OT: Is this true?

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Is this article true? If so, we Lymies are in big trouble.

It was posted on www.lewrockwell.com yesterday.

CR

Hammer Ready To Drop on Supplement Industry After Presidential Election

by Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: Bend the Fed

Major Food & Drug Companies Begin Buying Up Supplement Companies As Drug Patents

Expire.

New FDA Safety Requirements Do Bidding For Pharma Companies Who Want To

Consolidate Industry, Eliminate Competition

After the Presidential election anticipate what amounts to terrorist attacks

upon the dietary supplement industry as regulatory agencies and the news media

do the bidding for big business in a predictable industry takeover now that

vitamin pills are yielding greater profitability and unit sales growth than the

American economy as a whole and drug patent expirations force pharmaceutical

companies to search for replacements for their blockbuster drugs.

Proctor & Gamble and Pfizer, two food and drug giants, announced acquisition of

two dietary supplement companies, making it clear the vitamin pill business is

up for grabs now that it is growing faster than the rest of the economy. One

source predicts the supplement industry will grow at the clip of 9% per year

during 2011-15. For comparison, the entire US economy is in the doldrums with

less than a 2% annual growth rate. This growth is attracting pariahs and

predictable pressure from regulatory agencies to rid the industry of

competition.

The first part of the strategy has been underway for some time – attack the

industry, make false claims products are unsafe, and head off public demand. As

big business buys up these supplement companies so they don't have to pay

millions or even billions of dollars for them if sales are hindered by negative

publicity. So negative news is generated, unfairly claiming dietary supplements

are risky for consumers.

For example, a recent NBC Dateline report, where NBC reporters dug up a

4-year-old case involving a lone derelict company that made a faulty product,

was depicted as what is characteristic in the industry. It's all part of the mud

that the news media has been lobbing at the supplement companies for years now.

How big business will swallow the vitamin pill business

It should not be a surprise that big business can get news agencies to do its

bidding for them. For example, Proctor & Gamble spends $1 billion a year on

advertising. Pfizer spends ~$19 billion a year on marketing and promotion. Ditto

for & .

These companies have clout and can rub out competition in various ways,

including paying off politicians to write legislation that will just make it too

difficult for small competitors to survive in the supplement industry.

The New Dietary Ingredient regulations, which the FDA plans to impose, are an

example. These regulations require new and existing brands of dietary

supplements to undergo costly testing to prove they are safe, even if they have

been safely used in the market place for years. Thousands of dietary supplements

are likely to disappear from store shelves in the near future due to this

requirement.

Another recent example is Rite-Aid drugs stores which hired wellness ambassadors

and placed them in white coats to promote the sales of dietary supplements.

Apparently drug companies caught wind of this successful strategy that was

resulting in consumers purchasing more supplements and fewer drugs. So two US

Senators wrote a strong letter to Rite-Aid alleging these wellness ambassadors

were wearing white coats, making it appear they are pharmacists. It's a bogus

claim and a clear interference with free trade, but nonetheless any successful

strategy to sell dietary supplements instead of drugs is a target for sanctions.

Some attacks against the industry are more direct. Some retail dietary

supplement outlets are being raided without justifiable cause and their products

confiscated.

As the US becomes less and less of a free market and more of a fascist nation as

big business buys off government overseers, the supplement industry can

anticipate more pressure from unseen directions.

Big Pharma exerting its will

As a FoxNews report says: " The world's largest producers of new drugs and

medicines are facing an unprecedented time in their history as a record number

of patents expire and generic drugs swoop in as more affordable alternatives. " A

so-called " patent cliff " has been reached where more and more drug patents are

expiring, billions of dollars of blockbuster drugs.

Americans don't realize the freedoms they have when it comes to dietary

supplements. In Europe, dietary supplements are prescription drugs. Once the

supplement industry is captured by big business, anticipate legislation that

will force vitamin and herbal remedies to be acquired by prescription under the

false guise doctors need to monitor use. Many overseas tourists visiting America

purchase thousands of dollars of dietary supplements to bring home with them.

Foreigners know what it is like for dietary supplements to be restricted.

Why the public continues to take dangerous prescription drugs cannot be easily

explained. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more

people die from such overdoses than from all illegal drugs combined.

Furthermore, accidental prescription drug deaths in the United States each year

now outnumber roadway fatalities.

Compare this with the fact there was not a single death associated with a

dietary supplement in 2010.

Supplement industry sometimes lives up to its reputation

This is not to say the dietary supplement industry hasn't gone off in the wrong

direction from time to time. The industry has a penchant for selling what is

popular, not what works.

Take Sea Silver, a supplement that was avidly purchased by naïve consumers who

were desperately searching for natural remedies for a wide array of maladies –

650 of them in all that Sea Silver's makers said its products cured. The Federal

Trade Commission put that company out of business.

Another over-hyped supplement was Coral Calcium, which was no better than a

plain calcium carbonate supplement yet it was advertised as a cure-all for many

maladies and widely embraced and sold within the dietary supplement industry.

Many a health food store posted sidewalk signs outside their establishments

saying " Coral Calcium here. " It was an embarrassing moment for the retail

supplement industry. For unknown reasons, consumers are susceptible to the most

bogus of health claims attached to dietary supplements.

Sleight of hand against supplements

Oftentimes the supplement industry is unfairly accused of selling ineffective

products. One of the common sleights of hand is to generate studies that are

inherently slanted against supplements. For example, a recent review of the

effectiveness of B vitamins and vitamin E showed that randomized clinical trials

do not reveal a beneficial effect in reducing cardiovascular disease in humans.

But the review also showed that these studies failed to consider confounding

factors, that drugs like aspirin and statin drugs reduced or abolished any

possibility of observed differences in the number of heart attacks between

vitamin pill users and non-users.

Whether you believe supplements are good for you or not, a continued barrage of

publicity leads people to believe that supplements are not controlled by the

Food and Drug Administration and have the potential to do more harm than good.

The FDA does in fact control the manufacture, labeling, and distribution of

supplements. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are subject to legal liability

if their products are impure, improperly labeled, result in side effects when

properly used or when false or unsubstantiated advertising claims are made. And

why is it that the unregulated supplements have a better safety record than the

FDA-approved drugs?

You can fool the people only some of the time

You can only fool some of the people some of the time. There is scientific

evidence that substantiates the widespread use of supplements that cannot be

easily refuted.

The most remarkable is vitamin D, a long overlooked sun-produced hormone/vitamin

that is producing striking health benefits, including declines in the risk for

cancer and diabetes, as well as a reduction in overall mortality. Vitamin D

pills are a 10-cent cure for what ails most people, from the winter blues to

osteoporosis and the common cold.

When noted New York Times health reporter Jane E Brody gives vitamin D her

blessing (she's penned a number of negative reports about vitamin supplements in

the past), you have really convinced a skeptic.

It doesn't look like anything can hide the plethora of positive scientific

reports now being published about vitamin D. As the public adopts vitamin D

pills into their daily health regimens anticipate a measurable improvement in

health parameters, a decline in overall mortality that cannot be easily hidden

and a revelation that modern medicine has for a long time now been gaming a

certain rate of disease into the population by limiting intake of essential

nutrients.

The tactics used by big business are not new. A similar consolidation effort was

made in the retail gasoline market when California required small independent

filling stations to dig out their old underground storage tanks and replace them

with double-lined tanks. This was too costly for the independent stations and

they folded. Gasoline prices then rose dramatically in California without the

price competition. Consumers are surely to lose as the supplement industry is

taken over by big business.

March 23, 2012

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics.

His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest

book is Downsizing Your Body.

Copyright © 2012 Bill Sardi Word of Knowledge Agency, San Dimas, California.

This article has been written exclusively for www.LewRockwell.com and other

parties who wish to refer to it should link rather than post at other URLs.

The Best of Bill Sardi

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