FDA Censorship: Freedom on Trial

It may come as a surprise to you, but the federal Food and Drug Administration prohibits makers of foods and dietary ingredients from informing you of the effects those substances have on disease. Most of us know that water treats dehydration and that prune juice treats chronic constipation, but if bottled water or prune juice sellers were to tell you that, they would be violating federal law and could go to jail. If those companies were to send you scientific articles on water curing dehydration or prune juice relieving chronic constipation, that too would violate federal law.

Telling you that saw palmetto extract may reduce symptoms of mild benign prostatic hyperplasia (an enlarged prostate) or that glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate may reduce cartilage deterioration and thereby lessen the risk of osteoarthritis or that calcium may reduce the risk of colon cancer can land the makers of those dietary ingredients in jail. Although those statements are backed by credible scientific evidence and could relieve the pain and suffering of millions, telling you that truth on the label of, or in advertising for, a dietary supplement or food product violates federal law.

You may be aware that folic acid reduces neural tube defect births (e.g., spina bifida). In September of 1992 the Public Health Service recommended that all women of child-bearing age (before pregnancy) consume .4 mg of folic acid daily to reduce their risk of neural tube defect births. The risk reduction can be as great as 40% to 80%. Despite the PHS recommendation, FDA banned the claim for years, even refusing to comply with a court order compelling the agency to allow a claim that .8 mg of folic acid in a dietary supplement was superior in its effectiveness to a lesser amount in foods. Congress found FDA’s suppression of the folic acid/neural tube defect claim indefensible, explaining that it contributed to preventable neural tube defect births each year the ban remained in place.

You may wonder if our First Amendment still means what it says. The First Amendment to our Constitution protects Americans’ rights to tell the truth and to receive truthful information. Like a throwback to the Fifteenth Century Courts of Star Chamber, the FDA blocks access to the truth. It censors health information every day and by doing so it not only violates all of our rights, it also sacrifices the lives and health of those who, if fully informed, could avoid certain catastrophic diseases or could lessen the severity of them.

If you believe as we do that freedom is too precious to permit its loss to go unchallenged, that a government that denies its people freedom distrusts its people, and that a people deprived of basic health information is a people less apt to succeed in the struggle for health and longevity, you should contact us, make a $25 non-tax deductible contribution to on-going litigation against FDA censorship, and receive in return a video, Freedom on Trial, that documents the history of a remarkable struggle for freedom.

Please send your name and address along with a check for $25 (payable to __________________) to: ________________[NAME AND ADDRESS]. In return, we will send you the dvd Freedom on Trial by Hollywood Producer Ray Schwartz.