supplementation with health-sustaining nutrients.
The FDA's new guidelines are so flawed that even nutrients shown to be completely safe in hundreds of human clinical studies would fail to accommodate the unreasonable safety margins.
To give you an example, each manufacturer of certain fish oils would have to conduct a one year study where animals would have to consume the human equivalent of 240,000 milligrams each day of fish oil.
Another option under the FDA's proposed mandates is to conduct a 90-day, 1,000 – fold safety margin study in which two species of animals, one being non-rodent – likely young beagle dogs, will theoretically consume the equivalent of 2.4 million milligrams of fish oil daily. We know of virtually no species can tolerate this high dose, so by default, FDA guidelines will make it impossible for certain omega-3 supplements to be sold. (Note typical dose of EPA/ DHA people take each day is around 2,400 mg—100 times less than what the FDA proposes must be tested.)
Since these are not patented drugs, no supplement maker will be able to afford these "safety" studies, which means that many of the nutrients you now purchase at low prices will convert into high-priced drugs.
Pharmaceutical Industry Profit Threatened By Low Cost Supplements
It appears that the FDA is claiming that dietary supplements are unsafe, and in order to "protect consumers" the agency must place a stranglehold on the dietary supplement industry by requesting exorbitant safety testing. These ludicrous safety thresholds are in excess of those required by pharmaceutical drugs despite studies showing supplements are far safer than drugs.According to the 2001 report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), of the substances implicated in fatal poisonings in 2001, 84.6 percent were pharmaceutical drugs, with analgesics being implicated as the primary cause of death in 32 percent of fatalities or 341 deaths. This compares with 0.8 percent for all dietary supplements combined, even including substances such as dinitrophenol, a dangerous (and illegal) substance banned in 1938, as well as the central nervous system stimulant Ma Huang (Ephedra). Interestingly, the anti-asthma drug theophylline alone was responsible for 15 deaths, 66 percent more than all the available dietary supplements combined.
There is, however, a massive economic benefit for the drug industry if the proposed guidelines are enforced by the FDA. Health conscious Americans who properly supplement slash their risk of degenerative disease. The FDA's new rules, if enacted, will force the price of many supplements to surge upwards, while removing many effective ones altogether. That means that more aging people will have to rely on side effect laden prescription drugs to treat the degenerative diseases they will contract because they will be denied access to health-promoting nutrients.
What You Can Do to Stop this Impending Carnage!
No one can sit on the sidelines with an emergency of this magnitude about to befall everyone who depends on dietary supplements. As citizens, we have the constitutional right to petition the government to redress our grievances. In this case, the FDA proposals pose a direct threat to our health and longevity.We therefore have to take extraordinary measures to defend our right to continue using supplements that our very lives depend on, and to gain access to new natural ingredients that demonstrate efficacy in scientific studies.
I ask each one of you contact your representatives by following this link:
Recall how Consumers revolted back in 1994 and the result was a glorious victory over FDA tyranny!
Let your voice be heard by exercising your right to petition the government against these serious violations of the law and scientific principle. Please be sure to call, fax, or send a certified letter to your representative - emails can be easily dismissed.
Here is a set of talking points for your consideration:
- My name is [Name] and I am a constituent of [Congress Member's name].
- I am very concerned about the new FDA draft guidance on dietary supplements and new dietary ingredients.
- I request that Congress hold hearings and take action to review the FDA's draft guidance and stop their overreach of power.
- The FDA's draft guidance flies in the face of the original congressional intent of the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act: The guidance turns what was meant to be a simple notification system for new dietary ingredients into a preapproval scheme that Congress did not intend to create.
- Congress recognized that dietary supplements are natural ingredients and therefore inherently safer than drugs and chemical food ingredients. It did not intend that the FDA would have the power to approve or reject dietary supplements.
- The FDA's draft guidance creates unnecessary regulations that limit my access to dietary supplements I rely on. The expensive and burdensome process will force between 20,000 and 42,000 dietary supplements to be removed from the market and will increase the cost of those supplements that remain.
- The draft guidance hurts our economy. Expert analyses show that this guidance will cause a total economic loss of $21.2 billion to $39.8 billion annually.
- Thank you for your time.
- Be courteous and respectful.
- Keep your comments brief and focused on the facts.
- Always thank the staff member for their time taking your call.
The Honorable _________________________ Washington , DC
In direct violation of the law, the FDA is threatening to ban my access to new dietary supplements.
The FDA defines dietary supplements as being "new" if they were introduced after October 15, 1994 . That means that nutrients that I have been safely using over the course of three decades will be subject to FDA's oppressive policies that mandate costly animal testing, which translates into forced withdrawal from the market, and higher prices for me if the supplement is ever allowed to be sold again.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 states that:
"The Federal Government should not take any actions to impose unreasonable regulatory barriers limiting or slowing the flow of safe products and accurate information to consumers."
It says that Congress finds that:
"dietary supplements are safe within a broad range of intake, and safety problems with the supplements are relatively rare."
And it says that:
"legislative action that protects the right of access of consumers to safe dietary supplements is necessary in order to promote wellness."
This draft guidance does the exact opposite of what Congress intended. It imposes unreasonable barriers that limit and slow the flow of safe products and accurate information to consumers. I call upon Congress to:
- Uphold the landmark legislation it passed seventeen years ago, and to direct the FDA to revise its New Dietary Ingredient draft guidelines to reflect DSHEA's (and Congress's) stated values and goals.
- Vote against the newly introduced Dietary Supplement Labeling Act as this would give the FDA even greater arbitrary powers to remove safe dietary supplements from the market, and will profoundly impact this nation's health in a negative way.
All of these proposals result in wasteful federal spending, while at the same time impose a massive new "regulatory tax" on consumers and the vitamin industry.
Kindly let me know what actions you are taking in response to the urgent issues raised in this letter. Sincerely,
Name________________________________________
Address______________________________________
City______________________ST____ Zip___________
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