Ever heard of CODEX???
-What is CODEX? (34) In short it is an annual World Health Organisation (WHO) sponsored gathering of delegates in Europe, many of them trans-national pharmaceutical corporations who are primarily focused on increasing their market share, by pushing their desired and arbitrary regulatory “standards” into a global standard and forcing it onto the smaller local supplement industry, all in the name of “international regulatory excellence”. The Codex Committee is also bound by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) treaties.
The WTO is a global commercial police that ensures countries are required to purchase from trans-national corporations in favour of their own locally produced goods, in the name of “lowering trade barriers”. This WHO/WTO joint effort called CODEX is in the process of wiping out local supplement companies and natural health care practices, to bring in more drug based medicine, in what is euphemistically known as “creating a level playing field”, while primarily giving the public a misleading impression that someone in the World Health Organisation (WTO) is looking after its health and safety.
CODEX recommendations are then adopted by regulators such as the Australian TGA or the US FDA by various direct or indirect means that end up as Acts and amendments that are passed into law by Parliaments or Congress, usually without public debate.
In 2002 I unveiled Codex to a Brisbane, Australia audience of 300 people. Only 3 knew anything about it - the same three I’d spoken with before the lecture. I then wrote a chapter on CODEX in my book “Health Betrayal”. Primary data about CODEX is not easy to find. (34) And there remains deliberate misinformation emanating from government sources with close ties to trans-national corporations. Meanwhile, the Australian regulator, the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) is deeply involved in the corporate agenda as this article will track.
The Australian Health Minister, Mr. Abbott, has recently called a Sydney talkback radio program to “reassure” the presenter and listening audience that CODEX is not an issue in Australia. At the same time there has been no effort on the part of the government to publicly reveal the extraordinary events that have delivered Australia into corporate governance in health care. This includes the very real possibility that many cheap and effective natural remedies may no longer be available to the public after July 1 when drastic changes that have never been openly debated, are set to be implemented by Parliament.
It is my intention to reveal the fact that trans-national pharmaceutical corporations have already assumed the role of government at least where health care is concerned. I intend to highlight what steps have already been taken by corporate interests to move Australia and New Zealand toward CODEX and toward international corporate governance in the Asia Pacific region. This being true, it would alter the basic premise and agreement which Australian governance was founded upon – Democracy. This agreement cannot be altered except with the informed consent of the majority and only after public debate and referendum. It is my educated guess that most Australians want democracy for themselves and that they would want to preserve it for future generations. It is my guess that Australians do not want to be governed by trans-national corporations. It is my intention to allow these issues to be debated, understood and corrected by the electors, the only legitimate proprietors of government at this time.
Short History – Key Data
When debating regulatory matters I believe it is essential to bear in mind that the supplement industry and the drug industry are totally different industries. The natural supplement industry and its related discipline, natural health care is thousands of years old with a proven tradition. For example, Nostradamus used compressed rose petal pastilles, rich in vitamin C to treat his patients suffering from bubonic plague. Many of his patients survived the dreaded disease, and Nostradamus himself, who took the pastilles never succumbed to the illness.
The modern supplement industry has been traditionally locally owned by private or family companies and evolved around its own proven quality and safety standards. Traditionally using cheap and naturally sourced raw ingredients, the supplement industry has an enviable product safety record. In addition an entire branch of natural and nutritional medicine has developed over the centuries with a long tradition of safety and a large body of scientific evidence in support of its efficacy. A little known fact is that literally thousands of peer-reviewed studies exist to support the success of natural and nutritional approaches to medicine. (36,37,38,39,40) There exist many conditions that can only be significantly remedied by nutritional medicine.
The pharmaceutical industry as we know it, on the other hand, only started in earnest about 60 years ago. Many drugs have been so recently synthesised that their side effects will not be known for some years to come. Pharmaceutical corporations rely on patented artificial chemical drugs to generate most of their profits. Aggressive drug company marketing and image management has created the impression that drugs are essential to health, when in fact deaths from adverse drug reactions make up the fourth highest cause of death in the US. Still stinging from the market share lost through consumers opting for natural supplements, the trans-national pharmaceutical corporations have influenced the regulators to regulate supplements as drugs when in fact vitamins and minerals are not drugs but essential to all humans on a daily basis.
The difference between drugs and nutrients is that they are fundamentally opposites. There are many conditions caused when sufficient nutrients are not supplied to the body each day, but there is no such thing as a drug deficiency.
Author’s Note
I’m a health writer. I track the sickness industry. I watch while powerful vested interests infiltrate governments of sovereign nations. Lately I’d been busy with some other issues and nearly missed a hat trick that was being performed by Australian politicians that would remove freedom of choice from the community. I discovered it just in time when an article came across my desk entitled “The Codex threat to Australia – fact or fiction?” written by a chap who sourced his information from a few government websites. He opined that the Codex issue was merely hype and nonsense and nothing much for Aussies or anybody else in the world to worry about. His article was published by the Australian Traditional Medicine Society, an organisation that is supposed to represent complementary health practitioners and provide them with clear information about exactly WHO’s in charge of making decisions about supplements.
Frankly, I expected such a hose-down article as this to more likely appear in a pharmaceutical company trade magazine or as a press release from the TGA. But I assumed the drug giants have their own spin doctors, legions of them. And they are quite content to have useful gophers disseminate their whitewash to the rest of us. Later I discovered the article’s author regularly sat on a TGA committee called the Interim Advertising Council, which has, along with several pharmaceutical front organisations such as the Medicines Australia and the Self-Medication Industry, set up an official advertising agency that so blatantly serves drug company corporate interests that even the AMA objects to it on the grounds that “the process is occurring against a backdrop of enormous pressure…from pharmaceutical companies and others to open up to direct consumer advertising”. (24, 20)
I must however give thanks to the article in question, and to its author, Raymond Khoury, for it led me to cast my attention back to Codex and focus on a currently unfolding disaster in the Pacific region that is only avoidable if the Electors get a grip on the reins very soon.
If you believe, as I do, that in time the stench of sleaze, bribery, greed and dishonesty will reach the nose of the ethical majority to be dealt with accordingly, then you might agree that the sickness industry is about to collapse in on itself by the sheer weight of its own corruption. This is a time when the drug industry and our “regulators” are committing some stupid and desperate acts against human rights. And our politicians don’t look good passing Parliamentary bills, acts and amendments in the dead of night that arose through improper influences. Remember their names, for it is they who are accountable for their ethics. And it is we who are accountable for the kind of society we have allowed corporations to create in our name.
Getting Health Care into Perspective – Understanding CODEX
It’s official. US research shows that inappropriate and dangerous medical treatments and adverse drug reactions are now the number one cause of death (4). To some it was no surprise. It seemed an inevitable outcome from the 1980’s when health care was taken over by “health care” corporations and the pharmaceutical industry. Then the bottom line in health care became profit instead of sending the patient home well and drug free, if possible. (13)
There are still no Parliamentary enquiries into the deaths of 18,000 Australians each year, killed by inappropriate doctoring and prescribed pharmaceutical drugs that are licensed by the TGA (the Australian regulator). The cause of these avoidable deaths has been known by the government for over ten years when Dr. Runciman made it known in a report he prepared to the government in 1995. And yet nothing has been done about it. This makes these unnecessary deaths a deliberate act on the part of the perpetrators, the medical and pharmaceutical corporations and the Australian government. This act is the equivalent of deliberately exterminating all living beings from an entire large sized Australian country town each year. (1,2,3). This killing for profit has knowingly continued for the past 10 years.
In addition to the death toll, 50,000 Australians are maimed and disabled, not by their diseases, but by the “health care system” which includes; bad doctoring and serious or permanent damage from drugs that were licensed by the TGA. Yet there are no outraged politicians giving undertakings on the Senate steps to find the culprits, to stop the criminality of it. This appears astonishing, since 187 Australians are unnecessarily killed and maimed each day – that’s seven Australians killed or maimed per hour by conventional health care - more Australians than were ever killed in all the wars. By the time you have read this another Australian will die or be disabled by inappropriate medical treatment or an adverse reaction from a drug that was licensed and approved by the TGA. No memorials are erected to these victims. (1,2,3)
Where is Mainstream Media?
A few years ago the media conducted a feeding frenzy about an unfortunate person who died allegedly of an allergic reaction to royal jelly, a highly nutritious food that worker bees feed to the hive queen bee. (Unfortunately many more fatal allergic reactions occur annually than ever before, to both synthetic and to natural substances, due to the fact that general immunological health is declining through environmental degradation.) The person had ingested both the jelly and a meat sausage before the allergic reaction occurred, one that could equally have been caused by the preservative in the sausage. However, the TGA launched a lengthy investigation into the royal jelly, and required Royal Jelly to carry a health warning on the label. The sausage, of course was not investigated, nor allocated a health hazard label, one that the fatty, preserved product could arguably deserve, since the nitrite preservatives in sausages are responsible for many serious or fatal allergic reactions.
To salvage any remaining integrity the media would need to start presenting honest reports about the serious damage done to victims of the pharmaceutical and conventional health care corporations. Instead it runs the occasional unfounded vitamin scare about the purported dangers of vitamin C or Echinacea.
WHO is the TGA?
The TGA (therapeutic goods administration) is the Australian “regulator” of drugs, chemicals, genetically modified products, medical devices and now nutritional supplements and herbs which it calls “complementary medicines”. The TGA is a statutory body, created by an act of Parliament over 20 years ago on behalf of the Australian community. Its motto is “to ensure the safety of all Australians”.
Since its inception as “watchdog”, the TGA has licensed and allowed genetically modified foods into the country which opinion polls showed the overwhelming majority of Australians did not want.
Despite hundreds of letters from concerned citizens and chemically injured persons, the TGA has continued to allow chemicals onto the market which are shown to have toxic effects on humans even when used as directed.
In addition, the TGA has licensed pharmaceutical drugs such as Zyban, Vioxx and mercury laden vaccines among others, despite available data about the potentially serious and fatal effects these drugs have on humans. The TGA still allows the drugs that cause a large proportion of the 18,000 deaths and 50,000 serious injuries through adverse drug reactions while on the other hand it has compiled a large data base on its regulation of natural substances including vitamins, minerals, and even honey and olive oil, listing them as medicines.
The TGA has taken over the regulation of nutrients which have traditionally been produced by a separate and unique industry and are not part of the pharmaceutical industry because nutrients are not drugs, they are essential to all humans. Most health conscious persons now take supplements because it is known that food produced by modern agriculture is depleted in essential nutrients. TGA now regulates nutrients as drugs requiring evidence and clinical trials. There is no point to conducting “clinical trials” to determine whether persons need calcium or any other essential nutrient since it has been a long established fact that humans need all essential nutrients daily. The sole advantage in regarding nutrients as drugs is that the drug industry then stands to have exclusive control of all supplement manufacturing, sales and distribution.
The TGA maintains close ties to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and to the Codex Commission. Domestically, it convenes various committees upon which sit well known representatives of pharmaceutical interests and pharmaceutical front organisations. (19,20,21) TGA regularly consults with and places on its committees representatives of pharmaceutical and food companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Eli Lily, Glaxo, Pfizer, Wyeth and many other multination drug corporations. Without Australians’ knowledge or consent, the TGA routinely places corporations in positions of power when making decisions about Australian’s health. (23) It could be argued that any decision arising from this improper relationship could well be a legal nullity.
No comments:
Post a Comment