The Government Cares About Your Health? Not By A Long Shot!
Ronald Reagan was famous for saying that the scariest words that any American could hear were these: “We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.” Anyone who questions the truth of this statement is either oblivious to reality of mentally impaired.
If the encroachment of government into our healthcare choices via Obamacare wasn’t egregious enough, now there is a BigPharma/government-crafted attempt to deny you the right to purchase vitamins and supplements currently available over the counter.
The proposal is called the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022 and it needs not only to be defeated should it come to a vote, but it should also be permanently expunged from every politician’s mind with prejudice.
Why The Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022 Must Die
On May 17, 2022, the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee released a discussion draft of legislation authored by US Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Braun (R-IN), to reauthorize FDA user fees for drugs, biologics, and medical devices packaging. This legislation includes a controversial premarket approval concept that would disenfranchise people from the freedom to protect their own health; people who rely on commonly – and currently available – vitamins and supplements.
We should all be concerned that elected officials, who claim to want to preserve our freedoms, failed to reject the radical and dangerous Durbin-Braun legislative provision; a provision that would require US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) premarket approval for many vitamin and dietary supplements, not to mention weaken key privacy protections of the Bioterrorism Act that protect the dietary supplement supply chain.
Dietary supplements are not “drugs, biologics, or medical devices,” so why would Congress – or anyone, less a profiteer – support non-germane legislation that would only serve to raise costs to consumers who are doing everything they can to stay healthy?
This Isn’t The First Time They’ve Tried This...
In the past, BigPharma and the FDA have unsuccessfully attempted to regulate certain supplements, including vitamin B6 and N-acetylcysteine (NAC), by reclassifying them as “new drugs.” This is unacceptable to the point of being ludicrous.
NAC, in particular, has potent properties that aid in the prevention of certain cancers, is a tremendous anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory (think arthritis), strengthens the immune system, helps with energy levels and mitochondrial function, and aids in dopamine activity which is of great benefit to the brain. Why would the federal government pass legislation to make it more difficult to access this readily available supplement?
Reports, confirmed this week, indicate that Amazon is removing dietary supplements containing NAC from its website because of intimidating correspondence from the FDA, which last year issued warning letters that NAC couldn’t be legally marketed in dietary supplements because it was “first studied as a drug in 1963.”
Additionally, BigPharma has been aggressively acquiring independent supplement brands which give them an increasing monopoly over the supplement industry. Just 14 mega corporations – most of them large pharmaceutical companies – now own more than 100 of the most popular over-the-counter supplement brands on the market.
This monopoly gives BigPharma enormous regulatory influence. It also puts independent supplement makers, who can’t afford to put their products through the financially burdensome drug approval process, at risk of extinction, exactly what the Durbin-Braun premarket approval proposal seeks to accomplish.
An excellent article on this issue – full of facts and truths – titled, “Big Pharma Wants to Put an End to Vitamins and Supplements,” written by Joseph Mercola can be read in The Epoch Times.
It Affects Everyone
I, like many out there, am directly impacted by this attempted power grab at the hands of BigPharma profiteers and their toady, bought-and-paid-for political lackeys.
My partner, a wonderful and giving young woman – a medically retired nurse of 23 years, developed an autoimmune disorder in the service of others. This autoimmune disease has been held in check through the use of a variety of over-the-counter vitamins and supplements – including NAC – which are consumed in a daily regimen. This regimen allows her to lead a healthy, normal life. Without them, she would be chained to the will of the BigPharma and for-profit medical industry; an unholy marriage that profits off of the misfortune of others by exploiting their medical conditions.
Honestly, no one should be denied the chance to affordably maintain their health, especially those who rely on alternative resources to the current for-profit medical establishment, an establishment nepotistically and opportunistically intertwined with BigPharma and the elected class. To be denied this health freedom – this avenue to health – should be criminal. Instead, it seems, the crime being committed is against the people and at the hands of the profiteers and those who lie to us about safeguarding our freedoms.
Hasn’t the government encroached enough into the healthcare system? Haven’t BigPharma and the for-profit medical industry indentured the public into financial subservience beyond a level we should tolerate? When is “too much” enough?
Please contact your US Senators and urge them to oppose the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022, and to engage in an effort to terminate this BigPharma giveaway with malice.
