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The War on Natural Healthcare – Reporting from the Frontline
Eve Hillary’s Campaign UPDATE on
CODEX, TGA, and Joint Tasman Treaty in AUSTRALIA NZ Region – Simplifying the
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Would you like to have a choice in your health care –between drugs or natural remedies when appropriate? Or would you like to be forced into expensive drug based treatments even if a simple natural and effective remedy is available? If so, stop reading and go back to sleep. If you want freedom of choice in healthcare, or if you want to stay in the natural health industry then please read on.
Have you ever taken a natural product, a supplement, or herb and felt a healthy benefit? Yes? That’s hardly surprising since the food chain is now toxic and depleted of essential nutrients – any goodness is bound to make you feel better. Have natural products ever made you better when nothing else could? You are not alone. Most Australians and New Zealanders have used natural health care products and supplements. (The drug companies have also noticed this and are now out to get their market share.) Would you like to continue to take nature’s remedies and have easy access to supplements? Or would you rather in future, have to wangle a prescription for a supplement from a doctor who has never studied nutritional medicine - only to find that the chemist can only sell you miniscule amounts – less than is in a fast food meal – made by a big drug company- and charge you up to 3000 times more than you pay now for a healthy therapeutic amount made by the natural health industry? That’s what will happen if we allow the drug companies to take over the natural health industry. That’s what has already happened in countries like Germany and France who have voluntarily adopted the CODEX standards. Australia is moving like the midnight express toward that scenario. And your professional organisations representing your interests are not telling you the truth because their relationships with Canberra are too important to them. If you want to continue accessing therapeutic amounts of your natural supplements at a reasonable price - if you want to continue taking your supplements, recommending them to others, practicing natural healthcare, or manufacturing natural health products, then you need to read this so we can all do something about this problem and not just leave it to a few battle fatigued health freedom warriors.
My April, 2005 research and analysis connected some nasty dots that various folk didn’t want connected and released facts that were meant to stay mouldering under a pile of political compost. Meanwhile power brokers in Canberra were delivering the natural health care industry into the hands of the drug companies at the cost of Australian and New Zealander’s health and livelihoods. Here’s a summary of these findings. If you’re already up with the TGA,CODEX, and JTA issues then skip to Part II – News From the Front.
Part I
What Your “Representatives” Did Behind your Back – A Short History
A virtual tsunami of secret action was taken against the Natural Health industry after Pan Pharmaceuticals was closed down by the TGA in early 2003. Pan was the fourth largest supplier of natural ingredients in the world, and privately owned. It was serious competition to the drug industry, which was taking steps to get into the supplement market. This included Wyeth, a multinational drug company chiefly making drugs and vaccines, which was looking to expand its supplement range into this region. Pan had a problem with one of its products, but was not given a chance to fix this product before the TGA closed the company down, and all of its 1400 other natural health products were ordered removed from the shelves by the regulator. Health food shops and chemist’s shelves were stripped nearly bare of product overnight. Pan was placed into the hands of a corporate liquidator which was well known as a consultant to the multinational pharmaceutical industry. Pan was disposed of (in record time) only six months later for a miniscule fraction of its true value, destined never to be a serious competitor to the drug companies again.
Two weeks after the TGA raided Pan, the regulator claimed that the public’s confidence in the Australian supplement industry had been undermined. This was done deliberately by the TGA after creating mass consumer panic by calling a class one recall on vitamins, minerals and other health supplements. Class one meant the TGA claimed that Pan’s vitamins, minerals and other supplements had caused death or serious injury when in fact nobody had died of any of Pan’s supplements or anyone else’s supplements. (Interestingly the TGA did NOT call a class one recall on VIOXX, when the drug, made by a multinational pharmaceutical company, in fact did cause thousands of deaths.) Why had the TGA created the panic that caused thousands of Natural health care consumers to wonder if their days were numbered when there was no evidence that anyone had been harmed by the supplements at all?
Two weeks after TGA shut down Pan, it formed a “Special Committee” to sort out the “problems” in the supplement industry. This TGA committee consisted of mainly pharmaceutical front organisations such as ASMI (Australian Self Medication Industry) and others who represented the interests of dozens of multi national pharmaceutical companies. The committee even included the Vice President of operations of Wyeth, the pharmaceutical giant who was in direct competition with Pan in the supplement market. In short, the regulator had put “Dracula in charge of the blood bank” and now Dracula was put in charge of “protecting the interests of the public” – as the TGA slogan goes. And here’s what happened next.
After Pan, the TGA, now stacked with drug company interests, began a regulating frenzy – scouring through the natural health industry like a bad case of the runs. The TGA closed dozens of companies, fined others and imposed crippling compliance fees on the rest of the mainly Australian based supplement industry. This created a nationwide shortage of natural health products and eliminated much of the multi national pharmaceutical industry’s local competition- “levelling the playing field”. Not satisfied with corrupting itself, acting outside its legal powers and doing the bidding of the international drug companies the TGA now had to take steps to cover its bared administrative buttocks.
TGA-REGULATOR Plans to Fly by Night – Puts Monkey in Charge of Peanuts
Later in 2003 the health Ministers of Australia and New Zealand signed the international Joint Tasman Treaty (JTA), without any public consultation or debate. The treaty is structured to form the legal foundation for a new regulator of therapeutic goods, including supplements, called the trans-Tasman Agency, intended to replace the TGA which was intended to disappear on or before July 1, 2005. Why? The TGA, is a statutory body, established by an act of Parliament existing to “protect the interests of the public”. In its present form the TGA is liable to be sued by angry Aussies and Kiwis whose business it had ruined for no good reason, except to give the drug companies a leg up. (The TGA’s name is now so closely identified with corporate vested interests, self serving and corrupt practices that there are increasing numbers of lawyers who will now gladly accept cases against the TGA for its victims’ financial losses during its regulatory feeding frenzy.) The TGA’s track record is rife with the potential for serious allegations of corruption, financial mismanagement, and conflict of interest issues that will become an embarrassment when the TGA is investigated.
So Voila! The shape shifting regulator plans to escape into another jurisdiction! Unlike the TGA, the proposed new regulator, the trans-Tasman agency will not be a statutory authority. It is set on the back of an international JTA treaty - located in an international jurisdiction. It has a corporate structure - no longer accountable – out of the voter’s reach and away from even the longest arm of the law and the Australian Courts. The Australian and New Zealand governments have created an offshore corporation so multi national pharmaceutical corporations could become therapeutic goods regulators without the threat of being sued. This new structure has been set up and waits for the New Zealand and Australian Parliament to pass the Implementing Legislation, which was previously intended to be slipped through without public consultation by July 1, 2005. However, those in charge of implementing the scheme are increasingly finding it to be so harebrained, impossibly complex and unworkable that its deadline was extended to on or before July 1, 2006. But wait the sneakiest is yet to come!
If implemented the new regulator would then reside in an international jurisdiction, the same jurisdiction as the World health organisation’s CODEX. This international jurisdiction would automatically honour the terms of the world trade organisation (WTO) and any other international treaties or global organisations that existed out there in never-land where the corporations and their global institutions reside. This means that any recommendations made by CODEX committees about supplements would AUTOMATICALLY APPLY! (Remember in never-land, Bubbles is at the helm. Do you want a monkey in charge of your health? No? Then you might like to keep the TGA in Australia long enough to conduct a Parliamentary enquiry into its practices and scrap the JTA treaty and its new regulator altogether.
Part II NEWS FROM THE FRONT
CODEX “Recommendations” about Supplements
“In short, the argument whether the TGA regulates supplements as drugs is mute. The TGA will no longer exist this time next year. The plan was ingenious: Don’t bring CODEX to Australia – but deliver Australia to CODEX on the back of an international treaty”. Quote- Eve Hillary
Meanwhile this year the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for special dietary uses, met in Rome. This committee makes recommendations which can find their way into law when they are enacted by various nations through their Parliaments or Congress. While health freedom activists all over the world try to prevent their country from accepting them, Australia and New Zealand were planning to send their regulator to CODEX on the back of a treaty to automatically accept CODEX. Maybe it’s because we’re down-under that we do these things down-side up.)
An offspring of the UN/WHO, this CODEX committee has met each year with delegates from 96 countries and scores of delegates representing the interests of massive multi-national drug and food conglomerates. Remember these corporations want to set the “industry standards” and get a monopoly on supplements. These individuals, unelected by anyone, have been busy making recommendations over the past 10 years, which if implemented into law would be deciding whether you and I are allowed to have vitamins, minerals and oils, and if so, which ones and how many, and which forms. This committee and its corporate delegates are also in the process of setting the maximum limits on supplements, totally disregarding the fact that therapeutic doses and maintenance doses of supplements have been set by nutritional medicine protocols and produced by natural health manufacturers and used SAFELY and effectively by consumers for over 100 years! THERE ALREADY ARE STADARDS. Why set new ones allowing only preposterously low “upper limits” of such supplements - doses that would hardly be sufficient to prevent a nutrient deficiency disease?
Ok, let’s do the maths. In Germany where the CODEX standards have been voluntarily accepted, a tube of ten, 60 mg vitamin C effervescent tablets (maximum 60 mg dose available only at the pharmacy), is purported to cost over A$25. This dose per tablet is not a therapeutic dose and is hardly adequate to prevent a vitamin C deficiency in a person who has no other source of vitamin C. In Australia vitamin C powder is still available in therapeutic doses for use as a complementary treatment for persons with chronic diseases, burns, CFS and even cancer. A dose of 1000 mg costs about 14 cents. A level teaspoon of powdered Aussie or New Zealand (Kiwi) vitamin C is roughly equivalent to 3000 mg., a common daily dose– costing 42 cents. The German 60 mg C tablet is useless in therapeutic treatment of illness. The German C costs the equivalent of $40 per 1000 mg. and you can’t even get as much as 1000 mg in one entire container. The German C is manufactured by a multinational drug company. It costs 3000 times more than the dose equivalent of Aussie or Kiwi vitamin C manufactured by the local natural health industry which costs about 42 cents for 3000 mg. compared with the German dose equivalent costing $120 for an average Aussie daily dose. The corporate bottom line is profit and the consumer ends up with a useless product.
This will be just one possible future scenario if Australians and New Zealanders don’t stop the Joint Tasman Treaty, which if enacted will automatically enact CODEX recommendations, including new upper micro-dose limits on supplements that are being set now. In that case at least 250 ingredients will disappear out of supplement products and be replaced with micro doses for inflated prices. Multi-level marketing companies and others will be required to reformulate their products and pay more for their raw ingredients. Those who doubt that scenario should be reminded that many companies have already been forced to reformulate their products and there have already been price rises and product disappearances, flowing on from TGA “regulatory” actions. Under CODEX, product prices will rise steeply and low dose products will not be effective, making it difficult for distributors and retailers to sell an expensive and useless supplement. Personally I will be heading for the hills to forage on wild bush tucker - that is if the regulator hasn’t set an upper limit on wattle seeds or lillipillies.
Stop Shooting the Messenger and GET With the PROGRAM!
In the many years that I’ve been writing and speaking professionally I have never encountered an aftershock greater than after releasing this information on my Australia wide CODEX information briefings. While travelling throughout the eastern states, I was careful to expose the information by showing only primary documents and sources from legal and government sites and connecting the dots for people. This, however, registered as a major event on the corporate Richter scale. At first I was slightly bemused. However, when mysterious persons heckled, or attempted to disrupt the briefings only to slip out the side door before question time, I was left wondering. Some politicians came. Before a briefing an MP hissed through clenched teeth; “there’s NOTHING to worry about”– then beat a hasty exit from the room before halftime. Other MPs thanked me from the bottom of their heart for coming out with the data and raising the issues. Tragic stories emerged from persons in the audience with the courage to stand up and publicly share scores of stories about being bullied by the TGA; about containers of natural products being confiscated and never returned, about TGA threats and fines and orders to stop trading indefinitely, about people having to retest products, retest again, relabel, and destroy stocks, about people being put out of business by the regulator, about people being tied up by TGA confidentiality agreements. All this emerged like a poisonous boil being lanced in public for the first time. Some visibly trembled while telling their stories. One woman turned deathly pale as her husband revealed their tale of TGA harassment. Some said they had been warned by TGA not to come to my briefings or there might be (regulatory) consequences to their business. Some couldn’t bear to tell their stories in public and waited for a private moment to share it with me. A few stood up and told inspiring stories about successfully standing their ground against the TGA and winning because the regulator had no legal entitlement to back its intended actions. One proprietor did not consent to the TGA coming onto the premises and the men in suits never returned with their outrageous demands, leaving the business and its proprietors alone.
Suddenly however, persons on TGA committees wrote poisonous articles, attacking me personally and not the issues. Peak body organisations representing supplement manufacturers, and practitioners as well as MLM companies distributed a flurry of TGA bulletins and one or two poison pen articles, misinforming their some combined 80,000 members, a clear breach of their duty of care to their members. Other MLM (multi-level marketing) companies came on side. Many persons high on the food chain privately told me they agreed with my information but they would not jeopardise their relationship with Canberra to come out in support of me publicly. Canberra is where the big corporations hold sway and the small business people are sold out regularly. A place where strange bedfellows sleep together. Where cockamamie schemes are conceived. Fortunately, some involved with the ill conceived JTA treaty and the new agency quietly leaked their opinions about it. The consensus was: it’s a bloody nightmare and unworkable.
The WINS are COMING!
Understandably, nothing was featured of my CODEX information campaign in the mainstream media, which relies enormously on pharmaceutical company advertiser’s revenue. But local TV and radio stations covered the events. The independent international media contacted me frequently, whenever they wanted to know about Australian CODEX politics. There are now more people in the world getting their news from independent internet news sources than plug into the mainstream media which features only what corporate sponsors want. People power and independent media is emerging strongly this year as the mainstream media is being increasingly identified as a purveyor of manufactured news and political spin-doctoring.
History was made this year when Australians gathered for a demonstration in Canberra, joining the rest of the world in protesting against CODEX and standing up for freedom of choice in health care. As a result of the CODEX information campaign hundreds of people have written to their MPs and others about moves to shift the regulator into a CODEX jurisdiction. Pollies are beginning to reply, but unfortunately only with the TGA whitewash. Some MP’s however are demonstrating a working knowledge of the issues and their replies are informed. We thank you for hearing our concerns even though the present government has a Senate majority and is shooting Bills through Parliament ten to a dozen without letting anyone read or debate them properly.
Happily, the worn out TGA fairy tales are addressed with the myth-buster information at the end of this article as well as a sample reply letter found on my website www.evehillary.org These tools will be useful to anybody who’s been bamboozled by the TGA’s verbose hogwash contained in official letters about CODEX, TGA or JTA and wants to reply to their peak body representatives, their MLM companies or those MPs who don’t get it yet. Scores of organisations, businesses and people have come on board this year after hearing the truth. Many more are on the way. I predict that next year the ill-conceived JTA treaty will have to be scrapped, and the TGA will be investigated.
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CODEX, TGA and JTA MythBusters
Myth 1. Codex only sets standards for food. Codex Australia is part of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and forestry.
Truth: Australia is also a delegate member of the CODEX alimentarius Commission of the UN/WHO sponsored CODEX committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary uses. Its minutes of the 2003 session specifically states in its table of contents that it is involved in setting the “proposed draft guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.” The Australian delegation, Mrs Janine Lewis of Food Standards Australia New Zealand has participated in this process.
Myth 2. CODEX standards relate to food only, they have no influence or status in the regulation of Australian therapeutic goods.
Truth: CODEX committee Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary uses has been working on step 5 of the Proposed Draft guidelines for Vitamin and mineral supplements. The minutes document of the 2003 session defines vitamins and mineral supplements as…”sources in concentrated forms of those nutrients alone or in combinations, marketed in forms such as capsules, tablets, powders, solutions, etc not in conventional food form and whose purpose is to supplement the intake of vitamins and/or minerals.” This relates to nutritional supplements.
Myth 3. “The draft CODEX guidelines for vitamin and mineral food supplements specifically states that they apply in countries where vitamin and mineral supplements are regulated as food.” (TGA fact sheet)
Truth: This is a tricky piece of doublespeak. The minutes of the 2003 session of the CODEX document referred to above states; “these guidelines do apply in those jurisdictions where products defined in 2.1 [vitamins and minerals] are regulated as foods.” It does not say that the guidelines ONLY apply to those regulating vitamins as foods but that they do apply as well.
Myth: 4. “As these types of products [supplements] are regulated as medicines in Australia, they will not be affected by the proposed [CODEX] guidelines.” (Senator Patterson, TGA)
Truth: Where in the CODEX guidelines does it say that? In fact supplements in Australia are regulated and classed as therapeutic goods under the Therapeutic Goods Act. 1989. “Therapeutic goods” is not defined by the TGA so we do not know what is meant by this word, but therapeutic use is defined in the JTA treaty as; “preventing, diagnosing, curing or alleviating a disease, ailment, defect or injury in humans; Influencing, inhibiting or modifying and physiological process in humans...” Under that definition water could be classed as a therapeutic good. Could water be defined as a medicine? Or a drug?
The latest minutes of the CODEX Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Purposes, 2005, has made reference in paragraph 14 to jurisdictions that regulate supplements as drugs wanting to be exempt from the recommendations. However, there is no evidence the TGA regulates supplements as drugs, only therapeutic goods.
Finally, An important quote from the TGA; “The current Australian regulatory framework for complementary medicines under Therapeutic goods Act 1989 is not subject to the standards and guidelines of the CODEX …Commission. It is administered by the TGA and provides Australians with timely access to complementary medicines that are safe and of high quality.” (Author’s note; that’s the “current framework” but what about the new regulatory framework proposed under the JTA treaty?)
Answer: According to Christopher Pyne’s press release dated 9 February 2005, “the Joint regulatory agency will replace the TGA…on 1 July 2006, although if the scheme is ready before then it could start earlier.” Therefore it would appear that all the official reassurances are irrelevant if and when the TGA ceases to exist in a few months time. The new agency is located on the back of the JTA treaty and the regulator goes into an international jurisdiction where CODEX applies automatically along with WTO and other treaties.
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Keep up the fantastic work everybody and know you’re making headway with every action, no matter how small, that is aligned with the honest to God truth. This is a victory we need if we want health freedom. From your fantastic responses, and the many responsible businesses and organisations coming to understand this issue better, it looks like we’re going to make it! Keep up the good work next year. Please send these e-mails around to your lists and go to my website for more campaign suggestions that you can do, including template letters you can send. And have an enjoyable holiday season.
For those who want all the references please go to my website www.evehillary.org and click onto the CODEX article which will have at least 5 pages of sources and references listed including the primary documents. There are also campaign tools there for you to use. If you’re not a letter writer, your sincere prayers for this Health Freedom Campaign would be much appreciated.
About Eve Hillary
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