Below is a letter from Dr. Julian Whitaker’s September Newsletter outlining the concerns over U.S. Senate Bill 722. Please take time to review this information and do whatever you feel prompted to do.

Wishing you well, in all ways, URGENT! Feel free to copy and distribute this text to everybody you know. ==================================================
An Urgent Call to Action:

Your Right to Use Nutritional Supplements Is in Jeopardy

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO:

Dr. Julian Whitaker's - Health & Healing - September, 2003

Dear Reader,

We need to take action and we need to take action now. There is a movement in Congress to restrict your freedom to use nutritional supplements, destroy the nutritional supplement industry and, in the process, endanger your health.

Here is the problem. Reacting to the hysteria over ephedra, Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) brought forth Senate Bill 722, cosponsored by Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), which gives unprecedented power to the FDA to remove nutritional supplements from the market. Here's how.

A Bill With Chilling Implications

The bill calls for a reporting system for adverse reactions to nutritional supplements. The FDA is empowered to act on a single adverse reaction report and immediately take the product off the market while it is being investigated. In addition, it could force the manufacturer to undergo prohibitively costly safety analyses of the product, similar to what is required for new drugs.

Here's a scenario; Mrs. Jones in Somewhere, USA, is taking a supplement containing vitamin C. One afternoon she has some diarrhea. She faints, falls in her bathroom, hits her head and is hospitalized with a head injury. Believe it or not, an adverse reaction could be pinned on vitamin C. Based upon this single event, the FDA could, at its discretion, move to restrict sales of vitamin C throughout the entire country until an investigation proves that vitamin C did not cause Mrs. Jones' problems.

Don't Believe the Smoke Screen of "Safety"

The bill also gives the FDA license to require supplement manufacturers to submit safety information that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, patterned on regulations required for new drugs. This is absurd. New drugs need rigorous safety testing because they are compounds that have never been ingested by human beings. The ubiquitous use and long history of safety of nutritional supplements is apparently irrelevant to the sponsors of this bill.

The nutritional supplement industry arguably has the best product safety record of any industry in the country. According to Congressman Dan Burton (R­IN), a maximum of 16 deaths were attributed to a nutritional supplement last year. (Excessive doses of ephedra were the suspect in the majority of these cases and the supplement link was definitively proven in only a few of them.) Meanwhile, the FDA turns a blind eye to the 106,000 deaths from adverse effects of prescription drugs and the tens of thousands of deaths from aspirin and other over-the-counter drugs that occur every year.

This isn't about safety. It's about control.

This bill is a good example of government irrationality and it Will harm you.

According to a 2002 report by Washington, DC based Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the use of antioxidants, folic acid, calcium, zinc and other nutritional supplements could reduce the incidence of neural tube birth defects by 70 percent, hip fractures by at least 20 percent and sick days caused by infectious diseases by 50 percent. Heart disease, stroke, cataracts, macular degeneration, some types of cancer; nutritional supplements have been shown to prevent or delay all these conditions and others. Furthermore, CRN reports that by delaying the onset of cardiovascular disease, stroke and hip fracture alone, nutritional therapies could potentially save $89 billion a year in healthcare costs!

Yet S.B. 722 would empower the FDA to dismantle the supplement industry and prevent you from receiving the many benefits that only nutritional supplements can deliver.

You Can Make a Difference

The only way to stop this bill is for us to flood our elected representatives with so many emails, faxes and phone calls that they will be forced to say no to the powerful interests that are behind this movement.

Don't underestimate the power of such a grass­roots movement. Ten years ago, Health & Healing readers were instrumental in rallying the passing of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). Millions of letters were written to our representatives and senators in support of this legislation. It generated more letters than any other issue in US history. Because of DSHEA, which reduced the FDA's power to block the production, sale, and use of natural substances, we have free access to herbs, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and other nutritional supplements.

The Bad Old Days

Some of you might remember the pre-DSHEA days when the FDA was completely out of control. They raided the offices of nutritional physicians like Jonathan Wright, MD, of Kent, WA - at gunpoint! They barged into manufacturing facilities and seized natural substances such as Stevia and GLA. They authorized the removal of coenzyme Q-10 and other supplements from health food stores, claiming they were "illegal." They refused to allow any information on nutritional supplement labels that would help consumers make informed choices. They mandated that many supplements now sold over the counter require a prescription, making them more expensive and less accessible. This is the kind of tyranny we experienced then and if you think this kind of stuff couldn't happen again, you're wrong.

A Power Grab by the FDA

You may have read in the press that we need new laws because there is no regulation of nutritional supplements. This is simply not true. DSHEA gives the FDA tremendous regulatory power and, in fact, it already has the power to pull any supplement it feels is unsafe off the market.

Yet because DSHEA also gives supplement manufacturers some autonomy, the FDA has attempted to circumvent it from day one. This agency fought hard against the passage of DSHEA ten years ago and, in a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of or amend it, has refused to act responsibly within its confines ever since.

Send a Message and Tell a Friend

Time is of the essence. S.B. 722 has recently been referred to committee and may be tagged onto the Agriculture Appropriations Bill. We can and must act quickly to stop this legislation.

What can you do? Send a message to your senators today asking them to vote against S.B. 722. If you've already done so, do it again. Tell your friends about this threat and encourage them to take action as well. If each one of you could commit to generating just a handful of emails, faxes or phone calls, over a million messages would descend upon Washington. You may not realize how powerful a grassroots campaign like this can be, but our elected officials cannot ignore something of this magnitude.

How to Contact Your Senators

The easiest way to let your senators know what you think about 5. 722 is to visit NNFA's website http://capwiz.com/nnfa/S722.html

All you have to do is type in your zip code and it will address a message to both of your senators, allow you to personalize it if desired, then send it by e-mail or print it out for faxing. (I don't recommend sending letters via US mail at this time because anthrax screening has slowed delivery to a crawl.)

If you don't have access to a computer, write a short letter identifying the bill and your position on it. Address it to The Honorable (senator's name), United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510. You may also call your senators' offices. You'll likely speak with staff members, but your message will still be heard. Let them know who you are, ask them to vote against S. 722 and be prepared to tell them why.

The US Capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. Look in the phone book for your senators' local office numbers. Staffers can give you your senators' fax numbers, as well as other contact information.

To your health and freedom,

Julian Whitaker, MD

P.S. This isn't the only threat to health freedom lurking on the horizon. I'll keep you informed on all these issues, but for now, let's send a strong message that we're not going to take this lying down. Voice your opinion about S.B. 722 today.