To: IAHF List
Subject: Congressman Burton: Add to Previously Submitted Codex Comments: Submit to Congressional Research Service Along With Previous Questions
From: "International Advocates for Health Freedom" jham@iahf.com
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 19:28:43 -0400
All Webmasters: Please post
IAHF List: Please join me in sending Dr.Rath's Open Letter Opposing the Mindlessly Restrictive EU Vitamin Directive to Congressman Burton and to your own Congressman with the request that it be sent along with IAHF's previously submitted Codex Comments (http://www.iahf.com click on green spinning disk), and the additional questions specifically for the Congressional Research Service (http://www.iahf.com breaking news), to the Congressional Research Service.
(At Burton's March 20 Oversight Hearing on the Codex vitamin issue, he announced that he would be examining the FDA's contention that Codex "will never" impact US vitamin laws to threaten consumer access via the Congressional Research Service. To assist him in doing this, and to educate all other members of congress on this issue, I asked Burton, and my own congressman to give my Codex Comments, Additional Questions, and now this information to the Congressional Research Service because the FDA and the pharmaceutically dominated vitamin trade associations all lied at the March 20 oversight hearing, and we have been set up. There is very real need for additional oversight on this issue.
Yesterday in Capetown South Africa, 2 of Burton's witnesses (Seckman and Israelsen) participated in an IADSA conference titled "Toward a Global Regulatory Model" Despite being fully apprised of this gross conflict of interest, Burton allowed them to testify anyway. The IADSA conference was dominated by pharmaceutical interests such as BAYER, HOFFMAN LA ROCHE, WARNER LAMBERT and many others plotting to take over the dietary supplement industry. The IADSA Secretariat is an employee of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company, Randy Dennin. Dennin is co chair of NNFA's International Committee Chair, along with Karl Riedel. Riedel lied under oath in the Oversight Hearing falsely claiming that a finalized Codex standard won't end up negatively impacting US domestic vitamin laws. The Congressional Research Service won't be able to come to that conclusion after reviewing all the evidence, and Burton will have to hold additional hearings, but beyond that, he'll have to take concrete actions to protect American consumer interests, and so will every member of Congress. If you live outside the USA, please forward this to people in the USA, and everyone must assist Dr.Rath by paying heed to his warning and sending his form letter with your own added comments to the EU Parliament and Commission.
------------------------------
Dear Web Site visitor!
During the first few months of this year one event above all others has had repercussions for our work: the European Commission is planning to issue a "Directive of the European Parliament and Council for the harmonisation of statutory provisions in member states governing dietary supplements". What lies behind this unwieldy sentence is nothing other than an attempt to force through a Europe-wide ban on vitamin therapy. Work on this directive is proceeding behind closed doors.
Dr. Matthias Rath is addressing this European Parliament plan to sanction a Europe-wide ban on vitamin therapy with an open letter.
In this letter, Dr. Rath is addressing all the people of Europe and calling on you to assist in resisting this directive designed to restrict our freedoms across the whole of Europe.
You can register your support for this open letter with your signature, and in so doing contribute to bringing a Europe-wide initiative into being.
Tell your friends and acquaintances about this open letter.
Talk to colleagues at work and fellow club members. Publicise it.
Send this letter to members of national parliaments and members of European governments, to the members of the European Parliament and to the members of the European Council!
---------------------------------------
Say NO to a Europe-wide ban on vitamin therapies which is in the interests of the multi-million dollar pharmaceutical industry
- An open letter from Dr Matthias Rath -
To the members of the national parliaments and governments of the European states,
To the members of the European Parliament,
To the members of the European Council
I am very concerned to learn that the European Parliament has passed a law on first reading that will ban vitamin therapies and other natural healing methods for millions of people in Europe. In the interests of a multi-million dollar market of symptom-oriented pharmaceutical preparations, the rights of millions of patients to access effective vitamin therapies and natural healing methods as well as their basic right to health and freedom from bodily harm will be fundamentally violated.
As the scientist who instigated the global breakthrough in vitamin therapy against heart attacks, I am addressing you on behalf of millions of Europeans for whom you bear political responsibility. Reject this unethical law! The people of Europe must have free access to vitamin therapies and other natural healing methods!
A Europe-wide law muzzling freedom of speech in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry
The so-called "European Parliament and Council of Europe Directive concerning the harmonisation of the laws of the member states with reference to dietary supplements" provides for the following:
A strict ban on health reports concerning vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements for the prevention or treatment of illnesses. Soon it may no longer be said that vitamin C stabilises the arterial wall, thereby preventing heart attacks and strokes. Yet this fact has been known for 250 years, since the discovery that a lack of vitamins caused scurvy in sailors.
Only certain vitamins and dietary supplements may be sold freely. Hundreds of natural substances will be arbitrarily declared medicines by this law and so will only be allowed on the market through the pharmaceutical industry and with inflated profit margins that will cause the costs of health care in Europe to explode still further.
An artificial upper limit for vitamins and natural substances is also being arbitrarily set in law by an ad hoc "Science Council". The members of this committee have so far been in the dark with respect to their potential connections with the pharmaceutical industry.
It is planned to introduce this muzzling law concerning natural healing methods compulsorily across Europe. Member states will no longer have the option to reject this unethical law.. Following pressure from the German members of the European Commission, the originally planned option for individual European countries to opt out of this "directive" was abolished. Pressure from the German pharmaceutical industry, part of a Europe-wide pharmaceuticals cartel has brought about, a law which gags the people of Europe on an extremely important point - the right to their own health.
The dominant pharmaceutical groups in Germany are Bayer, BASF and Hoechst, who, as the organisers of "IG Ausschwitz" and the forced labour camps spread poverty and misery across Europe in the last century. To escape from such an unspeakable past, Hoechst recently changed its name to "Aventis". The name may change but corporate policy remains the same -the willingness to sacrifice the health and lives of millions of people in favour of corporate interest.
Vitamin therapies: A breakthrough in the fight against popular disease
This Europe-wide law muzzling the freedom of speech in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry is a law to artificially protect a multi-million dollar market of superfluous pharmaceutical preparations. Superfluous because of scientific breakthroughs made in the field of vitamin therapies for the treatment of almost all common diseases:
Hardening of the arteries, the cause of heart attacks and strokes, is an early form of the sailors' disease, scurvy. I myself developed the world's first patented therapy for the natural reversal of heart attacks and strokes (US patent no. 5,278,189).
High blood pressure, weak heart, and circulatory disturbances in diabetics were identified as diseases, the main cause of which is a lack of vitamins, minerals and other bio-catalysts as part of the cell replacement process in the heart and circulatory system. The consistent use of these discoveries, will mean that, for future generations, these diseases will be reduced to just a fraction of their current levels.
Our Internet site, www.dr-rath-research.org, which extensively documents this scientific progress, is one of the most frequently visited sources for natural health world-wide. "Medline", the largest library on the Internet, contains over 10,000 studies that provide evidence of the medical efficacy of vitamins and natural healing methods.
The argument that this European muzzling law provides consumer protection is a white lie in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. The opposite is in fact the case. During the last 10 years, not one single person has died of an "overdose" of vitamins whilst every year over 100,000 people in Europe die from the known, harmful side effects of pharmaceutical preparations.
The fatal side effects of pharmaceutical preparations have now assumed such proportions that they have now risen to become the fourth most frequent cause of death in Europe, topped only by heart attacks, cancer and strokes.
The people of Europe need protection from the harmful side effects of synthetic pharmaceutical preparations - and not from the alleged side effects of vitamins, which to date are simply in the imagination of the pharmaceutical industry.
Background to the Europe-wide pharmaceutical muzzling law: a multi-million dollar market of symptom-oriented pharmaceutical preparations collapses
The international pharmaceutical companies have already had to suffer defeat with similar muzzling law plans, with global effects.
The 1994 pharmaceutical muzzling law defeat in the USA: As a direct reaction to my scientific discovery that heart attacks are an early form of the sailors' disease scurvy, the pharmaceutical industry tried to have vitamins designated as medicines through the health authorities in the USA. Millions of Americans opposed this and instead pushed through the "Law on vitamin freedom", the "Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)". From that moment on, health reports on vitamin therapies and natural healing methods were legally allowed. The DSHEA went down in history as the biggest defeat of the pharmaceutical industry. The DSHEA text can be downloaded from http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/dietsupp.html on the Internet.
Pharmaceutical muzzling law defeats in 1996, 1998, 2000 world-wide: Following their defeat in the USA, the pharmaceutical companies tried to abuse the so-called "Codex Alimentarius Commission" of the UNO for their own purposes. Using the same bogus arguments, such as "consumer protection" and "international standardisation", vitamin therapies and natural healing methods were to be banned for all member countries of the UNO - i.e. world-wide. In 1996, 1998 and 2000 these plans failed. At the last Codex meeting in Berlin, thousands of people and patients protested outside the conference building and over half a million people sent their protests directly by e-mail to the members of the Codex Commission.
After all these failed attempts, the same muzzling plans are now to be secretly and quietly forced on the whole of Europe through the European Parliament. Do the pharmaceutical managers and their political henchmen think that the people of Europe are so naïve that they can carry out their unethical plans in Europe of all places?
The "wire-puller" and preparatory committee of this latest pharmaceutical muzzling law farce is the so-called "European Commission", a committee that is elected by nobody! This "European Commission" was only just recently completely replaced because of corruption, bribery, and backhand payments from international companies. Yet, the new composition of this so-called "Commission" is clearly pursuing old policy.
In the name of millions of people and patients from across Europe, I ask you, the politicians, who bear the responsibility in this situation to:
Stop the "Directive of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe concerning the harmonisation of the laws of the member states with reference to dietary supplements" immediately. Do this on all political levels and with all the means available to you!
Lobby your parliament and government to withdraw their support for this law as far as the European Parliament and European Council are concerned immediately!
Bring the German members of the "European Commission" to account! Ask them in whose name these "authorities" want to impose the laws of the pharmaceutical cartel on the whole of Europe. This is not in the name of the 85 million people of the United Kingdom and is therefore contrary to any democratic mandate!
Make sure that just like the "Law on vitamin freedom" the "Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act" in the USA a law is also passed in Europe that expressly permits the publication of health reports on vitamin therapies and natural healing methods.
Promote scientifically-based natural healing methods as an important part of the health care in your countries!
Make it clear that the health interests of millions of people are more important than the share prices of a handful of pharmaceutical shareholders!
Europe must not become the banana republic of the pharmaceutical cartel! Health must be a human right!
Yours sincerely
Dr Matthias Rath