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CODEX:
INTERNATIONAL THREAT TO NUTRITIONAL FREEDOM
In the autumn issue we brought you an account of another attempt by the Food and Drug Administration to block access to a promising cancer treatment (Gaston Naessens' 714X). Now, thanks to John Hammell of the Life Extension Foundation (LEF) and John Lesso of Australia's Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research, we bring you news of Codex Alimentarius Commission, hereinafter referred to as "Codex", a division of the World Trade Organization, which has the power to impose and enforce trade regulations under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).

Prior to the Codex meeting in Bonn in October, Dr. Matthias Rath, MD, a German physician living in San Francisco, addressed an open letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Members of the German Bundestag, expressing his concern that representatives of German pharmaceutical companies on the Codex Commission were pushing to ban any information on the preventive or therapeutic properties of vitamins for human health.

Citing his own clinical studies and books describing how vitamins can ward off cardiovascular disease, Dr. Rath asserted that "The health interests of millions of people are more important than the stock price of the pharmaceutical corporations." He urged, among other things, that representatives of pharmaceutical companies be barred from the commission and that the Government "immediately pass laws that guarantee free access to vitamins and other nutritional supplements for everyone in Germany" and "make every effort within the European Community to abolish all barriers restricting free access to nutritional supplements!"

He also urged the Government to "support the eradication of heart disease, now possible through advances in vitamin research.....by all means available!" Needless to say, reducing the incidence of heart disease is not in the interests of those who peddle the pills to repair the damage.

Dr. Rath's letter was ostensibly ignored. The German pharmaceutical company delegates to Codex succeeded in pushing their agenda from Step 3 to Step 5 in the 8-Step process of being accepted. It is conceivable that they could advance from Step 5 to Step 8 when the commission meets again in two years' time. This would mean that the citizens of all member countries could be bound by regulations favoring the marketing of immensely profitable petrochemical drugs and lose access to gentler remedies that help to maintain health and avoid the need for toxic ones that can wipe out the patient along with the disease..

Delegates from Australia, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and the US, pointing out that there was no consensus on many provisions of the guidelines, recommended that they should be sent back to Step 3 for revision, but they were overruled by other countries whose delegates had approved the advance to Step 5

While in Germany, John Hammell found that vitamins and dietary supplements were scarcely available in health food stores if at all, and that availability on an "over the counter" basis in a pharmacy was behind a counter guarded by a "phalanx of pharmacists wearing white lab coats".

Comparing the cost of vitamin C in a German drug store with that charged by his own LEF, John found that Germans must pay over 18 times as much per gram for a "huge, hard-to-swallow tablet" as Americans pay for the comparable LEF product.

Another foreseeable problem is that "minimum daily requirement" (MDR) amounts might be lowered for any or all vitamins, resulting in lower-dose tablets or capsules and requiring the purchase and swallowing of larger quantities in order to maintain customary dosage.


UK PROPOSES STUDY OF BSE/TSE IN APE COLONIES
Not content with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) in sheep (scrapie) cows (BSE), cats (FSE), and humans (CJD Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease), the British Department of Health cites an "urgent need" to establish large-scale colonies of apes in order to study "the fundamental nature" of the disease. The European Union plans similar studies,but Professor Lesk Borysiewicz, chair of the department's Medical Research Council TSE advisory group, says that the number of primates required would necessitate coordination of colonies throughout Europe. (The Daily Telegraph, 12 November 1996 p. 6)

There is no indication that inflicting more animals with the disease will yield useful knowledge, and it is certain to increase the supply of prions (the disease organism) that propagate the disease. Autopsies on existing victims would yield more reliable information about the human disease, which; may not affect other primates in the same way.

Jacquelyn Shortland, one of our UK correspondents, had the following letter printed in the usually unreceptive The Daily Telegraph of 19 November 1996.

Apes and BSE
SIR- It is extremely disquieting to learn of the Government's plan to establish a colony of apes for medical research into "human" risks from BSE. From cruel experiments on lower animals it has become increasingly acceptable to experiment on higher animals; but all, logically and without exception, lead to the same experiment having to be carried out on man himself.

The notion that one species can have any predictive value for another is an illusion and a fallacy, even conceded by many voices within the medical profession itself.

No one can fail to be moved by the plight of those afflicted with such devastating diseases as CJD, but the concept of vivisection not only draws us into a system that stifles our consciences and appeals to our baser instincts for a cure at any price, but blinds us to its absurdity and even any desire to explore the subject further.

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VACCINE UPDATE
Rubella increase follows vaccinations
According to the Lancet, 6 April 1996, rubella cases have hit a 13-year high in Scotland since the 1994 push to vaccinate every school child. It used to be a harmless disease but now, since the use of the vaccine has become more widespread, tends to occur in teenagers and young adults for whom the disease is a more serious matter.

Vaccine causes diabetes in New Zealand
Researchers have traced an epidemic of diabetes mellitus among New Zealand children to a massive Hepatitis B vaccination campaign in 1988. They also attribute several auto-immune diseases to this vaccine

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and warn that the 1993-1994 influenza B vaccine campaign could produce a similar increase in diabetes. (Lifeforce Summer 1996)        home

FDA approves new pertussis vaccine
An acellular vaccine (one that doesn't use the entire bacterium) for

(Continued on page 8)