By Byron J. Richards, CCN

December 11, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson not only rolled over in their graves, they had a stake driven through their coffins by the departing 109th Congress. Big Pharma is now fully in charge of the FDA. Therapeutic nutrition is now marked for elimination from the free market. How did this happen? What does it all mean? Why did the House Democrats, at 3:06 A.M., while Americans slept, stab our people in the back? It is an ominous sign of things to come.

As the lame duck session drew to a close, it became clear that the Republican’s scorched-earth policy was intended to make it difficult for the Democrats to get anything done next year. They are hoping to regain voter confidence by making Democrats look even worse than the Republican’s near-total ineptitude, which is not a very tall order.

However, the Republicans and Democrats were able to agree on several key points regarding your health: health options for Americans should be curtailed and the American public should be subjected to massive drug experimentation. Thus, with little fanfare or reporting by the general media, the Destroy Effective Supplements and Poison Americans with Biotech Drugs Innovation Act of 2006 (S.666 and HR.1832), was passed in the middle of the night, just as the lame duck session came to a close.

Americans seem almost numb to the fact that Big Pharma kills several thousand of us every week. Kudos to the 109th Congress, those numbers will now dramatically rise.

Big Pharma Now Runs the FDA

Yes, the fox is now officially in charge of the henhouse. Over the objection of a small handful of Senators Big Pharma couldn’t buy, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D, was confirmed to head the FDA. His clearly stated agenda is, and always has been, speeding new and dangerous drugs onto the market with little testing for safety or effectiveness. Von Eschenbach would like to turn every doctor’s office in America into a large clinical trial run by an FDA supercomputer, he would like a computer chip in your arm, and your DNA in his supercomputer – and if you don’t comply you soon won’t get medical services (read Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America). The experiment, known as the Critical Path Initiative, is now full steam ahead! Of course, when Americans are injured and killed, von Eschenbach is pushing heavily to make sure no one can sue for damages.

Andrew von Eschenbach is up to his eyeballs in Big Pharma connections. As director of the National Cancer Institute he perverted billions of taxpayer dollars away from solid science on desperately needed cancer research and into the coffers of his biotech and pharmaceutical pals, collectively known as C-Change. Now, he actually wants to turn part of the FDA into a drug company and even has a name for it, the Reagan-Udahl Center for Biomedical Research. Big Pharma co-sponsors, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Mike Enzi (R-MT), are attempting to fund his new FDA drug company with taxpayer money, which could easily be funneled through the National Cancer Institute, into the hands of his C-Change friends, and then used to pay for FDA drug approvals (S.3807). In other words, the American taxpayer will soon be slated to pay for the development of all these new biotech drugs, and then pay exorbitant drug prices for the “privilege” of being part of a human experiment.

As temporary head of the FDA, von Eschenbach proved he could adeptly cover for drug companies, even when they blatantly lied to the FDA! Such was the case with Trasylol, the Bayer heart bypass drug that needlessly kills and causes permanent kidney damage, which, thanks to von Eschenbach, is still on the market injuring Americans this holiday season.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) was hot and heavy on the von Eschenbach protection agenda for Big Pharma and had placed a hold on his nomination over von Eschenbach’s flagrant violations of law and the FDA’s cover-up of fraud relating to the Ketek antibiotic. Von Eschenbach’s utter disdain of Congressional oversight should be a major concern to all Americans. On December 7, 2006, this is what Grassley had to say:

People ought to be ashamed of saying Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has done a superb job in the position he is currently occupying [acting head of the FDA].…That is an insult….In my interactions with the Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA these last 8 months, I have seen a complete and utter disrespect for congressional authority and hence the law.…In Cedar Rapids, IA, I have a family that lost an 18-year-old because of a drug [Ketek] that was on the market then and which is not on the market now….It seems to me that if you are concerned about the safety of drugs, this information is important, and if you are going to have it covered up in the FDA, you aren't protecting the public.…This body [the Senate] should not walk hand in hand with the executive branch and sit idly by as instances of abuse and fraud continue to endanger the health and safety of American people.

Following these frank and chilling statements of fact, the opinions of Orrin Hatch (R-UT) were put forth to quell the concerns just raised:

To me it is simply unconscionable that the Food and Drug Administration, one of the best little agencies in Government, has gone leaderless for such a period of time…I know Dr. von Eschenbach well. He is a man of integrity….I urge my colleagues--no, I implore my colleagues--to do what is right and vote [for] this nomination….it is what the American people deserve.

Such a character endorsement, coming from a man at the top of Big Pharma’s payout list, is hardly an encouragement to anyone. What is it that constitutes integrity in Hatch’s mind? And just what is it that the American people deserve? These questions were answered for us by Grassley, in his follow-up testimony:

A vote for this nominee would be an endorsement of the stonewalling, but, more importantly, the disrespect for Congress he has shown by not cooperating with congressional oversight.…Under Dr. Von Eschenbach, the FDA has not only avoided transparency, it also has threatened those who are trying to desperately expose the truth….

This started back in January with Ketek and our getting involved in the oversight. There was fraud in this Ketek study….In June, Dr. Von Eschenbach held a meeting of FDA staff involving this drug I have been investigating, questioning how it was handled--Ketek. FDA employees who were present say that he used a lot of sports metaphors regarding being a “team player” and keeping opinions “inside the locker room.” Basically, he said to not criticize the FDA outside the locker room, “outside the locker room” being his words. Apparently he stated that anyone who spoke outside the locker room might find themselves “off the team”…

This nominee held this meeting in the midst of this ongoing congressional investigation of this drug Ketek. He called the meeting after a number of critical reports in the media about the FDA's handling of Ketek. A number of FDA employees interviewed by the committee were offended by his comments, found them highly questionable, inappropriate, and potentially threatening. I don't think there was any “potential”' about it, they were meant to be threatening, and I agree with the employees.

Leaders of an agency should not hold a meeting to suggest that dissenters will be kicked off the team, particularly when the lives of American people are at stake, when drugs are going to be put on the line and they might not be safe. I can refer to the death of an 18-year-old in Cedar Rapids, IA. His is the type of action that shows the true stripes of the nominee….The way the Food and Drug Administration under this nominee has handled the investigation of Ketek shows the agency would like to keep its business secret.

This gives us a very clear understanding of how Hatch defines a “man of integrity.”
 

The Rise of the Hatch-et-man

In the gospel according to Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the R now stands for regulation. It has been somewhat difficult for him taking large sums of money from the supplement industry and Big Pharma at the same time; however, after 30 years of Senate politicking Hatch-et-man has talking out of both sides of his mouth down to a science. And unfortunately for the supplement industry, he takes the most money from Big Pharma. He has even been able to completely forget that Republican core values center around less government regulation, not more - especially when such regulation is totally unnecessary.

Under the false guise of consumer safety, Hatch-et-man was clearly the driving force that ramrodded AER (Adverse Event Reporting) legislation for dietary supplements, without any testimony or hearings, through the Senate and the House. The net effect of the legislation will be to remove therapeutic nutritional supplements from the market, health options millions of Americans count on to remain well. This is a favor to Big Pharma, not the supplement industry.

Of course, Democrats love the smell of any legislation smacking of increased regulation of health care, thus they pounced on the bill, driving it through the House with Democrats voting 134-4 to pass it. This is the first of many bills the Democrats will endorse in the coming months to undermine the supplement industry. Leading the charge against health freedom will be the Big Pharma Democrat cartel. This group is composed of the vitamin-hating Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), along with Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and Senator Hilary Clinton (D-NY). These Big Pharma sponsors are sure to pile on in the coming months.

Now there are those out there who think Hatch-et-man is a friend of the supplement industry, based on his long ago support of DSHEA. Well times have change. Hatch-et-man wears a supplement industry suit and has a heart of Big Pharma gold. His veins are icy cold, filled with a synthetic FDA-approved blood.

Emboldened by his rise to power as a profit broker between Big Pharma, the FDA, and the supplement industry, Hatch-et-man actually started to publicly spill the beans. Maybe all the idiots in the supplement industry that either supported the AER legislation or did little or nothing to stop it will start to wake up.

In his December 6, 2006 Senate testimony he tells us that he has spoken to Andrew von Eschenbach to ensure that the FDA will more vigorously pursue supplement companies. His AER legislation was crafted with the help of over twenty meetings with the supplement-despising FDA. He pays special thanks to David Dorsey, a Senator Kennedy's staffer, once a top FDA lawyer, who was instrumental in drafting the bill, and his own Bruce Artim who has now, but not surprisingly, moved on to a top position at Eli Lilly. 

Yes, our wonderful Big Pharma-sponsored legislative system has now produced draconian supplement-regulating legislation that could easily obliterate natural therapeutic health options from planet earth, the true competition to Big Pharma profits.

In Part 2 of this report I will explain how Hatch-et-man accomplished the sell out of health options and health freedom for Americans, with special help from traitors within the supplement industry itself.

Click here for part  2

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Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, educator, and author. Listen to him live every Tuesday evening at 8 P.M. (CST) on TruthInWellnessRadio.

Richards encourages individuals to take charge of their health, stand up for their health rights, and not blindly succumb to propaganda from the vested-interests who profit from keeping Americans sick. Author of Mastering Leptin, the Leptin Diet, and Fight for Your Health, Richards is now joining forces with health freedom leaders in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Charter Member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists (IAACN) (since 1991) Richards has presented hundreds of educational classes to health professionals and individuals who want to take charge of their health!