Health Freedom, What's it Worth to You?

October 23, 2007

IMPORTANT HEALTH FREEDOM UPDATE

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

HEALTH FREEDOM HAS SOME GOOD FRIENDS AND SOME SERIOUS FOES. 

HERE'S A RUNDOWN OF THE CURRENT SITUATION

The Health Freedom scene is full of moving targets and there are a great many things happening at the same time.  This email will give you a quick update and a look at the whole picture along with Action Steps to make our voice heard.  Before I give you that update, though, I thought I would ask you a question:

What's Your Health Freedom Worth to You?

A dozen organic eggs costs $3.49 here in Albuquerque where I am right now.  An organic cantelope is $3.99.  A gallon of organic milk is $2.99, a 25 oz bottle of Perrier is $1.29 while a medium cappuccino with organic milk is $3.49.  An 8 oz bottle of high quality fish oil is $29.99. Is your health freedom worth that much to you each month? That's what supporting the Natural Solutions Foundation protects!

How about the amount of money you spend per week on supplements, herbs, natural practitioners and clean food?  Would you be willing to donate that amount once a month?  Once a year?

Is your health freedom worth a dollar a week to you?  $10 dollars a month?

Right now, about 7500 people have made tax deductible donations (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation and if you are one of them, we thank you deeply. You continued support is deeply appreciated since you already understand that this is OUR battle, yours and mine, and are putting your money where our collective mouth is.  THANKS!

If on the other hand you are one of the more than 200,000 people on our list, or the 600,000 or so other people who read our eHealth Alerts, vist our site and take action, I need to talk to you directly.  Thanks for being interested, taking action and being in the battle.  But I want you to consider seriously how this battle is to go forward if you do not help fund it. Click here now to make that committment: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189

FACTS AND FIGURES

Between January 1, 2007 and today, the Natural Solutions Foundation spent $101,281.41 on air fare alone to:

• Travel to Health Freedom Rallies (the next one is in Tucson, AZ, 7 PM on October 30 at Bookman's, 6230 East Speedway Blvd.  Call 520-748-9555 with your questions and your RSVPs.  There will also be a Tuscon Private Reception on October 29.  If you would like to attend this fund raising event, please call 520-748-9555).
• Deliver lectures, owrkshops and seminars at lay, scientific and professional meetings about Codex and Health Freedom here and abroad
• Attend Codex meetings in North America, Europe and Asia
• Educate Congressional staffers and Members about Codex, FDA abuses and other Health Freedom issues, provide legislative language, etc.
• Visit leaders and decision-makers around the world to promote the Codex Two Step Process to protect their health freedom and food supply
• Initiate International Decade of Nutrition projects in Thailand, Ecuador and Panama
• Commission our new full length educational tool,  the "Murder by the Numbers: the Codex Agenda" documentary and begin filming footage (we've already got 30 hours in the can as I write this!)

During the same period, not only did our activism help to assure that the Senate protection of supplements, lacking in the House version, from the [otherwise very bad] FDA Revitalization Act was included in the compromise version of that bill, we also

• Motivated more than 588,000 people to use our site to protest the ill-advised and dangerous FDA Guidance on CAM (which they call Complementary and Alternative "MEDICINE"- but which we have always called "MODALITIES" - since these advanced therapies do
  not want to be considered part of licensed medicine).  Because our site, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, was under constant attack, "ONLY" 197,000 people got their comments through to the FDA
• Generated more than 240,000 emails to Congress in support of Ron Paul's vitaly important Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2117, (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11754) to stop the FDA from prohibiting the dissemination of science-based information about the health benefits of food and food components like dietary supplements.
• Sent each of the 16 Presidential Candidates a total of 79,452 faxes asking 19 tough Health Freedom questions on our Health Freedom Score Card (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13881) to let them know that our issue MUST become a central one in this Presidential campaign.  (To date, only Ron Paul has taken a Health Freedom stand with a Health Freedom plank in his campaign.  We need many more faxes to drive the point home: "If you want our donations and our votes, tell us where you stand on our Health Freedom!"
• Delivered 333,000+ emails to the Texas State Legislators and the head of the Texas Medical Board supporting medical freedom for patients and doctors to practice drug free medicine when they threatened the license of Dr. Bill Rea (Dallas).
  

  WE'LL GIVE YOU A DOLLAR - YOU GIVE US $10

  Each Health Freedom Score Card fax costs $1 to send plus administrative costs bringing the total to about $1.50 per fax.  During October, while we sent just under 80,000 faxes to candidates who did not make their email addresses available, our donations totaled about $15,000.  You do the math. 

  This includes the support received to fund the important full length DVD, "Murder by the Numbers: the Codex Agenda" (we are asking 1500 people to donate at least $100 each to fund this documentary). Click here to help fund this unique documentary: https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/healthfreedomusa/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2835
  

  You can see that airfare, hotels, administrative costs, legislative consultant costs, office equipment, supplies, etc., to say nothing of the  costs of our trips to Washington and other critical meetings, are not covered by the donations we are receiving. If you are reading this email , I would like you to take the following action: make a recurring tax deductible donation of at least $5 per month (more is greatly appreciated, of course) by clicking here: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189.  Consider: if 200,000 people make that commitment, we will have enough money for every health freedom activity we need to take and the personnel to make sure it happens.  

  I am not asking you to close your business as General Stubblebine and I closed our medical practice to fight this war.  I am not asking you to work pro bono, for no pay, as our lawyers and we do because Health Freedom is so compellingly important that the war MUST be fought.  I am not asking you to go without your luxuries - or your necessities - for that matter.  But I AM asking you to shoulder a small piece of the financial burden to give our side the resources it needs to win these battles.  And I am asking you to either make an annual donation or a monthly one right now: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189.  After all, the other side has more money than God.  We need a lot less, but we do need enough to win.

  Oh, by the way, every single penny goes toward the fight.  There is zero cushy overhead.  I promise.

  Now for That Health Freedom Update

  Items in the news tell us where Health Freedom is threatened and championed:

  US Freedoms "HARMonized" To Restrictive EU Regulations:
  EU's Health Freedom Directive, Herbal and Medicinal Products Directive, Functional Foods Directive and a host of other European regulatory systems called "Directives" are rapidly and efficiently removing health choices for high potency nutrients, herbs, nutriceuticals and other natural health choices in Europe.  In fact, President Bush recently signed an order to "HARMonize" the EU's regulatory system and the United States' in 40 areas, including food (remember, supplements are food under US law).  As attorney Ralph Fucetola says, "the US is 'HARMonizing' our freedoms to Europe's restrictions", much to the glee of the multinational interests, including Big Pharma.

  Item: An unnamed source* says: "One American official says flatly that   the EU is 'winning' the regulatory race, adding: 'And there is a sense that that is their precise intent.' He cites a speech by the trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, claiming that the export of 'our rules and standards around the world' was one source of European power. Noting that EU regulations are often written with the help of European incumbents, the official also claims that precaution can cloak 'plain old-fashioned protectionism in disguise'".

  * Quoted in Sepp Hasslberger's Health Supreme Blog 

  Item: UK's NGO (Non Governmental Organization) "Consumers for Health Choice" (CHC) chairman Mike Peet said at a parliamentary reception last week that the EU regulatory approach is "indicative of all the worst aspects of the European Union - an indifferent, aloof and unresponsive institution, unaccountable to and unheeding of the freedoms of individual citizens, determined to foist a one-size-fits-all approach on diverse national traditions."

  Sounds like Natural Solutions Foundation's criticisms of Codex Alimentarius, doesn't it!

  Health Freedom on the March

  If you check Ron Paul's campaign web site today you'll see the following two featured articles (we reproduce just the intros here):

  "Featured Articles

  Free Speech and Dietary Supplements

  "Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Health Freedom Protection Act. This bill restores the First Amendment rights of consumers to receive truthful information regarding the benefits of foods and dietary supplements by codifying the First Amendment standards used by federal courts to strike down the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) efforts to censor truthful health claims. The Health Freedom Protection Act also stops the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) from censoring truthful health care ..."

  Free Market Medicine

  "Last week the congressional Joint Economic committee on which I serve held a hearing featuring two courageous medical doctors.  I had the pleasure of meeting with one of the witnesses, Dr. Robert Berry, who opened a low-cost health clinic in rural Tennessee.  His clinic does not accept insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid, which allows Dr. Berry to treat patients without interference from third-party government bureaucrats or HMO administrators ..."

  Food Safety and Quality Under Attack
  
  Multinational interests recognize the rapidly growing demand for organic food which consumers expect to be free of pesticides and other dangerous chemicals, genetically modified (GM) components, and, in the case of organic animals, they want them to be raised in accordance with organic requriements: no GM feed, no antibiotics, hormones or veterinary drugs and given ample access to pasture and natural environments in which to graze, peck and grow.
  
  Organic standards are controlled by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) based on US law.  Theoretically, they uphold organic standards.  Theoretically.  As with other regulatory agencies, however, the interests and wishes of industry often holds more sway than good sense, the law or what consumers want and expect.  When the government does the wrong thing, sometimes consumers take matters into their own hands.
  
        Item: Organic Consumers Sue Aurora Dairy in 27 States for Violating Organic Standards. Acting on behalf of organic food consumers in 27 states, class action lawsuits are being filed this week in St. Louis and Denver against one of the nation's largest organic dairies.  The suits charge Aurora Diary Corporation, based in Boulder, Colorado, with allegations of consumer fraud, negligence, and unjust enrichment concerning the sale of organic milk by the company.  This past April, Aurora officials received a notice from the USDA detailing multiple and "willful" violations of federal organic law that were found by the federal investigators, specifically not providing mandatory pasture access and bringing non-organic cows onto their massive feedlots.  Unfortunately the USDA gave Aurora what the Organic Consumers Association considers a "slap on the wrist" rather than taking away the corporation's USDA Organic certification.**
  
         Item: EPA Approves Pesticide Known to Cause Cancer and Miscarriages.  On October 5, the EPA approved a new chemical fumigant for use on strawberries and other food crops across the US.  The pesticide, methyl iodide, vaporizes quickly, causing it to drift long distances.  Although the state of California has categorized methyl iodide as a cancer causing agent and the EPA admits it causes thyroid tumors, the Bush Administration has been advocating the fumigant for the better part of two years.
  
  In a letter to Stephen Johnson the nations leading chemists asked EPA not to approve methyl iodide without further scientific review.  The chemical has been used to induce cancer in laboratory experiments and causes neurological and thyroid problems, as well as miscarriages in studies with laboratory animals. Farmworkers, families, rural workers and the food supply will  now be subjected to exposure to the carcinogen unless the EPA revokes the approval immediately. **
  
  **Organic Consumers Association
   A search of the official Codex Alimentarius website reveals that even Codex, which is exceptionally friendly to highly toxic pesticides and  has published no standards for this deadly carcinogen!
  
       

  Human Chipping
  Starting with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), mandatory federal regulations for the implantation of tracking chips into every farm animal were promulgated over the last several years.  Pet owners, too, were urged to chip their animals.  Since these chips emit continuous microwave radiation 24 hours a day it is not surprising that they have recently been shown to be associated with the development of cancer in chipped animals.
  
        Item: Last week two new types of chips, already implanted in millions of pets, for animals were approved by the NAIS program for use in farm animals. With increasing intensity, these same cancer-causing chips are being implanted in humans either as a "service" by insurance companies to allow quick medical record access in seriously ill patients, a security-enhancing bio-identification requirement for employment or a "safety measure" to find lost or stolen children.
  
  Despite the fact that studies going back to the 1980's had already shown the chips to be associated with tumor development, this information was not made public when the chips were approved for human use and were in fact, cited as the cause of the cancers by Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist who led a study at Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan.
  
        Item: The FDA approved the chips for human use when Tommy Thompson was head of its parent organization, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Shortly thereafter, Thompson resigned his position with HHS to  become the CEO of Verichip, the company that makes the chips.  To date, neither Thompson nor any member of his family has been chipped.
  
        Unconfirmed Item: Information, so far unconfirmed, that the Natural Solutions Foundation has received says that mandatory chipping of humans is slated for implementation starting in May, 2008 and that this requirement was inserted into a recent Iraq War Appropriations Bill.  If you have accurate information about this information, either confirming or refuting it, please contact the Natural Solutions Foundation.
  
  Medical Privacy
  
  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed by Congress in 1996 to set a national standard for electronic transfers of health data.  Although it appears to protect your health information from prying eyes, the failures in this Act and subsequent legislation, including the Patriot Act, Patriot Act II and a host of other legislation, makes any medical or related personal information transmitted or stored electronically vulnerable to secret scrutiny.  In fact, under these "Homeland Security" measures (including directives and regulations as well as the laws themselves), if you are informed that your records have been searched or accessed by anyone in your physician's office, the person who told you about the access can actually go to jail!
  
  The Natural Solutions Foundation believes that medical records are an extension of the sacred trust of confidentiality and privacy between you and your physician and works closely with various privacy interest groups to educate and pressure Congress to reverse the significant damage done to that trust and to your rights by passing corrective legislation and blocking further intrusions.  At the moment, your best bet for keeping your information safe from access by government, commercial, insurance and other groups is to consult only health care providers who do not keep electronic records and who do not transmit either records, medical information or billing information over electronic systems.
  
  Since Medicare, Medicaid and third party insurers demand electronic transmission of information and bills, only health care providers who are outside the system and do not accept insurance are able to keep your records and information safe.  If you pay your physician yourself and then YOU, not the doctor, submit your statements to the insurance company, you have a much better chance of securing some measure of medical privacy.  Better yet is to deal with doctors you pay out of pocket and NOT submit to insurance companies.  How far you are willing to go to assure your medical privacy is a matter of personal choice, but you need to know that it is threatened if an insurance company or other third party is involved and support legislation to make medical privacy private once again.
  
  Genetically Modified Foods
  
  Genetically Modified (GM) foods and products made from them MAY NOT be labeled as such in the United States.  The FDA forbids such labeling because, as Dr. Barbara Schneeman (who works for the FDA as the head of the Office of Dietary Supplements) "explained" during a Codex Working Group on Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods and Food Products (Oslo, 2007):
  1. Research by both the FDA and others shows that consumers would reject GM foods if they knew that they were genetically modified.
• 2. The FDA, which does not require any safety testing or review of a GM food before it approves its use in the food supply, holds [administratively, not scientifically] that GM foods are equivalent to natural foods.
  3. Since consumers would be making an error based on their MISTAKEN [according to the FDA] belief that GM foods are undesirable if they rejected them, the FDA withholds the information about which foods are GM and which are not.
  4. According to the FDA, therefore, telling consumers the truth about GM foods would be false and misleading!
  
  You should note that when the Natural Solutions Foundation shared this information with the world outside of the meeting room in an email blast and a press release, Dr. Schneeman said that we had "misquoted" her.  I told her that the above is precisely what my verbatim notes recorded but, if she will share with me what she believes that she said at that meeting, I would be happy to share it with my readers.  To date Dr. Schneeman has not provided any information to conflict with the above report.
  
         Item: A USDA internal audit (December 2005) made it clear that it has no idea where pharmaceutically altered GM crops are being planted, nor whether there are any precautions against their entering the food chain.  (In fact, custody of these modified foods is so lax that a group of genetically modified pigs was actually sold "by mistake" into the food chain by a university in Florida not long ago.) These dangerous crops and animals are altered to produce vaccines and drugs in their edible parts.  They become part of the food chain without any scientific evidence that they are safe required by the US government. An escape of Bayer GM pharma rice in Louisiana contaminated the entire region's rice crop and WAS NOT REVEALED BY EITHER BAYER OR THE US GOVERNMENT FOR MORE THAN 5 YEARS after it was discovered.
  
         Item: At a Codex meeting, the Natural Solutions Foundation learned from a former Minister for Financial Development of Ghana that the contaminated Bayer pharmaceutical rice was first sold to the US Military in Iraq.  When they rejected it, it was sold to rice markets in Africa through jobbers in Dubai.  EVERY lot of rice tested in EVERY market in Ghana was contaminated with this dangerous crop.  The people buying their rice at the market stalls had no more chance to chose GM free rice than we do in our supermarkets.
  
         Item: A GM corn variety which produces the pesticide BT has been identified the source of major disruption in the aquatic systems near the GM crops.  Since the BT kills not only the corn borer (which destroys ears of corn before they can be harvested), but also other insects including the caddisfly, a major food source for fish and amphibians, the disruption of these ecologically vital water systems is very troubling for ecological stability and sustainability.
  
  Although the BT corn in question was approved a decade ago by the EPA, that approval came without any testing of its impact on the caddisfly, known to be present and important in the areas where the corn grows.
  
         Item: at the same time that the European Union has rejected applications for a genetically modified potato and three varieties of genetically modified corn, the US has announced plans to approve (or "deregulate") its 71st GM crop, this time another type of GM soybean.
  
                               Health Freedom Threats and Champions            

  We are very pleased, as an educational  non governmental organization (NGO), that at least one presidential candidate, Ron Paul, has a positive position on health freedom. Our Health Freedom Score Card, http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=13881, will, over the next few weeks, 'smoke out' any other pro-freedom sentiments, if any, among the other candidates!
  And Dr. Paul's offices have come to us for advice: his campaign asked us to
  help write his Health Freedom Plank, which we did, and his legislative office just asked us to suggested stronger language for HR 2117.. that bill is about to be amended and it will be even more important for us to rally behind it!
  You remember the FDA theats: the draft anti-CAM guidance; the highly restrictive draft "health claims" guidance; the final "destroy small companies" good manufacturing practices etc.
  Ride That Freedom Mouse!
  By using your computer mouse, you have generated a more than two hundred thousand messages to Congress supporting Dr. Paul's bill and seeking additional sponsors. When it is amended in the next few weeks, we will need to redouble our efforts and turn on the tremendous grass roots resources you've created to push Congress to do the right thing. Your responses to the aforementioned FDA attacks over the past nine months has been nothing short of awesome!
  You literally forced Congress to add special protective language to the recent FDA authorization bill, exempting and protecting our supplements from the truly terrible FDA Revitalization Act. You stopped the FDA anti-Cam guidance (I don't think it will ever be finalized because of your response!). Now you can make Congress pass the Health Freedom Protection Act!
• An Amazing Nine Months
• Your efforts in the past nine months have grown Natural Solutions Foundation by a factor of twelve to well over two hundred thousand people! Now we need to increase our elist, which grows by many people each day, to millions of health freedom activists.
  
  Freedom Warriors
  
  We need at least One Million Health Freedom Mouse Warriors on our list ready to ride the Freedom Mouse. But, as I said at the start of this email, we need your financial support to make that happen. We need you to send this eblast to everyone on your email list with a short note asking them to read it, sign up for the email Health Freedom Alerts and become part of the Health Freedom Mouse Warriors Brigade. We need to grow into a force that will make Congress listen each and every time we speak!
  The Last Time We Got Really Mad We Got DSHEA!
  In 1994 the health freedom movement forced Congress to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) by Unanimous Congressional Consent instead of forbidding all supplements as they had been planning to do (sound familiar?) We overwhelmed them with letters and faxes (one old-timer says they all ran out of fax paper..., just what's happening with our Health Freedom Scorecard!). Now, with Internet Activism - with you, our Mouse Warriors - it will be even easier to protect health freedom again ... and again ... and again .....
  
  Natural Solutions Foundation has the natural solutions for the health care crisis; we have developed the contacts in Washington to make sure it happens just as we have the natural solution to the Codex threat IF you support us and our ability to make those in power sit up and take notice. We need you to click those Computer Mouses to send messages to Congress, and to donate to the cause!
  
  You know we can't do it without resources, money, and right now, millions and millions of dollars are being "sucked up" by the presidential campaigns leaving little for activist, educational nonprofits like Natural Solutions Foundation. That's why we need you to dig deeper and help us by signing up for a regular monthly donation.  Just a small amount monthly from each of our hundreds of thousands of supporters will be enough for us to continue our success in educating Washington decision makers and to continue to represent your interests by attending international agencies like Codex and going to the homelands of those who can turn Codex from a monstrous health threat to a pro-health organization -- or kill it. Please help today!                                                                                                                                                  Yours in health and freedom,

          Dr. Rima

        Rima E. Laibow, MD

          Medical Director
        Natural Solutions Foundation
        www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
        www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org

Oh, yes, don't forget to visit our virtual store, www.Organics4U.org.  Purchases are  40% tax deductible and support your health and the Natural Solutions Foundation at the same time! 

Thanks again, Dr. Rima