[Mb-civic] codex update

[IHHS at aol.com]

just FYI, b  
Codex  update 
European court  cases stall pharmaceutical companies' plans to control 
natural  supplements. 
Dateline: Sunday, October 02, 2005  
by Helke Ferrie  
What do airplanes, pharmaceutical drugs and Codex Alimentarius have in  
common? Answer: a black box. When an airplane crashes, its black box, retrieved  
from the wreckage, contains the record of events up to the moment of the crash  
and enables analysts to determine the cause of the tragedy. The US Federal 
Drug  Agency (FDA) "blackboxes" a drug when post-marketing experience shows it 
killed  a lot of people and frequently produces potentially fatal side effects. 
Doctors  are informed accordingly in the US and Canada. When consulting the  
annually-updated CPS (Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties), you will  
see literally a black box under such drugs with warnings printed inside.  
Codex Alimentarius is a black box containing most of what you wish you didn't 
 have to know about the transformation of medical science into a purely  
iatrogenic enterprise. The late Ivan Illich coined the word "iatrogenic" from  the 
Greek iatros, meaning "physician" and genesis, meaning "creating".  
Iatrogenesis refers to physician-caused illness. Codex is the political  equivalent of 
the current toxicology manuals because it endorses and promotes  for 
international trade and consumption in the whole wide world everything from  pesticides 
to irradiation, genetically engineered foods and synthetic analogs  for drugs 
and nutrients in preference to bio-compatible natural substances.  
   
Codex does have the power to impose regulations that  could restrict the 
availability of vitamins  worldwide. 
The Codex black box was opened a crack by the April 5 opinion handed down by  
Justice Leendert A Geelhoed, the European Union Advocate General, who 
happened  to refer to the arbitrary powers of the Codex-supporting EU legislation as 
being  "about as transparent as a black box". The box was opened wider on July 
12th  when the European Court of Justice provided a ruling for the EU that 
zeroed in  on the central problem of the entire Codex exercise, namely the 
preference for  synthetic over natural medicinal substances. This is key to 
understanding Codex,  why EU legislation can affect Canada and the US, and what the 
current health  freedom movement wants to achieve.  
Their rulings both came in response to legal challenges launched by Dr Robert 
 Verkerk, the executive director of the UK Alliance for Natural Health (_ ANH 
www.natural-health.org_ (http://www.natural-health.org/) ). His litigation 
questioned  Codex's supporting EU legislation. Dr Verkerk said in a telephone 
interview on  September 16: "It is a serious mistake for you in Canada and the 
US to believe  that whatever happens here in Europe will not happen to you."  
By virtue of its mandate from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its  
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Codex does have the power to impose  
regulations on the world that restrict the dosages of and even the very  
availability of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, amino acids, enzymes,  essential 
fatty acids, probiotics as well as traditional Chinese, Aryuvedic and  other 
old systems of medicine. Codex would have succeeded in doing just that in  
Europe in August of this year, if the ANH hadn't gone to court.  
   
In 1990-2000 about 7.8 million victims suffered death  from properly 
prescribed and implemented  medications. 
To understand how all this hangs together we need to go back to the beginning 
 of this process: On November 6, 2001, the European Parliament tabled 
Directive  2001/83/EC, which states in section 2 and 3 of its preamble the following: 
"The  essential aim of any rules governing the production, distribution and 
use of  medicinal products must be to safeguard public health. However, this 
objective  must be attained by means which will not hinder the development of 
the  pharmaceutical industry or trade in medicinal products within the European  
Community."  
However, since 2001, several factors have shaken the public's faith in  
pharmaceuticals. For example, the International Committee of Medical Journal  
Editors updated its guidelines in October 2004 and specifically warned against  all 
the ways that pharmaceutical sponsorship could influence journal articles.  
_www.icmje.org/#conflicts_ (http://www.icmje.org/#conflicts)   
Dr Carolyn Dean has written, in Death by Modern Medicine that in  1990-2000 
about 7.8 million victims suffered death from properly prescribed and  
implemented medications. In particular, she stated that "There have been 140,000  
fatal or near fatal reactions to Vioxx; one third of the millions of women who  
took fen-phen, the weight loss drug, suffered heart and lung damage; heart  
disease is caused by Celebrex and all the other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory  
drugs; Prozac is causing suicides and homicides as well as heart disease... "  
A new book, Selling Sickness, by Ray Moynihan, charges that  pharmaceutical 
companies are quite deliberately trying to sell drugs to people  who aren't 
sick at all — these being a much larger market than actual sick  people.  
Big Pharma has demonstrated that it fully understands that its products do  
not work, often kill, and usually harm, as proven by the research they  
themselves did to establish the toxicity of their products but then hid from the  
regulators (see Let Them Eat Prozac). Big Pharma staff understands the superior  
biochemistry of natural substances. Recently, the prestigious British 
Institute  for Science and Society (ISIS) put the whole puzzle together: 
_www.i-sis.org.uk/CFV.php_ (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/CFV.php)   
ISIS reports that pharmaceutical corporations have started to buy up vitamin  
and mineral companies. Merck has acquired Lamberts, and Wyeth bought Solgar.  
Virtually all raw materials for supplements are produced by the big  
pharmaceutical companies, such as Bayer and Hoffman-La Roche. "In fact," Sam Burcher 
reports on ISIS's website, "drug companies have gained control of food  
supplements through pharmaprinting, the result of collaboration between  PharmaPrint 
Inc and the University of Miami. Pharmaprinting is a technology that  isolates 
and measures the bioactivity of an active compound of any plant or  natural 
remedy and replicates it in a laboratory. These compounds are  standardized as 
pharmaceuticals for government approval [necessary for  patenting]. Patents 
are currently pending on pharmaceutical versions of some of  the most useful 
herbal remedies such as St John's Wort (for depression),  Echinacea (immune 
function) Ginko Biloba (brain function), Saw Palmetto  (prostate function) and mi
stletoe (alternative cancer treatment)."   
   
ISIS reports that pharmaceutical corporations have  started to buy up vitamin 
and mineral  companies. 
Subsequent clinical trials cost about $ 6.5 million per product and gaining  
patent protection costs another half a million dollars. The whole process 
takes  five years. ISIS observes that, "investors are reluctant to commit unless 
market  exclusivity is assured. One way of creating an exclusive market is to 
ban or  remove natural remedies. The existing US health care market is 
estimated to be  worth US $ 1.5 trillion [which] makes it worth manipulating. 
[Therefore] the  'foods as drugs' guidelines laid out by Codex were adopted by 
Australia,  Denmark, Germany and Norway and many products have been co-opted by  
pharmaceutical companies and repacked as drugs. The Health Protection Branch of  
Canada has registered 'natural therapeutic' food products as drugs. Fish oil  
(for joints), cranberry capsules (urinary problems) and hawthorn berries 
(heart)  have all been issued DIN numbers (drug identification number)." ISIS 
concludes,  that "this is a thoroughly disproportionate degree of 'protection' 
imposed on  what are in effect harmless food items, especially when conventional 
drugs kill"  so many people every year.  
Agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations are trans-national. Sound  
business practice requires international harmonization in trade. Because most  171 
Codex member states are also World Trade Organization members, the stage is  
set for world-wide trade harmonization. Ratified Codex guidelines are enforced  
among its members by the WTO court (which operates in secret) as well as by  
CAFTA, NAFTA and several more trade treaties involving Europe, Australia and  
North America. Each of these treaties has clauses referring explicitly to 
Codex  for the simple reason that the major players are the pharmaceutical,  
agricultural and food producing corporations that want to remove every possible  
trade barrier — or, to put it another way: reduce responsibility for quality.  
We live in a world in which corporations hope to create designer customers  
who are offered one-size-fits-all products to make them into corporate engines  
of wealth. Today, the customer is the last resource on earth that is not 
totally  controlled and exploited. Customers who ask questions concerning quality, 
safety  and especially sound science are the only formidable barrier 
remaining to  corporate world control.  
The July 12th ruling of the International Court of Justice in Luxembourg  
followed the July 4th Rome meeting of Codex when the 85 countries present  
ratified these restrictive guidelines for dietary supplements. Canada and the  USA 
were among them. Objections from China and South Africa were ignored. Just  as 
in the original 2001 version, the current guidelines, under Article 6 (2) of  
the EU Directive, strictly prohibit information about diseases being treatable 
 by nutrients and call for future supplement dosage restrictions. Conspiracy? 
No  way! To borrow a phrase by Moynihan and Cassels about Big Pharma's 
tactics in  general: "This is daylight robbery."  
Eight days after the Rome meeting, the International Court of Justice handed  
down a ruling that surprised everyone. The judges conceded that EU countries  
were free to have a law that regulated production and trade in dietary  
supplements, namely the EU Directive, which also forms the basis of the  
international Codex guidelines. However, the judges agreed with the Advocate  General 
Justice Geelhoed who had in April put his finger on a sore spot and  observed 
that there was a rather odd "preference for the inorganic forms [of  vitamins] 
which results in unjustifiable and disproportionate exclusion of their  natural 
forms, which are, nevertheless, common in the normal diet and generally  
better tolerated by the body." Justice Geelhoed had also noted that the  Directive 
requires completely unnecessary toxicity studies: "It would be odd to  start 
the evaluation procedure [of all supplements according to risk assessment  
principles used for toxins and synthetic drugs] from zero again, when it is  
clear that the products concerned have already undergone [tests] establishing  
safety and bioavailability [which should be used] as the existing evaluations as  
a starting point."  
2005 was a close call: had the Alliance for Natural Health not appealed to  
the EU Advocate and then proceeded to the International Court of Justice, 
Europe  would have been the first vast area virtually under complete Big Pharma 
control.  Most vitamins and minerals would have been banned from the European 
market on  August 1 this year, some to return at exorbitant prices after Big 
Pharma had  identified and created patented synthetic analogs.  
Now, however, the game has shifted. Big Pharma is no longer solely in  
control, except in countries that have already adopted these stringent  guidelines, 
such as Denmark, Australia, and especially Germany. I received an  email on 
September 6th from Germany informing me that a bottle of 90 vitamin E  capsules 
now costs 45.50 Euros, which is about $ 70 — manufactured, patented and  
marketed by a pharmaceutical company and, in limited amounts, available without  
prescription. This price is about seven times higher than in Canada.  
Furthermore, the Court dealt a terrific blow to Big Pharma and the corporate  
agenda by ruling that this restrictive Directive does not apply to vitamins 
and  minerals in their "natural forms", but only to those from "synthetic 
sources or  those derived from a manufacturing process using chemical substances." 
Thus,  natural substances that have necessarily been part of our diet for the 
past  several million years cannot be regulated in a restrictive manner, nor 
can they  be subjected to toxicity studies in the same manner as is necessary 
for  synthetic chemicals used in drugs. The ANH lawyers who led these two legal 
 challenges state that "food supplements in the EU [will] not be classified 
as  drugs and [will be] readily available across the EU."  
However, the battle is far from over. The Court did not forbid the scientific 
 assessment of supplements as part of this international trade harmonization  
process. That means, they can still be subjected to corporate-driven phony  
science and be sold at very high prices in very low dosages to make more money  
from less — which, according to the ANH and Dr Verkerk is exactly what the  
industry now wants to achieve. Whose science will be used? Big Pharma's 
"tobacco  science", or independent science based on actual research, not financed by 
any  industry? The International Court of Justice clearly orders independent  
scientific assessments, but enforcing this is another matter. Dr Verkerk said  
that several leading universities in Europe have joined the health freedom  
movement in order to establish an assessment process that is truly scientific  
and not corporate controlled, to ensure that meaningless low dosages will not  
become the standard. Research institutions and medical organizations in the 
US  are also joining. An international health freedom conference on Codex is 
taking  place in Minneapolis on October 28 – 30th to hammer out strategy.  
Most helpfully, a British filmmaker has produced a documentary on Codex  
entitled "We Become Silent". It will be aired in the US late this year and seen  
by an estimated 25 million people. On Saturday, November 5th, I will be showing 
 it for the first time in Canada at OISE in Toronto (12 noon – 4 pm) and I 
will  report on the results of the Minneapolis conference. The film shows how 
Codex  may affect Canada, unless we all work to protect natural medicine, which  
actually works.  
Sources:  
M Angell, The Truth About The Drug Companies, Random, 2004 (former  editor 
New England Journal of Medicine)  
C Dean, MD, Death By Modern Medicine, Matrix Verite, 2005  
S Ellison, Health Myths Exposed, Author House, 2005 (former drug  designer 
for Big Pharma)  
D Healy, MD, Let Them Eat Prozac, Lorimer, 2003  
J Kassirer, MD, On The Take: How Medicines Complicity With Big Business  Can 
Endanger Your Health, Oxford University Press, 2005 (former editor New  
England Journal of Medicine)  
R Moynihan & A Cassels, Selling Sickness: How The Worlds Biggest  
Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, Nation Books,  2005 (from the 
British Medical Journal and Canada's CBC)  
German-born, Helke Ferrie is the owner and director of KOS Publishing  
(incorporated in Ontario, Canada, in July 2002). Ferrie's education includes  
prehistoric, ancient, Near Eastern and Greek archaeology; Chinese and Buddhist  
studies; and she holds a master's degree in physical anthropology. Her areas of  
special interest are the evolution of disease and the application of Complexity 
 Theory to biological evolution.  

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