To: IAHF List
Subject: Assistance Sought to Reach More Groups With Our Urgent Message Re ANH Lawsuit
From: IAHF.COM
Date: 12 Jul 2003 16:39:01 -0000
IAHF List:
I need your urgent assistance in reaching out to more alternative medical groups, organizations, clinics, vitamin companies, and consumers.
Some of you may have valuable contacts in these groups that I don't have. We're all in the same boat, and I can't do this work without your help. We're in a race against the clock.
We must get the lawsuit filed no later than the middle of August and have sufficient funds in our warchest to not only file the lawsuit, but to sustain it which will cost upwards of $600,000. or more.
I spent a lot of time yesterday and last night re-appealing to
http://www.thenhf.com/ National Health Federation- via Scott Tips Scott@rivieramail.com Tips lives in France. Also via contact-us@thenhf.com
http://www.apma.net/ American Association of Health Freedom via Candace Campbell candace@healthfreedom.net
http://www.ahha.org/ American Holistic Health Assn via Suzan Walter at info@ahha.org
http://www.citizens.org Citizens for Health via Ana Micka amicka@citizens.org and via Jim Turner Jim@swankinturner.com
http://www.alternativemedicine.com/ Alternative Medicine Magazine via Burton Goldburg bg@alternativemedicine.com
http://www.garynull.com Gary Null Radio Show c/o pderienzo@garynull.com
All of these groups have been contacted in the past, but appear to be in denial about what is going on. Go ahead and contact them yourselves. Maybe if they hear urgent appeals from a lot of people then it might dawn on them that this is actually a real issue.
The problem I have here in the USA is that you can get anything you want in an American health food store, so its hard for people to see the threat, but these groups have no excuse, and I am damn sick and tired of approaching them on my own, over and over to no avail.
Maybe if they hear from all of you they'll pay attention.
I also emailed a slew of alternative cancer hospitals in Mexico, and I emailed contacts within such groups as People Against Cancer and others who are friends of mine requesting that they also contact these clinics with their OWN messages since they know these people far better than I do.
We need the same kind of help contacting vitamin companies. Although Rob and David from ANH made a very good presenation recently before the joint International Committee of NNFA and AHPA at the NNFA Marketplace vitamin trade show recently in Nevada, we could still use help from anyone who may have an inside track on anyone in a leadership position at any of these vitamin companies.
The other side is trying to wear us down so we will just give up and stop fighting, but we can't become complacent like that. One person on this list emailed me that he was busy "stocking up" and he said that he thinks we're going to lose. Wrong attitude. No one ever won ANY fight by thinking like that, and I won't tolerate that kind of wimpy attitude on this list.
We ARE going to win, and the REASON we're going to win, is because all of us are going to try our absolute HARDEST to get word of the ANH lawsuit out to more people ASAP. Don't expect us to win if you leave all the work up to Rob Verkerk and I, we're just two very mortal people, we're NOT superhuman, we're being beat into the ground like tent pegs from stress, but every day we pull our tired bodies out of the ground, and we keep on pluggin' because we MUST!
Please let me know what you are doing, I've asked this and very few of you got back to me, so that makes me wonder how many of you are actually taking action.
You can go on a search engine and find alternative clinics, vitamin companies, and health food stores just as easily as I can, and I need you to help me get this message out quickly even if you duplicate some of my work. Here is what to send out:
Alternative Cancer Hospitals and other interested parties: URGENT HEALTH FREEDOM ALERT!!
We have a deadline of the middle of August to file the lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive. This has huge global implications for people everywhere who require access to dietary supplements- see my article http://www.iahf.com/anh_lawsuit.html also http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2003/2003_preprint_eu_01.html Generating sufficient donations to sustain this lawsuit is doable if enough people pitch in.
Please Listen to Audio Archive- I was Just on the Jeff Rense Show With Rob Verkerk from Alliance for Natural Health List of Talking Points for Radio Show--
I need a chance to get exposure on more websites and to go on the air to alert more people. If you have a website please post this. If you have an email distribution list please forward this. We are trying to put together a warchest of $600,000. to overturn the EU Food Supplements Directive in order to protect the health of people world wide who need dietary supplements- the situation has huge global ramifications due to ongoing global harmonization pressure for nations to conform to an unfolding international vitamin standard. Donations can be made via
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org We have the seed money necessary to file it, but it will take a lot more than we have so far to sustain it. At stake is the health of vitamin consumers world wide due to how the EU Food Supplements Directive threatens to impact creation of a finalized Codex vitamin standard.
The FDA has set the USA up for harmonization to a grossly restrictive international standard, which forces us to help our internaitonal allies including the Alliance for Natural Health with lawsuits such as this which can thwart the pharmaceutical industries takeover plans.
Here is the email I just sent out to my distribution list. Within it is the url where you can hear the audio file from the Jeff Rense show that I was on last night, July 10th. Listening to it will help you understand what is going on and what you can do to help stop the Pharma Cartel. People can sign onto the IAHF email distribution list at http://www.iahf.com scroll down for sign up menu.
Below this email which I sent to my list today are the bio + talking points that I sent to Jeff Rense which he used for this show.
Please post on your website and if you have a radio show, or know someone who does, Rob Verkerk and I need more air time to get this information out. Please forward this widely and urge everyone to do the same..... we're trying to defuse a ticking bomb and are in a race against the clock.
Subject: Hear Audio Archive of Rense Show, What to Do Next to Help Stop the Cartel
IAHF List:
We're down to "crunch" time. The lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive which has huge global implications, will cost upwards of $600,000. or more. It will be filed by the middle of August, but unless all of you help me to reach out to more people to generate the necessary donations, we could get caught short after the suit has been filed, and we have a deadline of the middle of August to do that.
Last night Rob Verkerk of the UK's Alliance for Natural Health and I were on the Jeff Rense Radio show which could also be heard over the web. Jeff did his usual great job of interviewing, Rob did a great job even though it was 3 am in England when he came on the air, and I also felt sharp so it will be well worth your while to hear what we had to say, it will help you to explain whats going on to more people, quickly, and we badly need that!
I am sure many of you missed the show because you were too busy to hear it or because you were asleep. It is extremely important that you listen to the audio archive of this show which is at http://www.soundwaves2000.com/rense/ [See July 10 show]
Please strongly encourage everyone you know, especially health food store owners and vitamin company owners to listen to it- we have a deadline of the middle of August to get the suit filed, and we can't afford to not break our butts to wake more people up.
Talking points that I used in the show can be downloaded from
http://www.ymlp.com/pubarchive.php?jham
WHAT TO DO:
Make a list in a notebook of every health food store near your house that you can take the time to drive to. Write down the name, address, and phone numbers of these stores. Leave space to write in the names of the owner and managers.
Go to these stores and give them copies of my article from http://www.iahf.com/anh_lawsuit.html Show them the taking points from this show. Urge them to listen to the audio archive, and explain to them that unless more people donate to the ANH lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive, that we won't be able to stop the globalization process in the future.
Keep in mind that many of these stores belong to NNFA which has only just started to wake up. Inform these stores that Rob Verkerk and David Hinde just spoke before the joint international committee of NNFA and AHPA at the NNFA Vitamin Trade show in Las Vegas. Inform the stores that this committee is finally grasping what I have been trying to get across for years: that IADSA can't be trusted. For info on that, they can look at http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
ANH's lawsuit needs and deserves support from vitamin companies, health food stores, alternative practitioners, and consumers world wide, but Rob and I are just two people. No one can reasonably expect he and I to do all the work here. It is not reasonable or realistic for any of you who receive it to take the attitude that you're "too busy" to do your share.
You wouldn't be on this email list if you didn't value your access to dietary supplements, but if you REALLY want to protect your access, you will take grass roots action: you WILL forward this to the attention of everyone you know who might also help. You WILL make a donation or more than one, and you WILL very STRONGLY and EMPHATICALLY urge more people to take action because its going to take a team effort to BEAT THE ODDS.
Will we pull off a miracle and overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive, kill the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive, kill the Pharmaceuticals Directive,and stop the finalization of a vitamin standard at CODEX? Will we keep the USA from being forced via a WTO trade dispute (which FDA has set us up to lose and which congress has done nothing to stop) to harmonize our liberal food based supplement regs to a horrible unfolding international standard?
Don't leave it up to Rob Verkerk and I to make this happen---- we're trying our absolute hardest. Rob got up at 3 am UK time to go on the air on the Jeff Rense show which is broadcast out of California, and I was up til midnight being on the show. So we're working our butts off- putting in insane hours, but we REALLY CAN'T win this battle without help from a LOT more people than have been pitching in so far.
We're forced to redouble our effort to reach people because its the summer time when so many are away on vacation.
So please listen to the audio file of the Jeff Rense show last night, and please urge others to listen as well, and please help us reach out to vitamin companies- they've all been lied to about this.
We need to keep the ball rolling on the excellent presentation that Rob Verkerk did at the NNFA Vitamin Trade show recently in Las Vegas. Some companies are waking up, but many more need to wake up or we just won't beat the odds.
We have the numbers- there are millions of us world wide who use supplements, but the wool has been pulled over people's eyes. Massive spin has been done against my message over the years.
Please let me know what you have been doing and what you will still do from now on to help us get this message out- I need to hear back from you on this. My email address is jham@iahf.com
Thank you,
International Advocates for Health Freedom
POB 10632 Blacksburg VA 24062 USA
http://www.iahf.com; http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
800-333-2553 N.America
540-961-0476 World
---------------------------------------
brief bio/cv
John Hammell is the President of International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF), a consulting firm to the dietary supplement industry on legislative issues. IAHF also interfaces heavily with the grass roots, world wide, in a catalytic networking capacity assisting allied health freedom organizations world wide. John's career as a health freedom lobbyist began in 1989, and many of his articles on legislative matters impacting the supplement industry have been published over the years in Life Extension Magazine and other publications. John recovered from a life threatening illness over 20 years ago via a suppressed alternative treatment mode involving the use of dietary supplements for which he has a strong genetic need. Information about his recovery from schizophrenia via orthomolecular medicine is available on his website. He views the struggle we are in to defend consumer access to supplements as a personal matter of life or death, as do many world wide who are assisting him.
IAHF endeavors to monitor the Pharmaceutical Industry's ongoing effort to take over the dietary supplement industry, warning that they are organized at the international level via an umbrella group which coordinates the world's FDA's called ICDRA (International Conference of Drug Regulating Authorities) so to thwart their efforts, vitamin consumers, health food stores and supplement manufacturers must also be organized at the international level.
IAHF was formed for that purpose in 1996 as an outgrowth of John's experience as a member of the US Delegation to the UN's Codex Alimentarius Commission's Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use- where he observed numerous violations of US law by Dr.Beth Yetley of the FDA who has been setting us up to lose in a future WTO Trade Dispute via which American dietary supplement laws could be forcibly harmonized to a grossly restrictive emerging international standard.
John warns the dietary supplement industry world wide that they must awaken to the fact that they are being led to the cliff by IADSA (International Alliance of Dietary Supplement Associations) a controlled opposition group which is chaired by an employee of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company. He alerts us to the fact that we now have a smoking gun which exposes IADSA as a controlled opposition group- and that this can be seen at http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
John's purpose in coming on the show tonight will be to help us to connect the dots on the global threat to consumer access to dietary supplements so that we can see the threat, and understand the extreme importance of making contributions to the Alliance for Natural Health's lawsuit to overturn the European Union's Food Supplement Directive. John will be helping us to understand the connection between the EU Food Supplement Directive, and the UN Codex Alimentarius Commission's effort to create a really draconian vitamin standard via which the USA would be threatened due to membership in the World Trade Organization which has already forced several American laws to be overturned and changed. John warns that we must make immediate donations to the ANH lawsuit, because they have a deadline of the middle of August to file it and it will be very expensive. He insists that we can WIN the lawsuit because ANH has retained one of the best law firms in England, one of the few that have EVER overturned an EU Directive.
a brief item list of things to discuss
CONNECTING THE DOTS: SEEING PHARMA'S GAMEPLAN TO TAKE OVER THE DIETARY SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY WORLD WIDE
Overview:
**** In April, the TGA (Australia's equivalent to our FDA), conducted a nuclear strike against the dietary supplement industry by yanking 1600 dietary supplements off the shelves under false pretenses. They didn't have a single product assay to prove that any of the products they banned were contaminated. This move triggered a huge media circus against the dietary supplement industry intended to alienate consumers against the use of dietary supplements, to try to get them to stop using them and to return to only using Rx drugs.
**** Massive pressure is being put on tiny New Zealand to harmonize their very liberal food based regs to Australia's very stringent pharmaceuticalized regs.
**** On June 18th, Canada gazetted new regulations which harmonize Canada to Australia. These regulations are being challenged via 4 lawsuits, and via bill C-420 which is moving in the Canadian Parliament and which could overturn them. So a pitched battle is ensuing on our northern flank. Due to NAFTA and due to pressure to establish the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas, intended to be an EU clone in our hemisphere) Americans can't afford to ignore what is happening on our northern border, but must Americans aren't paying attention, in part because these events are unfolding during the summer when many people are on vacation.
**** In August the USA FDA will come out with new Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regs for vitamins. The law only allows them to come out with food based GMP regs, but they're trying to bury the industry under an avalanche of red tape and they will be coming out with illegal regulations even more stringent than pharmaceutical GMPs in a naked effort to crush the industry by moving us more in the Direction of Australia, Canada and the EU. A lawsuit against the FDA to get an injunction to stop this is already planned by attorney Jonathan Emord.
**** The middle of August is the deadline for the Alliance for Natural Health to file a lawsuit to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive, a draconian measure that bans consumer access to all innovative and high potency vitamin and mineral products, and which must be stopped in order to arrest the Cartel's momentum, so as to have a CHANCE to also stop the Traditional Herbal Medicines Directive and the Pharmaceuticals Directive which also must be killed in the EU Paraliament.
***** The EU is going to expand by 10 new countries in 2004, all of which will adopt the FSD unless we overturn it in court. Unless we overturn it, the Cartel won't be able to be stopped from pushing a very restrictive vitamin standard through at Codex.
**** The FDA has already set the USA up to lose in a WTO trade dispute by creating false definitions of vitamin safety with help from the pharmaceutically dominated National Academy of Sciences. They've been creating bogus safety monographs for all the top selling dietary supplements including Melatonin, Saw Palmetto Extract, Glucosamine, Chapparel, Shark Cartilage and Chromium Picolinate. Because Congress whitewashed the March 20, 2001 Oversight Hearing on Codex, FDA is getting away with this, and FDA got away with illegally putting a paper on the table at Codex, over Congressional objection, which is totally unscientific. That paper is titled "A Risk Assessment Model for Establishing Safe Upper Levels for Nutrients."
**** Because the fix is in, and Congress has not provided us with the oversight we need, we have no choice but to play an international game now. The only way Americans can defend their access to dietary supplements in the face of this current threat is to get behind the ANH lawsuit in large numbers. Even small donations of just $5. or $10. dollars can really help, but they need to come from lots of people because it will be very expensive to fight this legal battle and carry on with our lobbying. Donations can be made via credit card at http://www.alliance-natural-health.org and at http://www.iahf.com Checks can also be sent to IAHF POB 10632 Blacksburg VA 24062 USA
1. The world's FDA's are coordinated via a UN umbrella group called ICDRA (International Conference of Drug Regulating Authorities) ICDRA plays a role in the harmonization of food and drug laws world wide. Harmony in music is a beautiful thing, but its a bad idea to make the laws the same world wide because what is happening via the WTO is that the people of the world are being disenfranchised, and everything is being subordinated to the bottom line of the multinational corporation's greed driven interests.
2. The WTO was created via the Uruguay Round of GATT which gave the WTO "teeth" via the creation of a new International Court: The Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. The DSB poses a serious threat to the interests of American dietary supplement consumers because they do not follow US rules of evidence, and no private person, no matter how well qualified, has standing to appear before them. The only people who have standing to appear before them are national reps of WTO member nations, and in the case of dietary supplements, they would be people such as Dr.Beth Yetley of the FDA, and her international counterparts, in other words, the very same people who are working to develop a very restrictive international vitamin standard at Codex meetings in Germany, so the fox is guarding the henhouse- we're being set up badly.
3. On March 20, 2001 an Oversight Hearing on the Codex Vitamin Issue that John worked for 5 years to try to get was whitewashed and the truth did not come out. John and all of his witnesses were not allowed to testify. The only person who was allowed to testify had been misled into believing that Codex posed no threat by an employee of a pharmaceutical company who he had made the mistake to trust. Just two weeks after he testified that Codex posed "no threat" to US domestic laws, his co chair on the National Nutritional Food Association's International Committee (the employee of a pharmaceutical company), chaired an IADSA meeting in Capetown, South Africa titled "Toward a Global Regulatory Model" Today, this person is an employee of Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company. He is the ceo of Capsugel, a subsidiary of Pfizer, the company which sells about 70% of the gelatin capsules used in the manufacture of dietary supplements. IADSA has NGO status at Codex, and was allegedly created to "protect" the dietary supplement industry and consumer access to vitamins. The sad reality though is that IADSA is a controlled opposition group which has proven themselves to be untrustworthy- they've demonstrated via their actions that they're in fact doing the diametric opposite of what they CLAIM to be doing.
4. The presence of the Chair of IADSA, Randy Dennin of Pfizer, on the International Committee of the National Nutritional Foods Association's International Committee is a gross conflit of interest, and all the health food stores and small manufacturers that belong to NNFA should demand his removal, and should demand that NNFA enforce article 14.3 in their bylaws (Conflict of Interest Disclosure) NNFA should not allow pharmaceutical companies or employees of pharmaceutical companies to be members of their vitamin trade association. John warns that all over the world pharmaceutical interests have their tentacles deeply into the vitamin trade associations, which he warns are being controlled from the top-down by these interests who are actively manipulating the rank and file members, keeping them in the dark, while making moves that insure the supplement industry moves progressively toward the cliff--- while all the while they PRETEND to be "protecting" the industry's interests.
5. SMOKING GUN WHICH EXPOSES IADSA: (International Alliance of Dietary Supplement Companies) See http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
NNFA New Zealand was a member of IADSA til they were thrown out. The reason they were thrown out is that they started asking hard questions about conflicts of interest and because they objected to IADSA's unwillingness to help defend New Zealand from massive political pressure coming from Australia for New Zealand to harmonize their very liberal food based dietary supplement regulations to Australia's much harsher pharmaceuticalized regulations. IADSA had reneged on an agreement to allow for a rotating chairmanship of the S. Pacific IADSA region on the IADSA Board. Australia had been holding this position, but New Zealand argued that due to the conflict between Australia and New Zealand, the chairmanship should rotate every year and that last year New Zealand should have had their chance to chair the region.
IADSA agreed to this verbally and in writing, but then reneged on their promise when the Australian vitamin trade association threatened to quit IADSA if New Zealand were allowed to chair the region. IADSA then stood behind Australia. IADSA also refused to allow the executive director of NNFA New Zealand to make a presentation at the IADSA annual meeting in Vancouver last spring about the huge threat of trans Tasman harmonization being faced by the New Zealand industry in the face of this massive Australian pressure. NNFA New Zealand was also angry that IADSA's lobbyist in Brussels, Simon Pettman, had refused to issue a press release under IADSA's auspices defending Kava when it came under media attack. Pettman refused to do this despite having been asked repeatedly by NNFA New Zealand's exec dir Ron Law who went to the trouble of furnishing him with expert risk analysis material to use in the press release. So the Board of NNFA New Zealand put these grievances in writing to the IADSA Board, and rather than invite them to a meeting to discuss everything properly in order to resolve these problems, IADSA just sent them a very brief letter of expulsion. In the process, IADSA showed their true colors. They demonstrated that they were doing the diametric opposite of what they'd been leading members of NNFA and other vitamin trade associations world wide into THINKING they were doing.
(I attended a meeting at an NNFA Trade show in '99 at which IADSA was introduced to members of NNFA. This meeting was held in a hospitality suite at the hotel where the trade show took place. Warner Lambert, which owned Dennin's Capsugel at the time, paid for an expensive catered dinner with a lot of fancy imported wine, beer, and cheese and while people were eating, we were shown a very simple slide presentation in which the USA was marked "GREEN" indicating that consumers had a proper degree of vitamin access due to passage of DSHEA. Several countries were STRIPED indicating less than idea access, but better than many other countries- they included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, Ireland, Holland, and Sweden. The rest of the world was marked RED, indicating that major work had to be done to harmonize those nations to DSHEA.
Then, with a grandiose sweep of his arm across his chest, Karl Riedel, Dennin's co chair on the NNFA International Committee swept his arm across his chest and as if by MAGIC, all the STRIPED and RED nations turned GREEN.
No explanation was ever made as to how they intended to bring about this transformation, NNFA members were expected to just accept at face value that this was the ACTUAL goal of IADSA. From that point in, the wool had been pulled over NNFA members eyes until just recently, because at the NNFA Trade show that just took place in Las Vegas, Rob Verkerk and David Hinde of the Alliance for Natural Health made a presentation to the joint International Committee of NNFA and the American Herbal Products Assn (AHPA) at which these companies finally began to grasp that they could not trust IADSA, which had done NOTHING to try to stop the FSD from going through the EU Parliament, and which in fact isn't doing ANYTHING to stop a really bad vitamin standard from being rammed through at CODEX.
Verkerk and Hinde were able to help them connect the dots and grasp the DIRE NEED to get behind their lawsuit to overturn the EU FSD.
So, what remains to be seen now is whether enough vitamin companies will come on board this very expensive legal effort for them to be able to sustain this lawsuit and see it through to a successful conclusion. ANH and IAHF also need ongoing funds for lobbying, in Brussels, Washington DC and other nations capitals including Ottawa Canada.
--------------------------------
List of people and groups I sent this to (aside from my own much larger email list):
cancercontrol@cox.net, getwell@healthtours.com, info@PeopleAgainstCancer.com, frank@peopleagainstcancer.com, nexus@GMBH-Online.de, info@canceractionplan.com, ccf@cancure.org, pc_medium_cool@yahoo.com, pc_medium_cool@yahoo.com,betaniawest@hotmail.com, bri@americanbiologics.com, amirubioyfry@aol.com, biomedics@pacnet.com.mx, info@chipsa.com, cacsct@aol.com, informationcenter@issels.com, hilery@letstalkhealth.com, drd@donsbach.com, info@santamonica.se, drcnb@js-net.com, delrio@telnor.net, bajanor@telnor.net, drtony@hope4cancer.com, eldoc@cetys.net, webhost@iptq.com, newhope@newhopeclinic.com, mail@gerson.org, info@natural-care.com, vgammill@san.rr.com, info@ralphmoss.com, resource-guide@nationalassociation.org, pderienzo@garynull.com, candace@healthfreedom.net, jim@swankin-turner.com, amicka@citizens.org, info@citizens.org, bonnie@citizens.org,mail@ahha.org
International Advocates for Health Freedom
POB 10632 Blacksburg VA 24062 USA
http://www.iahf.com; http://iadsa-exposed.tripod.com
800-333-2553 N.America
540-961-0476 World