Disastrous Sen. Durbin Anti-Supplement Amendment Offered -- Help Stop It!

[MachineGhost]

The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (S.3187) is a bill that is considered “must-pass”? legislation and without notice, Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Blumenthal offered their anti-supplement amendment (No. 2127) to the bill.  Their amendment creates duplicative, unnecessary, and unexpected new regulations while upending current law and the regulatory process.

As you know, Sen. Durbin has engaged in this sort of dirty-trick legislative process before in an attempt to regulate away your supplements.  The amendment will:

• Circumvent the FDA’s New Dietary Ingredient Industry Guidance. FDA and the dietary supplement industry are currently engaged in conversations regarding implementing a new dietary ingredient notification process. The Durbin amendment creates an entirely new law that would require new FDA regulations, likely erasing nearly two decades of DSHEA’s positive influence in favor of Durbin’s knee-jerk approach to governing.
• Require that a “facility engaged in the manufacturing processing, packing, or holding”? of dietary supplements to register with the FDA. Title III of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 already requires supplement facility registration! Extra regulation drives up costs of supplements.
• Hurt businesses and the economy with burdensome and unexpected new regulations. Supplement manufacturers have thirty days to register their products after marketing or face charges of misbranding. Given that there are thousands of products currently in the market, these regulations will force significant numbers of products off the market as industry adjusts to the new regulations, costing the industry significant revenue, and causing the loss of American jobs. Most importantly, this amendment would drastically limit you access to supplements as companies would likely remove their products from store shelves in order to meet Durbin’s thirty-day deadline.

Contact your Senators IMMEDIATELY and tell them to OPPOSE the Durbin and Blumenthal amendment no. 2127 to the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (S.3187).

[lazyboy]

I signed on to the petition. I agree that there is an irrational bias against supplements, herbs and alternative medical practices in general. And I surmise there is big money behind these efforts from the drug manufacturers.  I think people should have free choice to explore alternative healing practices. Let unbiased evidence (if that truly exists) show what is healthy, what is toxic and what is ineffective and/or costly. Unfortunately, I suspect and fear that many approved drugs will be shown eventually to be toxic, costly and/or ineffective. There is a deal of money spent  and effort made to discredit supplements while criticism of allopathic drugs is usually suppressed in the media.  However, I think the government and FDA should be concerned about maintaining the purity of the supplements that are sold.

[MachineGhost]

I signed on to the petition. I agree that there is an irrational bias against supplements, herbs and alternative medical practices in general. And I surmise there is big money behind these efforts from the drug manufacturers.  I think people should have free choice to explore alternative healing practices. Let unbiased evidence (if that truly exists) show what is healthy, what is toxic and what is ineffective and/or costly. Unfortunately, I suspect and fear that many approved drugs will be shown eventually to be toxic, costly and/or ineffective. There is a deal of money spent  and effort made to discredit supplements while criticism of allopathic drugs is usually suppressed in the media.  However, I think the government and FDA should be concerned about maintaining the purity of the supplements that are sold.

Just a minor correction: It wasn't a petition.  It was an actual protest letter sent to your Senators.

Here's a trip down memory lane, with Mel Gibson:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/IV2olDA0w8U

[lazyboy]

Hmm...Well, unfortunately, Mel is the example of the self-fulfilling prophesy: "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you."  

[Benko]

The most useful division of people is not into democrats and republicans, but into those who want to control other people and those who don't.

I don't remember where that paraphrased comment comes from.

[Pointedstick]

The most useful division of people is not into democrats and republicans, but into those who want to control other people and those who don't.

I don't remember where that paraphrased comment comes from.

"Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
- Robert A. Heinlein

[moda0306]

I have to admit, there is a purity to that attitude that I have to respect...

But being walked into a gas chamber for being a Jew, and being forced to contribute to FICA to fund a stable minimum retirement income of older people, to me, are two different forms of control and we probably should be careful about equating mass murder with social stabilizers.

Yes, the ultimate consequence of refusal to pay FICA is arrest or death (if you attempt an armed resistance to the tax man), but ANY level of government, no matter how apparently voluntary, could probably have an identifiable level of coercion to it.