The main one is because people are getting away with things that are in my opinion misleading and potentially dangerous.
And that, my friend, must not be taken lying down.
The other reason is an issue of freedom. Your freedom to choose and my freedom to provide you with the best supplements I can possibly bring you.
Here is a short list of the issues:
Seriously considered in Congress this law would pretty much remove supplements from vitamin stores and put them into the exclusive hands of drug companies and doctors.
I have nothing against doctors (I am one) but very few have even a rudimentary knowledge about supplements.
And you already know how I feel about Drug Companies.
All of the original laws concerning steroids and human growth hormone were based on trying to prevent athletes cheating at sports, specifically the Olympics.
Thanks to guys like Jose Canseco who claims to have single handedly saved Major League Baseball (MLB) and now Barry Bonds who allegedly used all kinds of performance enhancing drugs the witch hunt is on.
As a result, legitimate use of either of these substances in age management medicine is getting very hard.
Fortunately, you can still get my amazing supplement the Hercules Factor as they haven't outlawed it yet.
Next, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals attacked the use of Bio Identical Hormone Replacement, a therapy that has been used for years to avoid the problems with the horse estrogens that companies like Wyeth has been pushing on women for years.
You know the ones that seem to increase the rate of heart attack and cancer.
If Bio Identical Hormones are removed from the market, ladies, you will have no choice but to use the stuff that comes from horse piss!
Now lest you think this is just me belly aching, let me tell you a little story of how I paid the price for Big Parma's joy ride and why I am particularly miffed at their recent attacks on fish oil and its use in cancer.
Lizzie was 78 years old but she seemed more like 88 when she contracted lung cancer. Both she and her daughter agreed that chemo therapy should be tried.
She went to the cancer doctors and lasted about 3 rounds of chemo before the side effects made a further chemo intolerable for her.
Of course the cancer docs stopped the fish oil and multivites trying to blame them at first.
Next, they offered her a drug called Iressa. It was supposed to work by mouth and have few side effects. It should have been ideal for Lizzie.
Well it didn't do squat except empty her wallet.
She died 2 months later. A little bit after that Iressa was removed form the market because it was found to be "ineffective".
But of course the FDA had approved and the drug companies sold it and made millions before they pulled it off the market.
Lizzie's daughter called me irate one day asking me why did I let the other doctors give her this expensive and worthless drug that gave them hope when they might have pursued other alternatives.
I had to explain to her that the FDA had approved the drug after its usual clinical trials showed that it might do some good.
After a while she calmed down and thanked me for all the years I had taken care of her mom.
But I still felt bad so I went back to the data and looked carefully at this cancer drug and many others that are currently in use.
What I found was the same statistical game playing I see in so much of what drug companies do and what the FDA allows.
In many cases the cancer drugs were being sold on a result called disease progression.
In other words if the drug slowed down the progression of the disease for a while it was OK and better than a sugar pill.
Problem is in many cases the patients still died at exactly the same time they would have on placebo, and died the same kinds of deaths they would have.
In some cases, instead of a disease progressing slowly for a year without treatment, the drug would seem to slow the cancer down for 6 months and then the disease would come back with a vengeance and kill the patient 6 months later.
End result: the patient was dead in 1 year either way.
And that, my friends, was good enough to get these drugs pushed through the approval process.
Why?
I can only offer my version. Recently a very large wing was built onto one of our local hospitals. It is beautiful and clearly cost many millions of dollars.
It is a cancer wing.
Cancer is big business and chemo drugs are covered by insurance companies and large profits are being made at all levels form these drugs right down to the people giving them.
Now you can see why something like fish oil might threaten the status quo.
It's safe for most people and far less costly.
Unless I want to be writing from behind bars, I can't say it does anything for cancer. But I can sure keep printing the articles that are in favor of it.
My friend, I have spent 20+ years at the mercy of a medical establishment that does not promote prevention. I have seen a multi billion dollar industry grow fat and rich selling drugs that can kill or maim people and if you don't use them as a doctor, you are guilty of malpractice.
I have seen my and your personal freedom eroded away by an ever-menacing force that aligns the interests of bureaucrats, politicians and money making machines like Big Pharma.
I have seen blatant abuses of medical information and clinical trials and data to "show results" that are nothing more than statistical game playing.
I have seen doctors' ability, desire and willingness to do the right thing be slowly taken away and watched them be forced into cook book medical practices that pander to these interests and become unwilling accomplices in a game they cannot win.
What am I doing about it?
Trying to keep you aware.
Making the best supplements money can buy.
And encouraging you to take you fish oil, Monster Multi and Immune Boost everyday like I do.
I will keep doing this as long as they let me.
All the Best form the Bad Boy of Medicine,
Dr Dave
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