Your Right to Use Vitamins Is in Jeopardy, Senators Push Regulatory Assault on Vitamins

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | 09.03.03 | Dr. Julian Whitaker

[Coleus]

Your Right to Use Nutritional Supplements Is in Jeopardy

Senators Push Regulatory Assault on Vitamins

by Dr. Julian Whitaker

Posted Sep 3, 2003

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We need to take action, and we need to take action now. There is a movement in Congress to push through legislation that would restrict your freedom to use nutritional supplements, and could destroy the nutritional supplement industry?and, in the process, endanger your health.

Here is the problem. Reacting to the hysteria over ephedra, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D.-Ill.) has introduced S. 722, cosponsored by colleagues Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), and Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.). The bill gives unprecedented power to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to remove nutritional supplements from the market. Here’s how:

• It calls for a reporting system for adverse reactions to nutritional supplements.
  
  
• It empowers the FDA to act on a single adverse reaction report and immediately take the product off the market while it is being investigated.
  
  
• In addition, the FDA could force the manufacturer to undergo prohibitively costly safety analyses of the product, similar to what is required for new drugs.
  
  Here’s a possible scenario. Mrs. Jones in Somewhere, USA, is taking a supplement containing vitamin C. One afternoon she has some diarrhea. She faints, falls in her bathroom, hits her head, and is hospitalized with a head injury.
  
  Believe it or not, an adverse reaction could be pinned on vitamin C. Based upon this single event, the FDA could at its discretion move to restrict sales of vitamin C throughout the entire country until an investigation proves that vitamin C did not cause Mrs. Jones’s problems.
  
  Smokescreen of ‘Safety’
  
  The bill also gives the FDA license to require supplement manufacturers to submit safety information that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, patterned on regulations required for new drugs.
  
  This is absurd. New drugs need rigorous safety testing because they are compounds that have never been ingested by human beings. The ubiquitous use and long history of safety of nutritional supplements are apparently irrelevant to the sponsors of this bill.
  
  The nutritional supplement industry arguably has the best product safety record of any industry in the country. According to Rep. Dan Burton (R.-Ind.), a maximum of 16 deaths were attributed to a nutritional supplement last year. (Excessive doses of ephedra were the suspect in the majority of these cases, and the supplement link was definitively proven in only a few of them.)
  
  Meanwhile, the FDA turns a blind eye to the 106,000 deaths from adverse effects of prescription drugs and the tens of thousands of deaths from aspirin and other over-the-counter drugs that occur every year.
  
  This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.
  
  Harmful Bill
  
  This bill is a good example of government irrationality.
  
  According to a 2002 report by Washington, D.C.,-based Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the use of antioxidants, folic acid, calcium, zinc, and other nutritional supplements could reduce the incidence of neural tube birth defects by 70%, hip fractures by at least 20%, and sick days caused by infectious diseases by 50%?Heart disease, stroke, cataracts, macular degeneration, some types of cancer?nutritional supplements have been shown to prevent or delay all these conditions and others.
  
  Furthermore, CRN reports that by delaying the onset of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and hip fracture alone, nutritional therapies could potentially save $89 billion a year in healthcare costs!
  
  Yet S. 722 would empower the FDA to dismantle the supplement industry and prevent you from receiving the astonishing benefits that only nutritional supplements can deliver.
  
  Immediate Action Needed
  
  The only way to stop this bill is for us to flood our elected representatives and senators with so many e-mails, faxes, and phone calls that they will be forced to say no to this bill.
  
  Grassroots Effectiveness
  
  Don’t underestimate the power of such a grassroots movement. Ten years ago, Health & Healing readers were instrumental in rallying the passing of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Millions of letters were written to our congressmen and senators in support of this legislation?it generated more letters than any other issue in U.S. history. Because of DSHEA, which reduced the FDA’s power to block the production, sale, and use of natural substances, we have free access to herbs, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional supplements.
  
  An FDA Power Grab
  
  You may have read in the press that we need new laws because there is no regulation of nutritional supplements. This is simply not true. DSHEA gives the FDA tremendous regulatory power, and in fact, it already has the power to pull any supplement it feels is unsafe off the market.
  
  Yet because DSHEA also gives supplement manufacturers some autonomy, the FDA has attempted to circumvent it from day one. This agency fought hard against the passage of DSHEA ten years ago and, in a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of or amend it, has refused to act responsibly within its confines ever since.
  
  Time is of the essence. S. 722 has recently been referred to committee and may be tagged onto the Agriculture Appropriations Bill. We can and must act quickly to stop this legislation.
  
  Send a message to your senators today asking them to vote against S. 722. (See box for information.) If you’ve already done so, do it again. Tell your friends about this threat and encourage them to take action as well.
  
  If each one of you could commit to generating just a handful of e-mails, faxes, or phone calls, over a million messages would descend upon Washington. You may not realize how powerful a grassroots campaign like this can be, but our elected officials cannot ignore something of this magnitude.

  Dr. Whitaker is editor of Health and Healing, one of the country's leading health newsletters.

  Herbal Supplements and alternatives are under attack!! Take Action

  Click here to send your message now!

[freeeee]

Life liberty persuit of happiness speech assembly religion bear arms freedom from unwarranted search and seizure...

Those are some of the enumerated rights.

Non-enumerated rights are explicity recognized and afforded protection under the Constitution via the 9th Amendment.

[Dead Corpse]

Roe V Wade was WRONG as it created judicial Law. Something forbidden as it is not listed as a Federal Power. Abortion is a States issue. As are most murder cases. And Marriage. And Drugs. And ....

[discostu]

No, making up idiotic rights that don't really exists is silly. I've said multiple times stopping this law would be a good thing, just do it the right way instead of the leftist way of making crap up.

Thanks for twisting my words into something they're not, it shows you're wrong.

[discostu]

But non-enumerated rights do NOT include any stupid damn thing some bozo decides to make up off the top of his head. You do not now, never have before, and God willing never will, nave a right to take vitamins. No such right exists in a society that actually knows what the word "right" means. The next step after deciding there's some right to take vitamins is making up a duty of the government to provide vitamins, that way lies leftist stupidity. Stop the madness and block the law with things that actually exist, like the fact that this law is entirely outside the limitations to the federal government listed in he Constitution. Stop bad laws with smart things not with moronic made up rights.

[robertpaulsen]

My points always elude you, don't they? I'll try again. Is it an unalienable right?

[Wolfie]

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" sounds like the mother of all penumbras to me. Of course, it might be countered by that mother of all Governmental powers, "To Promote the General Welfare".

[Dead Corpse]

Trying to say that somewhere in a government storehouse is a list of all of our Rights is what is silly.

Government has specific powers. Granted to them by us. This isn't one of them.

[Dead Corpse]

No. Your "points" always come across like big government communist bullsh*t to me.

[discostu]

Yeah and if we push through the idea that there's a right to take vitamins that the government dare not interfere with that would also be creating judicial law. I agree vitamins are not something the fed should be considering, but just because the fed shouldn't be messing with something doesn't mean you have a right to it, it just means it's not in the thankfully small list of stuff the fed should be messing with as listed in the Constitution.

[freeeee]

obviously you're interpreting the 9th and 10th too broadly

While the 10th Amendment is self explanatory (all powers not delegated are prohibited), the 9th Amendment needs logical parameters spelled out to determine its scope. And the fickle and changing whims of SCOTUS are not a legitimate method of doing so.

I prefer use the stated purpose of our government as a logical guide to the scope of the 9th:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

As abortion violates the rights of another (life), it is not consistent with the legitimate purpose of our government and does not warrant 9th Amendment protection.

Taking vitamins violates no one's rights. Therefore it falls under the 9th Amendment. Even if it didn't, the 10th Amendment forbids federal involvement (not that the fed cares).

[discostu]

Except the Declaration of Independance has been well established as creating the goals of our Constitution, no penumbras there, just the guiding logic that should be used in interpretations. And anybody that's read the Federalist Papers know the General Welfare clause was put there for the interpretation of the list of limited powers, there to remind the Fed that it was to act in the interest of the entire nation not just their home state, to keep them from selling Georgia to save New York.

[freeeee]

The next step after deciding there's some right to take vitamins is making up a duty of the government to provide vitamins

You confuse liberty with socialism. The two couldn't be more dissimilar.

Your argument, if taken to its logical conclusion would preclude the right to free speech, lest government be compelled to provide you a forum, and the right to bear arms, lest government be compelled to provide you a weapon.

[Dead Corpse]

But to answer your question... Yes. those would both be considered "Rights" as defined in the Constitution. If the power to regulate said activities is not strictly enumerated in the Constitution, then the Fed Gov has no legal power to do so. Period. The additional prohibitions in the BOR were to make sure that it was iron clad and understood that while the rest of the governing authority was to be vested down to the States, there were certain things that would NEVER be touched.

Idiot opinions like yours were why some Founders were AGAINST a BOR to begin with. That attitudes would arise that if a Right were not listed, then government would feel free to regulate.

Prophetic those old dead white guys...

[discostu]

This isn't one of the powers of the Fed, I've already said that multiple times. But just because the Fed isn't supposed to be mucking in something doesn't mean you have a right to it.

The storehouse of rights is in our own ability to use our minds. A right to use vitamins is inherrently moronic and therefore obviously doesn't exist, that doesn't mean the fed should regulate it to death, it just means there is no such right. If you can't see that you're beyond hope.

[Dead Corpse]

OK. I'll concede that that last post of yours made some sense. However, what is a Right but freedom of action? No one is saying that as a RIGHT, the government must provide vitamins as they are somehow basic to human existance. No one here is advocating a government program to subsidize vitamin production. That is how the Left has perverted the meaning of the word "Right". Don't fall into that trap...

[discostu]

And I am applying logical parameter. The concept of a right to use vitamins is laughable in it's stupidity. Such a right is illogical and foolish. Therefore it doesn't exist. That's all I'm saying.

[freeeee]

And I am applying logical parameter. The concept of a right to use vitamins is laughable in it's stupidity. Such a right is illogical and foolish. Therefore it doesn't exist.

Logical parameters by definition lack subjective terms. All you have offered are subjective terms:

"laughable in its stupidity"
"illogical"
"foolish"

Do you have any objective criteria? What of the ones I proposed in post #50, taken from the DOI?

[discostu]

I'm not confusing anything with anything. I'm paying attention to recent history. Step one somebody establishes that something is a right, step two somebody establishes that if somebody can't achieve that right on their own that's a violation of their rights, step three somebody decides the government has a duty to provide that new right. That's why we have federally paid for abortions, it followed that exact chain of illogic. I'm just trying to nip the federal vitamin program in the bud here by reminding everyone that you have no right to vitamins.

Also once we establish something as a right we not only keep the fed out (which is just in this case), it also keeps the states out which isn't always a good thing.

[TrueBeliever9]

Thanks for posting this! The AMA wants their control on the health of America. The pharmaceutical want their pound of flesh! Since AMA is funded by the large pharmaseuticals - this is a powerful movement to take away American's rights to alternative medicine.

[discostu]

And that's how they'll pervert this "right" too if given half a chance. I'm not falling into their trap, I'm trying to keep it from capturing another made up right and turning into another wasted government program.