Behind the scenes, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries are trying to change the law—to benefit no one but themselves. Major Action Alert! Big Pharma in general—and biotech in particular—are having trouble coming up with new-to-nature molecules they can successfully patent and turn into blockbuster medicines. They know the healing power of natural substances. But natural substances […]
The government is playing games with patients’ lives. A new document shows just how arbitrary Pharma-inspired limitations on shipping compounded medications really are. Action Alert! The FDA is continuing to issue rules that implement the new compounding law passed by Congress in 2013, and this week the agency released a whole slew of documents—including the long-awaited draft […]
Good news in the fight against monopolies in nutritional therapy. You may remember the story of North Carolina Paleo-blogger Steve Cooksey. In 2012, Cooksey got a cease-and-desist letter from North Carolina’s Board of Nutrition/Dietetics because he was offering nutritional advice about the Paleo diet at no charge on his blog—but without a board-issued license. A legal […]
A federal panel has reversed itself on forty years of dietary guidelines. As usual, natural health physicians were way ahead of this news. A federal panel, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, run jointly by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the USDA), recently released its Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory […]
A new bill—actually a re-tread of an amendment that grassroots activists like you defeated last year—is intended to protect Big Food and Big Farma. Action Alert! Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has reintroduced the Protect Interstate Commerce Act (PICA). He attempted to pass this legislation last year through an amendment to the Farm Bill, but ANH-USA and its allies successfully […]
Conflicts of interest are nothing new for dietetics associations, to the shame of many sincere and dedicated dieticians. An important report from Michele Simon shows massive problems with the Dietitians Association of Australia. Michele Simon is a public health lawyer who has been researching and writing about the food industry and food politics since 1996. […]
This is a bill sponsored in the House by Rep. DeLauro and in the Senate by Sen. Durbin. Durbin is the arch-nemesis of natural health. But with the right amendments, this bill could actually help! Action Alert! Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) have introduced a bill, the Safe Food Act of 2015, […]
The supplement ban was issued based on a single unverified test, performed by a scientist who usually studies lizards, using completely inappropriate technology—and new tests show that the original testing was wrong. State-based Action Alert! The NY attorney general’s cease-and-desist letters to four national-chain retailers, charging them with selling nutritional supplements that were “deliberately mislabeled” and “potentially dangerous […]
In breaking news, the DC Appeals Court says that would be unconstitutional. But the rest of the decision in the POM Wonderful case was disappointing. Last August, ANH-USA filed a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief in support of POM Wonderful. The Federal Trade Commission had barred the pomegranate juice company (and, by extension, other natural product companies) from advertising […]
It’s called a 21st century bill, but this extraordinarily dense legislative proposal follows an old, 20th century paradigm: if there’s an illness, create some new government-subsidized drugs to throw at it. Action Alert! The “21st Century Cures Act” is close to 400 pages long. If enacted, it would dramatically alter the ways pharmaceutical and medical device products are […]