U.S. bans import of Canadian meds by individuals
May 31, 2012 by uncoverthenews
Filed under Big Pharma, Health News
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill that would ban Americans from bringing safe, approved Canadian prescription drugs into the country.
H.R. 5651 — the Food and Drug Administration Reform Act of 2012 — was passed Wednesday by a vote of 387-5.
Among other things, it gives the FDA new authority to prevent drug shortages and speed reviews of medical devices. The bill also addresses the matter of drugs imported from abroad, including those deemed safe by Health Canada.
When the Senate debated the bill last week, former presidential candidate and senator from Arizona, John McCain, wanted an amendment that would allow individual Americans to bring in prescription drugs under certain conditions.
Amendment 2107, Safe and Affordable Drugs from Canada, would have permitted the import of drugs that were: Purchased from a licensed pharmacist, from an approved pharmacy in Canada; purchased for personal use; issued by a doctor licensed to practice in the U.S.; and has the same specifications as a drug approved by the FDA.
His amendment was struck down 54-43.
Feds shut down Amish farm for selling fresh milk
February 13, 2012 by uncoverthenews
Filed under Food Watch
The FDA has won its two-year fight to shut down an Amish farmer who was selling fresh, raw milk to eager consumers in the Washington region, after a judge this month banned Daniel Allgyer from selling his milk across state lines, and he told his customers he’ll shut his farm down altogether.
The decision has enraged Mr. Allgyer’s supporters, some of whom have been buying from him for six years and who say the government is interfering with their parental rights to feed their children. But the Food and Drug Administration, which launched a full investigation complete with a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and a straw-purchase sting operation against Mr. Allgyer’s Rainbow Acres Farm, near Lancaster, said unpasteurized milk is unsafe and said it was exercising its due authority to stop its sale from one state to another.
Adding to Mr. Allgyer’s troubles, Judge Lawrence F. Stengel said if he is found to violate the law again he will have to pay the FDA’s costs for investigating and prosecuting him.
His customers are wary of talking publicly, fearing the FDA will come after them.
“I can’t believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food,” said one, who asked not to be named but who got weekly shipments of eggs, milk, honey and butter from Rainbow Acres. “In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank.”
Some senators are fighting the FDA for our supplements too. Let’s get active!
January 4, 2012 by Darren6688
Filed under Commentary
As the FDA continues its apparent goal to stymie access to supplements several senators have shown themselves to be on our side. We must all get active to keep our access free and unfettered.
Will it be enough to rein in FDA’s outrageous power grab?
ANH-USA, together with a number of supplement trade organizations, went to Capitol Hill to plead our case about the FDA’s profoundly flawed NDI (new supplement) draft guidance in the offices of two powerful senators and longtime friends of natural health, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Our visit was preceded by all the letters you have been sending to Congress, which have immeasurably increased the visibility of this issue. As you know, if this draft guidance stands, it would allow FDA to arbitrarily deny the sale of any supplement created (or modified) in the past seventeen years. Immediately after this meeting, Sens. Harkin and Hatch wrote to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and formally asked the FDA to withdraw its guidance document.
The senators urged FDA to begin work on a new draft that provides needed clarification on what constitutes a New Dietary Ingredient (NDI)—but, in their words, does not undermine Congress’s desire to provide consumers with access to safe, affordable dietary supplement products. Exactly!
These senators were uniquely qualified to make such a request, since they were the principal authors of DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. “When Congress included language in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) directing FDA to clarify when a dietary supplement ingredient is a new dietary ingredient, the expectation was that the guidance would be consistent with DSHEA,” they write. “Unfortunately, the draft guidance serves to undermine DSHEA in a number of important respects.”
They go on to outline the various arguments that we have been making in these pages for some time:
* The requirement for a manufacturer to submit an NDI notification for every dietary supplement containing an NDI is directly contrary to the language of DSHEA, which requires notification only of the intent to use an NDI;
* This new requirement is burdensome and would impose substantial additional costs on manufacturers, would not provide additional safety benefits, and would undermine access to the safe, affordable nutritional supplements that DSHEA was designed to ensure;
* The NDI guidance’s assertion that synthetic copies of ingredients can never be a dietary ingredient is without any statutory basis, and is contrary to longstanding FDA policy; and
* This guidance is contrary to Congressional intent by grandfathering in only ingredients that were marketed before the enactment of DSHEA—such an argument is particularly specious since “the term dietary supplement wasn’t even defined prior to DSHEA”!
The senators requested that FDA meet with interested parties to work through all of the issues raised in our and others’ comments. Fortunately, FDA can’t just ignore the senators’ request, because the agency is required to work within legislative intent. Otherwise they would be creating new law—which legally they cannot do. This is one of the arguments we have been making all along—that FDA is in fact making new law with this draft guidance, and now Congress is calling them on it!
We would like to thank Senators Harkin and Hatch for being such stalwart champions of natural health, and for their leadership in this battle to prevent the FDA from usurping powers that they are not legally entitled to. We also want to thank every one of you for contacting Congress and the FDA and being such a vital part of this process.
We aren’t out of the woods yet—we’ll have another update soon with additional action items for you. The time may come for more specific legislative action, and we may find ourselves battling FDA in the courts as well. That’s why your continued support and activism is so terribly important. Together we can win this one, preserve your access to supplements, and keep supplements from costing as much as drugs.
FDA Violates Federal Law: Emord and ANH Challenge Illegal Rulemaking
December 6, 2011 by Darren6688
Filed under Big Pharma
Even the mighty FDA can be brought to its knees and that is what we must do. They must be forced to play by the same legal rules as we the people. The good news is that a big lawsuit is taking place to make sure they do just that. Read below!
Bolstered by a massive outpouring of support from you, we are asking the agency to withdraw its New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) draft guidance completely!
The period for comments to the FDA on the draft guidance on NDI notifications closed on December 2. Along with the hundreds of thousands of messages you sent and the 20,000 phone calls you made to FDA and Congress, ANH-USA also submitted formal comments.
The problem with the FDA’s draft guidance on New Dietary Ingredients is that it allows FDA to arbitrarily deny the sale of any supplement created (or modified) in the past seventeen years. If you’re a supplement manufacturer or distributor or possibly even a health food store, and you don’t file a NDI “notification” (actually a request for approval) for each ingredient in each product developed since 1994 in just the way prescribed by the FDA, and the court later decides the FDA is right, then you are guilty of product “adulteration,” which is punishable by prison. With your favorite supplements off the market, it also would allow the drug industry to adapt and patent them, and sell them back to you—by doctor’s prescription only—for 10 or 100 (or even more) times what you’re paying now.
Our comments, drafted by acclaimed attorney Jonathan Emord on our behalf, show that the FDA is engaged in substantive new rulemaking, in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA). “The APA says if an agency’s action is legislative in nature, that’s rulemaking,” explained Emord. “The guidance distorts the plain language of the laws that govern supplements. FDA needs to comply with the APA’s formal rulemaking requirements, not issue unilateral guidance as a deceptive means of creating new rules.”
We argue that the FDA is acting illegally. The FDA circumvented the regulatory process by issuing a guidance, which gives them cover and flexibility, instead of going through the rulemaking process, which is required when creating a new law—and we believe the guidance in fact does create new law. As a result, FDA’s actions leave interested parties little recourse within the regulatory system.
In technical terms, a guidance is supposed to be legally non-binding. It is meant to simply present the FDA’s interpretation of the rule. However, the NDI guidance goes well beyond an interpretation, and we believe it is in fact a legislative rule with legal implications:
- The NDI guidance is a departure from the FDA’s previous standards for NDI notifications. It alters and broadens the meaning of what qualifies as an NDI, and creates new—and very expensive—requirements to comply with the NDI notification process (creating what we would call a de facto pre-approval system), counter to what is outlined in Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
- Not fulfilling the NDI notification requirements outlined in the guidance ensures that the supplement will be considered adulterated and therefore illegal. This indicates there’s a clear, legally binding impact to the NDI guidance.
- Supplements that are considered illegal can be confiscated, and under the Food Safety Modernization Act, as we noted lasted week, can now be subject to administrative detention as well.
You may recall that Joanna M. Shepherd Bailey, PhD, professor of law and economics at Emory University, demonstrated that FDA grossly underestimated the economic cost of the NDI guidance. Her report found that:
- Between 22,240 and 41,700 nutritional supplements would likely be removed from the market, at an economic loss of between $5.6 billion and $10.5 billion;
- The nutritional supplement market could shrink by between 28% and 52.5%, producing an annual loss for the industry of between $7.84 billion to $14.7 billion; and
- Between 55,720 and 104,475 jobs in the supplement industry could be lost.
FDA’s analysis did not take into consideration the costs of the expanded reach and requirements of the NDI guidance. The agency therefore misled the Office of Management and Budget, in violation of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1996.
FDA has arbitrarily determined that supplement companies need to show at least “25 years of widespread use” in order it to meet the “history of safety” standard in NDI notification. In other words, only supplements on the market before October 1986 could be considered “safe.” This is patently ridiculous, since the cutoff date for grandfathered ingredients assumed to be safe, according to DSHEA, is October 1994.
The NDI notification system was intended to ensure safety. The very reason pre-DSHEA supplements were grandfathered is because they had proven themselves safe through years of use by hundreds of thousands of consumers! If safety is of utmost concern to FDA, why does the guidance document burden the supplement industry with regulatory requirements that have nothing to do with proving the safety of the supplements? It appears FDA is acting out of spite—and not in the public’s best interest. Moreover, many of the provisions in the guidance are totally unrelated to safety and serve only to limit consumers’ access to nutritional supplements.
We believe FDA will be unable incorporate enough changes to their draft guidance to bring it in line with existing law, preserve supplement access for customers, and remove needless regulatory hurdles for industry. Because of this, we asked FDA in our formal comments to withdraw the draft guidance at the earliest possible moment.
Now that the FDA’s comment period is closed, the agency is supposed to review the comments and prepare a final version of the guidance document—though they are under no legal obligation to do so. In fact, because it is guidance, they are under no legal obligation even to take public comments into consideration. Nor is there any timeline: the agency is still sitting on a guidance, now nearly three years old, that was meant to create a distinction between beverages and liquid dietary supplements.
Even worse, since this is presented as guidance and not formal rulemaking, the FDA is very likely to enforce the provisions in the draft guidance as though they were final—with limited legal recourse for affected parties!
We believe FDA’s actions require them to follow the Administrative Procedure Act, which calls for a formal rulemaking procedure. Under this law:
- FDA will be forced to have a formal comment period, and to review and consider all comments before they issue a final rule. This includes a rulemaking record that shows the data and analysis behind a proposed rule, and sometimes even public hearings.
- If the result is not to the liking of interested parties, “Each agency shall give an interested person the right to petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule.” This means, that unlike a guidance, it is possible to challenge a rule in court. It is very likely that FDA conveniently issued a guidance, instead of going through the rulemaking process, to avoid this very outcome.
Now that the NDI comment period is closed, we will start implementing the next phase of our strategy—which will include both legal and legislative components. We will, of course, keep our supporters and allies in the loop.
Thank you all again for your tremendous outpouring of letters and phone calls! It has laid important groundwork for our next actions.
The 11 minute make over of the mind
December 6, 2011 by Darren6688
Filed under Food Watch
11 minutes to change a mindset. Incredibly it does not take long to turn the tide and morph a mindset. In this story by Jeffrey Smith we learn how a powerful presentation change the way a hug group of people felt about GMO’s. Read more below!
by Jeffrey M. Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology
11 minutes
It took the audience just 11 minutes?11 minutes to give up food brands they had grown up with and to commit to seek healthier non-GMO food. Of course this group had already been against genetically modified organisms as a concept. This was Greenfest after all; and in San Francisco no less. But when I asked them to honestly rate themselves on a scale of 1-100 how vigilant they had been at avoiding GMOs, the largest number of hands went up for lowest category?1-20. That’s typical of most US audiences. And so is what happened next….
After showing them photos of damaged organs from lab rats fed GMOs, skin rashes from farm workers picking GM cotton, and dead livestock that had grazed on the cotton plants; when they saw rodent studies showing a 5-fold increase in infant mortality, smaller babies, sterile babies, and severe immune responses; when they realized that genes inserted into GM crops can transfer into the DNA of bacteria inside our intestines and possibly continue to function, and that the poisonous insecticide engineered into Monsanto’s corn is found in the blood of pregnant women and unborn fetuses; when they learned how industry rigs their research to hide dangers and attacks independent scientists and their studies; when they discovered that FDA scientists had repeatedly warned of serious harm from GMOs, but the political appointee in charge?Monsanto’s former attorney?allowed GM foods on the market without any required safety tests; and when they discovered that the same doctors’ organization that first identified Gulf War syndrome, chemical sensitivities, and food allergies, now urges physicians to prescribe non-GMO diets to everyone; I asked the audience to rate themselves how vigilant they would be next week to avoid GMOs.
“How many will be low vigilance, 1-20?” No hands.
“20-40?” Still no hands.
“40-60?” A couple of hands.
The most popular category shifted from the lowest vigilance (1-20) in the first vote, to the highest (80-100) in the second?just 11 minutes later.
I then reminded the audience of the strategy to eliminate GMOs, which we had discussed at the beginning: If brand managers from major food companies see any drop in market share that was attributable to growing anti-GMO sentiment in the US, it would be the food industry equivalent of a “Sell Signal.” GMO ingredients would be considered a market liability and be discarded. Remember, these same companies had quickly removed GMOs from their European brands when GMO resistance spread there. To hit that sell signal in the US, we think the tipping point requires about 5% of US consumers changing their diet.
I asked the audience, “How in the world are we going to get 15 million Americans to change their diet?” After the 11 minutes, I told them, “Now we know. We just tell them the truth.”
I then asked the audience to rate themselves how active they planned to be to educate people on GMOs. At the start of the presentation, most rated themselves in the lowest category. After 11 minutes, nearly everyone was in the highest.
“So you see,” I said. “The same information that changes peoples’ diets also makes the campaign go viral.”
Endgame for GMOs
Now it’s just a numbers game. Once we disseminate that information to enough people, it’s the endgame for genetically modified food.
The Institute for Responsible Technology has packaged this behavior-changing message into a full range of educational materials, organized local and national action groups, trained 750 people to give public presentations, and reaches 5-10 million people each month.
Because collective consciousness is starting to awaken to this issue, it’s become easier to get the word out and change lives. As the same time, we’re now getting flooded with opportunities and requests. With current staffing levels, we simply can’t keep up. We need your help.
We love our supporters. Our precious donors make our work possible. To you, and to everyone who has ever considered giving a donation, please understand that right now every single dollar has enormous leverage, driving us closer to a non-GMO future.
Help us harvest all this low-hanging non-GMO fruit. Please make a contribution to help end the genetic engineering of our food supply.
I wouldn’t say we’re in the home stretch just yet, but we’re banking the turn and hear the crowd cheering. It’s time to turn on the juice.
Thanks so much,
Jeffrey Smith, Executive Director
Institute for Responsible Technology
FDA run amuck
We have been saying for years now that the FDA has completely surpassed their stated agenda and every year they reach for even more absurdity. Now it appears that have surpassed even their own capacity for foolishness with the recent fine levied on a family for selling bunny rabbits. The ridiculous rules!
USDA Fines Family Four Million Dollars For Selling Bunny Rabbits
NaturalNews
Ethan A. Huff
May 22nd, 2011
When the Dollarhite family of Nixa, Mo., first started raising and selling bunnies as part of a lesson to teach their teenage son about responsibility and hard work, they had no idea they would eventually meet the heavy hand of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
According to a recent article covered in Breitbart’s Big Government, the USDA recently ordered the Dollarhite family to pay more than $90,000 in fines because they sold more than $500 worth of rabbits in a year — and if they fail to pay the fine by Monday, May 23, the fine will multiply to nearly $4 million.
It all started back in 2006 when John Dollarhite and his wife Judy rescued two rabbits that ended up breeding. The family cared for and raised the new rabbits, and eventually began to sell them to neighbors, friends, and others for $10 or $15 each.
Having started by first selling the animals for meat, and later for show, the Dollarhites carefully and humanely raised the small creatures on their three-acre homestead, all while teaching their son honest values in a business environment similar to running a small lemonade stand.
Eventually, the Dollarhites developed such a highly-respected reputation across Missouri that the popular Branson, Mo., theme park Silver Dollar City, and even a local pet store, Petland, began purchasing bunnies from the family in 2009.
And according to John, individuals from both Silver Dollar City and Petland, as well as a rabbit competition judge, told him that the family’s bunnies were among the best they had ever seen — healthy, beautiful, and very well-cared for.
All seemed well until a USDA inspector showed up at the family’s home in the fall of 2009, and asked to do a “spot inspection” of the rabbitry. The inspector made no indication that anything was amiss, but only that she wished to see the facility.
After meandering the premises, the inspector claimed that a few very insignificant aspects of the raising facility were in violation of USDA standards, even though the Dollarhites were not USDA certified, nor were they required to be. She then asked if the Dollarhites wished to be part of the voluntary USDA certification system, upon which they told her they would look into it.
When the government not only allows such action by their own agencies one must ask, what sort of government do we have?
FDA ignores 4th Amendment now
May 10, 2011 by Steve
Filed under Health News
If you are surprised by the recent FDA regulation revision where they plainly state that they can and will seize foods even without evidence that there is contamination present. This of course will be judiciously applied mostly to natural and/or local food growers/providers and NOT the large factory farms where most of the problems stem.
I don’ know about you but I am thinking about now that the regulatory agencies are way, way, way out of control now and I have no idea where that will end. I do know that I will continue to support local growers and help them in any way I can.
FDA claims power to seize food without evidence of contamination
Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
A few hours ago, the Food and Drug Administration declared it no longer needs credible evidence to seize food that may be contaminated. Ignoring the Fourth Amendment entirely, the FDA claims that based on mere suspicion that a food product has been contaminated or mislabeled, and that serious illness or death will result, it can hold the food for 30 days while it then looks for evidence. It claims this power under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which President Monsanto, I mean, Obama, signed in January.
On May 4th, the FDA stated:
Previously, the FDA’s ability to detain food products applied only when the agency had credible evidence that a food product presented was contaminated or mislabeled in a way that presented a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.
Beginning July, the FDA will be able to detain food products that it has reason to believe are adulterated or misbranded for up to 30 days, if needed, to ensure they are kept out of the marketplace. The products will be kept out of the marketplace while the agency determines whether an enforcement action such as seizure or federal injunction against distribution of the product in commerce, is necessary.
Credible evidence no longer applies, it seems.
The Fourth Amendment states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
FDA thinks it can engage in search and seizure willy nilly. They’ve already been doing this, of course — but only at natural food facilities. Factory farms like DeCosta Eggs can sicken thousands of people over a period of years, without ever being shut down or having its product seized or destroyed. But, if you raise natural foods without pasteurizing them or adulterating them with drugs and genetically modified ingredients, even though no one becomes ill from your product, then be assured, the FDA will seize your products, your computers, your paperwork, and shut you down.
Most recently, the FDA shut down Pennsylvania farmer Dan Algyer, though no one became ill from his natural milk. Morningland Cheese and Estrella Family Creamery are but two more in a long line of victims of the corporate war on natural food, though their products sickened no one. And most of the nation knows of the armed raid on Rawesome Foods last year. (Also see David Gumpert’s book, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights.)
In the May 2011 edition of the Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine (hat tip FTCLDF), Greg Breining summarizes the issues in MILK vs milk: Do consumers have the right to choose? Well, of course we do. Food freedom is as inalienable as the right to breathe. The freedom to eat the food with which humans evolved is requisite to our survival as individuals and as a species. Thomas Jefferson agrees: “Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”
That’s often paraphrased as: “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
Another rule announced by the FDA requires importers to declare if any nation refused their food or feed product for any reason, and to give the reason. Both rules go into effect July 3, 2011.
This article is so shameful that it is hard to look at it and think that this is happening in our country. Is it time to become incensed at such outrageous denials of our constitution and our rights?
New Attack on Health Freedom
The attacks continue on our health freedom. A new bill with vague language has been passed by the Senate, S 216. This bill is a slight improvement over the bill that was eventually voted down last year, S. 3767, due to all of our efforts, but still contains language that is just too vague and could allow the agents of the FDA to shut down producers of health products that are honest and forthright.
So, we ask all of you to help stop this one also. The Alliance for National Health has a website and you can read all about the bill and if you are so inclined you can act to get this bill stopped.
You can access the ACTION page here:
https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=725
You can also read a full ANH review of S. 216 here:
http://www.anh-usa.org/urgent-actio…
Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032178_dietary_supplements_health_freedom.html#ixzz1KlZ6YWy6
Flu his UK
AS the swine flu hits the UK causing phrases like ‘pandemic’ to rear their ugly heads, we find that even though a very large portion of the population has now been vaccinated you still see that same percentages of infected population.
What they don’t want you to know is that the vaccinated are getting ill also…so what is the point? We can go from the really benign, MSM explanation to the more ‘radical’ interpretation of conspiracy. I tend to fall somewhere between the conspiracy theory and the just raw capitalism exhibited by these drug companies. The more of these toxic vaccines they get the governments to buy into and sell for them by ‘requiring’ said vaccinations, the better their bottom lines.
There is enough nasty business in these vaccines to cause some long term damage and even death in some cases. You can go from there in drawing more conclusions. This screwy scheme is far deeper than meets the eye, especially if your eyes are drawn to MSM reporting.
Britain on course for flu epidemic
Britain is on course for its first flu epidemic for more than a decade, according to the Government scientific data.
The level of influenza – including the swine flu strain – in the population is now higher – and rising more sharply – than they were at this point in 1999, when the country was heading for an epidemic which triggered a major NHS crisis.
With millions of people visiting friends and family over the Christmas period experts believe that the rate could reach epidemic levels within a week.
The number of flu victims in intensive care has more than doubled in one week, with 460 patients now in critical care beds.
Meanwhile, a Government memo is warning of shortages of Tamiflu – the main drug used to treat flu patients – in some parts of the country.
The rate of flu in England and Wales is 87.1 cases per 100,000 of the population, a rate which has tripled in seven days.
In the run-up to Christmas 1999, levels were less than 60 per 100,000 population, yet by early January 2000 the outbreak had reached epidemic proportions, with more than 200 cases per 100,000.
The records, which only represent those who visit their GP, always underestimate the true extent of sickness.
Influenza expert Prof John Oxford said: ‘The numbers now are worse than they were in winter of 1999, and the curve is steeper; when you look at the graph the line for this year it is incredibly unsettling; it looks like scaling Everest,” said the virologist.
“If that trend continues I would not be surprised if we get to epidemic levels within one week.”
In the millennium winter, the resulting crisis meant patients were left to wait on trolleys and thousands of elderly people died, prompting then prime minister Tony Blair to order a tripling in health service spending.
Prof Oxford, from Queen Mary University of London said the “massive movements of populations” across the country as families came together for Christmas were likely to be speeding the spread of disease.
He said it was a “great shame” that the Government had taken the decision to axe its annual publicity campaign urging vulnerable people to have their flu jab.
“We don’t know what will happen next – everything is now hanging in the lap of the Gods – and it wouldn’t have been that way if people had been vaccinated,” said the professor of virology.
While the elderly usually suffer worst from flu, research suggests they may have some immunity to swine flu having encountered a similar strain of the disease in previous decades.
As a result, in the event of an epidemic, overall death numbers were unlikely to be as bad as those in the winter 1999/2000, Prof Oxford said, though overall “years of life” lost might be the same, with more children and young adults being struck down.
Latest figures show 27 deaths from flu, 24 of which were from swine flu. Nine of the cases were children.
Across the country, pharmacists are complaining of shortages of Tamiflu, the main drug used to treat the virus.
Prof Dame Sally Davies, the Government’s chief medical officer, last week changed the official advice to GPs, instructing them to prescribe the drug to anyone who might benefit – not just those in “high risk” groups.
A Government memo seen by The Sunday Telegraph reveals there are already shortages of the drug in some parts of the country, with concerns that stocks will run out elsewhere as demand increases.
The letter, by Dr Keith Ridge, England’s chief pharmaceutical officer, sent to hospitals and pharmacies on Thursday and marked urgent, warns: “Following increased demand for antivirals, there have been reports of localised shortages at both pharmacies and wholesalers”.
The letter, which announces the release of more than 50,000 packs of drugs from national stocks, says increased demand is expected, but that the level is hard to predict.
Pharmacies are told to ensure they have sufficient drugs to give them to patients within 48 hours of them falling ill, but told that stockpiling drugs “will lead to further shortages”.
A separate warning about shortages of treatment for babies was issued by the Royal College of GPs on Christmas Eve.
Doctors have been ordered not to prescribe the liquid version of Tamiflu to anyone over the age of one, to ensure there is enough of the formula left for babies.
GPs have been told that patients aged one or more must be given tablets, with parents of children who cannot take tablets given instructions on how to crush and dilute them.
The same practice is more dangerous when the solution is for babies, because of the greater risk of giving too high a dose.
John Healey, shadow health secretary, attacked the Government’s decision to axe a national advertising campaign, which until this year had encouraged take-up of flu vaccinations.
Vaccine uptake among under 65s in at risk groups, such as those with conditions like asthma, is five per cent lower than last year, while the number of elderly people being vaccinated has dropped slightly.
He said: “The health secretary should authorise an immediate public advertising campaign to encourage those most at risk to get the flu jab. This is the time to act.”
Last weekend Prof Davies criticised ministers for stopping the campaign, after warning hospitals that half of the most severely ill patients treated had previously been in good health.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said the numbers of those now critically ill with flu had been a “significant increase”.
He said the NHS was “responding well” to the demands on it, and said the Government would continue to monitor the situation carefully.
Please don’t allow these animals to convince you get vaccinations. I can’t recommend them nor can many other folks, MDs included. They are not effective and can be dangerous to your health.
STOP this Food Safety Bill NOW!!! ALERT ALERT
December 9, 2010 by Steve
Filed under Featured, Food Watch
In what seems to be a never ending assault on our freedoms, this one attacks our most precious asset…the right to grow our own food as small producers without regulation by the FEDS!
Clearly this bill, that started out to regulate INDUSTRIAL FARMS, has ended up as a full on assault by Big Ag to limit competition from local farmers by making the regulatory costs so high that no one can comply EXCEPT Big Ag!
CALL, WRITE, EMAIL OR FAX YOUR REP NOW!!!! SIGN THE PETITION.
Stop Big Ag’s Food Safety Bill!
The Organic Consumers Association cannot support the federal food safety bill as currently written because it fails to fully address the root cause of food borne illness, which is the factory farming of meat, eggs and milk.
Nevertheless, we do support amendments that would protect small, local, and organic food producers from the worst aspects of the bills’ one-size-fits all approach to managing the food safety hazards facing the largest producers.
The House of Representatives has just passed another version of the food safety bill and it’s headed back to the Senate for a final vote.
Please ask your Senator to stop the food safety bill, but, if that’s not possible, to mitigate its damage by supporting amendments that protect small, local and organic producers.
