NOT a hoax--You will lose the right to control your own health

[kaygore]

Codex is NOT a hoax. Disinformation has been disseminated to make us believe that it is a hoax. Passing CAFTA (and Codex) WILL limit our access to vitamins, supplements, and organic food.

Every major wellness expert has been trying to alert us and cut through all the lies and disinformation. We MUST contact our representatives in the House and urge them to vote against CAFTA and Codex.

Below is a letter that Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez wrote to his representative on this matter. Dr. Gonzalez has had quantifiable success using vitamins, supplements, and organic food to treat even Stage IV pancreatic cancer.

Contacting our representatives on this issue is another way we can honor Andy and his fight for life.

The argument that many state is that all those extra vitamins and supplements only make for expensive urine. If I want to have expensive urine, if I want my milk to be antibiotic and hormone free, if I want my vegetables grown without pesticides, how is that any more harmful to my pocketbook than if I spent my money on beer or tobacco? CAFTA and the resulting implementation of CODEX would rob me of these choices and rob all of us of health.

If this is a hoax and nothing to worry about, why are the British fighting Codex so hard????

A copy of the Gonzalez letter to Maloney:


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July 15, 2005

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
1651 Third Avenue #311
New York, New York 10128

Dear Congresswoman Maloney:

I am writing with some desperation to express my strong opposition to CAFTA which is soon coming up for a vote in the House of
Representatives. I sincerely hope someone in your staff reads this letter, as the lives of my patients could be in jeopardy should CAFTA pass and become law.

I am a physician who lives in your district, and practices in
Manhattan. I have a very traditional medical education background (AB Brown, postgraduate work at Columbia, MD at Cornell, fellowship in cancer immunology). Since I was a medical student, first under the direction of the then President of the Sloan Kettering Institute, I began researching intensive nutritional approaches to the treatment of advanced cancer.

Though in the past my work has been considered controversial, in recent years I have received significant academic support. In 1993, the National Cancer Institute invited me to present my work to a senior level group in Bethesda, and at their suggestion I pursued my first clinical trial, an evaluation of my approach in the treatment of inoperable pancreatic cancer, considered the most deadly of cancers. The results of that effort, which went beyond anything previously documented for the disease, were published in 1999 in the research journal Nutrition and Cancer. As a result of that study, the National Cancer Institute awarded me a large grant to support further clinical trials of my work, currently being
conducted at the Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons. My current approach involves the use of high dose pancreatic enzyme and nutritional therapy in the treatment of advanced malignancies, and does not involve the use of chemotherapy. All the supplements we prescribed are considered nutritional supplements; though we have full FDA approval for the study, none of these supplements required a prescription.

I want to mention that my research has been strongly supported by both Republicans and Democrats, particularly Senator Tom Harkin and
Congressman Dan Burton, both of whom have met with me to discuss my work.

What does this have to do with CAFTA? Everything, since should CAFTA
pass in the US, by the definitions of CAFTA, my therapy, the clinical trial itself, could become illegal.

Few Congressmen and certainly few Senators realize that CAFTA requires harmonization with existing European legislation regarding food and dietary supplements under the CODEX regulations. This is the genesis of the potential problem. The pharmaceutical industry has in Europe mounted a relentless campaign to use CODEX to virtually eliminate the over the counter sales of most nutritional and herbal supplements, and turn them into prescription items which could then be sold at much higher prices, completely under the control of drug companies.

Currently, as you probably know, nutritional supplements are available over the counter in this country, and do not require a prescription. I believe as a physician and scientist that this easy availability of such products has been of great benefit to millions of Americans, as a substantial and ever increasing amount of scientific literature supports the beneficial effects of many nutrients that are too often inadequately provided in food.

CAFTA, if passed, would require the US harmonize its dietary supplement legislation with that of CODEX, forbid the over-the-counter sale of the great majority of useful supplements, and destroy the valuable US supplement industry. Since my therapy utilizes only nutritional supplements, should CAFTA pass, and CODEX supersede American protection of their availability, my treatment would come to an end, my promising research would be dismantled, and many hundreds of my patients whose lives depend on this treatment will die. I am not exaggerating, and any of your staff are invited to come to my office to discuss these critical issues with me.

Nutritional supplements have a long history of safety except in very
rare cases when misused; their safety profile is far more impressive than that of many over the counter drugs such as aspirin, which yearly is responsible for several hundred deaths. Nutritional supplements as currently available offer many benefits in terms of disease prevention and good health, as documented clearly in the extensive nutritional literature, and they are a subject about which millions of Americans are passionate. You may not be aware, but for 30 years the pharmaceutical industry in the US has sought to gain complete control of what they perceive as a lucrative industry, by turning nutritional supplements into prescription items. Their attempts, often hidden beyond sacred tenets of "consumer protection from dangerous supplements," have little to do with the consumer and everything to do with industry control.

Many of my own patients are desperate, as they learn the dangers of
CAFTA and CODEX to their lives. But that's just the beginning; within the past few weeks, millions of Americans, including many who feel their health depends on the availability of their supplements, have started to organize. The political ramifications are enormous. I have scores of my advanced cancer patients who have already said should CAFTA pass and their supplement supply be compromised, they will picket the offices of any Congressman and Senator who voted for CAFTA, and they plan to stay and die right in front of the offices.

I have been rather amazed that so many politicians seem unaware of what CODEX is, how the drug companies have used it to infiltrate CAFTA, and its true origins from the pharmaceutical industry who have failed for thirty years to get control of the supplement business.

I hope you believe that I am not exaggerating when I tell you a vote
for CAFTA is a vote for the death of my patients.

For your information, I do have a website with rather extensive
discussions about me and my work. The address is:

www.dr-gonzalez.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D.

[Systematic Chaos]

1. I believe very strongly in the usefulness of most supplements

The purveyors of snake oil are, by and large, quite obvious. They can be avoided by anybody with a modicum of common sense. But there are so many benefits to vitamins, minerals and herbs that it would be horrible if we were to lose the ability to freely purchase them.

I hear people - including many here on DU - who insist that there's no way our right to use supplements would be taken away. However, it seems to me that if 9/11 could be LIHOP or MIHOP (and I really do believe that!) then any other kind of conspiracy involving the public health and welfare is certainly worthy of consideration.

All I know is that if I suddenly lost the right to buy concentrated garlic, cayenne pepper in capsule form, St. John's Wort, coral calcium, etc..., I would be one highly pissed off dude. :grr:

[kaygore]

3. Maybe this is what it will take to get the townspeople--

AKA American people--to pick up their pitch forks, torches, and hammers and finally go after the monster that is our government!

[stellanoir]

2. This legislation, if passed will

result in the deaths of millions, many who are uninsured who sustatain their well being through regular ingestion of supplements, to say nothing of the small businesses it will cripple and/or bankrupt.

[kaygore]

4. Yet, too many believe that it can't happen here

My aunt manages a health food store in Florida. When I asked her what they were doing, she said that the whole thing was a hoax and blown out of proportion. Then, she looked into Codex and CAFTA more closely and changed her mind. She finally saw what it was going to mean to her store (out of business) and to the ability of Americans to control their health.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. There was a BIG article about this in the Lone-Star Iconoclast, and

several other very reputable sources.

I think it is worth paying attention and investigating rather than ignoring.

Wouldn't it be terrible if it was true and everyone ignored it?

Doesn't it make sense that those who want to undermine alternative medicine, the use of supplements, and being in charge of our own health.. ie.BIG PHARMA! would have a vested interest in making sure that eveyrone thought this was a hoax?


EDIT: I have posted about this a couple of times in the past and it was immediately pooed-pooed as a hoax..

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Here is that earlier post from the L:one Star Iconoclast

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=138995

[faithnotgreed]

7. i depend upon supplements so im kicking this hard

[realms]

8. Tangled position

Medicaid is going to love me. I'm going in there with computer print-outs with my request for a nutritional supplement. They now have to pay for it. If they deny me I'll appeal up the chain and into the courts.