BIG Corp BROTHER IS AT IT AGAIN.
A threat to the alternative health information available Americans
An Article from sightings
SIGHTINGS
FDA Seeks To Destroy
Alternative Health Web Sites
By William Faloon
From Suzanne Kemp
1-11-00
(The following is from JC Spencer, one of our Associate Advisory Council
members. It is quite long, but shocking - the FDA is out of control.
You may want to contact your congressional representative. - Suzanne)
The FDA's history is one of incompetence, fraud, deceit and
the continuous striving for more power. Over the past 25
years, the Food and Drug Administration has sought to gain
authoritarian control that Congress never intended it to have. In
every attempt to seize this kind of power, the FDA has been
beaten back by a swell of public protest.
The FDA has just launched a disinformation campaign to
deceive Congress into believing that the agency needs to
"protect" the public from health information on the Internet.
The FDA is seeking ten million tax dollars a year to attack
alternative health and pharmacy web sites.
If the FDA convinces Congress to give it the power and money
to do this, American consumers will be denied access to
innovative therapies, and will be forced to pay a good deal
more for the nutrient and drug therapies the FDA allows them
to buy over the Internet.
One of the FDA's proposals is to be able to fine Internet
pharmacies $500,000 every time they dispense a drug without
a prescription authorized by the agency. With this kind of
excessive fining power, the FDA will be able to bankrupt any
online pharmacy it targets. To make it easy for them to shut
down large numbers of web sites, the FDA wants the power to
issue subpoenas without first obtaining a court order, a
totalitarian tactic the American public revolted against when the
agency proposed it in 1990. Finally, the FDA says it wants to
set up "a rapid response team" to identify, investigate, and
prosecute web sites. In other words, the FDA is seeking to
establish an army of cyberspace storm-troopers to enable it to
shut down large numbers of web sites quickly.
The alleged purpose of these new powers is to "target and
punish those who engage in illegal drug sales over the Internet."
This may sound reasonable to the average person, but as
members of The Life Extension Foundation well know, the
FDA's history is one of ineptitude and corruption that has
caused millions of Americans to suffer and die needlessly. In
1994, the FDA Museum was established to document FDA
malfeasance, and show that the agency hasn't the scientific
legitimacy to be allowed to police the healthcare of the
American people.
A flagrant example of FDA deception can be found in their
current attempt to control the Internet. The FDA has identified
one person who died after obtaining Viagra from a Web
pharmacy without a prescription. The FDA is using this one
death as an example of why the FDA needs to impose
dictatorial power over all health Web sites. One problem with
this position is that, as of November 1998, at least 130
Americans died from taking Viagra legally prescribed by their
doctors. (The total number of Viagra-related deaths for 1999
has not yet been calculated.) The FDA approved Viagra as
being safe, even though many Americans have died when the
drug has been legally prescribed. The FDA failed to detect this
lethal side effect of Viagra, yet it is now seeking gestapo-like
power to attack any Internet health company it wishes to,
without due process. It's time for the public to speak up again
to let Congress know that this kind of FDA tyranny will not be
tolerated by tax payers.
WHY INTERNET REGULATION IS DOOMED TO FAIL:
The powers the FDA is seeking are unconstitutional, and the
agency has neither the competence nor the integrity to police
the Internet; but even if it did, it would be impractical for the
agency to do so. There are currently an estimated 8,000 health
sites on the Internet. If Congress gives the FDA $10 million a
year, the best the agency could do is shut down a couple of
hundred sites a year. Within a few years, the FDA would
create a litigation monster whose appetite would far exceed
their $10 million annual budget. The FDA would be bogged
down in a quagmire of judicial proceedings, while thousands of
new health Web sites would be springing up that the agency
would be at an utter loss to control.
The end result of the FDA's war against the free flow of
information on the Internet would be tens of millions of tax
dollars wasted, with less so-called consumer "protection" than
exists today.
THE FDA ALREADY HAS THE LEGAL POWER IT
NEEDS:
The charade the FDA is parading before Congress is that they
need more money and stricter laws to regulate e-commerce.
The facts are that the FDA already has the regulatory structure
to "protect" the consumer on the Internet. Much of what the
FDA wants is already covered by existing Federal and State
law, but the agency is seeking to add another bureaucratic layer
of law and money to suppress the dissemination of health
information.
AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL
The FDA has its own Web site (www.fda.gov
SIGHTINGS HOMEPAGE
This Site Served by TheHostPros
-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @ conservation . com), January 12, 2000
They ALSO flaunt their lack of understanding. EVRERYBODY in side the
beltway figgers that the Net is linear, like a wire or cable, and
that they can put a block in place and VOILA they have control.
SOmeone needs to tell them that what they are going to try to
prohibit in the US will be available from Off-shore websites before
the ink is dry on the subpoenas, and they will be UNTOUCHABLE.
On second thought maybe we don't want them to understand...
c
-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 12, 2000.