Health Freedom Protection Act
From a previous article by Rick Shalvo
May 17, 2006
H.R. 4282, the Health Freedom Protection Act, introduced by Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) et al., is clearly the most important piece of health-related legislation in Congress at this time. The act would allow dietary supplement producers to exercise their First Amendment right to notify the public when scientific evidence regarding a supplement's health benefits has been validated.
All such claims would be scrutinized by the FDA before being approved and the FDA would retain its authority to attack false or misleading claims. The agency would not, however, be able to continue its present practice of either completely prohibiting or arbitrarily censoring all dietary supplement health claims, which it has done even when overwhelming evidence confirms lifesaving health benefits accompanied by huge health care cost reductions.
Federal censorship of the valid claim that adequate consumption of omega-3 fatty acids significantly reduces the risk of sudden death heart attack, for example, absolutely contributes to the fact that America's heart attack death rate remains so appallingly high. During the past 12 years, while heart attacks have taken the lives of an estimated six million Americans, we have known all along that a substantial percentage of these deaths could have been prevented with the omega-3 nutritional intervention. Why, then, does the FDA-approved language for omega-3 fatty acids shortchange the truth that can literally save lives?
I must tell you that I am not a paid lobbyist or a dietary supplement industry insider. I'm a cancer survivor who supports clinical and in vitro cancer research.
Dietary supplements that happen to be extraordinarily effective as anti-cancer agents would represent an enormous economic threat to the therapeutic sector and to the many people who have collectively invested astronomical amounts of money in the public corporations that profit from the cancer therapy status quo. If such supplements exist, they should be thoroughly studied and the data should be published.
In fact, such supplements do exist, and the FDA is doing everything in its unrestrained power to undermine these supplements by sabotaging the science that supports their safety and efficacy.
One characteristically vicious campaign began on the morning of February 16, 2005 with an ambush at the home of a board-certified oncologist in Reno, Nevada who is using a remarkably safe palladium lipoic supplement to save the lives of many Stage IV cancer patients - patients who have already tried and failed conventional therapy. This oncologist, Dr. James Forsythe (Retired Colonel, US Army Medical Corps), has been conducting an outcome-based cancer study and periodically reporting the unprecedented data to his colleagues.
Federal agents forced Dr. Forsythe to lie down on the floor of his home exercise room, held a gun to his head and raided his entire house while another squad was raiding his medical offices, seizing confidential patient files, computers and many other business and personal items, obviously terrifying his wife, staff and patients in the process. The government's attempt to justify these horrific raids is mind-bogglingly absurd, involving some convoluted story about "the supplier of one of his suppliers." Although the "supplier's supplier" story has absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Forsythe's impeccably administrated cancer study, obstructing the cancer study ultimately became the focus of the raiders' obsession.
The FDA's seek-and-destroy tentacles have now stretched from Nevada to New York. Once again finding the science to be unblemished, the FDA has resorted to intimidation tactics to make life miserable for a prominent scientist at Stony Brook University who has identified exactly how palladium lipoic complexes induce apoptosis (cellular suicide) in cancer cells while supporting natural healing processes in normal cells.
An enacted Health Freedom Protection Act may clear the way for the free flow of truthful health information, but the FDA's outrageous abuse of power will likely intensify as the agency will surely redouble its efforts to attack scientists who are engaged in research that may give rise to such information.
In this great nation, government censorship that contributes to our horrendous morbidity and mortality statistics and police-state raids on the homes and offices of honorable, superbly credentialed health care professionals are atrocities of unspeakable magnitude.
Rick Shalvo
Founder, Row For a Cure
Health Freedom Alliance Supporting Member
Cancer survivor Rick Shalvoy completed his first Row for a Cure event in 1997 and founded the Row for a Cure Foundation the following year. Rowing the 300-mile course around Long Island (New York) in a 19-foot ocean rescue boat every year, Rick has become a major fundraiser for cancer research, specifically supporting those projects that are designed to further evaluate adjunctive and primary modalities that are unquestionably safe and have an existing history of anecdotal effectiveness.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home