New Bill Seeks To Ban Consumer Access To Dietary Supplements

[Guest guest]

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Sent: 3/2/2010 12:43:04 P.M. Central Standard Time

Subj: New Bill Seeks To Ban Consumer Access To Dietary Supplements

Hi All...

The subject line pretty much says it all. We MUST take action on this.

Would you be good enough to copy and paste (and edit as you see fit) the

following letter onto your word document and send it (via US Postal Service)

to your DC Senators. E-mail is fine but not as effective... (The spacing

to the addressee here is incorrect but doing a copy and paste to Outlook

Express sometimes takes away one's options. You can correct via your " Word "

document).

To find your local Senator...

(1) Go to _http://.Loc.Gov_ (http://thomas.loc.gov/)

( " .Loc.Gov " is enough); (2) Click on " Senate " (12th link from top- left

side); (3) At upper right you will see " Find Your Senators " ... At this point,

insert your " State " and you will get all of your needed information;

Thank you for your help... Certainly appreciate.

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3/2/2010

Senator Tom Harkin

731 Hart Senate Office Bldg.

Washington DC 20510

Dear Senator Harkin

Please do not co-sponsor Senator McCain's Dietary Supplement Safety Act of

2010 (DSSA). I ask you instead to vehemently oppose it!

DSSA seeks to repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and

Education Act (DSHEA). DSHEA protects supplements if 1) they are food products

that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they

were sold as supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If

a supplement fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug.

If this bill passes, the FDA would have full discretion and power to

compile a discrete list of supplements allowed to remain on the market.

Supplements drawn entirely from food and long-established supplements or

supplement

potencies could be arbitrarily banned.

McCain's Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) appears to be supported by

the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) which is funded by major league sports

teams including baseball, football and others. In his comments, Senator McCain

cited six NFL players recently suspended for testing positive for banned

substances and purportedly exposed to these substances through dietary

supplements.

The problem here is, of course, one of illegal sale and use of steroids.

So why dismantle the supplement industry in order to control already illegal

substances?

The FDA currently has complete and total authority to stop illegal stero

ids and, more broadly, to regulate dietary supplements. If the agency were

doing its job, it could and would have prevented the sale of illegal

steroids. The answer to this problem is not to give FDA more power; we should

instead demand that the FDA do its job.

Why would a bill be offered to solve an illegal steroid problem that does

not really address the steroid problem but instead gives the FDA complete

and arbitrary control over all supplements?

One possible explanation is that the bill's sponsor buys into the often

heard argument that supplements and drugs should be treated identically, that

both should be brought through the FDA's drug approval process in the same

way. This is a completely false argument. The FDA drug approval process

costs as much as a billion dollars. It is not economically feasible to spend

such vast sums on substances that are not protected by patent, and natural

substances cannot legally be patented.

This is the great " Catch-22 " of American medicine. The FDA is unfriendly

to supplements because they do not come through the drug approval process.

But the drug approval process only makes sense for patentable substances

that will sell at very high prices. This leaves the FDA, which is supposed to

guard and promote our health, hostile to the kind of natural medicine —

based on diet, supplements, and exercise — that represents the real future of

healthcare.

If McCain's bill passes, we can look to Europe for a snapshot of what we

may be in for: EFSA, the European Food Safety Authority, has sharply reduced

the list of available supplements and is in the process of reducing

potencies to ridiculous levels, such as less beta carotene than can be found in

half of a large carrot.

The federal deficit-debt is at obscene levels, while government actuaries

mathematically project future financial insolvency.

Why then is any legislation being proposed that creates more federal debt,

saddles the private sector with needless but costly new regulations, and

denies Americans free access to better dietary supplements that reduce their

need for expensive medical care?

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 is a blatant example of

oppressive legislation that undermines free markets, decimates private sector

innovation, and hastens the federal government's plunge into a financial abyss.

Please refuse to co-sponsor the Dietary Supplement Safety Act and any

other legislation that adds to the already outrageously high fiscal deficit.

If a vote on this bill was to held today, how would you vote? Please

answer, and don’t respond with something politically correct like " I’ll

keep

your views in mind " .

This is a very bad bill. Please use all of your powers to oppose it.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

(They expect you to include your Name and Address)