LIFE UNDER CODEX
Excerpted from a Feb 2005 Vitality Magazine article
by Helke FerrieIf the following were a horror movie, we could all sit back with our popcorn and enjoy it. Unfortunately, this is not fiction, and if we don't do something about it, this nightmare will soon become waking reality in the USA and Canada.
In the mid-1990's my mother, then in her 80's, had a stroke. She lived in Germany. When she left hospital, I was ready with a nutritional plan that included high-dose vitamins: C, E, and B-complex, especially inositol, as well as Co-enzyme Q 10. I went to the pharmacy, whose owner was a family friend for some 25 years, and handed him my list.
The pharmacist handed me a small packet with a price sticker of DM 200 (then about $200) containing vitamin E capsules manufactured by one of Germany's largest pharmaceutical companies. The source was synthetic, not the "mixed" version from living plant sources I wanted which contains the whole E spectrum. The package contained a total of 10,000 international units of E, the equivalent of a mere 25 capsules of 400 IU each that we are used to buying (I take that many in 3 days). In Canada, our bottles contain 90 capsules and cost about $20.
He then handed me a tube-shaped metal container with vitamin C effervescent tablets. Each tablet, when dissolved in water would release 10 mg of vitamin C in a refined sugar solution. The cost: about $10 for 12 tablets. Twelve.
Then he asked me, "What's Co-enzyme Q-10? Are you allowed to buy all this in Canada in such dangerous dosages?"
When I told him what I take daily, his eyes popped. Then I asked, "Why can't I buy these supplements here?"
He replied, "Well, Germany is a CODEX country." Oddly, Germany has several government-run hospitals where environmental illness is treated with nutrients only, such as intravenous vitamin C.
Effective August 1, 2005, all vitamin and mineral supplements on a so-called "positive list," including everything from beta carotene to zinc, will only be available in the 25 European Union countries if they comply with specific rules set out in the June 10, 2002, European Union Directive Relating to Food Supplements, or CODEX. What does it specifically mean?
1) All products must show "maximum safe levels, as established by science."
2) Those nutrients found in the mythic "balanced diet" are to be subtracted from the final values.
3) Article 6 decrees that labels shall "not attribute to food supplements the property of preventing, treating or curing a human disease, or refer to such properties."
So, the Directive's "science" knows nothing of vitamin C preventing and curing scurvy, vitamin D preventing and curing rickets and osteoporosis, or vitamin B complex curing and preventing pellagra and anemia. It also ignores the mountain of evidence showing our diets are chronically deficient in essential nutrients because of factory-style farming practices. To "ensure a high level of protection for consumers and facilitate their choice," they even included baking soda and table salt. Must assume they, too, will be unavailable as of August 1 anywhere in Europe? What interesting consequences for the tourist industry in the baked goods paradises Austria, Switzerland and France.
Now, there is also a "negative list" covering essential fatty acids, phytonutrients, all the enzymes and more. Those cannot be marketed AT ALL, until the EU scientific committee in charge has made a final decision. So, forget omega-3, cod liver oil, and much more. The effect of this directive will be that thousands of products and businesses will be gone this year. In the UK alone some 21 million people will suddenly have no access to any supplement vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fatty acids and more. Since the onus is on businesses to produce the scientific information on safety, they can't produce or sell anything, not even to physicians who have the power to prescribe any toxic drug as well as any safe and essential nutrient. Obviously, there will be ludicrous enforcement issues: can you picture basement-concocted vitamins sold in dark alleys?
Hundreds of thousands of people die every year in North America from properly prescribed and ingested drugs. CODEX's effort to save us all from supposedly "dangerous" food supplements, by requiring their (non-existent) toxicity levels, is a determined backlash against the turn medical science took starting with Linus Pauling, Abram Hoffer, Carl Pfeiffer and Roger Williams in the 1950's. They established the concepts of bio-individuality in absorption and detoxification, high-dose essential nutrients as disease-curing, and environmental toxins acting as nutrient-depleting. Today, we have a flood of evidence showing that drugs have a very limited usefulness and that high-dose nutrients work better than drugs.
The pharmaceutical industry is anything but slow-witted, and good business practice dictates outfoxing the competition - one way or another - to secure the market. If the CODEX Directive is not stopped, there will be only one medical world: the pharmaceutical world. When this whole CODEX project began in 2001, some 180 million protest letters reached their office, but CODEX didn't give up on "protecting" us. Now the fight is on in each country, because the European Union's problem is now everyone's problem.
(Reprinted with the kind permission of the author.)
EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless you like that "back alley" vitamin-buying scenario that Ms. Ferrie refers to, get out your pen and write to your newspapers. For more action information:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/codex.html
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/Events/codex2004pat.htm
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org
http://www.doctoryourself.com/write_now.html
http://www.glycommunity.com/iahf to watch a free on-line video
For my previous discussions about CODEX:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v2n12.txt
http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n21.txt
http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n21.txt
http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n22.txt
Best wishes,
A. SaulAndrew W. Saul
http://www.doctoryourself.com
Contributing Editor,
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (http://www.orthomed.org)For information about my book, "DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works"
please go to http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html.Subscriptions to my DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER by email are free for the asking.
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