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Vitamin Supplements and our Health Freedom in Barton’s Hands |
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Crucial bill S.3546 may soon land in the House of Representatives.
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Darrell Miller | 09/19/06 |
Date:
September 19, 2006 11:24 AM
Author: Darrell Miller
(dm@vitanetonline.com)
Subject: Crucial bill S.3546 may soon land in the House of Representatives.
By the time you read this Washington Update, Senate Bill 3546 (S.3546), “The Dietary Supplement and Nonprescription Drug Consumer Act,” may have already passed the Senate. As S.3546 advances to the House for implementation, non-casual Adverse Event Reporting (AER) looms on the horizon. This bill will wrongfully associate safe and beneficial dietary supplements with millions of adverse events that supplements did not cause. As S.3546 targets supplements, it ignores foods that have been linked to millions of annual adverse events—calling into question whether this bill is truly designed to keep us safe. With our right to take vitamins hanging in the balance, we must take immediate action in the House to head off S.3546 as the pass.
S.3546 offers no protection to American people. Instead, this bill appears to inexplicably punish supplement manufacturers and those who choose nutrition as a path to health and well-being. S.3546 attacks our fundamental freedom of choice through guilt by association and will destroy our core freedom to decide how and through which means we pursue health.
Along the way to revoking our health freedom, S.3546 will impose unreasonable reporting requirements that will drain supplement manufacturers’ resources and finances until they collapse. The non-causal AER that S.3546 proposes will unleash a wave of junk lawsuits that will deliver the fatal blow to the supplement industry—making trial lawyers rich while America’s health sinks in the murky waters of malnutrition and sickness.
Association, Not Causation
S.3546 proposed AER for supplements is based on association and not causation—a baldy misguided approach under which supplements will be reported for adverse events even if they did not cause, and had nothing to do with, those adverse events.
Non-causal AER encourages the scourge of our society-junk lawsuit purveyors and ambulance-chasing trial lawyers-to continue exploiting out legal system for their own selfish gains. If S.3546 is implemented, this scourge will blame vitamins for everything from acne to obesity. Americans are already paying for the actions of junk lawsuit scammers, facing ever increasing insurance premiums. With S.3546, Americans will pay an even greater price for junk lawsuits-losing their freedom, their health and their very lives when health-enhancing nutrition is taken away.
Why are safe, natural supplements being singled out, anyway? Dietary supplements rarely, if ever, cause any serious adverse events. The centers for disease control (CDC) estimate that foods cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Despite these figures, no one in Washington is proposing AER for foods. That S.3546 does not include foods is incriminating; it suggests that public safety is not the bill’s ultimate goal. Our enemies in Congress are pushing S.3546, not to protect us, but to destroy supplements-because supplements keep us healthy and healthy people make no money for Big Pharma.
Sending Faxes to the House
After S.3546 is passed in the Senate, it will land in the House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce. We must voice our AER opposition to Rep. Joe Barton, the chairman of this key committee, because he will hold the greatest leveraging power when non-causal AER is discussed in the House. Please fax and call Barton (emails and letters are ineffective) and urge him to abolish S.3546 in the name of health freedom.
Please call and send faxes to Barton and other key AER players at the following numbers (fax numbers second): Barton at 202-255-2002, fax:202-225-3052, chairman of the judiciary committee F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. at 202-225-5101, fax: 202-225-3190; House Majority Leader John Boehner at 202-225-6205, fax: 202-225-5117; Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert at 202-225-2976, fax: 202-225-0697; and Congressman Nathan Deal, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, at 202-225-5211, Fax: 202-225-8282.
Join the Nutritional Health Alliance (NHA). Visit www.NHA2006.com and take advantage of online tools for easily sending faxes to Congress. Time is running out-please fax and call today and fax and call again tomorrow! With your help, we can preserve the American legacy of health freedom-and keep safe, beneficial nutritional supplements in our lives for generations to come.
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