- Thu Sep 22, 2011 4:08 am
#17776
Don’t Let Your Right to Choice Be Taken Away!
Big Pharma wants dietary supplements—their “competition”—to be regulated like drugs. This would mean the end of inexpensive preventative measures, and force billions of dollars more per year into the pockets of Big Pharma!
The drug industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Even though the government talks about healthy living and prevention, they are lobbied hard by Big Pharma to make sure that more people get sick. The more people that have illnesses and diseases, the richer the drug industry gets!
But lately, people are getting smarter. The Internet has made it easier for the average person to have access to medical information—like how certain diseases are caused or made worse, and what can alleviate certain symptoms. The average consumer is now able to make an informed choice about whether he would like to take an expensive prescription drug with dangerous side effects, or whether he would like to modify his lifestyle by taking all-natural supplements—which usually happen to be much cheaper than drugs, have fewer side effects, and are available without a prescription!
The result should be obvious—more people are looking to natural supplements to relieve unpleasant symptoms. Just about any condition, illness, or disease can be treated, reversed, or made more bearable by the use of natural supplements. Wholesome ingredients like garlic, saw palmetto, willow bark, and many, many more have been used for millennia to increase health and well-being, and now the average person can purchase these things in a store, rather than have to hunt down the plants themselves, as the ancients used to do.
Of course, people with financial stake in the super-rich drug industry don’t like this cheap competition. They’ve built an empire around being the “experts,” and around convincing the average person that only their magic artificial potions can help cure what ails him. The average person is smarter than he used to be—he looks ahead and wants to prevent disease from claiming him—but Big Pharma doesn’t believe in prevention, unless they’re selling it. Big Pharma tends to believe in letting people get so sick and desperate that they’ll pay anything for the “magic” cures it offers.
While, there’s no “magic,” of course—only natural and artificial versions of the same compounds that affect the human body the same way they always have. But while a naturopath carefully selects plants and grinds them to be boiled in a tea, Big Pharma prefers expensive labs that jack up the prices of everything they sell. Shouldn’t a person have a choice between artificially-inflated prices and wholesome, time-tested and proven natural cures?
There are those who don’t think so.
After a hard-won battle in 1994 to have dietary supplements regulated as food (and therefore not subject to the time-consuming and expensive testing artificial drugs must go through) legislation is once again before congress that could radically alter the way Americans take charge of their own health. Bill S 1310 proposes that dietary supplements should be regulated as drugs by the FDA.
What does this mean for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on natural supplements – including daily vitamins – for their health? It means that prices for things as simple as multivitamins and iron supplements will skyrocket. It means that people who take St. John’s Wort as a treatment for mild depression will likely find themselves forced to purchase expensive prescriptions instead—prescriptions with unpleasant side effects including sexual dysfunction!
Under this proposed legislation, every supplement manufacturer would need to fill out a NDA, or New Drug Application, with the FDA for every supplement they want to sell. The flood of applications for existing supplements would cause a huge backlog, since all new drugs must go through extensive scrutiny before being approved by the FDA. This would require supplement manufacturers to engage in years of expensive trials and testing to demonstrate the safety of natural ingredients that the human race has been using for health reasons for hundreds of years! Of course, the end result of all of the red tape and testing will be exactly what Big Pharma wants—supplements manufacturers will have to charge significantly more for their products in order to recoup their expenses for all of this work. The result will be the elimination of Big Pharma’s cheap, natural competition.
In case anyone doubts the motivation behind this legislation – after all, perhaps the government isn’t in the pockets of Big Pharma, and sincerely has the health of the citizens at heart—consider this story, broken by the Huffington Post on August 24, 2011:
Google has been sued by the U.S. government for allowing ads for Canadian online pharmacies to appear to U.S. searchers. Google is settling for 500 million dollars, but consider the motivation behind this. Canadian manufacturing standards for drugs are actually stricter than America’s—drugs are often approved and available for years in the U.S. before they are allowed to be sold in Canada. In Canada, animals raised for meat are not permitted to be injected with growth hormones like they are in the U.S., due to concerns about hormonal effects on the humans who eat the meat. Obviously, Canada has high standards for the safety of its food and drugs. Despite these stricter standards, drugs that are necessary for some people to remain alive—like the insulin that people with diabetes require—is often as much as half the cost in Canada that it is in the U.S, and that is despite the CAD and USD being practically at par.
So, what it the government’s motivation for blocking sales of Canadian drugs to U.S. residents? Safety, or the loss of profits to Big Pharma? Seems as though the reasons for bill S 1310’s existence are becoming clearer—there are millions and millions of reasons, and every single one of those reasons is a dollar that Big Pharma wants in its pockets rather than going to dietary supplement manufacturers.
Luckily, the United States of America is still a fantastic country, and a democracy. All you have to do to stop Bill S 1310 is to call your local congressperson and tell him or her how you fell. Tell your congressperson that you prefer choice when it comes to your health, and that you don’t appreciate large companies having a monopoly over how well you feel. If enough people take action, Bill S1310 will be defeated and your right to choose will remain. After all, what’s always differentiated America from other countries is the belief that, above all, a citizen has a right to choice.
To Contact your congressman !
To contact your senator !
Big Pharma wants dietary supplements—their “competition”—to be regulated like drugs. This would mean the end of inexpensive preventative measures, and force billions of dollars more per year into the pockets of Big Pharma!
The drug industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Even though the government talks about healthy living and prevention, they are lobbied hard by Big Pharma to make sure that more people get sick. The more people that have illnesses and diseases, the richer the drug industry gets!
But lately, people are getting smarter. The Internet has made it easier for the average person to have access to medical information—like how certain diseases are caused or made worse, and what can alleviate certain symptoms. The average consumer is now able to make an informed choice about whether he would like to take an expensive prescription drug with dangerous side effects, or whether he would like to modify his lifestyle by taking all-natural supplements—which usually happen to be much cheaper than drugs, have fewer side effects, and are available without a prescription!
The result should be obvious—more people are looking to natural supplements to relieve unpleasant symptoms. Just about any condition, illness, or disease can be treated, reversed, or made more bearable by the use of natural supplements. Wholesome ingredients like garlic, saw palmetto, willow bark, and many, many more have been used for millennia to increase health and well-being, and now the average person can purchase these things in a store, rather than have to hunt down the plants themselves, as the ancients used to do.
Of course, people with financial stake in the super-rich drug industry don’t like this cheap competition. They’ve built an empire around being the “experts,” and around convincing the average person that only their magic artificial potions can help cure what ails him. The average person is smarter than he used to be—he looks ahead and wants to prevent disease from claiming him—but Big Pharma doesn’t believe in prevention, unless they’re selling it. Big Pharma tends to believe in letting people get so sick and desperate that they’ll pay anything for the “magic” cures it offers.
While, there’s no “magic,” of course—only natural and artificial versions of the same compounds that affect the human body the same way they always have. But while a naturopath carefully selects plants and grinds them to be boiled in a tea, Big Pharma prefers expensive labs that jack up the prices of everything they sell. Shouldn’t a person have a choice between artificially-inflated prices and wholesome, time-tested and proven natural cures?
There are those who don’t think so.
After a hard-won battle in 1994 to have dietary supplements regulated as food (and therefore not subject to the time-consuming and expensive testing artificial drugs must go through) legislation is once again before congress that could radically alter the way Americans take charge of their own health. Bill S 1310 proposes that dietary supplements should be regulated as drugs by the FDA.
What does this mean for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on natural supplements – including daily vitamins – for their health? It means that prices for things as simple as multivitamins and iron supplements will skyrocket. It means that people who take St. John’s Wort as a treatment for mild depression will likely find themselves forced to purchase expensive prescriptions instead—prescriptions with unpleasant side effects including sexual dysfunction!
Under this proposed legislation, every supplement manufacturer would need to fill out a NDA, or New Drug Application, with the FDA for every supplement they want to sell. The flood of applications for existing supplements would cause a huge backlog, since all new drugs must go through extensive scrutiny before being approved by the FDA. This would require supplement manufacturers to engage in years of expensive trials and testing to demonstrate the safety of natural ingredients that the human race has been using for health reasons for hundreds of years! Of course, the end result of all of the red tape and testing will be exactly what Big Pharma wants—supplements manufacturers will have to charge significantly more for their products in order to recoup their expenses for all of this work. The result will be the elimination of Big Pharma’s cheap, natural competition.
In case anyone doubts the motivation behind this legislation – after all, perhaps the government isn’t in the pockets of Big Pharma, and sincerely has the health of the citizens at heart—consider this story, broken by the Huffington Post on August 24, 2011:
Google has been sued by the U.S. government for allowing ads for Canadian online pharmacies to appear to U.S. searchers. Google is settling for 500 million dollars, but consider the motivation behind this. Canadian manufacturing standards for drugs are actually stricter than America’s—drugs are often approved and available for years in the U.S. before they are allowed to be sold in Canada. In Canada, animals raised for meat are not permitted to be injected with growth hormones like they are in the U.S., due to concerns about hormonal effects on the humans who eat the meat. Obviously, Canada has high standards for the safety of its food and drugs. Despite these stricter standards, drugs that are necessary for some people to remain alive—like the insulin that people with diabetes require—is often as much as half the cost in Canada that it is in the U.S, and that is despite the CAD and USD being practically at par.
So, what it the government’s motivation for blocking sales of Canadian drugs to U.S. residents? Safety, or the loss of profits to Big Pharma? Seems as though the reasons for bill S 1310’s existence are becoming clearer—there are millions and millions of reasons, and every single one of those reasons is a dollar that Big Pharma wants in its pockets rather than going to dietary supplement manufacturers.
Luckily, the United States of America is still a fantastic country, and a democracy. All you have to do to stop Bill S 1310 is to call your local congressperson and tell him or her how you fell. Tell your congressperson that you prefer choice when it comes to your health, and that you don’t appreciate large companies having a monopoly over how well you feel. If enough people take action, Bill S1310 will be defeated and your right to choose will remain. After all, what’s always differentiated America from other countries is the belief that, above all, a citizen has a right to choice.
To Contact your congressman !
To contact your senator !
