FDA moves closer to criminalizing herbs, vitamins, and minerals

As of April 2011, herbal medicines will require full licensing throughout the European Union. And in any European country after this date it will be illegal to sell or supply any herbal medicine that has not been licensed.

Of the hundreds of herbal remedies under threat of being classified as a controllable medicinal herb are Cascara bark, Pau D’Arco, winter cherry, Skullcap, Meadowsweet, Horny goat weed, and even peppermint.

Europe’s population will now be forced to obtain a doctor’s prescription and rely on pharmaceuticals instead of using natural methods of healing found in herbal remedies and nutritional supplements. By eliminating natural alternative healing methods, the pharmaceutical industry has, in effect, eliminated their only competition.

EU Restrictions Coming to US

The EU restriction and outlawing of herbs is slowly taking shape in the U.S. by way of FDA superintendence. Last February, the FDA sent a Warning Letter to the president and CEO of Diamond Foods claiming the company’s walnuts are drug products in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA came to this conclusion solely because the company suggested walnuts are beneficial to human health.

The FDA has also menaced cherry growers with an injunction letter threatening legal penalties and jail time for suggesting that cherries reduce inflammation and pain based on Harvard scientific research.

FDA Moves to Ban Vitamins and Natural Minerals

And now The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) reports the US Food and Drug Administration recently sent a warning letter to McGuff Pharmaceuticals, ordering the company to stop manufacturing and distributing intravenous vitamin C.

Intravenous vitamin C is used to directly attack pathogens and cancer cells and oral doses of Vitamin C lack the necessary concentration to achieve that end.

The FDA letter tells the firm, “You manufacture and market unapproved new drugs in violation of sections 505(a) and 502(f)(1) [21 U.S.C. §§ 355(a) and 352(f)(1)] of the Act”—that is, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or FD&C.

The letter goes on to specify which “unapproved new drugs” are being targeted: various formulations of injectable (intravenous) vitamin C, magnesium chloride, and B complex 100.

Magnesium chloride (a natural mineral), and B complex 100, writes ANH, are routinely added to intravenous C to make the “Myers Cocktail,” used especially for conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, and infectious diseases such as hepatitis, AIDS, mononucleosis, and flu.

ANH believes the FDA is not going after the Myers Cocktail directly, but is instead “attacking each individual substance used to make the cocktail, and may conceivably be going after injectable vitamins and minerals in general, despite such injections being given under the care of a qualified physician.”

The acting director of the Compliance Branch of the FDA told ANH-USA that any other company unable to show an exemption or prove that it has taken IV C through the drug approval protocols would be subject to a similar order to cease production and distribution.

IV C Research and Studies

ANH claims IV C is being used in burn units around the world, including in the US, and has been adopted by the military for this purpose, but the National Institutes of Health (NIH) refuses to fund any studies using intravenous C in patients.

A team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice, vitamin C and potentially other antioxidants, can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors. And there are privately funded studies currently underway, but as ANH notes, these cannot continue if the FDA bans IV C.

In 2008, The Washington Post reported that in a study published in the Aug. 4-8 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Mark Levine, chief of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Molecular and Clinical Nutrition Section, and his colleagues found that intravenous vitamin C produced hydrogen peroxide, which reduced cancerous tumors in mice by 43 percent to 51 percent. The mice had ovarian, pancreatic and brain cancer.

Levine claims it’s virtually impossible for people to overdose on vitamin C since the body only ingests a certain amount through the mouth and then stops allowing it to build up. As a result, researchers have found that they can disrupt the body’s “tight control” over vitamin C levels by giving the nutrient intravenously and bypassing the digestive system, Levine said.

In 2006, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an article detailing three cases in which patients with advanced cancer benefited from high-dose intravenous vitamin C.

Last week, the Vancouver Sun reported that a Canadian Clinic in Ontario has several cancer patients receiving vitamin C intravenously.

According to naturopathic doctor Denis Marier who administers IV C to cancer patients at the Canadian Clinic for Integrative Medicine in Ontario, there is a growing interest in vitamin C infusions from cancer patients doing their own research.

Cherries, Walnuts, Vitamins, Minerals — What’s Next?

As ANH points out, the government, instead of banning intravenous vitamin C, should alternatively be supporting research into its efficacy; but therein lies the problem: any substance used to treat disease — even fruits and nuts — is considered a drug by the FDA, and drugs must be patented and go through the drug approval process, because only “drugs” manufactured by pharmaceutical companies are permitted to treat disease.

It should be clear to anyone by now that the FDA, AMA and pharmaceutical companies have demonstrated time after time that they have a vested interest in suppressing natural alternative approaches to healing. Liberty means have a choice to choose our own personal path to healing, and overcoming dis-ease.

As Mike Adams with Natural News notes, the larger issue is why do unelected regulatory bureaucrats have such power in the first place.

While we may elect lawmakers in America today, says Adams, those lawmakers have long since delegated the real “laws of the land” to bureaucratic agencies like the FDA which are run by unelected politicians who simply write their own laws and regulations without the approval of Congress.