COUNTERING THE DURBIN/BRAUN
DIETARY SUPPLEMENT FALSE ‘TRANSPARENCY’ BILL
ACT HERE NOW: https://inhere.salsalabs.org/DurbinDSBill
On April 26, 2022 Senators Durbin and Braun issued a Media Release [1] proposing further legislative restrictions on the availability of dietary supplements.
The bill has the innocuous sounding title of The Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022. Since Sen. Durbin is the current Majority Whip the bill stands a good chance of passing before the upcoming congressional election.
In the Release Sen. Durbin admitted, “Seventy percent of people in America take a dietary supplement including me.”
The proposal is to have all dietary supplements ‘registered’ with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because, the Senators imply, since Congress unanimously passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) the number of dietary supplement products available to the public has increased from about 4,000 to an estimated 80,000.
We reject the authoritarian notion that, because Americans want nutrients and therefore nutrient companies are successful, they ought to be further regulated and restricted.
Unlike pharmaceutical drugs which, even when used according to prescription, may kill over 500,000 Americans annually [2] there are virtually no adverse reactions reported for dietary supplements. There is no public health reason to register nutrients which are foods deemed safe when used as directed.
If there were to be a serious adverse reaction to a nutrient the current law requires notification to FDA. Additionally dietary supplement marketers are already required to notify FDA regarding each claim made for each dietary supplement within 30 days of making the claim. Further, all manufacturers of dietary supplements must register with FDA as food processing facilities.
The Senators are wrong to imply that FDA needs additional power to “regulate” supplements.
Since there is no compelling reason to add another layer of registration and notification above those that already exist, and such registration will be an additional burden on especially smaller companies, the Durbin/Braun proposal should be rejected.
The Bill is just another power grab to limit access to the market and availability of affordable nutrients.
We have initiated a campaign to educate supplement users regarding the Durbin/Braun proposal, providing the public with an easy “Action Item” through the system that operates the Natural Solution email list. The goal is for the Action Item to ‘go viral and flood the White House and each individual’s Senators and Member of Congress with our concerns.
HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ACTION ITEM
https://inhere.salsalabs.org/DurbinDSBill
Share with all your circles of influence and act now or your access to nutrients will be at risk.
Share with this link: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/stop-durbin-braun-vitamin-registration-bill/
Support this campaign here: https://fundly.com/support-natural-therapies
[2] https://inhere.org/international-journal-of-nhsp/ihr-journal-2016/medicine-that-kills/
The whole Congress, all Senators, except for few, need to be EXCHANGED by NON pharma cartel dependent HUMANS.
Agree.
Your health takes a back seat to their padding their pockets with big pharmaceutical lobbyists money.
Rockefeller’s manipulation of natural medicine for toxic synthesized medicines was all for profit/control/ and reducing world populations!
I sent this to Dick Durban today at: https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
7/9/2022
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
Subject:
Your “The Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022” Proposal
You may not be aware of it, but many of us, myself and my patients, REQUIRE dietary supplements to preserve our health and longevity. For some people, these supplements are absolutely necessary for their immune system, digestive health, memory and cognition, and multifarious other health issues.
WHY?
These supplements are necessary because we are living in a modern age where
1 — Topsoil for edible vegetation is severely depleted and requires fertilizers to produce crops – the soil is depleted of elements required for human health.
2 — The fertilizer used in the commercial production of food does NOT have trace minerals necessary for human health.
3 — The FDA’s “Recommended Daily Allowance” (RDA) is well below the current research recommendations for most supplements.
4 — The age in which we live (and die from) is far more toxic than ever before — from industrial chemicals in our air, water, and food. We need various supplements in much higher concentrations to help the liver detoxify these substances.
More federal regulation of supplements will lead to more ill health and death, well beyond the 500,000 individuals dying from prescribed pharmaceuticals each year!. When I was in Australia, I had the personal experience of trying to find supplements such as vitamin C and vitamin D and others that were so LOW in concentration as to be of minimal value for immune function. Your proposal of more regulation will surely result in the FDA mandating lower concentrations of nutrients to match their “Recommended Daily Allowance” (RDA) which is so LOW that modern research of what is really needed demonstrates that the FDA recommendations are not only severely inadequate, but laughable. The FDA guideline for vitamin C is so LOW (60mg old value, 90mg new value) that it’s just enough to prevent scurvy, let alone the amount required to produce enough collagen to prevent “weak scar strength”
https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/08/16/new-analysis-of-landmark-scurvy-study-leads-to-update-on-vitamin-c-needs/)
If you wish to argue the need and value of higher levels of vitamin C, argue with Dr. Linus Pauling, a three time Nobel Laureate.
For example, the Linus Pauling Institute recommends 400mg/day (https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-recommendation)
and Pauling personally took over 10,000mg/day of vitamin C.
I only use vitamin C as a “poster-boy” example of the FDA’s inadequate RDA in view of modern research.
Many more inadequate recommendations can be found on their own site at:
https://www.fda.gov/food/new-nutrition-facts-label/daily-value-new-nutrition-and-supplement-facts-labels
More specifically at the above-noted site it has
Vitamin D at old value of 400iu and new value of 800iu is still too LOW. Why did they double the value? Perhaps it is because previously they thought vitamin D was only needed for strong bones and now they got convinced that it was invaluable for a strong immune system (think CoVID-19 and other immune diseases such as cancer). Yet, modern research demonstrates that a minimum of 5000iu of vitamin D is necessary to maintain a superior immune system
And they even “decreased” Zinc from 15mg/day to 11mg/day! Zinc is also required for the immune system. Yet, Zinc can reduce the duration of cold symptoms, support blood sugar management, improve severe and inflammatory acne, decrease heart disease risk, and slow the progression of macular degeneration.
It’s no secret that there is a “revolving door” between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry with pharma representatives going into the FDA and vice versa which ensures a genuine collaboration between them both to give the pharmaceutical industry an advantage. AND, there is one thing big pharma would like to do about vitamin supplements – abolish them, or make them so inadequate that people get ill and turn to pharmaceuticals!
Additionally, there are gargantuan bribes/donations and lobbying from big pharma to both Democrat and Republican congress members a la “Citizens United” to ensure that the big pharma stays BIG with no opposition from Congress to lower drug prices — AND to enact laws that would inhibit the use of vitamin supplements!
MR. DURBIN — YOU WOULDN’T BE ONE OF THOSE CONGRESS MEMBERS THAT TAKES MONEY FROM BIG PHARMA TO INFLUENCE YOUR PROPOSAL OF YOUR “DIETARY SUPPLEMENT LISTING ACT OF 2022” – WOULD YOU??
I would suggest that you hold off on your proposal and get a deeper understanding of the requirements for dietary supplements by going to:
https://www.lifeextension.com/ , type in your supplement of interest in the search area, then select “News & Protocols” and/or “Magazines”, then read the best research that is NOT FUNDED by the pharmaceutical industry. All of what you will read there is “Research based”!
BREAKING NEWS!
After writing all the above, I decided to Google search for, “how much money has dick durbin received from the pharmaceutical industry”. At the top of the list was specific information from
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/dick-durbin/industries?cid=N00004981&cycle=2020&recs=0&type=I
which shows the following monies you have received from the pharmaceutical industry for your re-election campaigns:
2022 – $68,830
2018 – $81,043
2016 – $89,822
2014 – $100,510
2012 – $111,500
2010 – $110,400
Certainly, that’s enough data to help me and all of us understand your motives.
And there are many more years not depicted here and it doesn’t even include the thousands paid to you from lobbyists.
I would love to hear/get a response from you so that I might better know how to vote when the time arrives.
It will also help me know whether I should discard this letter or to post it widely before the next election.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Durbin!
CORRECTION:
I noted after sending the above letter that a page came up stating, “Request not Accepted
Your submitted request contained a potential security risk.
Please try your submission again using natively composed plain text (not copied and pasted from another document), with few or no hyperlinks, or other syntax that may be interpreted as computer code (examples: ‘–‘, ‘&’).”
The letter that was to be sent requires quotes and hyperlinks referring to the research references I provided. It appears that the senate.gov site prevents sending demonstrable proof of one’s positions/views that have research links. What a way to “dumb-down” the mentality of Congress more than it already is.