Health supplements assaulted by Consumers Union and the FDA; your freedom to choose nutritional supplements is being trampled

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The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, continues its attack on your freedom to choose health supplements with their recent announcement that nine out of ten Americans want dietary supplements to be proven safe before they are marketed. If the survey question is carefully crafted, there's no doubt that 90% of the people would agree. But the real story is the question they didn't bother to ask: "Do you want health supplements, vitamins, minerals and herbs to be banned and regulated by the FDA?" Because that's the real question here, and the Consumers Union very well knows it.

The Consumers Union and the FDA have both been pushing hard to either outlaw all health supplements or regulate them out of existence. If herbs, for example, were subject to the same hundred-million-dollar clinical trials required of experimental prescription drugs, no herb company could afford to fund the tests, and virtually all herbs would be outlawed. This is, of course, precisely the outcome desired by the pharmaceutical industry, which sees herbal medicine as competition for its high-priced prescription drugs.

Such testing for herbs, vitamins and minerals is, of course, ridiculous. The herbs used medicinally today have a long track record of safe, effective use. Even the so-called "dangerous" herb ephedra is thousands of times safer than prescription drugs and even over-the-counter drugs. Skeptical? Consider that ephedra has only been linked to the deaths of, at most, a hundred people (this number varies from one report to the next). Meanwhile, over-the-counter painkillers kill 40,000 Americans each year, and prescription drugs kill another 100,000. With this data in mind, consider the lunacy of the FDA's branding of ephedra as "dangerous" while OTC drugs and prescription drugs are apparently safe enough to keep on selling to the population at large.

I used to think Consumer Reports was a magazine that could be trusted, but no longer. It seems to be on a crusade to outlaw nutritional supplements, much to the amusement of the FDA which is pursuing the same outcome. Make no mistake: certain corporations and organizations in this country won't be happy until your freedom to choose natural health supplements has been utterly destroyed, forcing you and everyone else to rely on overpriced pharmaceuticals.

Your freedom to choose is being assaulted right now. Protect yourself with information and knowledge. Contact your representatives in Washington. Let them know you want health supplements to remain on the shelves so that consumers can protect their health with proven, safe, affordable supplements like herbs, vitamins and minerals.

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