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The FDA has slammed the door shut on accepting public comments over its contentious "CAM Guidelines" that threaten to destroy natural medicine by classifying virtually all health-enhancing foods, juices, nutritional supplements and functional foods as "unapproved drugs." NaturalNews has acquired emails from an FDA employee and key author of the CAM Guidelines. This email contains statements that directly contradict the FDA's own website and reveal a tactic designed to silence public commentary by retroactively declaring the comment period to be closed even while the FDA's own documents state the period should continue for another 30 days.
Check it out yourself: The FDA website says the comment period ends May 29, 2007 (click here to see the screen capture). But in an email received today by NaturalNews, the FDA's Philip L. Chao claims "...the entry (for which you provided the link) was mistakenly changed by an employee in mid-April, and we will correct that error soon. Thus, internet media reports claiming that FDA has extended the comment period to May 29 are NOT correct."
Thus, the public comment period for CAM Guidelines is now closed, one month ahead of what the FDA's own website provides as the comment closing date. And this is explained as being due to a "mistake" by an FDA employee that will be retroactively corrected, only after the public comment period has been officially closed.
Covert tactics at the FDANaturalNews editors believe these actions on the part of the FDA are not merely accidental. They are deliberate, and they follow a pattern of deception that appears to be designed to sneak CAM Guidelines under the radar and avoid public scrutiny. Consider this:
• The first draft of the CAM Guidelines was issued by the FDA on the day after Christmas, 2006, but the agency waited until February 26 to post them in the Federal Registry.
• The Guidelines state the public will have a "90 day comment period" in which to post comments on the proposal, but the initial closing date for public comments was posted as April 30 -- leaving just two months for comments, not three as explained in the Guidelines themselves.
• When the public learned of these documents thanks to investigative reporting by the health freedom community (credit goes to Rima Laibow, Ralph Fucetola and others who are staying on top of this issue), and filed tens of thousands of complaints with the FDA, the agency initially capitulated and changed the comment period to May 29. This is the comment period shown in this screen shot (click to view), taken May 1st.
• But even as the health freedom community was rallying its efforts to encourage further public comments on the CAM Guidelines, the FDA today announced the May 29 extension was a "mistake" and the window for public comments is now over.
It's a tactic much like rigging the electronic voting machines to make the voters think their opinion counts. At the FDA, the top priority seems to be creating the illusion of openly listening to the public while, in reality, using every means possible to thwart the public's will. By relying on deceitful tactics like the one being reported here, FDA is clearly operating in bad faith.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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