The Disappearing Vitamins...
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An Important Message to all
United States Consumers of Supplements
The disappearing vitamins...

Michael LeVesque, July, 2000

Imagine going to your local vitamin store to pick up your favorite multivitamin, vitamin C 500 mg, and some vitamin E 400iu, only to be told that they are no longer available and if you wish to purchase them you will have to visit your doctor and get a prescription.  This scenario is probable if the Codex Commission succeeds in their mission to restrict high potency supplements, to regulate supplements as drugs, and to reduce access to therapeutic nutrients.

In this article you will find out:

  • Why is the health food supplement industry being attacked?

  • Who is taking over the health food supplement companies?

  • How does the Codex Commission affect your rights?

  • What does the US voting delegate to the Commission say regarding supplements?

  • What are the alternatives to the present direction of the Codex commission?

  • How do you stop the present policies and get your voice heard over the wealthy lobbyists who want to deny your rights?

Benjamin Rush, M.D.,  Physician to George Washington and signer of the Declaration of Independence:

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship… To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic…The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom." - from The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush

Now for the information

Recently you might have seen newspaper articles or TV news programs condemning and criticizing the health food industry. Cavalier, false, and flippant statements were made that there are no safeguards, or that the health food industry lacks regulation. False statements were made about the dangers of herbs, and about their ineffectiveness. The health supplement industry is pictured as a threat. Nevertheless, more and more consumers are gaining benefits from nutritional supplements.

Why is the health food supplement industry being attacked?

It is no longer a fringe industry, but an important element in supplying people products for maintaining and improving their health. It is an industry that is threatened by its acceptance into the mainstream. It offers effective low-cost natural health remedies. It is very attractive to big business. It is a debt free industry and one built upon dedication and commitment. It has a devoted customer base made up of intelligent and passionate consumers. It is successful and a "take-over" by large pharmaceutical interests is in process.

To know and understand the heart of an industry 
is to look at its motivation.

Everyone wants to be profitable and earn a living. However, my primary motivation for being in this business is the health benefits, which my family, friends, customers, and I receive by using the products that I sell. The new owners acquiring the health food industry have a different primary motivation - their goal is profit. Market share, stock market standings, promoting one singular item as the cure-all, is their road to profit. Government regulation, governmental restrictions, government endorsements are the direction these corporations seek to control the market place, gain protectionism, and increase profits. These are the big players who are now bringing us over-priced health products and a narrowing of choices.

The takeover by the pharmaceutical industry plus the recent meetings of the Codex, make for a perfect opportunity to control the health food supplement marketplace, control the price of natural products, and control the availability of those products. It is an open game board with no checks and balances, but a great gold rush to ensconce big companies in a highly controlled division of the marketplace.

Pharmaceutical firms already manufacture most of the chemicals that the health food industry uses to combine with other nutrients into formulas. The pharmaceutical industry has demonstrated its ability to divide up the world market for dietary supplement raw materials. We know this because last year Roche Holding A.G. and BASF A.G. were caught and convicted of criminal price fixing on a huge scale. They were fined over half a billion dollars, the largest fine ever levied. There's no telling how much you and we have been overpaying for vitamins in the last few decades - all we do know is the fine they paid for getting caught. A few of the executives are in prison, but they pleaded guilty individually, so the corporations remained innocent. However, BASF has certainly recouped some of its losses by its mass distribution and public promotion of SAMe.

Yet even this level of criminal price-fixing by raw material suppliers did not destroy the price-effectiveness of natural remedies, and it pales into nothingness compared to the institutionalized price inflation of pharmaceutical drugs. These substances are not found in the body and so can be patented; and once they are approved for a certain use, they enjoy a FDA-protected monopoly. For instance, the FDA granted approval for smoking-cessation claims to a single drug in the early 1990's. The FDA informed all of the companies with herbal formulas that effectively stopped tobacco craving to change their labeling. They could no longer "make claims", that is, explain what their products were good for. These products soon disappeared from the market. This is the kind of "government regulation" that reduces market selection and choices for the consumer.

How does the Codex fit into this picture?

Unless you're actively searching for it, you do not know that the future of the health food industry and your ability to freely buy supplements at reasonable prices without prescriptions is put at great risk by the international Codex meetings.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the legislative body of the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Presently, 65 nations representing 98% of the world's population belong to the Codex Alimentarius Commission. (For more information, see Explaining the Codex.) The Codex commission committees set food standards, and one committee is currently debating an agenda created by the European nations to set upper potency limits on vitamins and minerals.

It is the considered opinion of legal consul throughout the US and the legal consul of the NNFA that the Codex poses a threat to US laws and regulations; specifically, harmonization would weaken if not destroy DSHEA.  

If that happens, or more accurately, when that happens, the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, which protects your right to purchase supplements freely and without a prescription, will be doomed. That is because NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and MERCOSUR adopt Codex standards as the international references. These become the gold standard and all other standards ultimately have to be harmonized to them. For example, when your "high" potency supplements - such as a Vitamin C 500 mg, or a CoQ10 of any potency - are challenged, the US will be told that these products are outside the internationally-agreed Codex guidelines and must be restricted, or else the US will be subject to trade sanctions. This is done in the name of "free trade"; in this case the term is an Orwellian oxymoron!

You might say, it can't happen here! Our laws and legislation protect us. Think again. Norway had a very viable health food industry just like the United States. Today, after harmonization with European Economic Community rules, one can no longer find vitamin C stronger than 250mg. The industry lost numerous products and is almost non-existent. Those products once were sold to people who looked after their own health, were educated in good nutrition, and appreciated the products they could purchase. The products were affordable, but now their prices are greatly inflated, and they are available by prescription only.

Canadian government, driven by the pharmaceutical industry, ruled that L-carnitine is salable by prescription only, along with all other amino acids, and any herb that makes a health claim. L-carnitine is the only amino acid that has received vitamin status because it is so important to the heart. In fact whenever an autopsy is performed on a heart attack victim and the heart tissue is measured for its levels of l-carnitine, it is always low. How expensive is L-carnitine in Canada under prescription? It was $14 for a bottle of 100 capsules before the government legislation and is now $120 to $190 by prescription only.

To its credit, Codex does work by consensus. This means that all voting members must agree to a proposal before it is adopted. The problem is that the vast majority of third world countries have little experience with a US-like supplement market. Their government delegations, if not already in the pocket of pharmaceutical interests, are easily swayed by the idea that the Codex can supply them with a ready-made template of how to regulate nutritional supplements. And what government official, even if of a different and educated mind, will risk incurring trade sanctions against important exports such as cotton or rice, to protect the right of its citizens to high-potency vitamin E? With Codex regulating not only what can be sold but also what can be said, these citizens will never know they need vitamin E because they won't hear about its benefits! It's a denial to these countries of access to safe, beneficial and inexpensive products.

One of the most important observations about the Codex Commission is that it is a trade organization. Codex decisions mean big stakes for big business! Ninety percent of the delegates represent large multinational corporations. The Codex commission is comprised of entirely non-elected officials from big government and bigger industry. (For instance, the US voting delegate is an official from the FDA - definitely not an "elected representative".) Worse still, industrial giants employ lobbyists armed with arguments for establishing a favorable position that represents their clients. These lobbyists are not registered as they are in Canada and the United States. Also, there are no financial disclosure statements as required by law in the United States and Canada. To repeat, Codex decisions mean big stakes for big business! The meetings are a bargaining platform by big business and lobbyists. This is the body that will ultimately overrule and negate legislation in this country that protects our rights to choice of health products.

What does the US voting delegate from the FDA
have to say regarding supplements?

Elizabeth Yetley, Ph.D., doesn't have a lot to say because she is not a representative of an organization that advocates nutritional supplements. It is not unlike having a car manufacturer represent the bicycle industry in trade negotiations. This is a new field of endeavor for the FDA and it should be demanded of them to proceed in a manner that recognizes the tremendous benefits and value of the nutritional field and health food supplement business. We already suffer from misdirection and inappropriate judgment by the FDA as they proceed along their path to stop any health food industry product that may compete with a pharmaceutical drug.

So here we have the FDA, our "voting representative" at the Codex meetings, using their own brand of inferior science to advocate restricting upper limits contrary to numerous good scientific studies. The lobbyist and their employers are looking very hard to find anything that can be construed as a reason to set these limits, which are considered ridiculously low by American nutritional science.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry wants nutrients regulated with low upper limits. In this way effective products will be available only through doctors by prescription. When only doctors can prescribe them, as in Germany, then insurance companies will be willing to pay for them and the price tag can be enormously inflated. With insurance paying for them the consumer will have little concern about prices because it will not come directly out of his pocket. The high price will generate more profits and wealth into the pharmaceutical industry. In this system, drugs can more easily be promoted as the preferred treatment of choice. Most importantly, the market for prescribed pharmaceuticals can now be greatly increased to include healthy people trying to maintain their good health.

Herbs are a special target. They are very effective and there are many traditional ways of preparing herbs. If the German Commission-E is established as the Codex standard, all other methods of providing a good herbal product for market will be eliminated. If herbs can suddenly be considered dangerous, contrary to fact, then they will be banned from the store shelves and made "prescription-only" products, as they are in Germany.

I don't like to sound like George Orwell, but…

All of this is very ominous because the Codex commission is an outside governing body determining American policy and public market availability of products. The pharmaceutical industry and the banking system abroad are closely aligned. This is a confluence of money and power. The pharmaceutical industry's sales are over one trillion dollars a year, with an incredible profit margin! This gives these international companies tremendous power to buy public relations firms, press releases, television programming, and newspaper and magazine articles. This wealth enables these companies to effectively lobby the government and gain legislation that directs large sums of money into their research projects and control the marketplace.

The FDA and the pharmaceutical giants are devising their own brand of health protection. Propaganda-like machines are spewing out false stories. For example, the vitamin C story in the LA Times (C causes hardening of the arteries). Also, the Lehrer NewsHour report on a "new" way to take vitamins (always ask your doctor- "yes, it's a good idea to take a multiple"- "oh, beta carotene is dangerous"). Or CBS's 48-Hours Special on herb-drug interactions (it's not the handful of un-named drugs she's taking that are dangerous, it must be the ginkgo). Each commercial break features a pharmaceutical advertisement, urging consumers to tell their doctors what to prescribe, i.e., you want that green and purple pill, and oh yes, please note the following (bad) side effects.

When the Codex committee meets in Berlin, delegates advocating strict controls and low upper limits to vitamins can point to the negative press that herbs and vitamins are receiving in the United States. They can say, it's time to control and restrict what is now available for you or me to purchase here at home. Meanwhile, propaganda attacking nutrition will be well financed and distributed everywhere. While in England I was amazed to find the "Vitamin C causes hardening of the arteries" article, that had been discredited, prevalent and accepted by people living there.

What is the true context of supplemental use?

Are supplements really necessary? Do we in this country have a special situation? Is everyone in the world experiencing the same situation and at the same time?

Much of what I read regarding the intentions of the Commission appears narrow, restrictive and mindless of the vast differences in the nutritional quality of each country's produce and other foods. One need only look at the American experience, which is filled with experimentation, freedom of opportunity and freedom of exploitation. Our wheat harvested in the early 1900s was nationally found to contain approximately 17% protein, i.e. amino acid content. The wheat measured nationally in the 1960's had dropped significantly to 12% protein.

In the AMA journals, as early as the 1950's there were recommendations for multiple vitamins because of the dramatic decrease in the nutritional levels of all grains, fruits, and vegetables due to increased acreage production and the advent of chemical fertilizers. Europe had not yet converted to industrial farming at that time, and so in comparison, while America was the breadbox of the world, nutritionally we were coming up short.

One area in particular was the dramatic decrease in niacin levels in corn over the last eighty years. As corn production went up, the nutrient level went down and niacin in particular was hard hit. As niacin levels dropped it affected biological levels of l-tryptophan, and with that decline came less serotonin production. As serotonin levels (which controls appetite) reduced, over consumption increased and obesity became prevalent. This lack of dietary niacin remains one of the many causes of obesity in the US.

Besides preventing deficiency diseases, supplementation is also necessary to aid the body in protection against exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other environmental chemicals. The presence of these chemicals is overwhelming. Since 1999 the Environmental Protection Agency is screening the impact of over 87,000 chemicals in commercial use for their impact on the endocrine system along with over 50 environmental estrogens.

Perhaps some countries in the world don't have the same problems as we do; perhaps some are not as aware of these problems. We know ways to detoxify and protect living cells through nutrient supplementation. We can't accept restrictions that may affect what we can purchase to help the maintenance of health just because another country is unaware of our particular problems. Neither should any other country be restricted from the use of supplementation to protect themselves as they encounter such overwhelming environmental problems. These problems are becoming worldwide, and rather than setting artificial and needless upper limits, I think the entire issues should be tabled. Let each country restrict and allow what it now understands, and let the United States stand up for what has worked so well for us.

A Call for Disinterested, Objective, and Honest Science

The science of supplementation is in its infancy both here and especially in Europe and Third world countries. Let nutritional science continue to develop for twenty or thirty more years as we begin to see the overwhelming necessity to re-evaluate our direction regarding pharmaceutical drugs and chemical poisons. And what of the "science" that has produced our present crisis? The New England Journal of Medicine published a critique of the US research system, saying science is being seriously compromised by the growing influence of industry money

Breast cancer incidence has steadily climbed in the US, and has been attributed to the accumulation of estrogenic chemicals in the environment. Yet, in this country many people still think there is a cure for breast cancer and are looking for magic bullets. Obviously, good nutrition along with other good health practices is our best defense, but the real issue is not the cure but the cause. The cause is readily obvious and glossed over whenever possible by large corporations who not only produce chemicals and pesticides that are producing estrogenic chemicals but have the audacity to turn around and want to own and control the marketplace. Now they also want to promote their pharmaceutical drugs as the only cure for the problems created by the chemicals they manufacture. Even pharmaceutical drug residues are showing up as a major new class of environmental pollution!

Harmonization Eliminates Context!

We, the people of the US, have lead the way in the science of supplementation because our situation has required it and as an inventive and free society we have faced the challenge. The Codex proposals do not take into consideration the context of the situation, i.e. some countries have a higher need for supplementation, some countries are better informed about supplementation, some countries lead the way for developing supplementation in a way that promotes and protects health.

What are the actual results of harmonization? In France the cheese industry is told that now that international rules have been implemented and accepted, French cheese must be refrigerated. The cheese merchants are furious because their cheese loses all of its qualities when refrigerated and in actuality the cheese is ruined. Furthermore, such cheeses as Roquefort are prohibited from sale because of the presence of mold. Mold is essential to that product and has beneficial qualities.

Blindness and Aids transmission have already been reduced by cheap and simple vitamin A supplementation. So why should a UN agency issue rules and regulations that restrict future possibilities? Individual countries must keep their rights to make their own choices.

What are the alternatives to the present direction
of the Codex commission?

Since most countries at present rely on national policy rather than nutritional scientists for the establishment of rules, and since much of the "science" promoted at Codex by the European delegation is politicized propaganda, there is no possibility of a reasonable agreement on supplements. It appears that the best solution for the US is to protect its own position, while actively seeking to educate interested nations in the value and safety of nutritional supplements. Because the US is the vanguard of nutritional supplements, we should use the Codex to host informational sessions on nutritional supplementation, including the need for nutrients to protect against environmental hazards and nutritional deficiencies. In addition, much needs yet to be considered regarding specific scientific data, its interpretation and use, and specifics of methodology.

To email your Representative,
click here.

To email your Senators, 
click here
.

Now is the time to contact your congressperson and pass this letter on to him or her for political action. Now is the time to insist that the FDA protect the interests of public health and call on the pool of educated nutritionists and health food supplement leaders rather than corporate pharmaceutical lobbyists. The US Codex representative, Elizabeth Yetley, Ph.D, of the FDA, must abide by the spirit and the letter of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, the passage of which millions of citizens actively supported. Now is the time for Dr. Yetley to vocalize an uncompromising position that protects the will of US citizens. We as a nation cannot abide by such a usurpation of our inalienable rights!

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Disclaimer The information contained in Michael's Notes is based on the personal experiences and research of the author, Michael LeVesque.  It has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  It is intended for educational purposes, and is not meant to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, or to prescribe or replace medical care.  Due to biological individuality, each person is unique and should check with a qualified health professional regarding the appropriateness of any product.  It is always wise to seek more than one opinion.

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