My country, tis of thee,
Once land of liberty, mourning I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land once of pilgrims’ pride,
Congress and the FDA have decided to let freedom wring!
A quick dictionary check notes wring as “to twist, squeeze, or compress … often used with out.” The same dictionary lists under synonyms “obtain by coercion or intimidation” and under slang “shake down”.
It is long past the publishing deadline but a quick and hurried vote of a new bill, HR2900, has just concluded well into the evening hours long past normal Congressional hours. The bill passed overwhelmingly with no debate or amendments allowed under special suspension of the rules.
Time is short so this column will be short and not do justice to this greatest travesty in the history of the American Congress as the worst and most destructive bill in the history of America has stealthily passed.
HR2900 is actually a very sneaky reauthorization of the 1992 FDA act that has allowed Big Pharma to bring drugs to market without completing safety testing. The result has been faster drugs to market, countless billions of dollars increased profits to Big Pharma, and more drug injuries and deaths in the 15 years since then from the likes of Avandia, Vioxx, SSRI drugs, Fen-Phen, Baychol, etc. than from all other drugs in more than half a century previous.
Currently there are far in excess of 1,000 safety studies required to be completed that have not been done – the number is growing all the time. Why should Big Pharma bother? More safety studies are more likely to find more problems and a need to quarantine the goose laying their golden eggs that is for we the people more like the colloquial, big goose egg zeros.
HR2900 was introduced 6/28/07 and in another after hours session that evening the House affixed a deadline of midnight on 7/09/07 for a report on this new bill. As Congress let out that evening they went to Independence Day recess and did not return until after the deadline. The designated reporting time was entirely for a time when “nobody was in the office(s)”. This bill was a rigged deal from the outset.
This new HR2900 reauthorization is even worse as it adds the establishment of a ‘Reagan-Udall Foundation’ with clever wording that sets up the elimination of nutritional supplements from competition with Big Pharma’s drugs and devices.
In part of the first inaugural address of President Ronald Reagan he said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”. HR2900 is a mockery to the legacy of Reagan.
Local readers of this column and listeners to my daily 'Voice of Change' radio broadcasts should be encouraged that the power of your voices were heard as both of the local Representatives, Marion Berry, D-AR, and JoAnne Emerson, R-MO, were 2 of only 16 nationwide who had the courage to stand against HR2900 with Nay votes.
An old American proverb says, “If you have your health you have everything, if you don’t have your health you don’t have anything.” So if you don’t have health freedom then do you have anything?
