If your use of nutritional supplements is limited to taking 1000 mg of Vitamin C when fending off a cold, you’ll be limited to 10mg unless you go to an M.D. and get a prescription. You might as well eat an orange.

If you have a chronic illness and your ability to function depends on several supplements, their manufacture and sale may be banned altogether. Your next bottle of supplements may be your last.

The looming battle for our right to access supplements and herbs—and ultimately freedom to manage our own health — makes the periodic skirmish with Congress look like a summer thunderstorm. The consequence to the U.S. of the WHO-directed EU Directive on Nutritional Supplements is a category five hurricane.

The EU Directive slated to become law on August 1st reclassifies vitamin supplements as medical drugs, available by prescription. The Directive severely limits the dosage of supplements that will be permitted at all, and 350 supplements will be banned altogether. The formulas of the supplements are mandated; the synthetic form of Vitamin E, which the body doesn’t absorb well, will be the only allowed form. The EU will ban 75% of vitamin and mineral forms effective in August, and legislation will extend eventually to phytonutrients, amino acids, essential fatty acids, enzymes and probiotics.

So that’s the EU, it won’t effect us in the U.S., right? You answer the question: Will the U.S. risk $600 billion of annual trade with the EU over the moral right of individuals to manage their health and the outbursts of vitamin manufacturers who are dwarfed by the pharmaceutical giants that are behind this ruling? Batten down the shutters for the hurricane.

Who’s Behind This and Why

The EU Directive is the work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a body created by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. The Codex Commission has the mandate to “harmonize” or standardize international food trade for the purpose of protecting the health of consumers and ensuring fair trade practices.

With ever-increasing globalization of trade, the creation of an international standard in many areas is protective of the consumer. Such areas as requiring labeling of irradiated foods and genetically engineered foods, one global definition of organic foods, and specifications of religious dietary requirements are a few of CODEX’s standardization mandates. Food packaging that reveals quantities of the ingredients is better regulated in the EU and Thailand (which leads everyone) than in the U.S. With health issues such as traces of up to 200 antibiotics found in a gallon of U.S. milk, would the Canadians or any educated consumer want to buy it? Salmonella in poultry and new threats to the food supply are reported regularly. Few would argue against some global standardization for the protection of the consumer and fewer trade disputes—no, we’re not importing beef from a country with mad cow disease, etc.

However, while Codex serves some useful purpose the pharmaceutical industry saw a grand opportunity to wheedle in and “harmonize” nutritional supplements and herbs, all perceived as threats to Big Pharma’s total control of healthcare, particularly in the U.S.A. Ironically, this collusion between supra-government bureaucrats and industry representatives took place in the mid-90s in Germany, the nation with the most standardized formulas for herbs and the birthplace of homeopathy, the medicinal system in most direct competition with the drug industry. (The discoverer of homeopathy, Dr. Samuel C. F. Hahnemann, was also driven out of Germany by the chemists—200 years ago. Around and around we go…)

Now the U.S. is one of the 165 member countries of the Codex Commission, and we have one vote. Here’s what we are up against:

• WHO classifies all dietary and herbal supplements as “drugs”
• The Codex Commission will limit over-the-counter sales of some dietary supplements while reclassifying others as pharmaceuticals available only through a pharmacist
• Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules Codex decisions override national and local laws
• Member countries that refuse to comply or “harmonize” with WTO directives may be subject to restrictive trade sanctions
• The European Union is the United States’ largest trade and investment partner with an annual exchange in goods and services estimated to be $600 billion

Whatever Happened to Democracy?

Democracy has been circumvented in this new international arena. Why would industry representatives carry their agenda to each nation and lobby for their special interests when they can have their interests presented in one fell swoop at a supra-government body such as Codex?

Industry reps meet with supra-government bureaucrats, hammer out the details of “how things work”, and then their agreements are presented as draft guidelines or proposals at Codex. Without any prior public knowledge of what is under discussion and certainly with no input from the public, laws and regulations are promulgated from global government organizations. In this case the impact on our daily lives will be deep, and for millions who manage chronic illness, the impact will be tragic.

Unless you’ve been to a health food store in the last few weeks (and they’ll all be put out of business by this ruling), you haven’t heard about this imminent threat because Washington doesn’t want you to know that the Codex rulings will circumscribe what Congress does. And you won’t hear it discussed on television because drug company advertising is about 40% of advertising revenues in the U.S.

In the last few months, two studies have been published to discredit the usefulness of antioxidant supplements and Vitamin E, and prepare to hear more such reports. Just as a nation orients its citizens for war by the news media changing the language to denigrate and dehumanize the “enemy”, so will there be more publications with “surprising” results of the uselessness or “danger” of supplements.

The safety record of dietary supplements is stellar, and to weigh the side effects of nutritional supplements and herbs to that of pharmaceutical drugs is sheer insanity. In America alone pharmaceutical drugs kill 100,000 people each year, as reported by JAMA, and that doesn’t count the thousands those who are given unnecessary or incorrect medications and are injured, but survive. Each year, in the US, 250,000 deaths are due to unnecessary surgery, medication errors and negative effects of drugs, making physician errors and pharmaceutical drugs the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Compare the safety record of drugs to that of nutritional supplements: from 1981-1993 the FDA had one verified report of death from a supplement and no deaths from commercial herbs. In the 1990s, the demand of diet products escalated, and ma huang/ephedra was put into diet formulas; the herb had never been used for this purpose in traditional Chinese medicine. From January 1993 to October 1998 the FDA received 2,621 reports of serious problems linked to supplements including 101 deaths, most of which were related to the use of ephedra in weight loss products. We’re looking at 101 deaths over six years from supplements compared to 600,000 deaths due to drugs.

Another factor to consider is that individuals who elect to manage their own health, who have sought out a nutritionist or done the research to know what might improve their well-being, are paying attention to their body and would be conscious of their body’s response to what they’re adding.

On the other hand, the education of members of the AMA typically includes one course in nutrition; how would an MD be qualified to write a prescription for nutritional supplements, much less herbs? The common refrain M.D.s tell patients, “I don’t believe in…” would dissuade all but the boldest patient/consumers.

At least in Europe all citizens have access to the medical (allopathic) establishment. Healthcare is universal, everyone has access. The US healthcare system is the poorest in the industrial nations. We spend nearly twice as much per year nationally as the runners-up, Canada and France, both of which have universal health coverage. One in six Americans has no health coverage whatsoever, and an estimated 60 million are without coverage part of any given year. With its ever-rising costs, employers who are footing most of the medical costs are reducing their coverage or opting out altogether, and retirees will leave with a gold watch but no health coverage. And pawning the watch won’t cover one month of healthcare premiums.

So we have better healthcare than other nations for all the money spent? Not even close. In indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality we’re among the bottom of the industrialized nations. They live longer in Shanghai, China, and Kerala, India, with a fraction of the medical costs: $38 a person per year in China compared to $3,000 average in the U.S.

In the U.S. $38 will get you a month’s supply of excellent vitamins. (That is, vitamins for optimal health as opposed to the USDA minimum daily requirements, the amount required to prevent overt signs of serious deficiency diseases.) But if the EU Directive becomes law as scheduled most of the companies making natural vitamins will go out of business.

What to do?

The Alliance for Natural Health organized in early 2002 in the U.K. and took the consumers’ and British physicians’ concerns about the directive to the London High Court in February 2004. The London court ruled that the case would have to be taken to the European Courts of Justice (ECJ), where it was heard on 25 January 2005. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Hope for the consumer in this David and Goliath saga was given by pronouncement of the senior adviser to the ECJ last month. The opinion of the Advocate General was that the food supplement directive is invalid under EU law; this opinion is expected to sway the Court’s ruling in favor of consumers’ freedom.

In Washington, D.C., the only activity relevant to this offshore hijacking of democracy is the introduction of the American Sovereignty Restoration Action (HR 1146) by Texas Rep. Ron Paul. This bill would pull the U.S. out of the U.N., a proposal floated periodically across the land whenever the U.S. is miffed at the U.N. Pulling out the U.N. would exclude us from WHO rulings, but this is a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite your face. And it isn’t going to happen.

Other than proposing bailing from the U.N., Washington is doing nothing about this threat to citizens’ health. The capitol continues to be lobbied by the pharmaceutical industry for legislation to limit the public’s right to take supplements; all the while Big Pharma sponsors studies to show that supplements are not effective for therapeutic purposes. A recent report of the ineffectiveness of Vitamin E wisely reported the drug company’s sponsorship of the study and which of the researchers are paid consultants for pharmaceutical companies. However, the writer neglected to report whether the Vitamin E used in the study was the natural form or the synthetic form (di-), which is known NOT to be readily absorbed by the body. Under the EU Directive only the synthetic form will be allowed, which Big Pharma manufactures, of course.

To possibly retain control over your personal health, to any degree, contact your Congressional representatives NOW, and tell every friend, family member and colleagues to do so as well. Report to your representatives what supplements you’re using and your results, as 350 of the supplements will be prohibited from manufacture and sale. If you’re not using a supplement currently but aging or future infirmities require it, it won’t be available.

File a report on what supplements you’re using with websites such as www.WomensMedicineBowl.com, which is compiling statistics based on consumer natural medicine usage. Join discussions on www.hsibaltimore.com and your favorite on-line communities regarding health. Sign the petitions in your neighborhood health food stores.

If this EU Directive isn’t thrown out by the European courts, a very dark scenario looms. To take care of one’s health without using pharmaceutical drugs, one will have to grow herbs, which may be illegal. Perhaps we’ll escape a return to a Medieval period when hundreds of thousands of women were accused and murdered for being witches for their herbal knowledge, but you can count on Garden Police as the modern-day Pricks checking on what you’re growing that could substitute for purchasing a patented drug.

Author Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D., is president of www.WomensMedicineBowl.com