FDA's Assault of Bioidentical Hormones Demonstrates Pro-Pharma Loyalties, Disregard for Consumer Choice

Tuesday, February 05, 2008 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: the FDA, bioidentical hormones, health news

(NaturalNews) In January of 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to compounding pharmacies around the country. That warning demanded pharmacies stop selling bioidentical hormones as an alternative to Hormone Replacement Therapy drugs (HRT), insisting that compounding pharmacies were making "false claims" about an "unapproved drug." What was this so-called "unapproved drug?" Estriol, a natural hormone that has been manufactured by the human body for nearly four hundred thousand years.

Apparently, the FDA now believes that nature's own hormones and compounds must first receive FDA approval before they can be used. I wonder if pregnant women whose bodies manufacture their own estriol as a normal part of pregnancy will soon be arrested for manufacturing and "self-dosing" with unapproved drugs...

The FDA's actions against bioidentical hormones, not surprisingly, were spurred by Wyeth, manufacturer of Prempro, the artificial, non-bioidentical version of estriol that's used in high-profit HRT drugs. Following a "citizen's petition" by Wyeth (a laughable concept, given that the petition actually came from a wealthy corporation, not a citizen), the FDA launched an all-out assault against compounding pharmacies as a way to eliminate the competition for synthetic HRT drugs patented by Wyeth and other drug companies.

This is the FDA engaging in business as usual: Monopolize the market, eliminate the competition, terrorize natural product retailers and lie to the public. We've seen it time and time again, and bioidentical hormones are simply the latest natural medicine to be targeted by the FDA.

Natural is dangerous, artificial is safe

The FDA apparently wants us all to believe that artificial, synthetic hormones made by wealthy drug companies are "safe" but that naturally-occurring hormones made in the human body are "dangerous." You got that? All those women receiving bioidentical hormones just like the ones made in the human body, the FDA claims, are being put at risk with "unapproved drugs," while all those women being given synthetic, artificial hormones are receiving "FDA approved treatment" that just happens to enrich Wyeth, the drug manufacturer. (And pay no attention to the increased risk of heart attacks and breast cancer from artificial hormones, by the way. You're not supposed to notice those side effects.)

It you are finding it difficult to contain your laughter (or outrage), I don't blame you. With this move against bioidentical hormones, the FDA has become the laughing stock of the medical community. When the FDA attacked herbs and vitamins, most doctors didn't mind. When the FDA conducted armed raids on vitamin manufacturers and herbal formulators, conventional doctors and pharmacists said nothing. But when the FDA continued its march of nutritional censorship into the realm of bioidentical hormones, they awoke a sleeping giant. The medical community is now aware that nobody is safe from the FDA, regardless of the scientific merit backing your product or therapy.

The FDA's assaults on natural medicine are not based on science or safety, of course: They're based on one thing: Protecting the profits of Big Pharma. Anything that competes with Big Pharma is declared "unapproved" while virtually anything sold by Big Pharma is pronounced as "safe and effective." This scam has been going on for decades, and now the medical community is finally waking up to the reality of just how criminal-minded the FDA really is.

You can take action to help protect your access to bioidentical hormones by visiting Hands Off My Estrogens! (www.HOMEcoalition.org) There, you'll find action suggestions for contacting representatives in Washington and demanding your right to choose bioidentical hormones.

The FDA is a criminal organization

As this action against bioidentical hormones clearly demonstrates, the FDA operates as a criminal drug racket, using many of the same tactics as organized crime to protect its friends (Big Pharma) and suppress the competition (natural medicine). It engages in routine censorship of health claims, suppression of educational materials, intimidation of its own scientists and the terrorizing of natural product manufacturers through numerous tactics. This is all done to protect and enhance the profits of its clients, the drug companies.

This campaign by the FDA to destroy women's access to bioidentical hormones is just the latest action in a long history of criminal activities pursued by the FDA. Another example is the routine censorship of scientific facts supporting the health benefits of nutritional supplements. For example, the FDA threatened cherry growers with shutting down their businesses if they didn't stop linking to scientific journal articles from their websites. (Click here to read the article.) The placing of a clickable link to any scientific publication, the FDA claimed, was equivalent to making an "unapproved health claim" about those cherries. And this is how the FDA got away with censoring the truth about the ability of cherries to reduce inflammation better than arthritis drugs.

Yes, you heard me right: Merely linking to scientific studies is no longer allowed by the FDA, because it might have the side effect of educating people about the true health benefits of natural medicines. That, of course, cannot be tolerated. An informed public poses a severe danger to the profitability of Big Pharma. Consumers must be kept ignorant. That's the only way the FDA and Big Pharma can successfully push artificial, patented drugs onto the public.

The solution: Arrest the criminals running the FDA

What really needs to happen in this country is quite simple: We need to send a large force of armed FBI agents into FDA offices around the country, arrest all the decision makers at gunpoint, charge them with acts of conspiracy under the RICO Act, and prosecute them for their crimes against the American people.

The top FDA officials operate as organized crime drug lords, and they should be treated accordingly. It's not enough to run around protesting one natural substance at a time, trying to defend our freedoms from a rogue agency that has become the "enforcement" arm of Big Pharma. We have to end the FDA's tyranny once and for all with a massive campaign of arrests and prosecutions that removes the criminals from power and restores consumers' rights and freedoms when it comes to natural medicine.

Until we are willing to do that, the FDA will continue to play a game of corporate monopoly at the expense of American consumers, and countless women will be harmed and killed by synthetic hormones that only have one real purpose: To enrich the profitability of the drug companies.

Is the FDA more dangerous than terrorists?

If you look at the number of people killed in America each year by FDA-approved drugs, you'll quickly discover that the FDA is responsible for far more deaths than terrorists. While terrorists killed somewhere around 3,500 people on 9/11 (if you even believe the official story, which I don't), and perhaps a few thousand more American soldiers in the Middle East, FDA-approved drugs kill at least 100,000 Americans a year right here at home. While no death should be taken lightly, the fact that FDA-approved drugs have killed nearly a hundred times as many Americans as terrorists since 9/11 means that the FDA is by far the greater danger to our safety.

Consider this: Since 9/11, FDA-approved drugs have killed at least 600,000 Americans -- a number equivalent to dropping a nuclear weapon on a major U.S. city! And this is from our own government, all under the guise of "medicine." It's all a grand medical hoax, of course.

Now add in the number of people killed indirectly by the FDA's censorship of natural therapies. How many American lives might have been saved by access to nutritional therapies that are safer, more effective and more affordable than prescription drugs? It's a wild guess, but I'm getting that an additional 100,000 American lives could be saved each if the FDA stopped censoring the truth about nutritional supplements, herbal medicine, and alternative medicine.

Together, that means an estimated 200,000 American lives are lost each year due to the actions of a single government agency: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (My estimates. Yours may vary...)

That makes the FDA the single greatest threat to the lives of the American people, far outweighing the threat of terrorism or any other organization. You'd have to start a major war to equal the number of casualties produced by the FDA. And remember: The Vietnam War killed around 50,000 Americans. The FDA likely kills four times that number of Americans every single year!

It's almost as if the FDA has declared war on the American people and decided to unleash a wave of chemical weapons (synthetic pharmaceuticals) to wage that war. What's happening today in terms of Big Pharma and the FDA is nothing less than a chemical holocaust. Over five years, we'll lose a million American lives to Big Pharma and the FDA drug lords, and we'll lose hundreds of billions of dollars in economic productivity as a result.

As I've said before, the FDA is not merely a threat to our health, it's also a threat to the economic viability of our nation! If we don't stop this FDA from decimating our population and terrorizing our people, we will end up bankrupt and diseased, isolated from the natural substances that could have restored our health and invigorated our national economy.

That's why I say: Protect America. Prosecute the FDA.

If you'd like to take action to protect your access to nutritional therapies, be sure to visit www.ProjectFANS.org to learn about what you can do right now.