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A BRIEF INTERMISSION OF THE HOLIDAYS

Published January 6th, 2018 in Alternative Therapies, What's in the News

While we have been preoccupied with Christmas, New Year, Haunnaka and other holidays of the season, the government agencies have been busy wrapping up not so nice presents for Americans. As always this is the time of year no one is paying attention to what sneaky moves regulatory agencies are making.

I rely on the Alliance for Natural Health and The Coalition for Holistic Health Education to keep me abreast of pending legislation and policy affecting our right to choose the kind of healthcare we want.

The following information on important action alerts has been provided by the Alliance for Natural Health-US

 

Customized Resveratrol Also to Be Banned: At a November  20-21 meeting of the FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC), in which the committee would recommend whether several natural medicines could continue to be customized by compounding pharmacies along with natural medicines for patients.

The fate of several crucial medicines was decided, including resveratrol (from grapes, astralagus a herb, and pregnenolone a natural progesterone precursor. Resveratrol and astralagus were rejected by PCAC, but the committee voted, against the FDA’s recommendation, to include pregnenolone in the list of medicines that can be compounded. Of course, PCAC only makes recommendations, and when the FDA finalizes its list, it may well reject pregnenolone too, so we must remain vigilant.

The goal of this process – as has been clear from the start – is to hamstring and eventually drive out of business traditional compounding pharmacies by eliminating the types of medicines they can produce. The FDA wants traditional pharmacies to register as “outsourcing facilities,” since the agency has tight control over what they can produce and can prevent the production of anything deemed to compete with conventional drugs. Few traditional pharmacies have chosen to convert to this new kind of facility because they know it would end their independence.

 

Protect the Integrity of Organic Products

There is an influx of fake organic grain imported from overseas. The USDA seems to recognize this problem but is doing little about it. One Turkish organic certifier, ETKO, seems to be egregiously at fault. Canada and the European Union have singled out ETKO for its fraudulent certifications and “decertified” the firm —meaning that ETKO-certified organic products are no longer accepted as organic.

The USDA lists problems with ETKO as far back as 2009 but, instead of decertifying this company, actually reached a settlement agreement with them in 2016. The firm is now under audit by USDA. The status of the audit –  the agency is still gathering data and will be done “soon.”

Not only do consumers unwittingly purchase products falsely labeled by the government as organic, but organic farmers in the US are also affected as they have to compete with fraudulent goods.

 

Protect Vaccine Choice

Vaccines are a hotly debated topic, with emotions running high on both sides. Reasonable people should be able to ask intelligent questions about the safety of vaccines. Parents should not be in danger of losing their children over exemptions or find they no longer have a doctor because of exercising their right of choice. There are many reasons besides religion for forgoing vaccinations, such as allergies and adverse reactions.

The truth is that the government’s vaccine schedule has not been rigorously tested for safety. We know that vaccines can cause severe illness. This is why it is so essential to protect Americans’ freedom of choice by fighting to preserve vaccine exemptions in states and reporting on the latest cutting-edge research.

 

Victories:

Defeated bills that either mandated certain vaccines or eliminated exemptions to vaccination in over two-dozen states, including: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IA, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MN, MO, NE, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, SD, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV

As we move into the new year, there will be battles we chose to fight, I hope protecting your health Freedom is one of them.