Victory Dance Time!

(No, unfortunately it’s not for Kira. This came through in my email this morning, so I thought I’d pass it on.)

May 3, 2007

Good News Travels Fast!

Your [tag]activism[/tag] just saved supplements from being turned into “untested drugs”! [tag]Big Pharma[/tag] will be back, but today, we can do a victory dance!

Thank you 435,005 times. That’s the number of people who used our site to submit their comments to the [tag]FDA[/tag] on their dangerous [tag]CAM Guidance[/tag] through our site. 182,484 succeeded but, since our site was interfered with several times, 252,521 people did not. We were working feverishly to submit those comments manually.

Ready for Some Great News?

Although the FDA denied our request to extend the comment, failed to update its site or its comment tally, extended the comment period and then resinded the extension (!), our collective voice won us a huge victory in [tag]Congress[/tag] today. Because we rallied behind our health freedom and access to natural health products, every member of the Senate voting today heard us loud and clear and acted — without a single dissenting voice — to protect our health freedom!

Read what “the [tag]Vitamin[/tag] Lawyer “, Ralph Fucetola, has to say about the impact of our activism in an email on the topic today:

“And some very good news: Congress has accepted the following amendment to S.1082 - Enhancing [tag]Drug Safety[/tag] and Innovation Act of 2007 - from Sen. Durbin. It appears that Congress heard our concerns! Hundreds of thousands of messages to FDA no doubt reverberated through the halls of Congress. The amendment was adopted by the Senate 94 to zero.

Sec. X08. Rule of ConstructionNothing in this title (or an amendment made by this title) shall be construed to affect–

(1) The regulation of dietary supplements under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act; or

(2) The adverse event reporting system for dietary supplements created under the Dietary Supplement and Nonprescription Drug Consumer Protection Act.

Like many victories in Congress, you hardly ever get everything you want. Leading supplement industry lawyer, J. Emord, originally proposed exempting all “foods” from the new law (Counsel stated: “It is a fundamental tenet of food and drug law that foods and food ingredients are presumed to be safe and have to be established to be adulterated only if they present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.” This approach would have offered even greater protection for natural products, but we are grateful that enough members of Congress heard the loud shout from the public and responded so quickly to at least protect [tag]DSHEA[/tag] products — the power of Internet politics at its best.