Posted on 02/21/2010 10:31:40 AM PST by John Semmens
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz) has joined forces with fellow Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) to introduce Senate Bill 3002, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act. The bill would grant the federal government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad new authority to control the nutritional supplements available to American consumers.
“What we have now is a chaotic, every-man-for-himself kind of approach when it comes to nutritional supplements,” McCain said. “Anyone can decide for himself what to take, when to take it, and for whatever reason he wants. Government has minimal control. All it can do is pull misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products off the market.” The Senator contrasted this with the FDA’s authority “to absolutely bar access to drugs until the government is convinced they are both safe and effective.”
“Not only are these substances outside of the FDA’s purview, they don’t even require a doctor’s prescription,” McCain complained. “A person’s health is being left in his own uninformed hands instead of being overseen by those trained in the field. Government has an obligation to save such a person from his own folly.”
The new powers for the FDA in McCain’s bill are modeled on those of the European Food Safety Authority. Under this Authority, nutritional supplements are much harder to obtain and are more expensive per unit of potency.
McCain characterized his bill as “a first step in a more comprehensive plan to upgrade the nation’s health. We’ve already taken steps to assert government oversight of the drugs that a person puts into his body. Gaining a firmer grip on the food he puts into it is the next logical move. Ideally, all of a citizen’s food and drug needs would be handled like they were for me when I was in the Navy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at azconserv1.wordpress.com ...
more goverment
This is pretty much what McAmnesty is thinking.
That's the way it is suppose to be McCain you freekin RINO!
I think McCain and the rest of the liberals need to stay the heck out of my life and my body!! The government can clamp down on dangerous supplements, otherwise, get lost!!!! Why are they opposed to supplements to cure the problem, when many prescriptions just treat symptoms and require additional prescriptions to treat the side effects. The less government the better!!!
We sure as hell can't have that, can we Juan.
THIS, Dr. Bennett, is precisely what Glenn Beck was talking about last night -- too bad you're too intellectual to grasp the notion.
And oh, btw, McCain and anyone else who wants to promote this baloney about supplements ... they are NUTRIENTS, they are not pharmaceuticals/narcotics, they don't need to be *overseen* by someone *trained in the field*.
Hope the hell he( McCainiac) disappears in November (along with his lame brained daughter )
Proving once again that John McCain is a moron!
McCain said.
“Anyone can decide for himself what to take, when to take it, and for whatever reason he wants. Government has minimal control. All it can do is pull misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products off the market.”
The problem with this personal freedom and restricted government is?????
Because John and his robust family look like they are up on health issues.
“Anyone can decide for himself what to take, when to take it, and for whatever reason he wants. Government has minimal control.
You could not write a better description of “small government” if you tried. If JD Hayworth doesn’t shove these words down McCainiac’s throat a thousand times between now and election day, he doesn’t deserve to win.
Have you been contacted by McCain yet? You are so good that people might believe you. I think I’ll have some fun and email this to a few friends - just to get their reaction!
Boy, your satire is so right-on-the-money that it’s hard to catch. If this weren’t so close to the truth, it would be a knee-slapper. Good job pegging these guys in their ivory towers looking down their sanctimonious noses on the ignorant masses who are just too stooooooooopid to know what’s good for them.
Someone put ‘satire’ in the keywords...this is just plainly the sad truth.
In case you haven’t seen it, a very good letter from a doctor to McCain about this ridiculous legislation.
GOP Doctor Instructs John McCain and Explains What the McCain Bill Means for his Patients
February 16, 2010
[In a letter posted in the Health Sentinel on February 8, 2010, Nicholas J. Gonzalez, M.D., wrote to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., co-sponsor of the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010. The following is an abridged form of Gonzalez’ letter.]
Dear Senator McCain:
Though I am a resident of New York, not Arizona, I suggest that someone on your staff read my letter very carefully, as I believe you are unwittingly sponsoring a bill with potentially onerous consequences, one that might — if I read the information about it properly — lead to the death of hundreds of my patients fighting advanced, terminal cancer. I do not think that you would want their deaths on your conscience.
I am a registered Republican, and in the past have donated many thousands to Republican causes, including your reelection, even when it became clear to me that the Party, including you, had strayed significantly from its mission of limited government, deficit reduction and, ultimately, protection of individual liberty.
A former journalist (Time Inc.), I am currently a physician and cancer researcher. I was educated at three Ivy League schools (Brown undergraduate, Columbia post grad, Cornell for medical school) and finished a fellowship in cancer immunology under Robert A. Good, for ten years president of Sloan-Kettering. Under Dr. Good’s direction, 29 years ago I began researching the use of diet, nutrients and proteolytic enzymes against advanced cancer.
Though some consider my work “alternative,” and although in the past I have generated controversy (since my therapy does not conform to the drug company model), I have been funded by very mainstream corporations and institutions, including Procter & Gamble, Nestle and the NIH. Congressman Dan Burton, R-Ind., has long been a vocal supporter; and I have met with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at his invitation, to discuss this treatment. My research was featured in a lengthy profile published in The New Yorker magazine (Feb. 5, 2001) and more recently in the actress Suzanne Somers’ best-selling book Knockout about innovative new approaches to cancer. My colleague Dr. Linda Isaacs and I recently published the first book in a projected series, The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer, which discusses in some detail the scientific support for our treatment approach. You can learn more about my background and therapy at our website: www.dr-gonzalez.com
Dr. Isaacs and I are currently treating hundreds of patients diagnosed with terrible advanced cancer, patients for whom no conventional options exist. Many are successfully battling their disease with our regimen of diet, nutritional supplements and proteolytic enzymes — currently available legally as over-the-counter items. We use only high-quality products, manufactured according to my stringent specifications.
Though I suspect you and your staff created this new bill with the intention of protecting the public, as I read information about the bill, it appears to give the FDA near-dictatorial control over the manufacture and availability of supplements, allow it at its own discretion to remove legitimate nutritional supplements from the marketplace, file arbitrary complaints against legitimate supplements and impose drug-testing standards on each supplement. Testing of a single product to meet FDA standards for marketing of a new drug can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. To my knowledge, no supplement company has the resources to fight or meet such regulatory impositions. As a result, ethical supplement companies would (again, if I read the bill correctly) be forced to shut down.
I have read that you are motivated by recent scandals involving the doping of athletes with illegal steroids, certainly a terrible tragedy, and have been approached by various professional athletic organizations such as Major League Baseball. I believe these organizations are trying to shift blame from their athletes to the supplement industry. Regardless, the FDA already possesses the power to investigate and punish companies marketing and selling steroids improperly. It certainly does not need added control over properly manufactured and properly marketed supplements or food substances — and the companies that provide these products — in order to regulate illicit steroid spiking. It hardly seems reasonable, as could now be possible should your bill pass, to punish and perhaps even eliminate an entire industry because of a few renegade manufacturers.
On the surface, your bill sounds innocent enough, requiring manufacturers to provide the FDA with ingredients, etc. But current Good Manufacturing regulations already require supplement companies to provide proof of ingredients and quality. This proposed bill, whatever your stated goal, appears to play into the FDA’s longstanding animus against the supplement industry at large, which to date — under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) — has had some protection from capricious regulatory harassment. Based on years of study, I believe that the FDA’s antagonism even against ethically manufactured supplements stems from its close working relationship with the drug company giants. Like the FDA, the drug industry has sought for years to have supplements removed from the over-the-counter marketplace and transformed into prescription drugs, which it alone could control and market and for which it could charge enormous prices. You seem to have played right into this effort.
In your press conference, you alluded to expected opposition to your bill from the supplement industry. I suspect such opposition will be small compared with the opposition of the American public at large. In past decades, as the FDA, working with the drug industry, tried to gain complete control over the supplement industry, the American people have repeatedly fought back in vigorous campaigns, expressing their opinions to their elected officials in Washington. But the regulatory agencies in Washington never give up their dream of removing most if not all supplements from the free marketplace and turning them into restricted and expensive drugs, all to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry and to the ultimate detriment of the public.
Ethically manufactured nutritional supplements, when used appropriately, are extraordinarily safe and provide considerable health benefits. We see this daily in our own practice, even with the most advanced, deadly of diseases. Furthermore, nutrients — again, when manufactured and used appropriately — have in my long experience none of the terrible side effects of prescription items or even over-the-counter drugs. For example, it is estimated that 10,000 Americans die each year from bleeding resulting from intake of aspirin or over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs, yet the FDA does nothing to ban these products, which bring in untold profits to the drug industry. Nor to my knowledge have you ever held a press conference expressing your outrage over thousands of Americans tragically dying from aspirin use each year.
On a personal note, I will tell you that since your press conference announcing the introduction of your bill, hundreds of my very sick patients have been very distraught, angry that you, of all people, would sponsor legislation that might possibly eliminate their life-sustaining supplements from the marketplace and essentially condemn them to death — all in the name of consumer protection. The mere possibility of such a turn of events has upset them enormously. I will also tell you that as we learn more about this proposed legislation, however you may position it, my patients are already considering mobilizing to support your opponent in every way possible, financially, as volunteers — even perhaps holding a “sit-in” at your offices for the benefit of the press. That is how seriously they are taking this situation. And let me assure you these people are not part of some supplement company conspiracy against safe manufacturing practices: They are Americans with terrible diseases, many of them veterans, who do not want interference with their treatment choice. I can understand their dismay. Perhaps I am wrong in my interpretation, but if this bill were ever to pass, the repercussions do seem potentially disastrous, in ways far beyond your assurance that this issue is a “no-brainer.”
I would be happy to talk to anyone on your staff about the unintended consequences apparent in this bill. As I read the information, it appears that ultimately it protects nobody except the drug industry and provides professional athletes with a convenient scapegoat. It certainly would not protect the American public that has repeatedly shown over the decades that it wants free access to nutritional supplements without FDA interference. Certainly, it will not protect my patients, who, frankly, did not need to hear of this bill, the thought of which has added enormous stress to their daily lives as they fight their life-and-death battles.
Sincerely,
Nicholas J. Gonzalez, M.D.
NOTE on his web site:
Danger to Supplement Supply: On February 3, 2010, Senator John McCain announced his support of “The Dietary Supplement Safety Act” which, despite its innocuous title, gives enormous regulatory power to the FDA that many believe could lead to the removal of most safe and effective supplements from the marketplace. This misguided bill requires prompt action if we are to guarantee the continued availability of nutritional supplements as non-prescription items. Dr. Gonzalez has written a letter to Senator McCain objecting to the bill; we urge all to contact their Senators and Representatives urging that this bill go nowhere. The Life Extension Foundation is mobilizing its supporters to help prevent the bill’s passage, and on its site provides a means to send a form letter of protest to your Senators and Representatives.
http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/index.htm
“IDEALLY, ALL OF A CITIZEN’S FOOD AND DRUG NEEDS WOULD BE HANDLED LIKE THEY WERE FOR ME WHEN I WAS IN THE NAVY.” Yes, Massa, we get it. We’re just so many cattle far as you’re concerned.
Like Susan Sommers said on O’Rielly the other night. The FDA can’t keep up with the drugs coming from the drug companies. And speaking of drug companies, they have plenty of bad drugs on the market. I take a lot of supplements. And I know that some can cause some people problems. You have to educate yourself and be careful. Most vitamins and minerals are pretty safe. In fact with out Potassium(which my doc did have to prescribe), and extra magnesium, I would have to take heart meds to keep my heart beating normally. The minerals did the trick and have worked for several years now.
Perfect, he'll be fine as a Captain, now Senator. Most of us will report to the dispensary three times a day for our medication. Talk about out of touch. Obamacare for ye, not me.
Anyone can decide for himself what to take, when to take it, and for whatever reason he wants...A person’s health is being left in his own uninformed hands...All it [government]can do is pull misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products off the market is just the way I like things.
Are tomatoes and brocolli supplements? Will Michelle be inspecting my garden.
When is this guy just going to go away?
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