Do you have medical authority over your child?

Of course I do...don't I?

Daniel Hauser, a 13 year old boy in Minnesota is at the center of a child protection case, not because he's in danger, but because his parent's decided to discontinue chemotherapy and seek alternative treatment for his Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Brown County Family Services in Minnesota is alleging that Danny's parents are medically neglecting him because they are not continuing chemotherapy. Read More

That's in Minnesota. It could never happen here. Or could it?

This is not the first case where that state has decided that they know how to take better care of your children then you do.

Most people assume that they have the authority to make decisions for their children, including decisions about medical treatment. This is not always the case.

In California...

In California, Laurie Jessop was arrested and prosecuted as a result of complaints filed by California Child Protective Services based on her decision to seek alternative treatment for her son's melanoma.

Jessop took her son to San Diego, where he received alternative treatments that included energy work, supplements, black salve and Rife therapy.

After the alternative treatment, Jessop took her son to a specialist who performed a biopsy and blood tests. He was cancer free!

At this time Laurie and her son had warrants out for their arrest. They subsequently turned themselves into the authorities in San Diego and were detained for 4 hours. Her son was remanded to the Orangewood Children's Home in Orange County.

Laurie was detained, released, and then re-arrested when she tried to make arrangements for her son to make up the schoolwork he missed while they were on the run to receive treatment.

After 5 days of incarceration, where she was assaulted and denied toilet paper, Laurie was released after midnight in an unsafe neighborhood in Santa Ana. Her car had been impounded, and tossed for drugs, and she paid $300 in fees to get it back.

Subsequently, Laurie faced trial, her children were living in foster homes, and she was forbidden to speak based on a gag order from the judge who would hear her case.

In Virginia...

Abraham Cherrix was a 16 year old with non Hodgkins Lymphoma. The prescribed chemotherapy administered to him was so toxic that it left the young man so weak that his father had to carry him from the car to the house after treatment.

Deciding that there had to be a better way, the Cherrix family took their son to Mexico, where he started a program of herbal remedies combined with an organic, plant based diet. His physician called the Virginia State authorities, resulting in the parents being charged with medical neglect, and the Accomack Social Services Agency gaining joint custody of Abraham.

The parents appealed the decision, but lost and Abraham was ordered to begin another round of chemotherapy.

On July 25, 2006, Judge Glenn Tyler, an Accomack County Circuit Court Judge, ruled that Abraham deserves the right to appeal this decision before undergoing any further medical treatment. The judge also returned full custody of Abraham to his parents.

As a result of the Cherrix's struggle, "Abraham's Law" was passed in Virginia in 2007, and allows teens 14 years of age and older to have more control over their medical treatments, without their parents being charged with medical neglect.

What can I do?

Health Freedom for All is building a very large grassroots organization, the Consumer Choice Coalition, which will be the "voice" for consumer choice. Our goal is to change health care in the United States, but we cannot do this without the help of people like you. The only way to get opinion leaders and legislators to listen is to form a massive consumer choice group that cannot be ignored any longer! We are asking everyone who wants to help to get TEN people to fill out a pledge card .We are not collecting money, we're collecting names of people who believe in consumer choice.

By becoming a coalition member we can work on ensuring parents, like you and me, have the right to decide what's best for our child. 49 more states need a law that protects parent's right to make medical decisions for their child. So let's get started TODAY!

For Natural Health, the most important step you can take isn't only voting on Nov. 4th. 

It's also preparing for action after the election.

    Over 90,000 people receive our newsletter.  So, you can imagine that we get a lot of diverse responses.  We appreciate every email we get, and we try to answer them as soon as we can. 

    In any case, we've seen that many of you support the freedom to choose and to self-educate that deregulation of natural health products and services would allow.  Others of you support limited regulation if it really helps protect the consumer, and if it protects natural health's place in the market.  The thing to keep in mind, we think, is that all of you clearly support natural health in ways that you believe are best.  Don't lose sight of that common ground.  The winning strategy that will bring natural health to the forefront of a truly successful healthcare system for our country lies in the collective, transpartisan wisdom of people like you.  Stick with this effort.  Vote November 4th.  And prepare to rally for the natural health causes that will surely become important in the weeks and months ahead.

    Listed (in the following post) are several pending bills and resolutions related to natural health from past legislative sessions.  We may see these come up again in some version or another.  We will surely see new ones. 

    When you think about these regulations, or any regulation that will affect natural health, consider these questions:

    1.  Is the regulation about safety (e.g. the Adverse Event Reporting law) or is it about access (e.g. S. 770, the Food Stamp Act below)?

    2.  If the regulation is about safety, what does the regulation protect?  Consumer health or someone's market share?

    3.  Does a regulation that's designed to protect your health include the means for you to educate yourself?  Or is the question of safety delegated to the expertise of others?

    4.  If the issue of health and safety is delegated to others, are those in authority accountable to consumers - that is, are their actions and decisions transparent and can consumers truly participate - or are their actions and decisions isolated from consumers?  Does the regulation in question address this issue?   Should it?

    5.  What are the standards for determining whether a product or service is safe or harmful?  Does a regulation first assume that a given product or service is safe, and then must be proven harmful before it's restricted?  Or does the regulation assume that the product or service is harmful, and then must be proven safe before it's accessible?  What role do consumers have in this process?  Should consumers have a role?

    6.  If a regulatory authority can protect consumers from harm, can that authority also determine what is good for you?  Is there a difference between protecting consumers from harm on the one hand, and deciding what is good for consumers on the other hand?

    In a nation as complex, diverse and large as ours, we need some structure of governance.  And sometimes we need to delegate authority to others to help us.   But there is more than one way to address these challenges.  What would you do differently to support natural health if you could make the call?

(CONTINUED NEXT POST>>>Past and Pending Bills related to Natural Health)

Sunshine Health

Freedom Foundation

Sunshine Health Freedom Foundation  is devoted to maintaining and expanding health freedom for all Americans through education and public awareness.

Our support comes from people like you and companies like Nature's Sunshine, determined to protect, preserve and defend their right to make their own health choices. Unfortunately, our choices are currently under legislative and regulatory attack.

Our goal is to "bring to light" these issues that impact your life and the lives of those near and dear to you.  If these attacks on our health freedom are successful, you will no longer be able to chose natural health-promotion or illness-reduction options here in the United States.

Those health choices include nutritional medicine and access to herbs, supplements, vitamins, essential amino acids, essential oils and natural hormones. 

Vibraceous, ND

HOW IS THIS A THREAT? 

We must never forget how the FDA and their international counterparts define "health fraud."

The world's FDA's function as trade associations for pharmaceutical companies. They are paid millions of dollars in fees from the pharmaceutical companies to put Rx drugs thru their less than scientific "approval process." Furthermore, there is a revolving door between the drug companies and the FDA as many leave the FDA to go to work for the drug companies.

The FDA's defines "health fraud" to encompass any health claim made about any non patentable natural substance, regardless of how true it is, if it cuts into the sale of Rx drugs. They also consider health fraud to include any non mainstream, alternative medical approach (any approach not involving the use of patented prescription or OTC drugs that have been thru their so called "approval" process.

Read "Why is the FDA Picking on Cherries?" and you'll see the the FDA is currently attacking the Cherry Industry, threatening to start raiding cherry orchards, unless the industry stops making health claims about the therapeutic effects of Cherries that are endorsed by the US Department of Agriculture.

 "The FDA does not want the cherry industry to tell people that recent studies show that cherries contain substances that are potentially 10 times stronger than aspirin or ibuprofen for relieving pain. It does not want the public to know that substances in cherries may kill cancer cells and prevent cancer. It makes no difference whether these statements are true. What's important is that the public not be told that a natural substance (cherries) has been shown to work as well as or better than an unnatural one (ibuprofen)."

"Only drugs, according to the FDA's legal doctrine, can prevent, treat, mitigate, or cure disease. If something does those things, it's a drug. And if it's a drug, it has to be tested for its ability to do those things. In this double-speak world, no natural substance can do anything significant against disease-that is, unless it undergoes testing as a drug. Attempts at slaying this many-headed monster of convoluted truths have only made it grow new heads."

The FDA is claiming that statements made by the Cherry Industry on their websites are an extension of the labelling of their products, and they're pressuring the Cherry industry to stop making these claims. The Cherry Industry is fighting back in the courts claiming that the FDA is violating their First Amendment Right to free speech. Efforts are underway to get a bill through congress called the Health Freedom Protection Act to stop this FDA censorship.

The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA's of Canada, the USA and Mexico have no USE for national laws that "interfere" with Pharma's efforts to block the use of natural products. They have no USE for the US Constitution and its First Amendment. They have no use for laws like DSHEA, or the Health Freedom Protection Act so they're all in FAVOR of ABOLISHING AMERICA and forcing all 3 countries together into the planned NORTH AMERICAN UNION, where we'd have much less input into the legislative process than we do now and everything would be dictated to us.

This is why IAHF needs your help to pressure congress into holding OVERSIGHT HEARINGS for the purpose of STOPPING the FDA from continuing to violate the law.

Diagnosis: Corruption

by Bill Sardi

The Federal branches of government responsible for protecting and promoting public health are in a state of moral collapse. The recent recall of the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, with the revelation that the continued use of the drug long after the Food & drug Administration and its manufacturer knew it doubled the risk of heart attacks and may have caused 30,000 or so avoidable deaths, is only a small picture of what is going on inside federal health agencies today.

MORE...

• If you want to help, please click on "Now What"
  
• Tell your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors about the problem. Ask them to get involved.
  
• Ask your local media (ie. newspapers, magazines, radio, television stations) to cover the issue.
  
• Speak to your local politicians and ask them to announce "No Confidence" in the federal government's ability to protect and safeguard U.S. citizens regarding prescription drugs, and announce the "No onfidence" referendum to the media.

I trust in the herbs that God gave us. I trust in the power of Love. I trust in prayer, in using the elements to maintain our health, and I trust in the power of laughter and water and sunshine and flowers and dance! But I do NOT trust the FDA.

I place my trust in the Source of all radiant health! I place my trust in God and in the way our bodies were made in perfect design, as was the environment in which we live. We can reverse what is wrong by going back to the way that things were intended to be.

Drugs do not grow on trees. Herbs are what nature grows, and herbs are what our bodies are intended to eat. (If you believe in the Bible, it says it in there. It's true even if you do not believe! Even cows get their food from herbs.)...(or at least they used to before man started feeding them other cows.)

I'm getting off track...The point is that the FDA is corrupt, in my opinion, and in the opinion of others who have researched this point. Please read the following thesis...You'll see.

Vibraceous, ND

Impact of User Fees (i.e. Drug Industry Money) on Changes within the FDA”

University of La Verne, School of Public Administration Gary W. Lawson, DPA - May 2005

Public Administration Doctoral Thesis

In 1992, Congress authorized the FDA to collect funds directly from the drug manufacturers. My research thesis offers information that can help citizens, media representatives, legal analysts and policy makers to better evaluate the impact of drug industry fees on the FDA.The fact that the FDA is dependent on drug industry money is, at minimum, a conflict of interest and more likely, financial dependence on the drug manufacturers represents the corruption of a public agency. The FDA receiving funding from the organizations that they are mandated to monitor is similar to the FBI receiving funding from the mafia. In my opinion, the FDA is not protecting and safeguarding Americans. In August 2005, I completed a study as my thesis to obtain my doctorate in public administration.

FDA Should Disclose Their Dependence On Drug Industry Funding

I have been a senior healthcare executive for more than 20 years. When I first started my thesis research I had no idea that the FDA was receiving a significant portion of its funding from the drug industry. At the time I started the study, even if I had known of the FDA's financial relationship to the drug industry, I wouldn't have believed that the FDA could be corrupted or influenced by this funding method. After two-years of investigation, I am convinced that the FDA's dependence on drug industry fees has created a deadly, unethical alliance and caused a principal-agent, pro-drug industry shift that puts millions of innocent Americans at risk. In my opinion, due to its dependence on drug industry fees, the FDA's actions related to prescription drugs are suspect, and the Agency can no longer be trusted to act in its traditional capacity as a legitimate, objective, consumer protection agency.

Although it is an unthinkable situation that citizens can no longer trust the FDA, I believe the more immediate issue is the need for full disclosure and informed consent. Citizens need to know and understand that the FDA is now dependent on the brand name drug industry for a large portion of their budget. Citizens need to know that the FDA's pro-drug industry positions may be based on financial rather than safety, efficacy or humanitarian considerations. Before taking prescription drugs, citizens MUST be informed that the financial relationship between the regulators and the regulated could help explain why Americans are paying the highest FDA monopoly protected world prices for medications that could be no better than what already exists and for medications that could cause them harm.

Due to its dependence on drug industry user fees, the FDA's objectivity is now questionable. To protect and safeguard Americans, the FDA needs to provide consumers with a full disclosure explaining the potential risks of the FDA's financial relationship with the brand name drug industry. "Proposed" RX Disclosure Statement... The FDA and key staff therein have SIGNIFICANT financial ties to the brand name drug industry. Therefore, when taking FDA newly approved prescription drugs you will, most likely, be paying the highest prices in the world for medications with unknown, untested or unlisted adverse drug reactions. The financial relationship between the FDA and the brand name drug industry may be harmful to your health up to and including death.

For a complete copy of the study, click http://www.fdastudy.com/Thesis.htm

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA, 1994), an American law classifying our supplements and herbs as foods (which can have no upper limit set on their use), was passed by unanimous Congressional consent following massive grass-roots support organized by health food stores. Millions of American activists told Congress, in no uncertain terms:

“Protect nutritional supplements as foods or we will remove you from office”.

Congress listened and carried out the will of the people.

DSHEA appropriately classifies nutritional supplements as foods which can have no upper limits set on their use. DSHEA recognizes that people use nutrients safely to deal with their individually differing needs for nutrients. The concept of biochemical individuality means that people have different needs for nutrients at different times. Are nutrients toxins? No, they are not toxins. They are substances essential to prevent, treat and cure any chronic condition, in differing doses at different times in different people.

DSHEA protects the US from Codex Alimentarius’ deadly Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. We must reach our Congressional members, educate them about the facts on Codex Alimentarius and direct them to vote against anything that would threaten DSHEA.

Congress holds the keys to our health freedom. And it is their job to listen to us. Let’s not allow cynicism to tell us otherwise. We did it for DSHEA in 1994. We can do it again in 2005.

DSHEA is under significant legislative attack right now. Your letter-writing is crucial: if the members of Congress know that voting against health freedom means losing their jobs come election time, they will listen. Our job is to make sure they get the message loud and clear. Take action via our 3 easy steps and send personalized emails to Congress right now.

After taking action on HealthFreedomUSA.org, consider getting together with others in your area and visit your Congressional members in their home offices. If we wait, we lose our health freedoms. Once we “HARMonize” with Codex, by the way, we no longer have the right, while we belong to the WTO, to repeal or change that “HARMonization”!

The objective of the pro-Codex Alimentarius multi nationals is to “boil the frog slowly” so that we do not wake up to it in time to avoid Codex.

Once we have “HARMonize” to Codex Alimentarius, as long as we are in the WTO, we cannot amend or change what we’ve been “HARMonize” to.

Codex Alimentarius will go into global implementation by December 31, 2009, unless We, the People, avert it. We must act now because right now, with $758 Million spent on declared Congressional lobbying by Big Pharma last year, there are members of Congress who are trying to overturn DSHEA and allow Pharma-friendly free reign for Codex. If protective laws like DSHEA are destroyed, the sanctioning power of the autocratic WTO kicks in, and it will be impossible to get out from under Codex Alimentarius. We can protect our access to high potency nutrients and stave off an adulterated food supply only by putting pressure on Congress.

If you would like more in-depth information about Codex Alimentarius before taking action, please click here.

If Codex Alimentarius is implemented in the United States of America, therapeutic dosages of vitamins and minerals (and all other nutrients soon to follow) will become unavailable because they will literally become illegal.

Here’s how it would work, in a nut-shell:

Due to the junk science use of Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess supposedly toxic nutrients, a false belief is being engineered saying that “nutritional supplements are dangerous to people’s health”.

Using this false belief generates calls to “protect” people from these “toxic” nutrients. After the calls come the bills to set ultra low permissible dosages (remember, nutrients are deemed “dangerous toxins” under this false belief). If enough of us and our Congressional delegates buy this nonsense, we and Congress would blindly comply with Codex Alimentarius’ VMG. And blind compliance is what the industries behind Codex Alimentarius intend.

Blind compliance goes hand-in-hand with lack of activism. This lack of activism allows our protective laws, classifying nutrients as foods with no upper limits (such as DSHEA), to be easily repealed and replaced with draconian laws to classify nutrients as toxins. And “harmonization” with the pro-illness, pro-pharmaceutical industry Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is there to fill the void.

Only intentionally ineffective, ultra low dose supplements would be legal, with or without a prescription, on the VMG list. If enough people do not take action, we can expect to watch nutritional supplement manufacturers and, thus health food stores, to go out of business, in a domino effect. The only player left standing would be Big Pharma.

Therapeutic grade vitamins, minerals, and amino acids would be eliminated from the marketplace (although a few low-dose supplements would be allowed by Codex, as a symbolic measure to avoid suspicion about their ulterior motive).

Natural health professionals would lose the tools of their trade (nutritional supplements) and health conscious people would be unable to choose natural health options for health promotion and disease treatment.

And that is, in a nutshell, how Codex Alimentarius is poised to make Natural and Nutritional Medicine (NNM) disappear from the legal health world and go underground. Who benefits? Big Pharma.

It would take a few years for the above scenarios to be feasible (Codex Alimentarius is meant to go into full global effect by 2010). The slower the process takes, the less alarmed people will be. That’s probably the logic of the architects of Codex Alimentarius.

More and more people are turning to natural health products globally. The “wellness” trend is a major trend in today’s society. The more natural health products people use, the fewer drugs they buy. The pharmaceutical industry, which is part of the “Sickness Industry”, fears the inevitable shift toward natural health care.

Instead of accepting the will of the people and rethinking the future of the pharmaceutical industry, the industry has decided upon an unethical course of action: the use of deception and deceit to eliminate natural health products completely.

Codex Alimentarius is a shrewd vehicle for protecting the pharmaceutical industry from the loss of income it stands to suffer due to the inevitable growth of natural healthcare.

Codex Alimentarius is the resistance of the dinosaurs to inevitability: the burgeoning desire of humanity for a healthier, saner, and more sustainable way of life.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) intends to force Codex Alimentarius upon the nations of the world, including the U.S. This would be done under the threat of massive economic sanctions if WTO-countries do not comply with Codex Alimentarius.

Furthermore, Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code, not Common Law. That means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Under Common Law, we hold that anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted. The difference is the difference between health freedom and health tyranny. Codex Alimentarius would be able to ban supplements by default.

(Points continued next post...)

HealthFreedomUSA.org, the website of the Natural Solutions Foundation, is beholden to no one: our only interest is health freedom. Rima E. Laibow, MD, successful natural medicine physician since the 1970s, has studied 16,000 pages of Codex documentation. Her conclusion is that people who say that Codex is “consumer protection”, “voluntary”, or “harmless” are, at best, seriously mistaken.

Codex Alimentarius was created in 1962 as a trade Commission by the UN to control the international trade of food. Its initial intentions may have been altruistic but it has been taken over by corporate interests, most notably the pharmaceutical, pesticide, biotechnology and chemical industries.

Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.

Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) has two committees which impact nutrition.

One of them, the “Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses” (CCNFSDU), is chaired by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus, a physician who believes that nutrition has no role in health. This is the “top-guy” for Codex nutritional policy, and he has stated that “nutrition is not relevant to health”.

As unbelievable as it may sound, Dr. Grossklaus actually declared nutrients to be toxins in 1994 and instituted the use of toxicology (Risk Assessment) to prevent nutrients from having any impact on humans who take supplements! It is worth mentioning that Dr. Grossklaus happens to own the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on this issue. This company makes money when its toxicology services are used for the “assessment” of nutrients. Here in the U.S. we call that a “conflict of interest”.

Codex is made up of thousands of standards and guidelines. One of them, the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), is designed to permit only ultra low doses of vitamins and minerals (and make clinically effective nutrients illegal). How can the VMG restrict dosages of vitamins and minerals? By using Risk Assessment (toxicology) to assess nutrients.

While Risk Assessment is a legitimate science (it is a branch of toxicology), it is the wrong science for assessing nutrients! In fact, in this context, it is actually junk science. Biochemistry, the science of life processes, is the correct science for assessing nutrients. Codex Alimentarius treats nutrients as toxins, which is literally insane.

Nutrients are not toxins - they are essential for life.

No matter what Codex Alimentarius officials say to convince you that Risk Assessment is a “science-based” approach to nutrients, it is not.

And it is worth repeating that Dr. Grossklaus, the head of Codex Alimentarius, owns the Risk Assessment company advising CCNFSDU and Codex on the “benefit” of using Risk Assessment to assess nutrients.

Contrary to the propaganda, Codex Alimentarius has nothing to do with consumer protection. Nothing! Codex is about the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry.

Using their multi billion-dollar marketing budgets, these industries have launched a massive media propaganda campaign to paint Codex Alimentarius as a benevolent tool of “consumer protection”, as well as to negatively taint the image of natural health options and mislead people to fear them as “dangerous”, so they will take drugs (which really are dangerous). Natural health products and options have an amazing safety record and are remarkably effective, especially when compared to pharmaceutical drugs.

Unfortunately, one-time defenders of health freedom such as National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) and Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) have joined the propaganda bandwagon and are spreading false information saying that Codex Alimentarius is either “harmless” or benevolent “consumer protection”. Neither is true.

The membership of these one-time defenders of health freedom has become permeated by people from the pharmaceutical industry (for example, CRN counts as its members corporations such as Monsanto® and Bayer®).

Public Citizen Exposes Frequent Financial Conflicts of Interest at FDA Advisory Committee Meetings

Study Published in JAMA Finds Conflicts Rarely Result in Recusal and Are Related to Voting Behaviors

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Conflicts of interest at drug advisory committee meetings for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are common and often of considerable monetary value, but rarely result in recusal, finds a study conducted by Public Citizen and published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study details financial conflicts of interest between drug advisory committee members and the companies producing the drugs they evaluated; it also examines conflicts with competing companies. The study exposes a weak but statistically significant relationship between certain conflicts and votes in favor of the drug under consideration.

The study appears in the April 26 issue of JAMA, and was authored by Dr. Peter Lurie, Dr. Cristina Almeida, Nicholas Stine and Dr. Sidney Wolfe, all of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, and Alexander Stine of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the FDA approves 25 to 30 new chemical entities each year, often relying in its decision-making on the advice of outside advisory committee members and FDA-invited voting consultants. In September 2001, Public Citizen threatened a lawsuit against the FDA to force it to disclose detailed information about the financial interests of committee members, as required by law. In response, the FDA instituted new guidelines in January 2002, requiring more detailed financial conflict of interest disclosure publicly at the beginning of advisory committee meetings held to consider specific drugs.

The study examined those disclosed conflicts, using all posted agendas and transcripts from FDA drug advisory committee meetings from 2001 to 2004, approximately one year before and three years after the new guidelines.

During this period, 28 percent of advisory committee members and voting consultants had a conflict, and at least one member or consultant had a conflict in 73 percent of the meetings. Despite this, only one percent of members were recused from attending the meeting. The data were limited to self-reported conflicts disclosed at the beginnings of advisory meetings, which could underreport actual conflict rates.

For advisory committee members and voting consultants present, the study found that 19 percent of consulting arrangements involved more than $10,000, 30 percent of investments were worth more than $25,000 and 23 percent of contracts or grants exceeded $100,000.

“Conflicts of these magnitudes should result in automatic recusal from advisory committee meetings,” said Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group. “With as many highly qualified professionals as we have in this country, there should be little difficulty identifying members with more limited or, ideally, no conflicts of interest.”

The study also found that speakers in the public session were frequently supported and/or flown to the meeting by the manufacturer of the drug under review. In fact, public speakers were more likely to disclose a conflict than advisory committee members or voting consultants.

The FDA guidelines appear to have improved conflict of interest disclosure but should be expanded to require naming the competitor company, explaining the reasons for a member’s recusal and to cover meetings that do not address specific products.

The study employed six analytic methods to determine whether a relationship between conflicts and voting behavior exists. These considered the potential impact of conflicts both on individual voting behaviors as well as on the overall outcome of meetings. A weak but, in several cases, statistically significant relationship between certain types of conflicts and voting behaviors was detected in a variety of different analyses.

For every voting member with a conflict of any type (index drug or competitor drug), there was a 10 percent greater likelihood that the meeting would favor the drug being considered. The exclusion of advisory committee members and voting consultants with conflicts would have produced margins less favorable to the drug being considered in a majority of meetings, but would not have altered the overall outcome of any of the meetings in this study.

The preceeding post is a PM that I sent to Vibe, yesterday. Per request, I posted it here for you...

Tina

Hi Mary Jo,

Have you ever heard of "Codex"? I hadn't until today. I want to share this information with you personally before sending it to all of my U.S. Care2 friends.

I watched this 40 minute video and quite honestly the lady comes across a bit...odd. It's your choice whether to watch it or not, but there is some really important and significantly serious information involved.

Here are the links:

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=157

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/action/step3/all_codex_docs.pdf

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634&q=Nutricide

Let me know what you know about this, okay? I already faxed over my signature.

Happy New Year!
Tina

• HR 315t calls for deleting the language in DSHEA that states that the United States shall bear the burden of proof on each element and attempts to dismantle DSHEA's high threshold of proof of harm.
• HR3156 treats dietary supplements as risky drugs instead of nutrient foods that are generally regarded as safe and applies a flawed risk-benefit analysis.
• HR 3156 attempts to allow the FDA to ban products even when there is "even a relatively small risk..."

Please kill H.R. 3156! 

US Politics  - 1 day ago - patientprivacyrights.org

Sunshine Ray (554) Tuesday December 12, 2006, 5:14 am
they passed this in Canada without our permission, slipped it right through, and wow is it a big PROBLEM. They are fighting in the US, THIS IS USA PETITION, KEEP UR RIGHTS AND SIGN IT, HAVE POWER OVER UR LIFE AND WHAT GETS RELEASED AND NOT. SO MUCH GETS PUT ON THAT IS WRONG IS OR IS MISSED, THE AMOUTN OF MALPRACTICE CASES IN BOTH OUR COUNTRIES AND DEATHS IS DISGUSTING, IT'S AN INSIDE WAR IN OUR OWN COUNTRIES AND WE AREN'T DOING MUCH ABOUT IT. PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS.

submitted by
Sunshine
 

Amendments to the privacy rule allow a web of interests, including employers, insurance, pharmaceutical and financial interests to view your most sensitive medical information.  New laws continue to expose these records to prying eyes.

Patient Privacy Rights is working with patients, doctors, nurses, hospitals, insurance companies and advocates across the country to let Americans decide who can see and use our medical records. 

Restore your medical privacy today.

SIGN THIS PETITON 

• I want to decide who can see and use my medical records
• I do not want my medical records or those of my family's to be seen or used by my employer
• I should never be forced to give up my right to privacy in order to get medical treatment

THEY WON!!   THEY WON!!

Click here to visit Abraham's personal site.

Update Tuesday, July 25, 2006:
The circuit court suspended the execution of judgment for both the order to submit to chemotherapy and the order awarding the state joint custody. The trial is August 16th.

Monday, July 24:
Lawyers filed a motion today to try to stop enforcement of a judge's order requiring Abraham to report to a hospital.

Friday, July 21:
A judge ruled that Abraham must report to a hospital by Tuesday afternoon for testing, evaluation and treatment as doctors deem necessary.

The juvenile court judge also found Abraham's parents neglectful for risking his health by permitting him to pursue alternative treatment of a sugar-free, organic diet and herbal supplements supervised by a clinic in Mexico.

Call and write:

Read more about Abraham Cherrix

• Abraham Cherrix - News 10 Video
• My Journey - Abraham Cherrix (The site is back up!)
• Judge Weighs Va. Teen's Cancer Treatment
• Teen's court battle gets national attention
• Cancer boy may be jailed and forced into having Chemo
• The Nanny State vs. The Family

Contact Judge Jesse E. Demps at (757) 393-2990 or (757) 399-5514 to voice your concerns.

Vibraceous, ND

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/07/12/sick.teen.ap/index.html

Starchild Abraham Cherrix was court ordered to start chemo"therapy" treatments again beginning today. Please hold him and his family in your prayers. There's even a possiblity his parents could lose custody because of this, plus imagine what this boy must be going through, to be forced to have poison administered into his body against his will. Please pray for him and us all.

Vibraceous, ND

This has been going on for many years. First it was the chiropractors where were called quacks and attacked mercilessly.

Jailing parents of kids is nothing new.

What is new is that the drug and medical industry is trying to take more control over all of our lives via a global control network, rather than on a national or local level.

Here's a case about a woman who wanted to provide naturopathic care for child and custody was not only taken from her, but she ended up being arrested for kidnapping her own child the night before he was to undergo surgery.  The surgery was not an emergency one, so the child was not in imminent danger.  Read the whole story and let us know what you think...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/275187_sickbaby24.html

Vibraceous, ND

Should 16-Year-Old, Family, Be Able To Pursue Alternative Treatments?

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va., July 9, 2006

Starchild Abraham Cherrix looks out a window as he ponders a question during an interview at his home in Chincoteague, Va., Monday, June 26, 2006. Cherrix, who has Hodgkin's disease, refused a second round of radiation, turning to an organic diet and herbal supplements to treat his cancer.  (AP)

Read the whole article...

Vibraceous, ND

A number of us have started threads in this group dealing with different issues of choice regarding health care. These issues are extremely important, and they affect every one of us, directly or indirectly. Our freedoms are being threatened each day.

There are many influences impacting upon our right to choose our own approach to health...which herbs to use and to buy, which procedures are allowed or not...who we may or may not choose to get help and advice from...even what we are allowed to teach at all, or to provide to each other for free is at stake.  I think it's well past the time for us to take these issues quite seriously.

This topic is far reaching...organic food standards, Codex, the role of the FDA and the FTC and the USDA and the AMA...AMA?  They're not a government institution!  Sometimes it seems that they are!

Here are some of the topic threads we've had in this group before which indicates an interest and need for attention to subjects like this!

Please keep adding more topics and let's keep each other informed!  These issues are soooo directly related to our health...to our right to make our own decisions...and to our right to use the gifts that God gave us to use.  I don't think anyone should infringe on these rights!

I strongly believe t hat our First Amendment rights are at stake with a great deal of what's going on!  Please be informed...

...and Act! New Petitions: PLEASE EVERYONE SIGN!!!!!!!!...

Vibraceous, ND