Dear Legislator:
I am writing to my National and State Legislators to urge you to resist current pressures to adopt laws that restrict Free Speech about Nutrition. Such a law was adopted a few years ago in Ohio with bad results. This week, Legislators in New Jersey are being asked to adopt a law granting a monopoly on speech about Nutrition to Dietitians who are poorly trained in Nutrition (A2933 in the Assembly and S1941 in the Senate). Similar bills are pending in other states as well.
I urge you to oppose all such bills on the State and Federal levels. On the Federal level, such restrictions are often imposed through FDA regulations and I urge my Federal representatives to exercise their oversight obligation to make sure that travesties such as FDA's recent attempt to impose a new regulatory category, "CAM Product" continue to fail to be implemented.
At a minimum true Health Freedom requires the free flow of truthful and not misleading information about these matters of personal concern. That's why Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in Thompson v. Western States Medical Center, decided on April 29, 2002 - 535 U.S. 357:
"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last - not first - resort."
"We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making bad decisions with the information."
"Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring ... a warning that the [product] had not undergone FDA testing and that its risks were unknown."
Without such free and open access to commercial information, part of the Free Speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution for the united States of America, we are not adults making decisions about our own bodies and health.
Health Freedom is a very important issue to me and I will remember to cast my votes for Legislators who are leaders in the effort to achieve and maintain the fullest Freedom of Speech in Nutrition.
Please see the Natural Solutions Foundation's important web site, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/ for more information about this.
Regards,
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Educating Legislators: Do Not Regulate Speech about Nutrition
ReplyDeleteThe Natural Solutions Foundation, founded in 2004, is an international NGO (Non Governmental Organization) active and registered in several countries and is a not for profit 501(C )(3) tax exempt organization in the United States. The Mission of the Foundation is to discover, develop, demonstrate and disseminate natural solutions to the problems facing us and threatening our health and freedom, achieving and maintaining a healthy self, community and world. Since its founding the Natural Solutions Foundation has pursued a vigorous program on many fronts, including natural solutions to significant social problems involving health and wellness. We have over one hundred seventy thousand people on our supporter list. We consider health freedom to be part of those solutions. The threats to health and freedom are both domestic and international, as are the solutions. Among our primary concerns are: Codex Alimentarius (World Food Code), Mandated Vaccinations and Genetically Modified Organisms.
One of our purposes is to educate Legislators in the Federal and State governments about the requirements of Health Freedom to insure Americans' access to truthful and not misleading information about the most advanced health care alternatives.
At a minimum true Health Freedom requires the free flow of truthful and not misleading information about these matters of personal concern. That's why Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in Thompson v. Western States Medical Center, decided on April 29, 2002 - 535 U.S. 357:
"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last - not first - resort."
"We have previously rejected the notion that the Government has an interest in preventing the dissemination of truthful commercial information in order to prevent members of the public from making bad decisions with the information."
"Even if the Government did argue that it had an interest in preventing misleading advertisements, this interest could be satisfied by the far less restrictive alternative of requiring ... a warning that the [product] had not undergone FDA testing and that its risks were unknown."
Without such free and open access to commercial information, part of the Free Speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution for the united States of America, we are not adults making decisions about our own bodies and health, but rather supplicants begging political and medical high priests for permission to live.
So it is with Food as it is with all such matters. Without truthful and not misleading information about the Food offered to us on the marketplace, we cannot be free consumers.
Nonethelss there is a movement afoot in the country to restrict truthful commercial speech about Food and Nutrition to one class of persons only, namely Licensed Dietitians, people who are, by and large, not trained in Nutritional Science. We have seen draconian State laws passed in States like Ohio forbidding Free Speech about Nutrition. Even now there is an attempt in New Jersey to pass just such a restrictive law, A2933 in the Assembly and S1941 in the Senate. This so-called “Registered Dietician Licensing” Act is really a Dietitians' Monopoly Act and will cause significant public harm.
Here is what one Nutritionist, Dian Freeman, wrote about it:
1. As currently written, this bill would censor information that is neither understood nor endorsed by the medical establishment. Information should be freely available in a free society. Therefore, the crux of the issue with this bill is multiple violations of civil rights, i.e., freedom of speech, the right to have fully informed choice and the basic right to make our own personal health decisions. This bill is also questionable relative to anti-trust laws against creating business monopolies. As it is written, Bill S1941 favors the medical establishment in New Jersey.
2. This bill, if passed, will disallow the public to be educated about natural health options and choices. Dieticians have no training or interest in natural and holistic alternatives and wish to be known as “medical nutritionists”. An oxymoron if ever there were one. Medicine and nutrition have been at odds for centuries.
In the Sixteenth Century, as in the Twentieth Century, licensed physicians and surgeons were going to the British Parliment to ban the activities of the alternative practitioners of their day, herbalists. Parliament ordered an end to this misuse of the Parliament to enforce licensure, thereby protecting the nutritionists from “suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of their goods…” (see attachment 7- The Herbalists Charter). http://home.earthlink.net/~lifespirit23/herbcharter.htm
The obvious aim of senate bill 1941 is once again the age old attempt to silence by licensure all alternatives to modern medicine and to render historically valuable health information extinct. This is knowledge that is valuable in both a historical and a practical sense. We ask the New Jersey legislators to stop this atrocity of justice and abuse of civil rights. We hope that this legislature, to paraphrase the Herbalist Charter, will order an end to this misuse of the New Jersey Legislature to enforce licensure, thereby protecting we nutritionists from “suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of our goods… to a medical monopoly. This charter protecting herbalist was taken as law by New Jersey and remains on the books today.
3. In every culture the perception of a people weighs as reality. The perception by the people about nutritionists and natural health practitioners is of those who would advise about eating organic food, traditional common-sense health practices, balancing and healing diet programs, effective supplement protocols and recommendations on other alternative choices that are complementary to a holistic approach to health. Dieticians are trained in none of these aspects of nutrition because doctors are not trained in them. Dieticians are by their own admission, medical. They are taught to mirror the medical establishment’s disrespect for holistic alternatives. This medical attitude, based on ignorance and fear, is unfortunate. Without the option to seek information from an alternative viewpoint, many will be misled by dieticians masquerading as nutritionists.
To designate dieticians as nutritionists is both to redefine the common perception of a nutritionist, which is propagating a lie upon the public, and to destroy a vast and growing industry by creating a medical monopoly.
4. These Bills deny the public access to holistic health information, thereby eliminating any possibility of a person to make an informed choice regarding their health and violating the American Medical Association’s dictate of 1999 which says, “Informed consent can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an intelligent choice.” Permitting only one side of a story does not lend itself to providing an informed consent.
5. Among the sadder consequences of these Bills would be the inevitably contradictory and probably intentional misinformation dispensed by the medical science community on diet and food. This would lead to confusion among the public as to what their truly healthful choices are. Natural practitioners can clear up much of this misinformation today by helping those who are confused to sort it all out.
Without the dissemination of natural health information and if natural health dialogue is censored by the passage of this bill, the ancillary businesses that depend on natural health information will decline and eventually vanish. This may be the true intention of this bill. The pharmaceutical and medical industries appear to be using their vast resources and influence to get the legislators of New Jersey to eliminate those seen as competition.
The businesses that will decline with the passage of this bill will be small farmers, organic foods, health shops, herbal and natural supplement suppliers, Dan doctors who council on diets for the autistic, natural health publications, etc. Voters will not be happy with those who take away their supplements. The natural heath field is a large industry. A industry of voters. Large enough to be of significant competition to the medical and pharmaceutical industry.
6. Of course, dieticians have a right to be licensed if they so choose. Removing the clause from these Bills that criminalizes the people who have been practicing, learning and teaching holistic nutrition would be the logical solution for this dilemma. Allowing nutritional guidance and the dissemination of natural health information by those other than dieticians would give dieticians their license without infringing upon the freedoms of others.
7. The bill proposes to designate registered dieticians as “nutritionists” a designation they did not have before and do not have the training for. It would also deem it illegal for any person who is not a medically trained dietician working inside the medical “box” to address or share information relating to food, diet, nutrition and health including doctors of nutrition and those nationally certified and conventionally trained as nutritionists.
8. Dieticians have traditionally been perceived as the food preparers in institutions. They have training in the constituents that make up a food thus they prepare the nutritional panels on food packaging. Memorizing food nutrients does not provide for understanding the nutritional value of food. Dieticians advocate the use of processed foods probably because the chemical constituents they memorized seem the same whether processed or fresh. In his article “Corporate Potluck” (attachment 6), Jacob Wheeler describes a dietician at the 2007 American Dietetic Association’s Annual Food and Nutrition Expo in Philadelphia as “promoting Taco Bell’s new Fresco Style line…” Wheeler notes that among the many sponsors present were PepsiCo, Heshey’s, Crisco, Taco Bell and McDonalds,” and he asks. “When did PepsiCo become an advocate for health?” A nutritionist does not advocate such food. A dietician does.
9. Dieticians choose the foods served in public schools, hospitals and nursing homes. All three the butt of many common jokes within the nutritional field as well as among everyday people. Nutritionists believe if people regularly ate the food recommended by dieticians, most people would end up, sooner than later, in hospitals and nursing homes, which may be part of a larger plan. It is dieticians that choose pizza, hot dogs and french fries as a wholesome school lunch with ketchup seen as a valid serving of vegetables. The moms of New Jersey will think their legislators have gone nuts when they hear that they are considering naming the perpetrators of such food atrocities as valid nutritionists.
10. Dieticians also recommend the diets of the American Diabetic Association and the American Heart Association and hand them out in doctor’s offices and hospitals. In study after study, these diets are reported to be less healthy for the diseases that they target than the Atkins diet is! There is not one major study that supports the effectiveness of these medical diets. Looking at the statistics, we see that diabetes and heart disease have not diminished one iota in America over recent decades, rather, they are growing to epidemic proportions. Medical-model diets seem not to work and authentic nutritionists reject them. As a result, with real nutritional guidance people are getting well eating the right foods and taking effective and appropriate supplements.
11. As I mentioned before, perception is often read as reality. The fact that this bill so strongly favors the medical establishment and is sponsored mainly by those who are medical doctors, work in the medical field or work for medical foundations does not leave much room for the perception of the impartiality or fairness of the sponsors or the legislature.
The legislators who sponsor this bill and those who vote for it will be perceived as bent on outlawing all competition to the medical model. By denying their voters the many healthy alternatives available they will be forced to adhere to the medical industry’s two “health” options: drugs and surgery. There may be a perception that New Jersey legislators have no compunction about violating the civil rights of their constituents in favor of their own special interest and agenda.
This is a perception that will be brought to the mind of New Jersey voters repeatedly, state-wide, district-by-district by holistic health proponents each time a legislator who votes for these Bills comes up for re-election. American can be tenacious when it comes to the loss of their freedoms.
12. If passed in New Jersey, a precedent will be set for similar legislation to pass in other states. This will lead to a nation-wide, state-by-state ban on the dissemination of all holistic information. This effort will accomplish what the combined forces of the pharmaceutical and medical industries, with the help of the FDA, have been unable to accomplish on a federal level. Even though they have been trying for years to outlaw holistic practices in Washington D.C., that ol’ Constitution keeps getting in their way.
The proposal of such legislation reeks of a paternalistic government behaving with an obnoxiously elitist attitude giving the appearance of questionable ties to the special interest of the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
Please join us in sending a message to your State and National Legislators: DO NOT RESTRICT NUTRITIONAL FREE SPEECH.