The Worst Defeat in the History of the Pharmaceutical Industry

It is a fact that almost all “experts” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies and have been instrumentalized on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry for decades. It was clear that millions of Americans who had been enjoying the health benefits of vitamins over decades would not understand why free access to vitamins should be restricted and why essential nutrients should become prescription items.

To cover their real goal — protectionist laws for drug markets — a camouflage was used by the FDA to make these unethical plans more palatable and acceptable to the American people:

• “Consumer Protection”: In a large-scale public relations campaign, the FDA on behalf of the pharmaceutical cartel, tried to make millions of Americans believe that vitamins and other natural therapies had to become prescription items in order to protect them from “overdosing.” The deceptive nature of this campaign was revealed when the following U.S. statistics became public: from 1983-1990, not a single person died from taking vitamins or other essential nutrients. In contrast, during the same period, hundreds of thousands of Americans had died from taking prescription drugs, which had been approved by this very same agency — the FDA!
• “Internationalization”: The deceptive argument by which the FDA tried to restrict vitamins on behalf of the drug makers was an alleged necessity for “international trade standards.” These outrageous “standards” were set by Germany and other European countries, where one gram vitamin C pills were defined as prescription drugs and amino acids were on the “black list.” Thus, on behalf of the drug industry, the FDA tried to abolish two of the most basic human rights — the right to health choices and the freedom to access health information.

But the American people were neither interested in “consumer protection” from vitamins or “internationalization” back to the “Dark Ages of Medicine.” In the “largest movement since the Vietnam War” (Newsweek), the American people through their political representatives secured their health freedom against the heavy lobby of the pharmaceutical industry.

In August 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was passed unanimously in the Senate and House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress.

The passing of DSHEA as the worst defeat of the pharmaceutical industry in its history for it broke down the walls artificially erected over a century by the pharmaceutical investment business with patented drugs. Over the past decade and a half, the DSHEA legislation provided the legal basis for an unprecedented explosion of scientific knowledge in the field of science-based natural health, saving millions of lives and billions in health care costs.