3,561,596 members
12,429,752 petition signatures
$19,571,785,510 diverted from Big Pharma
Supplements Yanked From Canadian Pharmacies
Saddle up the Mounties and sound the alarm, boys — someone’s been caught selling vitamins north of the border.
Canadian health officials are telling pharmacists to pull thousands of perfectly natural supplements from store shelves, as new regulations kick in that they claim will bring order and safety to the vitamin industry.
In reality, all they’ve done is give Big Pharma a chance to tighten the death grip it has on modern medicine. And as those drug companies pad their profits, supplement makers are caught up in a bizarre Catch-22 that could lead to job losses and business failure.
The new rules require supplement makers to have a license to sell their vitamins. But the bureaucrats who issue those licenses are either so overwhelmed or so inept — or both — that they can’t get them out fast enough
Canada’s National Post tells of one little company that makes just two supplements. One’s a homeopathic treatment for diabetes pain, the other is a vitamin. I have no idea if either work — but it may not matter, because neither one’s been given that government blessing yet.
If those two products get the Canadian heave-ho, the company will be toast — or whatever else it is that they burn for breakfast up there.
I hate to break it to them, but they should probably polish up those resumes: There’s an estimated backlog of 10,000 vitamins and supplements waiting for approval.
That’s one hell of a waiting list.
Over six years, the regulators issued around 18,000 licenses. I’m no math whiz, but that’s 3,000 licenses a year — which means it’ll take more than three years to get to everyone still waiting.
This is the precisely the kind of disarray and “regulation” that Big Pharma lives for… because while you can’t get many completely ordinary vitamins and supplements in Canada now, you can still get Avandia.
by Dr. William Campbell Douglass
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It’s a joke without humour!
When I lived in Calgary I set up a business which distributed high quality alive supplements from the US (Ultralife Inc) into Canada. One of my shipments was stopped because on the label there was too much Vit A in a bottle of Synergy – Com 2′s and they wouldn’t accept a specific amino acid.
HOWEVER, it is socially acceptable to kill over 40,000 Brits and over 200,000 (Dr Gary Null) American’s every year through Big Pharma drugs. Did you also know that when Dr’s go on strike (Israel, Canada, Florida) the death rate dropped by 17%.
WAKE UP PLEASE.
Here’s some bedtime reading from Orthomolecular.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 19, 2010
No Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids or Herbs
Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements’ Safety
(OMNS, January 19, 2010) There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2008, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 174-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.
Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John’s wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedies.
Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2008 from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. Two children died as a result of medical use of the antacid sodium bicarbonate. The other “Electrolyte and Mineral” category death was due to a man accidentally drinking sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic degreaser and drain-opener.
No man, woman or child died from nutritional supplements. Period.
61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. NPDS, the authors write, is “one of the few real-time national surveillance systems in existence, providing a model public health surveillance system for all types of exposures, public health event identification, resilience response and situational awareness tracking.”
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.
If nutritional supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,” as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?
Those who wonder if the media are biased against vitamins may consider this: how many television stations, newspapers, magazines, and medical journals have reported that no one dies from nutritional supplements?
Reference:
Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2008annualreport.pdf . Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals, herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages 1047-8.
For Further Reading:
Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1983-2008 free of charge at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/AnnualReports/tabid/125/Default.aspx
Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org
The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
Editorial Review Board:
Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.
Interesting hey. Over to you. Vote with your £ and $.
Sending love and Chi
Magnus A. L. Mulliner
Please stop poisoning our water, we do not need to contaminate our bodies with these chemicals that you don’t know how to dispose of.
Dearest Magnus,
Thank you so much for your comments and the reprint of Orthomolecular.org’s article. I would like to reprint it in my blogging as well. As you’re most likely aware, Codex Alimentarius is behind this assault on our health freedoms. They’re headquartered in Germany by Dr. Rolf Grossklaus. Dr. Grossklaus and his Big Pharma evil cohorts are trying to impose restrictions on our health freedom here in the U.S.!!! It’s an outrage! Dr. Rima Laibow and Major General Bert Stubblebine of the Health Solutions Foundation are at war with Codex – they have assembled a War Council to combat this hellish assault upon our health. An interesting article was released by Dr. Rima Laibow a while back which stated that Dr. Grossklaus who is responsible for removing supplements from the European Union, broke his ankle while playing with his grandchild. To speed his healing process, Dr. Grossklaus took two supplements which are banned in the EU – boron and vanadium – elements that are known to speed bone healing!!! Dr. Laibow stated “…what is very good for the Masters who want to control our health (and lack thereof) is most assuredly NOT deemed to be good for us, the Serfs who are also known, as a term of art by the people who created Codex, as “Useless Eaters.” Here’s the link to Dr. Laibow’s full article: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:pXGJ0UZ3ntUJ:www.mail-archive.com/ctrl%40listserv.aol.com/msg122446.html+Dr.+Laibow+article+on+Dr.+Grossklaus+taking+boron+and+vanadium&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
All my best to you in the fight for our freedoms,
Malibu Kim
The vise tightens yet another notch. CODEX MUST be implemented. WHY? Al Gore’s earth demands a population of 500 million. Rockefeller, Rothschild and their bought and paid for political goons are making it happen.
I just hope that average Canadian citizens find a way to fight back against such an unbelievable breach of their basic human rights to decide what is best for their own bodies. What will be next, a license to sell air?
Prove they work first. Homeopathy doesn’t work beyond placebo. If it did work, it would then be breaking many laws of the physical world.
Be careful what you pray for with CODEX. From what I have read, there will be more control of the food supply, more GMO, more pesticides, more artificial ingredients, the allowance of non-organic items in organic foods, and more. That to me is the opposite direction of where we need to go.
Big AGRA, Big PHARMA, the UN, and WHO say they have the best interests of the population at heart, but as usual “follow the money”, they are the ones who will benefit most from CODEX.
So how bad are things up there? I’m worried that the problems you’re describing will be happening down here in the states soon, and find it hard to believe the US has more freedom here than you do in Canada.
The average Canadian citizen is so out of touch with the reality of the con job that is being planned behind closed doors by the controlling corporate elite and their political minions that even if it hit them in the face like a brick they still would not realize that their basic freedoms are being taken away. There is a popular myth that Canadians are generally well ordered and polite. Don’t be fooled, the truth is that they lack the intestinal fortitude to react to oppression. Please don’t expect an apology if my opinion has offended anyone with what I have just stated. I feel perfectly entitled to make such a remark since I am Canadian myself and have been a witness to this flaw all my life. Rather than “polite” the word “passive” would be more appropriate to describe the average Canadian.
Homeopathy does work. I’ve witnessed Arnica Montana take a fresh purple bruise and turn it a soft pink within a couple of minutes. If an over-the-counter product had been used – the bruise would’ve been an issue for a couple weeks at least. I don’t get how Homeopathy – if it works – breaks physical law??? Energetic medicine is real Mr. Baptise.
As strange as the concept of homeopathy may seem to you, Mr. Baptise, it does work beyond placebo. It has been used as a last resort when allopathic treatments were not reducing mortality in infectious epidemics. The Journal of the American Institute
for Homeopathy, May, 1921, published an article about the use of
homeopathy in the flu epidemic of 1918. Dr. T A McCann,from Dayton, Ohio reported that 24,000 cases of flu treated allopathically had a mortality rate of 28.2% while 26,000 cases of flu treated homeo-pathically had a mortality rate of 1.05%. (This last figure was supported by Dean W.A. Pearson of Philadelphia (Hahnemann College) who collected 26,795 cases of flu treated with homeopathy with the above result.)
As for other research, see:
Bell IR, Lewis DA, 2nd, Brooks AJ et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo. Rheumatology 2004b; 43 (5):577-82.
Chapman EH, Weintraub RJ, Milburn MA et al. Homeopathic treatment of mild traumatic brain injury: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation 1999; 14 (6):521-42.
Witt CM, Ludtke R, Baur R et al. Homeopathic medical practice: long-term results of a cohort study with 3981 patients. BMC Public Health 2005; 5:115. (CONCLUSION: Disease severity and quality of life demonstrated marked and sustained improvements following homeopathic treatment period. Our findings indicate that homeopathic medical therapy may play a beneficial role in the long-term care of patients with chronic diseases.)
There’s plenty more where that came from. And if you are concerned about the quality of the research, you might want to refrain from taking another drug from Big Pharma with the scandals about the “cherry-picking” of studies and downright fraud they perpetrate to sell bad drugs to millions.
Les,
Thank you for your reply. I tried to evaluate the references you provided, where I could find them.
> Witt CM, Ludtke R, Baur R et al. Homeopathic medical practice: long-term results of a cohort study with 3981 patients. BMC Public Health 2005; 5:115.
This study reports in its background, “Patient and physician assessments (numeric rating scales from 0 to 10) and quality of life at baseline, and after 3, 12, and 24 months.” This a purely opinion based piece and does not contain any objective data.
> Journal of the American Institute for Homeopathy, May, 1921
Where is this one located?
> Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo
This study reports in its objective, “Participants were randomized to receive oral daily liquid LM (1/50,000) potencies with an individually chosen homeopathic remedy or an indistinguishable placebo. Homeopathic visits involved joint interviews and concurrence on remedy selection by two experienced homeopaths”. This sounds like another opinion piece without objective data. Also, does “individually chosen homeopathic remedy” refer to something that could be different for each participant? Also, this is a rather small study with only about 50 completing it.
> Homeopathic treatment of mild traumatic brain injury: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Where to start with this one… “Mild traumatic brain injury” covers a large swath of conditions that are not even specified in this study. As a person of repute has indicated to me, “a small tear in the blood-brain barrier over the frontallobe can have very different consequences than one over the left parietal”. The chances of two people having the same problem is very low, and this study covers only 60 people. Additionally, there is no control for variations in injury.
With all due respect, all of these studies are effectively worthless. If you want to present a paper with appropriate controls, not based on patient or doctor opinion, and having objective data, I would be extremely interested. An example, a study treating cancer that effectively reduces or cures the tumour. There are many conditions where there is measurable data.
The problem I have with homeopathy is that it takes a substance (that causes the symptom) and dilutes and shakes, over and over again until there is either nothing left of it or nearly so. Then, as it gets more diluted it gets stronger. Please explain to me what scientific laws validate this approach.
I am fully willing to accept legitimate data and theories, if I were not I would not be posting something of this length. There is a reason why homeopathy is usually bundled up with acupuncture and friends. Acupuncture relies on a sort of ‘energy flow’ that has never been experimentally found to exist.
This is a wake-up call to us in the USA to keep laws from being enacted that reduce or take away our own health freedom like what has happened in Canada. It’s interesting the double-standard for drugs versus supplements. It’s okay for drugs to kill or damage millions of people and they are still often not removed from the market. Supplements and herbs help folks get and stay healthy and kill no one and they supposedly must be heavily regulated and removed from the market! But if people get and stay well, how can the earth’s population be reduced to 500 million as the illuminati groups have written it should be in their long-range plan documents?
Hi have to agree with you 100% , I am Canadian as well, and when I talk to them about these issues, they tell me, “funny I never heard about this on the news” ????
Drink your fluoride water, watch the news, and go back to sleep………..
We are in deep trouble, and this is only the beginning!
Bob – I think Lou is being sarcastic/satirical here.
As a Canadian living, shopping and consuming vitamins/supplements in Canada (for >40 years) availability has never been better. Canadian manufactured as well as International supplied “health products” are found in corner grocery stores, mega grocery stores, health shops, gyms, Walmart, snack bars, etc.
I wouldn’t go to a Pharmacy to buy them anyway.
What’s the big deal?
The “big deal”, VitaminEh, is that it looks as though you are about to lose access to the full range of “health products” that you are taking for granted. The same in the EU; the same in the U.S. Big Pharma has been working on this for years – to make these products classified as ‘drugs’, so that they can come under pharma control. And what Pharma doesn’t want out there as competition – Pharma gets. Plus they buy up the competition, and make available but synthetic versions of food substances; not the same thing. I’m not really sure that you were serious about your post. Don’t you get the point of what’s going down?? It’s serious business.
altho i wasnt sold on homeopathy, when having difficulties, i tried, (why not) some remedies from a friend, and was amazed at the result. yes, they do work, and some infallably. in my experience. how do they work? i am not that knowledgeable about it, but i think they work with subtle energy fields among other things, and for people who dont even believe it will work. i think it is more than placebo
Ouch. Unbelievable. This takes Canada off my list of possible places to retire to for half the year when it’s warm up there. I couldn’t get across the border with my vitamins, so they would keep me out anyway.
And ‘on borders’, I think the passport requirement is another means to keep people ‘sedementary’, because then they are easier to control, being in one place.
John Baptise…what an egotistical statement. You are certain that homeopathy dosen’t work…at all…never…etc. maybe you lack the intelligence to understand such concepts. PS. The placebo effect actually has better outcomes than most clinical trials on most drugs, don’t underestimate the power of the mind. Better than dying from a “REAL” toxic side effect of pharmaceuticals. Do not negate what you do not understand.
Stan, I am very serious.
The article states “… you can’t get many completely ordinary vitamins and supplements in Canada now …”. THIS IS COMPLETELY FALSE.
The comments about “.. the average Canadian citizen is so out of touch with the reality…”. The reality is that Bill C-51 has been modified and is now SUPPORTED by reputable natural supplement manufacturers.
Big Pharma is not the only wolf in the woods that we need protection from. There are the FalseClaim Nutritional Supply companies whose profits are far more important to them than our health and want to operate without any regulation.
And really, take a look at Canada’s National Post before you believe someone who quotes them. We read it as a humor rag.
VitaminEh,check out http://nhppa.org/ and see why you are completely wrong. Or read the following from the same source:
A Message to Senators Dec. 14, 2009
Trading the Rule of Law for Safety – a Dangerous Game
The Senate is about to vote on Bill C-6, the Consumer Product Safety Act. As I mentioned in the Senate hearing, Bill C-6 represents Health Canada’s attempt to circumvent the rule of law in the name of safety. The problem is that circumventing the rule of law is never “safe”. Bill C-6 represents a fundamental change in the power dynamic between the citizen and the state that I am concerned about passing onto our children.
Under the rule of law the state cannot take control of persons or property without the supervision of independent courts. Without the rule of law the state can imprison citizens or seize property without court supervision. I do not want our children being subjected to state control of their persons or property without court supervision. I side with political philosophers who warn of the dangers of sacrificing the rule of law.
Some might think it is ironic that we are being asked to sacrifice a fundamental freedom that protects us against the state so that we can be “safe”. I don’t find it ironic at all. Whenever citizens are asked to sacrifice their freedom, it is in the name of safety. One only has to review the laws enacted in the U.S. following 9-11 to see this mechanism in action.
The impetus of trading freedom for safety is difficult to resist. What lawmaker can vote against safety? Citizens demand to be “protected” and governments acquiesce by passing laws that erode our freedoms. I am not against safety. Nor am I against improving our consumer safety legislation. My position is that we can structure consumer protection laws to protect Canadians against unsafe products while at the same time safeguarding our fundamental freedoms. Consumer products are not suddenly so dangerous that we need to sacrifice fundamental protections. Bill C-6 threatens our property rights and our right to private enjoyment of property.
Under Bill C-6, inspectors can seize property connected to the manufacture, distribution and sale of consumer products. This seizure can occur without court supervision. There is no limit to the amount of property that can be seized. There does not have to be a “safety” risk to justify the seizure. There are no defined time limits limiting the length of the seizure. If you are charged with an administrative offence, you cannot have a court hearing. The Minister decides if you are guilty. The same Minister can keep any seized property if he/she determines that you are guilty.
Bill C-6 also abolishes the law of trespass. Inspectors can enter onto any property or into any place except a private home without a warrant. They are exempted from the law of trespass. We do not give the regular police, who investigate much more serious matters, this exemption. Are consumer products suddenly so dangerous that we need to sacrifice the right to enjoy our property without the incursion of state agents?
This generation is responsible for protecting the rights of our children. Do we think our children will be safer in a Canada without the rule of law? Will they be safer in a Canada where the state can take their property without court supervision? Will they be safer in a Canada where they can no longer require state agents to leave their private property? These are fundamental questions that must be answered.
Consumer safety is an emotional issue. We are told we need to protect our children from defective cribs and lead in their toys. I agree. We can, however, protect our children from these dangers with court supervision and the rule of law. We can protect our children from the dangers of consumer products without giving the state free range over our private property. We can protect our children without surrendering freedoms previous generations ensured were passed onto us.
I expect that Bill C-6 will pass through the Senate. I expect that Bill C-6 will later be viewed as a major turning point in favour of state control. I expect that many will eventually regret the fundamental changes that we will bequeath to our children.
Shawn P. Buckley
In the eastern US, we have been sold fluoride from China. Why we have to get it from there is beyond me. We have plenty of the toxin. BUT, one town, Amesbury, MA, is not using it because when they went to put it in water, half of it would not dissolve.
I wish we could all have the ACLU stand up for us and sue not to use chemicals in the water, such as fluoride. I’m going to call them myself.
In the US, Ron Paul is trying to keep the Codex away. As you all say, though, money will rule…as usual. We are no longer America or Canada, especially once they (US, Canada & Mexico) blend into a union. We are the North Continent of Greed Corporate profits.
We are the ants, and ‘they’ are standing above us with the boiling water.