by
Helke Ferrie
January 28, 2011
from
VitalityMagazine Website
|
Why More Health Regulations
Are Not What We Need |
When the Egyptians informed their president
recently that they were fed up with 32 years of government tyranny which had
been justified as protection from harm, we all watched in amazement.
Few of us realize, though, that in North America
and Europe, we are heading for "tyranny light" as our governments
determinedly proceed to ensure that we are protected in every which way
except the way we want.
On January 6, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians
commented in the
Globe & Mail:
[Here is] "what you don't know about a deal you haven't heard
of," namely the impending Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and
Trade Agreement (CETA).
In this new treaty, CETA requires harmonization of all regulatory bodies in
all the governments involved (i.e. EU countries, US, Canada and Mexico), and
eliminates the power of elected representatives (from federal MPs down to
municipal governments) to make decisions within their areas.
Since the CETA
treaty was created to serve the needs of industry, it has been designed to
legally prevent the citizens of all participating countries from raising any
objections through their MPs or municipal councils. Thus, local politicians
are unable to counteract or override the treaty's requirements for
harmonized control over everything that can be bought or sold.
Canada's Environmental Law Association is appalled at this comprehensive
blueprint for an anti-democratic new world order in which people are
transformed from citizens to customers-serfs.
While many activists around the world have been focused on fighting off the
dreaded "Codex Alimentarius" global standards for food (which would
seriously destroy our ability overall to produce healthy and sufficient
food, as well as to remediate with proper nutritional supplementation, to
the favor of
pharmaceutical globocorps, and
the Monsantos of this world) the
European Union has almost identical standards enforced already.
We call
their rulebook "Codex's Evil Twin", and it has been in place for years.
CETA
is capable of forcing harmonization with the EU guidelines, long before
Codex Alimentarius comes into effect.
Dr. Eldon Dahl
Life Choice - Raided by Health Canada and RCMP
NATURAL HEALTH PRODUCTS BANNED AS DRUGS GET THE GREEN LIGHT
Meantime, governments in the E.U., U.S., and Canada are preparing for this
"harmonization" full throttle. By the time the ink dries on the CETA treaty,
everything it intends may already have happened.
Preparations for full
harmonization include the following:
-
A few weeks ago, Ottawa rammed into law
Bill C-36 (the former C-52 and
C-6) without mandatory public hearings and despite hundreds of thousands of
protests. C-36 is defended by Ottawa as protection for Canadians from toxic
substances, but in reality it bypasses all relevant constitutional
safeguards. Its illegal arbitrary powers, open to nobody's scrutiny, abolish
due process and deregulate business for toxin producers, while pretending to
go after polluters (see Shawn Buckley's Sept. 2010 Vitality article).
-
Its counterpart in the U.S. (S-510), became law at the same time that
C-36 did in Canada. The U.S. bill masqueraded as a food safety bill, but is
actually potentially disastrous to organic foods.
-
The E.U., meanwhile, has "responded to rising concerns over adverse
effects caused by herbal medicine"; without any evidence of harm, all
indigenous, Chinese, and Ayurvedic herbal medicines will be banned from the
European marketplace, effective April 1st. (For more on this, see Dr.
Verkerk's February Vitality article.) In the House of Lords, there was a
call to outlaw university courses on Chinese medicine.
This direct transfer of Canadian sovereignty to an unnamed foreign agency
can happen at any time, without Parliamentary or public oversight, and it
has happened before.
In fact, at last month's G20 conference, Prime Minister
Harper admitted the surrendering of sovereignty was occurring economically,
and treated it as a "fact of life"; we find this astounding, given that
Harper was adamant in recent years about protecting this same sovereignty,
and had until that moment not breathed a word about the fact that instead,
he was giving it away without our knowledge or consent.
Witness the changing of US corporate tax law at the order of the WTO: are
Canadian laws any less vulnerable?
That means that the draconian supplement
regulations of the EU (which force citizens to get prescriptions for
vitamins at therapeutic dosages and potencies at outrageous prices) can be
forced upon us via CETA between Canada and the European Union.
Meanwhile, Ottawa began preparations for the return of Bill C-51 to
"modernize" the Food and Drugs Act. Bill C-51 reinterprets the government's
legal "duty to care and serve the public interest" so that those quaint
ideals no longer stand in the way of profits.
Mike McBane, the national
coordinator of the
Canadian Health Coalition, writing about
drug safety in Canada on January 17 ("Drug Safety: Health Canada thanks you for not
enquiring"), reported that the "technical consultations" on the "modernization" of regulations governing prescription drugs were to take
place at closed-door meetings from January 19 to 21.
That government-Big Pharma love-in focused on scrapping the precautionary principle altogether,
and all new drugs will now be presumed safe without manufacturers' proof.
Health Canada announced that these modernizations are,
"grounded upon our understanding of what
Canadians believe federal approval of new drugs should mean."
Because of CETA plans and its requirements of harmonization between all
these countries, the EU Directive's limits on availability of all natural
health products has to be extended to all participating countries.
So, in
Canada we have a deadline after which the Natural Health Products
Directorate rules come into effect - on March 1st, at least half or more of
the "unapproved" herbal medicines, vitamins, minerals, etc., become
technically illegal.
(Shawn Buckley is challenging this in federal court and
will hopefully have this challenge registered before March 1 so it can
proceed through its various stages in court. Simultaneously, Robert Verkerk
will start his legal challenge, already registered in the UK. In both
countries the deadlines are based on legally insupportable policies.)
Greg Schilhab, the editor of Nutrition & Mental Health (a publication
started by the late Dr. Abram Hoffer) observed in the January 2011 issue:
"We have been complacent thinking that just
because something is natural and unpatentable it is the common
inheritance of humanity and free for all. After all, harnessing nature
to cure illness is as basic a human right as we can imagine.
Nevertheless, the EU, in its feigned concern for its subjects' health
and safety, created the opening to grant sole ownership of diagnosis and
treatment to the pharmaceutical giants."
HEALTH FREEDOM FIGHTERS MOBILIZE
Well, the fight is on.
In Canada, the
Natural Health Products Protection Association
is pursuing a plan for legal action, as are the
Alliance for Natural Health
and the
European Benefyt Foundation in the U.K. - having won previously,
when vitamins and minerals were slated to go off the market in the E.U. in
August 2005, we may be guardedly optimistic about the outcome.
U.S. "Vitamin Lawyer" Jonathan Emord, who has won many cases against the
FDA, has written a book about this global deception-fest entitled Global
Censorship of Health Information, which also describes Canada's role in
detail (to order, call 202-466-6937).
Importantly, he outlines the actions
that can and must be taken in order to secure our right to freedom of choice
in medicine.
HARSH REALITIES OF
CONVENTIONAL ‘HEALTH CARE'
The 2009 report from the U.S. National Poison Data System was recently
published in the Journal of Clinical Toxicology and, once again, shows that
there were zero deaths reported by Americans using natural health products
such as vitamins and minerals in 2009.
On the other hand, The Canadian
Adverse Reaction Newsletter published Canadian data in April 2010 showing
that 26,061 adverse events were reported, of which 74.9% were considered
serious (e.g. death). Of those 26,000 cases, 516 are supposedly
connected to
natural health products.
Seeing as
how the U.S. population reported no adverse effects from natural health
products during that time, and as it is known that more than 50% of
Americans regularly take supplements (which indicates an amazing level of
product safety), one wonders what this Canadian data is all about,
especially since the range of natural health products available in the U.S.
is enormous compared to the far fewer products available here.
In both
countries, reported adverse events occurred almost exclusively in hospitals
(ie. drug reactions). Furthermore, the FDA and the CDC have repeatedly
stated that the reported adverse events reflect only 10% of the total cases
occurring.
As for vaccines, we have an alarming statistic to ponder: In 1994, the U.S.
recorded that 22,780 students in the school system were autistic. By 2009,
that number had risen to 335,199 autistic children.
Meanwhile, outbreaks of
measles, whooping cough, and other childhood diseases continued to occur in
almost-fully-vaccinated populations in North America and Europe, but the
overall incidence decreased.
Every attempt was made to blame Dr. Andrew
Wakefield for an alleged increase in childhood illness, because more parents
refused
to vaccinate their kids after his research showed a
connection
between the MMR vaccine and autism.
However, World Health Organization
statistics proved that - prior to the Wakefield scandal - the U.K. and
Ireland reported 226,961 cases of measles, in spite of national vaccination
programs. Yet, after the Wakefield scandal, there were only 3,079 cases
reported. Evidently these diseases are neither influenced by vaccines nor by
those who warn against their use (see my review of Wakefield's book in this
issue).
With drugs killing tens of thousands, and vaccines shrouded in medical
mythology, let's look at cancer - the quintessential environmental disease
for which we have nobody but ourselves to blame.
The science publication,
Nature, reported on January 20 that cancer costs are continuing to climb at
a steady 2% annually and will drive the cost of U.S. cancer care to $173
billion by 2020. Given that virtually all cancers are avoidable, and that
the medical treatments used to arrest cancer growth temporarily are
themselves carcinogens, we are locked into a system that is starting to
appear somewhat ridiculous.
Enormous money is made from the "cancer industry" (as
Ralph Moss calls it)
and equally enormous profits are made from those substances that cause
cancer. But this is a bad business plan for government health care programs.
Ontario, for example, spends 50% of its annual budget on health care.
Curiously, governments push for all of those things that make people sick:
Imagine if human health were a
top priority - how much money could be saved on healthcare by taxpayers?
EVIDENCE FOR BREWING REBELLION
We haven't
taken to the streets as the Egyptians did, but there is clear
evidence of a slow, steady revolt against the hype and spin which promotes
everything from prophylactic mastectomies for alleged genetic reasons, to
every possible drug to control cholesterol, pre-hypertension, pre-diabetes,
etc., while also promising one breakthrough after another - with more toxic
drugs for new conditions we never knew we had.
Big Pharma is getting close to killing the proverbial goose that lays the
golden eggs.
Fines used to be small for defrauding governments and for
killing people with drugs marketed fraudulently. Settlements with
governments and class action groups were less than a billion dollars in
1999.
By 2009, this number rose to $5 billion per company. Such a dramatic
change can only occur when there is scientific evidence to prove wrongdoing.
Indeed, mainstream research is increasingly revealing the disturbing truths
about pharmaceutical medicine.
Consider that in December 2010,
PLoS One
analyzed the evidence that many prescription drugs -
especially
antidepressants - cause violent behavior.
The famous website
SsriStories
has been chronicling these for many years, and has shown that most of the
inexplicable mass murders, such as the one in Montreal and the Columbine
event, were all directly linked to antidepressant drugs.
Statin drugs, which were originally touted as so important that even
children were to take them, have suddenly proven to be less than useless as
a preventive measure (CBS, January 19, 2011). The prestigious
Cochrane
Library (which takes no money from Big Pharma) provided this analysis.
And the important American Journal of Public Health handed down an
astounding indictment of the business practices of Big Pharma by showing
that drugs were being sold for outrageous prices (90% higher than
appropriate) to milk the system.
Simultaneously, Stanford University Medical
School published a study asserting that Big Pharma's products,
"lack strong evidence that the drugs will
actually help… [and] may cause serious side effects as weight gain,
diabetes and heart disease, and cost Americans billions of dollars."
The January issue of Vanity Fair carried an excellent article analyzing Big Pharma and the damage its research and marketing practices cause to people
all over the world.
And the American Journal of Public Health came straight
out and stated that currently permitted drug marketing practices undermine
patient safety and public health. One of its authors was professor Lexchin
of York University, an internationally-respected authority on pharmaceutical
sleaze.
And now consider the fact that in spite of this growing evidence, Health
Canada and the U.S. and E.U. governments are working feverishly to harmonize
our regulatory systems to supposedly protect us by giving Big Pharma freedom
to do as it pleases, while simultaneously removing access to those products
the majority of us want (natural health products) because we found them to
do what drugs can never do - prevent and heal our illnesses.
Dee Nicholson
National Health Federation Canada
SPOTLIGHT ON ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES OF DISEASE
The rebellious demand for true accountability is also appearing in regard to
environmental toxins.
In the December 16, 2010 issue of Nature, the
editorial was devoted to the "irresponsible policies" of governments such as
Canada in regard to the mining and marketing of asbestos; it demanded that,
"governments must ban the extraction,
processing, and use of materials that can cause serious disease."
On
the fluoride front of the war against environmental toxins, important
victories were scored - all led by citizen groups.
The FDA banned the use of
a fluoride-based fumigant and the U.S. government finally decided to reduce
water fluoridation. Of course, they did not admit that it is neurotoxic and
causes cancer, but it's a good start. The city of Calgary banned fluoride
from its water supply on February 11, with city councilors voting 10 to 3
in favor of the ban.
The Mayo Clinic announced that,
"there really is no place for mercury in
children."
This was in connection to dental amalgam, which finally appears
to be teetering on the brink of extinction as the FDA reviews the evidence
once again.
On January 14, Harvard University's Environmental Health
Perspectives published data showing that 99% of all pregnant women in the
U.S. test positive for multiple neurotoxic and carcinogenic substances, many
banned for years. Basically all babies conceived start out swimming in a
toxic soup. In all women tested, the concentrations were higher for most
chemicals than considered tolerably safe.
The
American Stroke Association announced at their annual conference in
February of this year that diet soda and salt increase the risk of stroke by
61%. This was based on a large study involving 2,564 people.
So, does this
mean that not only are statin drugs out, but that decent food is considered
a healthy preventive substitute?
On the "dirty electricity" and EMF front, things are happening at a rate
that is difficult to keep up with. At the point when I started writing this
article, the Swedish evidence that cell phones cause brain cancer and cell
phone towers can also be harmful, held centre stage. Soon after, an e-mail
informed me that Germany had just banned fluorescent light bulbs, because
they cause cancer in mice and contain unacceptable amounts of mercury.
Germany is also calling for a drastic reduction of CT scans, because the
increased use of this diagnostic method is now known to correlate with the
increase in cancer incidence from radiation.
In the laboratory, chronic exposure to low level electromagnetic fields
clearly affects growth and development, stress response, immune response and
many neurological functions. This is not surprising because at the cellular
level we are all electrical beings.
Epidemiologic studies relate
electromagnetic fields to,
(At the Total Health Show, April 8-10, at the Metro Toronto Convention
Centre, three internationally-renowned researchers in this field will be
speaking about these issues.)
WHY CITIZENS NEED TO POLICE THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS
Those who are working to bring back Bill C-51 and to force Europe and North
America into the megalomaniacal fantasies of,
...are as out of touch with reality as the ousted Egyptian president.
Julian Assange, founder of
Wikileaks, observed recently that:
"Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims," and
that his way of nurturing victims was by helping to "police perpetrators."
Each one of us can help to expose and police those who benefit from sickness
and environmental degradation while pretending to help us.
References
-
For details on how Bill C-36 was passed
into law and what is being down about this unconstitutional piece of
legislation go to the website of the NHPPA
www.nhppa.org and Google
www.HFNN.ca to find out what you can do to help.
-
For an analysis of the
unconstitutionality of C-36 (identical to the problems with the
previous bills C-6 and C-52) download for free my 2008 book from my
website. The book is entitled What Part of No! Don't They
Understand? Rescuing Food and Medicine from Government Abuse – go to
www.kospublishing.com
-
For a full overview of what is currently
happening in the EU go to
www.ANH.org that is the Alliance for Natural Health run
by Dr. Robert Verkerk who is organizing the legal challenge. See his
February 2011 article in Vitality.
-
Mike McBane of the Canadian health
Coalition wrote his article on Health Canada's safety discussions
behind closed doors in FAIR which is an organization that protects
government whistleblowers who work to protect the public interest.
This January 17, 2011 article is on the internet; Google the
author's name.
-
Greg Schilhab is the editor of the
Nutrition & Mental Health quarterly newsletter published by the
International Schizophrenia Foundation, 16 Florence Street, Toronto,
ON, M2N 1E9. To subscribe, send email to:
centre@orthomed.org
-
The full report on adverse events from
drugs etc. compiled by the US government for 2009 was published in
Clinical Toxicology, vol. 48, p. 979 ff, 2010. Free download from
http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2009 AR.pdf
-
The Canadian data for 2009 were
published in Canadian Adverse Reaction Newsletter vol. 20, issue 2,
April 2010
-
The issues concerning adverse events,
how many people are killed by properly prescribed drugs etc and the
history of this research are most efficiently accessed by Googling
the name of the key researcher Dr. Barbara Starfield (of Johns
Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore).
-
For the complete report on how many
children became ill with which disease, despite vaccines, the autism
statistics from 1994 through 2009 and more, as well as the WHO
records, Google Dr. F. Edward Yazbak and/or "The Wakefield Factor."
-
Statistics on the increasing costs of
cancer care were published in the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, Jan. 19/11, vol. 103 No 2
