FDA: Agency that has Lost Its Way

I was invited to write an article for the MMS story that the US~Observer is publishing. Don’t know when it’ll be published, but you can read it here:

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did the public a great service in July 2010 when it published its official warning to consumers against the use of the product that had become known in “grassroots” circles, as the Miracle Mineral Supplement, or “MMS”. Prior to that time it was fast becoming a darling among a significant, but unrecognized population of researchers that are actively seeking effective cures to disease.

Unlike the products and methods developed by the medical science research industry that are intentionally designed to mitigate disease symptoms, this research group isn’t supported by grants, doesn’t operate laboratories, write about disease in academic papers, or have its own lobbyists in Washington, DC. They or their loved ones are people who actually are living with the diseases in question. Autism, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, herpes, hepatitis, flu, AIDS; you name it, they have it. Their motivation is different; no longer are they intent on “surviving” with reduced symptoms of the original affliction, but with a cascade of new diseases, and under a mountain of debt; they want to be healthy again.

The results that they share with others from their experience, positive or negative, are likely to be accurate, and more believable than the findings produced by medical research industry scientists. Like attorneys who take any side of an issue for a retainer, medical researchers today, both academic and independent, produce “studies” for a paycheck. They are beholden to the whims and agendas of grant givers and endowment bestowers. Articles submitted to, or published in “prestigious journals” must pay homage to established conventions of thought, or else their authors face the professional risk of being objects of the disdain and scorn of “leading experts.”

The fact that the grassroots research groups have, on the whole, shared such positive results after using MMS is likely what stimulated the Agency into action. Unable to continue dismissing the steady rise in positive reports as “anecdotal,” it decided to put its own spin on the matter, even though it meant taking liberties with the truth. One liberty was to say that MMS sellers were making medical claims. Another was to suggest that in the concentrations called for by the protocol, MMS turned into an “industrial bleach,” an inference of great harm that had not been supported by any research group, grassroots or otherwise.

The concentrations called for by the MMS protocol were infinitesimally small when compared to the amounts used in the myriad of industrial applications for chlorine dioxide that the Agency based its warning on. If you were disinfecting an entire building of mold or anthrax, two places where chlorine dioxide are quite effective but would also pose a risk if proper precautions weren’t taken, then the FDA’s warning would be appropriate. Yet, in very small, scaled-down amounts, the beneficial outcomes have been numerous, and profound.

A similar analogy to the question of scale is salt. We simply cannot be healthy without salt in proper mineral proportions. However, the healthiest forms of salt could be lethal to a human being if as little as four ounces were ingested at once.

It’s not that “salt kills.” It’s about the degree of imbalance that it, or any solution, medical or otherwise, causes upon ingestion. The amount of concentration determines, in part, the degree of imbalance (or restoration of balance) that the individual may experience. From one person to the next, the balance factor is unique. Yet, if the FDA used the same logic to salt as it did to MMS, a “warning” might be appropriate, but just as misleading.

Dismissing the positive reports from MMS users, the FDA advised consumers who had the product to essentially do themselves a favor and throw it away. It then embarked on a crusade to bring the perception of MMS as a viable medicinal resource that might yield beneficial results when used under certain intake parameters and conventions, down.

I mentioned that the FDA did the public a service, but what I’ve written above doesn’t really sound “good.” The truth is that it is not. It’s business as usual. The Agency has been doing these kinds of things, with impunity and no sense that their actions will be questioned, challenged, or defied, for decades. A good percentage of the death toll that we have attributed to disease, if truth were known, would be attributed to standard, FDA approved, treatments. The service is twofold: (1) inadvertently introducing MMS to a much larger audience, and (2) in the Agency being itself for all to see, giving pause for each to ask ourselves, “Is that still okay?”

All this comes at a time when the New York Times publishes a story that reports how in 2009, nervous drug industry lobbyists pushed the Obama administration to oppose legislation that would have meant a reduction in medicine prices. Times reporter Peter Baker writes:

Mr. Obama’s deal-making in 2009 represented a pivotal moment in his young presidency, a juncture where the heady idealism of the campaign trail collided with the messy reality of Washington policy making. A president who had promised to negotiate on C-Span cut a closed-door deal with a powerful lobby, signifying to disillusioned liberal supporters a loss of innocence, or perhaps even the triumph of cynicism.

This story in the Times shows how far afield the conversation about health in “the civilized world” had been diverted from what is important. Lobbyists are not only bending a sitting president’s ear and influencing his hand on policies that might lower the cost of expensive, symptom-focused, ineffective drugs, but there is absolutely no conversation about methods that restore health that do not involve use of said drugs. It has long been known that health care providers – doctors, HMO’s, or therapists – who use or approve said methods (not covered by insurance), do so at their professional peril.

The FDA’s actions against MMS, along with its attempt to turn U.S. citizens, including doctors and legitimate scientists, into criminals for having the temerity to step outside of their self-proclaimed laws, reveals an Agency that has lost its way, and forgotten what it was and still is supposed to be.

The FDA does not exist to serve those who pay its fees. It gets the bulk of its money from pharmaceutical firms, however, We the People are the ones that the drug companies make their money that they use to pay the exorbitant licensing fees to the FDA.

The public pays drug companies with its health. The education system guides “modern thinking” into the notion that patented pharmaceuticals are “improvements” over natural methods. We invest in said companies, and send our kids to “prestigious” schools that likewise instill within them a bias toward pharmacology over naturopathy. They pay by seeking to join the American Medical Association “club,” which then severely limits their objectivity.

I sincerely believe that at one time in their life, most young people who choose a career in medicine, do so out of the desire to help “heal the sick,” seeing that there has been no reduction in the last few generations. However, once they are “in,” they either choose to step away, or shut down a part of themselves in exchange for a steady paycheck.

If we allow the FDA to continue operating as it is, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. We will have lost our way.

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