Hello Chris:
I cobbled this - from the CHFA member directed questionnaire and other sources
to quickly rebut an editorial column published in today's Vancouver Sun
The media and mainstream medicine make a big issue of generally trivial side affects of Natural Health Products (NHPs) while neglecting death and major side effects from drugs which are nearly all toxic ("Herbal industry' success hinges on regulation," Editorial, October 6/03). There has only been one death in Canada in the last 30 years that was likely attributable to a NHP compared to thousands of deaths caused by highly quality controlled and regulated drugs every year. More regulations are hardly needed to protect the Canadian consumer form NHPs. Many safe, effective and low cost products like Boron, vitamin K, and amino acids are available freely in the United States but are not available in Canada due to Health Protection Branch (HPB) regulations. Health Canada�s HPB could better protect the Canadian consumer if it used its limited resources on generally toxic drugs instead of the generally safe NHP�s. The facts are NHP�s compete with pharmaceuticals.
The new NHP regulatory framework will block the sale of many currently available health products (particularly if effective) or significantly increase their cost. If this happens, many or maybe all small and some medium size businesses will be forced to close. This already happened in Australia. Similar restrictions are well on the way in Britain and the European Union (EU).
HPB directors and scientists have several times publicly objected to, and even quit because of internal pressure from senior HPB officials to approve drugs that had not been properly tested, or in which testing had shown to be unsafe yet the government has never investigated the HPB. most of the pressure to regulate NHPs comes from the drug regulating branch of Health Canada. There is no provision to protect the consumer from conflict of interest (many Health Canada officials have had direct connections to drug companies) in the HPB�s current or proposed NHPs regulations. Access to information has revealed Health Canada was audited twice over a ten year period in the 1980's. What emerged with both audits is the drug industry, which causes the most amount of regulatory and safety problems, gets the least amount of attention and monitoring from Health Canada when it comes to health and safety issues - compared to Health Canada's intense regulation of the natural health products industry which gives the agency the least amount of heath and safety problems.
Many activist/health/environmental/industry associations and groups, in whole or part, are funded by corporations with vested interests as this is the most effective and the best public relations tactic money can buy. Given the escalating costs and the high toxicity of drugs, the thousands of studies on the safety and effectiveness of low cost food supplements like vitamins, amino acids, it is notable Health Canada never promotes these alternatives. In the past months dubious negative reports have been published on garlic, Kava Kava, St. John's wort, and products containing ephedra. A characteristic of all these reports is their emphatic conclusion that all previous research which confirmed the validity of these natural remedies is to be discarded because the latest scientific report reached a contrary conclusion. It is becoming more obvious that misinformation about vitamins, minerals and herbal products is being planted in the news media and published in medical journals in a calculated fashion. The reason is that more and more North Americans are taking health care into their own hands and relying less and less on doctors and drugs to cure their ills. The big secret is that the biological action of virtually every prescription drug can be duplicated with nutritional supplements at far less cost and with fewer side effects. The only way to counter the growing demand for natural remedies is to confuse the public with misinformation. How do these non-news stories get front-page coverage? It's simple. Public relations agencies have bragged at seminars how they can take a presentation at a medical meeting and get it aired on television and published in newspapers. These publicity agencies do the dirty work of planting misinformation in the news media. It's propaganda, not news. There are simply no standards of journalism being upheld. Bad science gets front-page coverage regardless of whether it is true or not. Journalists aren't checking on the validity of medical reports, and they are not interviewing for alternate views. In the case of a recent vitamin C report, reporters did not interview the Canadian Health Food Association, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the Vitamin C Foundation, nor the American Healthcare Products Association. Why are the pharmaceutical companies so afraid of a simple vitamin? It's because high doses of vitamin C virtually eradicate the risk of developing cataracts, eliminate the need for blood pressure medication, reduce the need for anti-allergy drugs, reduce the risk of gall stones, and produce many other health benefits. The drug companies can't invent and patent a molecule as efficacious as vitamin C. We are told by the media headlines that 10,000 international units (I.U.) of vitamin A is toxic without differentiating between pro vitamin A (beta carotene and its co factors) and vitamin A found in cod liver, other fish liver oils and beef liver. To demonstrate the absurdity of such scare stories, a 3.5 ounce serving of fried beef liver contains 35,000 to 45,000 I.U. of vitamin A. Is Health Canada demanding that a prescription be required before going to the butcher shop or supermarket meat counter?
The current attack against Allan Rocke's plan to revise Canadian patent law to male cheap generic versions of the DNA busting drugs available to Africa is pharmacartel driven (Allan Apotex's new drug fiasco, National Post, Thursday, October 02, 2003]. However, the evidence that anti HIV/AIDs drugs actually aid in the treatment of AIDS is tenuous at best - regardless of whether they are the excessively expensive patented brands or the relatively cheap generic versions. It is moot whether generic or patented versions will do any better other than to kill African AIDS patients faster than if they received no treatment at all. After 21 years and billions of dollars spent in research and failed treatments the medical /pharmacartel are no further ahead in dealing with AIDS. AZT, originally an anti cancer drug discarded by the United States National Cancer Institute because it killed patients faster than their cancers, was sold to GlaxoSmithKline, the current patent holder, for one dollar. How can GlaxoSmithKline justify the 10,000 dollar per patient per year treatment cost when they had virtually no investment in research or development costs for AZT that would justify such a high price?
Pediatrics Online (January 2002;109:e6) reported HIV-infected African children younger than 18 months who received vitamin A grew significantly more in height, compared with their peers who took a placebo. After 4 months, vitamin A supplemented infants had grown an average of nearly 3 centimeters (cm) more than infants who had taken the placebo. Similarly, vitamin A-supplemented infants with malaria younger than 12 months gained significantly more weight than their peers who did not receive vitamin A. At a cost of pennies per dose these children received 200,000 international units (IU) of vitamin A if they were older than 1 year or 100,000 IU if they were under 1 year, or an inactive pill (placebo) on the day they checked into the hospital. The following day, children received a second dose, followed by a third and fourth dose 4 and 8 months after leaving the hospital for a total of 700,000 to 800,000 I.U. of vitamin A without any toxic or adverse effects. These kind of results with a cheap non patentable vitamin do nothing for the profit margins of the anti AIDS drug manufacturers - be they patented or generic - nor does it help the credibility of the current anti-vitamin, anti herb agenda when the media fails to report such benefits.
The facts are the natural health industry is well enough regulated while the drug industry needs more regulation and much closer scrutiny than what it currently receives from government.
Croft Woodruff, MH, Hon.
President
Canadian Alliance of Health Retailers
6262-A Fraser Street
Vancouver BC V5W 3A1
Current President Chelation Therapy Association of Greater Vancouver
Canadian Health Food Association President (1979/83 - 1987/91)
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