To: IAHF List
Subject: ALERT! NAS RELEASES BIASED "SAFETY" REPORT ON DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS
From: "IAHF-John Hammell" jham@iahf.com
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 13:55:02

IAHF List: Yesterday, July 24th, at 11 am EDT, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Committee on a Framework for Evaluating Dietary Supplements released its report "Proposed Framework for Evaluating the Safety of Dietary Supplements" to a public meeting in the Washington D.C. area, with a posting of this report on its website at 11 pm EDT http://www.nas.edu

The FDA contracted the pharmaceutically dominated NAS to generate this report because FDA legally has the burden of proof regarding all dietary supplement ingredients, and they needed a biased report to assist them in attacking the supplement industry so as to be able to start banning a lot of products. FDA is attempting to hide behind the fact that NAS is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so we can’t get the raw data behind this report, or details pertaining to conflict of interest regarding its authors through FOIA requests.

IAHF is currently reviewing scientific articles written by the authors of the report in an effort to examine their past and current sources of pharmaceutical funding. IAHF feels that the FDA should be sued over this report, and that Congress should immediately amend the Freedom of Information Act in order to extend it to non governmental bodies such as NAS when they generate reports like this that are paid for by federal funds.

I have not finished reading the report, but from what I’ve seen so far, FDA is, quite predictably, attempting to once again attack the supplement industry. Also, the FDA intends to use this report at the next Codex meeting in Germany to further create a false definition of vitamin safety so as to set the USA up to lose in a WTO trade dispute wherein Congress could be pressured to repeal or seriously amend DSHEA.

IAHF anticipates that the mass media may start cranking out news reports attacking the safety of supplements due to this report, as this is the usual pattern whenever any report is generated that questions the safety of dietary supplements.

IAHF notes that this report will be the subject of discussion at the FDA’s upcoming Codex meeting in DC on July 30th.

IAHF once again requests assistance in reviewing scientific articles published by the authors of the report in order to learn anything possible about past and present pharmaceutical research grants they have received so as to document the obvious conflict of interest which taints this biased report.