Just a few days ago, I received a more in-depth look from William Rand, Reiki Master teacher, about the legal battles that are fought currently about reducing our health freedom and our freedom to choose alternative treatments and natural medicines, like herbs and supplements. It is a battle which is happening on different levels and we need to pay attention to it and take action as it all progresses. Make our voices heard loud and clear to the senate, the congress, the people in the White House.

Can you imagine that in the future our foods, dietary ingredients and dietary supplements we are using would be at risk of being treated like drugs when evaluated by the FDA with their new drug tools!?? I can't and I don't agree with this policy!

Here William Rand  shows us what he has found when he researched these issues more deeply. Please take some time to inform yourself about this critical information. Your health and freedom depends on it.

Many Blessings to you and yours,
Regina-Sophia
PS: there are three links in the following post for you to take direct action


William Rand's post:

FDA Update

Dear Students of Reiki,

We’ve got a very serious situation we need to take action on right now! Please read:

At the end of April I sent out an email concerning an FDA Draft CAM Guidance document that various people and organizations had posted web pages about and had also circulated emails on the Internet. Some said that the practice of Reiki was being threatened and that we had to email the FDA to prevent them from greatly curtailing our right to practice Reiki. I indicated that among other things, based on my research, the practice of Reiki isn’t being threatened by the FDA. And while this was reassuring to most, a few seemed to be more confused. The confusion seems to be coming from the fact that there are issues in addition to the FDA Draft CAM Guidance document that don’t actually threaten the practice of Reiki but do create a serious threat to our health freedom and deserve our attention.

Since sending out the first email, I’ve had a chance to look more deeply into these issues. Because I’m on the board of directors of the National Health Freedom Coalition (NHFC), I was able to ask Diane Miller, their attorney for her help in understanding the meaning of the FDA document as well as the other related issues including the proposed S1082/H1561 Reagan-Udall Foundation legislation and Codex.

Diane confirmed that the professional practice of Reiki isn’t affected by the above issues unless a Reiki practitioner uses foods, vitamins, herbs or other dietary supplements as part of their Reiki practice. (To clarify, this means that in addition to complying with the state occupational laws for health care practitioners, if you use dietary supplement products in your practice, such as herbs, vitamins, essential oils, or minerals, they would have to be used in compliance with all state and federal product laws and without the intent to prevent, mitigate or cure a disease)

However, when considering all three of the above issues/documents together, our right to use vitamins, herbs and other food and dietary supplements is being threatened. This is a very serious situation and because of its nature and the way the information has been presented by the government and legislators, often in a confusing and/or hidden way, some readers have over reacted to the information while others have ignored it. Because of this, it’s important that we have a clear understanding of what these issues mean and that we work together to prevent the proposed restrictions on our health freedom from taking place.

Major Concern
The legislative bills S1082/H1561 sets up a non-profit corporation called the Reagan-Udall Foundation that would give the FDA a new and expanded role. It would become part of a Foundation with the purpose of implementing goals of the FDA in the area of new drug development. This means that the same organization that will be developing drug evaluation technology is also enmeshed in the agency that regulates the drug approval process, thus creating a situation that could potentially reduce the safety of the drugs and products made available to the public.

In addition and of greater concern for health freedom, the Senate added language to the bill which included food safety. The addition of amendments that include food safety, and the language of the original bill that included food and dietary supplements in the purpose of the Reagan Udall Foundation, are completely unacceptable to freedom advocates because it could mean down the road that foods, dietary ingredients and dietary supplements would be at risk of being treated like drugs when evaluated by the FDA with their new drug tools.

Foods and dietary supplements in the U.S. are not currently regulated as drugs, but are regulated as foods under DSHEA. Notably because of this, they are evaluated differently. Foods and dietary supplements are considered food nutrients and are generally regarded as safe and the evaluation of their safety is based on whether they cause a significant risk of harm as opposed to being evaluated under the toxic drug risk/benefit assessment. Risk/benefit analysis is reserved for toxic substances and the FDA approves drugs for market if the benefit justifies the risk. These foundational differences of drug and food safety assessments have recently been challenged in the Ephedra cases and because the Supreme Court has denied hearing the Ephedra case May 2007, there is a real possibility that drug assessments might be applied to foods in the future.

With a drug, a consumer has to weigh the risk/benefit ratio in choose whether they are open to the possibility of being harmed by a toxic substance, in order to receive the benefits the drug may provide. And the drug companies have to disclose side effects. But that is not the nature of food. Food is not generally toxic. Whether a food has benefit or not should always be the consumer’s decision and the government should only block a food from the market if it has shown harm. Because of the assumption that food is safe we have a wide variety of foods and supplements in the marketplace. If foods and dietary supplements were ever to be evaluated as drugs with technology developed for drugs and a risk/benefit analysis, it would no longer be up to the consumer to decide whether a food or dietary supplement were risky or beneficial to them. The FDA would be deciding that for us before the food or supplement would be allowed on the market. We then run the risk of natural pr! products being incorrectly assessed as harmful because of a drug analysis being applied to them and losing access to many wonderful foods and nutrients that we currently use.

Foods and dietary supplements should continue to be treated as food (DSHEA) and evaluated under food standards and technology instead of with toxic drug risk/benefit assessment tools. To accomplish this, an amendment must be added to the current bill S1082/H.R.1561.

To contact your legislators and request they add this amendment
Click Here

About Codex
Codex is an organization that sets up food safety guidelines and is a joint project of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and has 182 member countries. The guidelines they create concern the shipment of food products between countries. Their purpose is to improve business between countries and is not related to improving health. Sadly, after years of deliberation, they passed Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines in 2005 that say that for products being traded between countries, maximum upper limits shall be set for vitamin and mineral amounts per daily portion of consumption as recommended by the manufacturer. This means that a vitamin or mineral might be limited to a very small dose compared with what we currently enjoy in the US. As an example, vitamin C might be available only in a 30 milligram dose rather than the 500 or 1000 milligram doses we currently have available in the US.

There are no maximum upper limits in the United States for vitamins and minerals today because of our hard won victories in Congress years ago with the passage of the DSHEA legislation. The U.S. is a member of Codex and will need to abide by the Codex guidelines when trading with other international countries but since Codex maximum upper limit guidelines are not U.S. law, they do not apply to trading inside the U.S. And health freedom advocates work hard to protect DSHEA so that the maximum upper limits restrictions never become part of the public policy of the U.S. or become U.S. law.

Read more on Codex and write your legislator

Our ability to make our own choices about which foods or dietary supplements we take and in what doses is necessary if we are to take care or our health based on our own unique requirements. If we are to maintain our freedom of choice, we need to have a clear understanding of the issues and work together in harmony to take action. I hope this email has helped you do both and that you have taken the time to email your legislators about this issue by clicking on the link above.

Sincerely in love and peace,
William Lee Rand

Please forward this email to all your friends so they can take action too!

HB 2117 is an additional Health Freedom issue. Please read this also:

http://nationalhealthfreedom.org/nhfa/AlertHB2117_53107.html

http://Womenscircles.us/RedHook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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