- ANH members rescued bio-identical hormones in 2008
- In the 1980s (before ANH) los federales “morphed” a very effective natural insomnia supplement(GHB) that cost (at most) $360 per year into a “drug” now costing $143,604 per year (not kidding!)
- Join ANH now, stop los federales from “morphing” a safe natural pain reliever (CBD) into yet another no-competition “drug” with the very same effect at enormously higher price.
Are you a member of the Alliance for Natural Health? No, this is not a commercial to sell you something; membership in the Alliance for Natural Health is free! Many of us already are members; for those who aren’t, hope you will join, today, because the Alliance for Natural Health is the most effective lobbying organization for Natural Health in these United States.
Here’s in example: In February 2008 (yes, that’s awhile ago, promise to get to much more recent examples after this) los federales@ FDA sent a “warning letter” to all compounding pharmacies, telling them to quit including estriol in prescriptions for women’s bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT)! For those of us who don’t know about it, estriol is (along with estrone and estradiol) one of three “major estrogens,” and the only one that is strictly anti-carcinogenic. (For the technically inclined, it acts only through contact with “estrogen receptor beta,” which is 100% anti-carcinogenic!)
A surprise for guys: one of our testosterone metabolites also contacts only estrogen receptor beta, which men have too, located among other places on our prostate glands! That testosterone metabolite is abbreviated as “3b-Adiol,” which research has found can actually reverse prostate cancer in experimental animals, so of course it’s unavailable in these United States to any of us “free citizens”…but’s that’s a topic for another time. Now back to estriol, BHRT, and the Alliance for Natural Health.
Los federales at FDA sent that “warning letter” because of what they termed a “citizen’s petition” complaint. Who was the “citizen”? The Wyeth Corporation, the patent medicine company and the original patent-holder for “Premarin®.” Most of us know that Premarin® was collected from pregnant horse urine (get it, “pregnant mare urine,” “Premarin®”?). Along with the unnatural (but patentable) pseudo-progesterone “Provera®,”Premarin® was routinely prescribed as (so-called) “hormone replacement therapy” throughout these United States starting in the 1960s. In 1965, Robert A. Wilson M.D. published the book Feminine Forever, which significantly boosted Premarin® sales. Anyone surprised to read that Dr. Wilson was a consultant for the Wyeth Company?
(Many other details the Wyeth Company would prefer we didn’t know about Premarin®, can be found at (no kidding at all) “Tuesday’s Horse,”https://tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/trace-the-history-of-the-premarin-family-of-drugs-with-this-revealing-timeline/)
In 2001, the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative put an end to the myth that horse urine estrogens and a “space alien molecule” (never found on planet Earth before it’s invention and patenting) named “medroxyprogesterone” (trade-named Provera®) should be termed “hormone replacement” for the human hormones which almost disappear at and after menopause.
By then, bio-identical hormones had been in use as BHRT for almost twenty years. Following the principle “Copy Nature,” BHRT used only molecules exactly identical to those made by human ovaries and other endocrine organs, with the majority estrogen always being anti-carcinogenic estriol (thank you to the research of Dr. Henry Lemon for that!) and always being monitored for safety with lab tests. Also by then, it was obvious to the physicians who prescribed it, the women who used it, and all these women’s families and friends that BHRT was not only safe and effective in restoring mood and attitude to it’s pre-menopausal state, but also (especially those who’d used BHRT for a decade or more) in significantly slowing not only the appearance of aging, but also the onset of many of the physical problems suffered by older women.
Over the next few years after the 2001 Women’s Health Initiative report, many, many women switched from Premarin® and Provera® to “BHRT” and “never looked back.” So what’s a patent medicine company to do when they clearly can’t compete? File a “citizen’s petition” complaint with their buddies los federalesat the FDA to suppress the competition, of course! (Yes, los federales are “buddies” to nearly all the patent medicine companies—remember to put the words “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals” into your computer search engine, and what will appear is a freely downloadable “pdf” from the Fall 2013 issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. If you haven’t read this already, it will “blow you away” with footnoted fact after fact after fact about how patent medicine companies and los federales @ FDA are really the best of buddies!)
But back to los federales 2008 “warning letter” and the response organized by The Alliance for Natural Health (“ANH”). ANH sent an emergency alert via e-mail to every one of their members. That alert contained a short factual description of what los federales had just done. The description of the problem was accompanied by a solution: an e-mail letter to each member’s U.S. Representative and two State Senators, determined by each members postal address. The e-mail letter could be “clicked” and sent as is, or altered in any way the member wanted. (My favorite alteration was a message to a woman’s U.S. Congressman and two U.S. Senators which said “if you allow FDA to take away my BHRT, I will come to your offices and have PMS every month!”)
Over 100,000 e-mail protest letters were sent to members of Congress in less than two weeks. The result: los federales didn’t “follow-up” on their “citizen complaint”-induced warning letter, and estriol—originally put into BHRT in 1982 as it’s a major natural estrogenic anti-carcinogen and keeps BHRT for women safe—remains a key component of BHRT.
Next, a current campaign by the Alliance for Natural Health. This one asks members to e-mail members of Congress (using that already-prepared e-mail to save time, or doing one of their own) to stop los federales “approval” of an entirely safe, natural and effective pain-relieving substance (CBD hemp oil) as a “drug,” which would prevent it from being sold as it is presently as a relatively inexpensive supplement. The “eliminate the competition” process has already started: Los federales have already sent “warning letters” to the companies who have been supplying CBD hemp oil as a natural supplement. ANH is our best hope for stopping this “eliminate the competition” part of the “approval”process of “morphing” an relatively inexpensive natural substance into a prohibitively expensive “drug.”
Not kidding about prohibitively expensive! Here’s an example of what happens when los federales “approve” an entirely natural substance as a “drug,” which automatically bans it’s sales as a supplement. In the 1980s, gamma-hydroxybutyrate (also called “GHB,” a substance made by human and animal brains, and easy to provide in a bio-identical form) was sold in health food stores as a very effective and very safe sleep aid. (It really is the best and most effective entirely natural sleep-inducing substance seen in medical practice.) The price was reasonable at $20 to $30 for a bottle of capsules which—on the average—contained enough to last four to six weeks. Total cost for a year, $240 to $360 a year.
Los federales “buddied up” with a patent medicine company, “approving” GHB as a “drug” so that only one company could have a monopoly on selling it. You’ll never, ever guess what the cost in 2017 for a year’s supply of GHB, disguised as a “drug” named “Xyrem.” Hold onto your chair, am not at all kidding, you can look this up on-line: The cost for a year’s supply is $143,604. Yes, that’s up from $240 to $360 a year when the very same molecules of GHB were sold as a supplement, and now $143,604 a year—yes, that’s $143,604 a year when it was $240 to $360 a year in the 1980s—when the very same molecules are sold as an “approved drug”! It’s one of many rackets supported by los federales that is driving the cost of health care in these United States to unprecedented heights. The Alliance for Natural Health is one of our best hopes for stopping this from happening again!
ANH’s present campaign—please join ANH to easily help this campaign!—is to prevent los federales from doing the same thing to another safe (and significantly pain-relieving) natural material currently being sold as a supplement. Here’s a description of the problem posted June 30th 2017 on the ANH website (www.anh-usa.org ):
“We must maintain consumer access to CBD oil, a safe, non-addictive, natural pain treatment. Last year, the FDA sent warning letters to six companies marketing CBD supplements, saying that, because a pharmaceutical company was investigating CBD as a drug, CBD does not meet the definition of a supplement. The government needs to get its act together. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) recently published a final rule saying that all marijuana and hemp extracts are Schedule 1 controlled substances, a category that includes heroin, LSD, and mescaline (note that CBD does not get you “high”). By definition, Schedule 1 substances have no medical benefit. Yet the US government has a patent on CBD for its ability to protect the brain from degeneration.
A pharmaceutical company has patented CBD oil for the treatment of a rare form of childhood epilepsy and has won orphan drug approval from the FDA. Why did the company apply for orphan drug approval? It’s generally easier to gain marketing approval for an orphan drug, and companies with orphan drug approval are granted extended exclusivity. But once the “orphan drug” comes to market, it can be prescribed off-label to treat anything under the sun. When the FDA finishes clearing the market of CBD supplements, the CBD drug will be the only show in town—at which point the price will soar into the stratosphere.
This is unconscionable on a number of levels. We have an opioid epidemic in this country that is killing 33,000 people a year, and growing. FDA-approved drugs are part of the problem: fentanyl is as much as 100 times more powerful than morphine and killed 4,200 people in 2014; aspirin causes internal bleeding. There are also more than 100 million Americans with untreated pain. How does the FDA look out for these patients? By denying them access to the CBD product so Big Pharma can make a killing selling it to these same patients at an exorbitant price. Something needs to be done. Write to Congress and urge your elected officials to support federal legislation that protects consumer access to CBD and to direct the FDA to stop its attack on CBD supplements.”
Please join the ANH today! Remember, membership is free! To help protect your right (stated in our country’s Declaration of Independence) to life (which includes your health), liberty, and pursuit of happiness (which goes a lot better if we are healthy), please “go to” www.anh-usa.org and join today! ANH is our best hope to significantly slow and perhaps stop and even reverse what’s happening to our rights to take care of our own health at a reasonable price!