John C. Hammell, legislative advocate    9/29/98
International Advocates for Health Freedom
2411 Monroe St. #3
Hollywood, FL 33020 USA
800-333-2553, 954-929-2905 outside USA
fax 954-929-0507, jham@iahf.com,
www.iahf.com

URGENT OVERSIGHT MATTER

The Honorable Dan Burton
Chairman, House Government Reform and Oversight Committee
c/o Laurie Taylor, legislative assistant
United States House of Representatives
2185 RHOB
Washington, DC 20515
fax 202-225-3974 (oversight committee)
ph 202-225-2276
email: taylor,laurie@mail.house.gov

Re: Thank You For Your Letter of September 21st in Effort to
Amend Illegal FDA Codex Comments on Vitamins and Minerals-
Your Letter Will Be Published in Life Extension Magazine along with an
article I'm writing & This letter will be published in a number of
publications world wide
 

Dear Congressman Burton:
 

 On September 17th, 1998 a Public Tribunal was held in Berlin, Germany
against the Pharma- Cartel. Helmut Kohl and a number of specifically named
accomplices of this Cartel for planning, committing, and assisting mass
murder and crimes against humanity have been identified and can be
downloaded from the website of Matthias Rath, MD at
http://www.rath.nl/GB/WEBGB.pdf This complaint will be submitted to the
International Court of Justice, and courts around the world by Dr. Matthias
Rath, MD, who along with the late Dr. Linus Pauling has discovered a
nutritional protocol for the successful prevention and treatment of
cardiovascular disease, the world's number one killer. You, along with
every member of Congress could avoid ever having heart attacks by learning
of Dr.Rath's and Pauling's work.

 I urge people world wide on the IAHF email distribution list and elsewhere
 to download Rath's detailed declaration in pdf format from and to read it
carefully and become familiar with his work. To assist you in more speedily
examining it, I am faxing it to Lori Taylor in hopes that she will call it
to the attention of all L.A.s in your committee, and am calling
international attention to it via the IAHF email distribution list and an
exclusive article about this entire deplorable situation will be published
soon in Life Extension Magazine.  (See www.lef.org for information about
the Life Extension Foundation.)

 Jessica Zufolo in Congressman De Fazio's office recently did a great job
of alerting you and Congressman De Fazio to the urgent need to strongly
request that the FDA comply with the will of Congress as clearly expressed
last year when the FDA Reform Bill was amended in the conference committee
to specifically EXCLUDE dietary supplements from the harmonization language
which threatened to harmonize our laws to those of the European Union. As
you know, in the EU dietary supplements are regulated as drugs under EEC
65/65, and consumer access is severely restricted in every country except
England and Holland.

 Jessica faxed the letter which you and Congressman De Fazio signed to my
hotel room in Berlin Germany where I was a member of the US Codex
delegation, and I put it directly before Dr. Beth Yetley of the US FDA, the
only member of our delegation with voting power, but she totally ignored
it, just as she had already previously ignored a similar letter drafted by
Congressman Ron Paul, which had been signed by Congressmen Stump, and Cook,
which I know you are also aware of.

 I need to come to Washington to meet with you in your office at your
earliest convenience, because I caught Yetley, red handed, totally ignoring
the will of Congress, on videotape at a pre Codex meeting of the American
delegation held the day before the meeting began in a Berlin hotel on
Sunday September 20th. I will copy the tape and send it to you very soon so
you can see the incredibly deceptive manner in which Dr. Yetley is
attempting to defy the will of Congress as clearly reflected in your letter
to her as well as through the passage of DSHEA.

 The  FDA is clearly attempting to torpedo DSHEA via a so called
"harmonization" process, in an effort to work with the Germans in a
concerted campaign to break past the impasse at CODEX over the proposed
draft guidelines for vitamins and minerals which have been vigorously
condemned as an heinously despicable threat to the public threat by irate
consumers from all over the world who are stridently, and with complete
justification, calling for their complete and immediate dismissal.

 I predict that the FDA will totally ignore the many thousands of comments
which they have just received in objection to their current proposed rule
which targets all dietary supplements as "unapproved drugs" based on
intended use, and which seeks to impose arbitrary and capricious limits on
allowable commercial speech through product labeling.
In the Supreme Court decision of 44 Liquormart, the Supreme Court ruled
that the government has no right to try to coerce us by withholding
information which we need in order to make personal informed decisions,
such as those involving our health. It is high time Congress forced the FDA
to obey the Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment.

 In the pre Codex meeting of the American delegation discussed above, when
I expressed irritation that the document titled "A Risk Assessment Model
for Establishing Upper Intake Levels for Vitamins" had not been made
available in full on the web for public scrutiny in advance of the Codex
meeting, I was informed by Dr. Christine Lewis, Special Assistant to Yetley
at the FDA Office of Special Nutritionals that it had "been made available
on FRIDAY (September 19th) on the FDA website (leaving no time before the
meeting on the 21st for public review.I question the truthfulness of this
statement which she made on videotape. Upon doing a search on the FDA's
website just now
(http://www.verity.fda.gov/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=Search&AdminImageP
ath=&ServerKey=Primary&ResultTemplate=stndrslp.hts&Theme=&Company=&QueryText
=%22A+Risk+Assessment+Model+for+Establishing+Upper+Intake+Levels+for+Vitamin
s%22&+SEARCH-97=+Search+&collection=all) I get the following message,
indicating that Dr.Lewis is a liar: Your Query ""A Risk Assessment Model
for Establishing Upper Intake Levels for Vitamins"
 matched 0 documents out of 31942.  0 documents displayed. I want Lewis,
Yetley and Moore fired from their jobs at FDA for lying to me as a member
of the US Codex delegation and as an American citizen on this issue.
Although the "Risk Assessment" document was produced by the National
Academy of Science, orthomolecular M.D.s with years of clinical experience
in the actual treatment of patients with dietary supplements uniformly
reject the myopic views of the Academy's researchers because they are
mainstream nutritionists operating in University research settings which
are heavily funded by research grants from pharmaceutical companies which
puts a very strong bias on their pronouncements.

 The best thing about America is that it is not a democracy, it is a
republic. As such, we don't have mob rule here, and minority viewpoints
still hold considerable weight and aren't automatically dismissed. This is
why it is so important that the "Risk Assessment" document should have been
made available to the public well in advance of the Codex meeting so that
the US position could have undergone adequate public review, especially
from TRUE experts in the field of clinical nutrition (such as Dr.Rath) who
have FAR MORE than just the theoretical lab based experience of the
academics at the National Academy of Science. Rath and his orthomolecular
peers have YEARS of experience in working with patients, such as me, who
often have a GENETIC NEED for the nutrients that we take. There isn't a
single person who worked on that NAS document who can even REMOTELY match
Rath's experience or clinical knowledge in the field of nutrition.

 As a member of the US delegation, I should have been automatically sent a
copy of the document without having to ask for it, but I only got a copy a
few days before the Codex meeting after having to DEMAND that they send it
to me. They DO have an "abridged" copy available on the USDA website, but
they should have the WHOLE thing available online. Putting an "abridged"
version online smacks of deception, and forces people to check carefully to
see what sort of "spin" they put on it. I only know of one other member of
the delegation who had read the entire document.

 I am sending a copy of the document to Dr. Matthias Rath in the
Netherlands, and also to a number of other prominent physicians for their
studied opinion so that they can report back to you and me with their views
on it. One person who I will send it to is Majid Ali, MD who is my aunt
Jane's Dr. in N.J. Dr. Ali is the author of a book that I am going to send
to you care of Lori Taylor titled "Rats, Drugs, and Assumptions" and
subtitled "A book about one physician's search for the cause of disease and
truth in medicine.

 This book explodes the myth of the so called "RDA", an utterly fallacious
concept which should have been relegated to the scrap heap of history years
ago due to the fact that individual nutritional needs vary widely, and are
as distinct as our fingerprints. As a person who needs far more than the
minuscule 35 mg/day upper limit on niacin put forth in the "Risk
Assessment" docu ment, and who has taken mega dosages of niacin for 20
years in complete safety, I absolutely refuse to trust what I see unfolding
vis a vis the highly un-transparent CODEX process, and feel that perhaps
more than anything else should cause many more members of Congress to
cosponsor Ron Paul's bill which would get us entirely out of the so called
"United Nations."

 In the FDA's ANPR published in the Federal Register on July 7, 1997,
Vol.62, #129 pp.36243-36248, the FDA announced their intention to throw our
Constitution completely out the window and to "harmonize" their regulations
to emerging Codex standards. In so doing, they clearly indicate their
desire to give more power to the Codex Alimentarius Commission than even
the most EXPANSIVE interpretation of our duties under present international
law would warrant, and this matter is deserving of intense scrutiny from
your Oversight committee.

 You may be interested to know that over 1000 German citizens conducted an
orderly demonstration at the barricaded front gate of the compound leading
to the German Ministry of Health Building during September 21st, the day
your fax arrived at my hotel on the first day of the Codex meeting. Berlin
police in full riot gear, armed with automatic weapons stood guard at the
entrance to the German Ministry of Health compound.

 I didn't organize the demonstration, that honor goes to Matthias Rath, MD
who along with the late Dr. Linus Pauling authored one of the most
important documents ever published in a peer reviewed medical journal: "The
Solution to Human Cardiovascular Disease" which was published in the
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. As you may know, heart disease is the
world's current number one killer. Pauling and Rath developed a nutritional
protocol of vitamins and minerals which successfully prevents, treats and
reverses heart disease and they have made many new discoveries as to its
nature, all of which poses an enormous threat to the profits of the
pharmaceutical industry. This is one reason why they are currently engaging
in the sort of despicably non transparent process that I have witnessed in
1996, and last week while a member of the US delegation to the last two
Codex meetings of the Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary
Use, both held in Germany which hosts meetings of this particular Codex
committee.

 Dr.Rath was accompanied by two very large bodyguards wearing full length
trenchcoats with unidentified objects under them which may have been
shotguns, and I wouldn't blame him if he had taken these precautions
because he pulled his demonstrators together by putting up more than 50
billboards all over Berlin, along with a huge banner draped off the side of
a building on a busy Berlin traffic circle which I have on videotape. GS
Odin, of International Nutrition, a New Mexico vitamin company was at the
Codex meeting and witnessed Dr.Rath's demonstration where he also gave a
speech. I'm sure he would be glad to testify regarding this situation to
your Oversight Committee as he was also the victim of a particularly
offensive FDA raid in which they tried to put him out of business because
he sells a product called Calcium EAP, which is particularly effective in
the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis.

 (His calcium product, which was developed by Dr. Hans Nieper of Germany
threatens the profits of an incredibly dangerous and ineffective "approved"
drug called Betaseron. Nieper is utterly HATED by the FDA which has carried
out a mindless vendetta against him and his American patients for years,
often seizing the Calcium EAP which they seek to import in injectable form
from Germany.)

 Dr. Rath's banner and billboards were quite graphic, showing monster hands
dripping blood coming out of the sky in an effort to squeeze the life blood
out of the earth, which is being shielded by very gentle looking hands of
vitamin consumers who are banding together world wide to protect their
interests. View this poster at http://www.rath.nl/GB/p1.htm Dr. Rath held
the aforementioned public Tribunal 4 days in advance of his demonstration,
and two years ago he wrote a letter to Helmut Kohl protesting the holding
of the Codex meeting on German soil (Rath was born and raised in Germany).
Rath correctly considers the current vitamin proceedings at the Codex
Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use to be even more
genocidal than Hitler's holocaust.

 Although some might consider this to be an extreme and "politically
incorrect" view, it really is quite objective as far more people have died
from heart disease than were killed by the Nazis, yet he and Dr.Pauling
have unequivocal evidence that it can be successfully prevented and treated
with micronutrients and their work really is deserving of far more world
attention than it has received. I am going to be getting a videotape of the
demonstration  from Dr.Rath and hope to show it to you. I urge you to
peruse Dr.Rath's website at www.rath.nl

 You may be interested that when I attempted to videotape the meeting, I
was blocked by the Committee Chair, along with some countries delegates,
all of whom represent various international counterparts to the FDA. In my
experience, these unelected dictocrats have nearly identically myopic
mindsets, and are internationally unresponsive to the will of vitamin
consumers in their respective countries. I can get you statements from
consumers around the world attesting to this fact, and have had a number of
articles published over the past few years which call attention to this
problem which I have been addressing through public speeches in the USA,
Canada, and South Africa.

 Today I received a phonecall from the owner of a small vitamin company in
Santiago Chile, named Ron Madra of Vitamigos, SA who wants to have me
travel there in order to educate Chilean consumers who are angry that
efforts are being made there to restrict their access to dietary
supplements, so we are seeing a world wide pharmaceutical campaign which is
threatening the lives of many people, and if it is not immediately halted,
large numbers of people will experience unnecessary suffering and death.
Ron Madra just told me that a bill which will utterly destroy consumer
access to dietary supplements within the therapeutic range is being fast
tracked in Chile, and that it could be pushed through in the next 4 days. I
am faxing him a copy of this letter.

  Isn't it desirable to radically lower the high cost of health care? How
much money could America save if Dr.Rath's nutritional protocols for the
prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease were widely applied?
Surgeons who perform expensive double bypass heart operations might not
like this much at all, but wouldn't our whole society benefit if the need
for these operations could be prevented?

 I can provide you with statements from vitamin consumers from around the
world who feel that they have no hope whatever of changing this deplorable
situation in their own countries, but many have told me that they look to
America as their last hope, because only our system of government allows
for sufficient oversight of this sort of abuse to have a chance to set
things right.

 On Friday I will be the guest of Croft Woodruff on his health freedom
radio show out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, as Canadian
consumers are equally up in arms over this injustice, and I am doing radio
shows all over the world to call attention to what is going on.

 In addition to the video from the pre- meeting discussed above, I'll also
be sending you the video footage from the start of the Codex meeting, up
until I was forced to turn off my camera. Additionally, on the very last
day of the meeting I was accosted by a member of the German delegation,
along with Ms. Ellen Y. Madden, Staff Officer, U.S. Codex Office, Food
Safety and Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, who angrily
demanded that I stop taking still photographs since I "had failed to secure
permission from the Chairman" and since I had been "told" not to engage in
"any form" of photographic recording of the proceedings.

 The argument they came at me with when they forbade me to videotape was
that the videotape could be "used to take information out of context" which
might somehow "interfere" with their little shell game, and when I
expressed the view that I failed to see how still photos would similarly
jeopardize the Codex "process" they looked as though they might explode
with anger or even get security to escort me from the building. Why the
nontransparency?

 Please let me know if I can come to Washington to discuss this important
issue with you in person. As a person who recovered from a life threatening
illness 20 years ago via a suppressed alternative treatment mode
(orthomolecular medicine) I have a genetic need for the dietary supplements
that I take, and speak for large numbers of consumers throughout the world
many of whom are on the International Advocates for Health Freedom email
distribution list. If you would like to learn more about IAHF and our
decentralized international campaign to shed the light of truth on the
corrupt Codex proceedings as well as on corrupt legislation that
pharmaceutical interests world wide are attempting to ram down the throats
of vitamin consumers, please visit our website at www.iahf.com

 We are totally unaccepting of the FDA's position on these issues, and feel
that they should be exhibiting considerably more respect for us than they
have been given the fact that we buried Congress with more mail during the
campaign to pass DSHEA than you've received on any issue since the Vietnam
War. We'd rather not have to do this again, as we are aware that we caused
a lot of fax machines to run out of paper and ink, and other issues are
also quite deserving of Congress's time.

 The FDA should have FAR more respect for the American people than to
attempt these constant deceptive maneuvers which run totally contrary to
their alleged purpose of safeguarding the public health. You may be hearing
from some people on the IAHF email distribution list, including some
vitamin consumers from other countries who share these views.
 
 Your leadership in providing badly needed oversight on this issue is
greatly appreciated, and I extend the same thanks to Congressmen Paul, De
Fazio, Stump, and Cook. Seldom has Congress seen an issue more richly
deserving of oversight than this one, and I really hope we can work
together to bring about justice. The video footage from the pre Codex
meeting of the US delegation, and the half hour I taped at the Codex
meeting before the Chairman forced me to stop recording will be in the IAHF
website before the end of this week so that the whole world can download
it. I am very tired of unelected government officials lying to my face and
being deceptive this way. Yetley will no doubt attempt to finesse her way
out of this. She is quite the artful dodger.

       For Health Freedom,
 

       John C. Hammell, legislative advocate
cc Matthias Rath, MD, Netherlands
Congressmen Paul, De Fazio, Stump, and Cook
GS and Susan Odin- International Nutrition Inc. New Mexico
Hans Nieper, MD Hannover, Germany
Majid Ali, MD, Denville, New Jersey

the IAHF Global Email Distribution List
Julian Whitaker, MD
Clinton Ray Miller, legislative advocate
Arline Brecher- the Alternative Medicine Connection website
Life Extension Magazine & Website
Gary Null, Croft Woodruff, Deborah Ray and many other additional health
freedom radio shows)
Media Bypass Magazine and Radio Show
Art Bell, Lou Epton, Chuck Harder, Tom Valentine, Zoe Hieronymous, Charles
Collins, Dickson Ward, Richard Boyden, National Pubic Radio (radio shows)

The Townsend Letter for Patients and Doctors
Nexus Magazine
The Spotlight
Mother Jones
The New Republic

The American Chiropractic Association
The National College of Naturopathic Medicine
The Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine
The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians
The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
The American Preventive Medical Association
The National Health Federation (USA)
The International Council for Health Freedom (USA)
Foundation for the Advancement of Innovative Medicine (USA)
Project CURE (USA)
People Against Cancer (USA)
Citizens Voice for Health Rights (Canada)
Freedom of Choice in Health Care (Canada)
People's Health Alliance Rejecting Medical Authority Prejudice and
Conspiratorial Tyranny
(South Africa)
Society for the Promotion of Nutritional Therapy (UK)
Consumers Against Fraudulent Medical Research (Australia)
New Zealand Charter of Complimentary Medical Practitioners
HEILSUFRELSI- Iceland
additional other health freedom/civil libertarian/anti MAI/ anti UN/anti
vaccination/anti vivisection/pro ecology/anti genetic engineering and other
seriously agitated grass roots activists groups world wide from all sides
of the political spectrum too numerous to list who share my serious disdain
for this sort of injustice and feel the urgent need for oversight.

PS: If the FDA isn't reigned in now, and a STOP put to this madness, they
will destroy health freedom not only in the USA, but all over the world. If
Congress can't or won't provide us with oversight in this matter, many
Americans will correctly conclude that America, for all intents and
purposes, no longer truly exists, and they will take it as an indication
that multinational corporations/UN truly are ruling us now. If a large
enough group of people who take the 2nd amendment to heart were to fully
grasp the implications of this situation, Washington DC (and the whole
country) could become a very dangerous place, overrun by civil unrest. I am
not personally either threatening to engage in civil unrest, or to
encourage it, but I do feel that this is a very accurate observation, and
have said as much to the FBI when they came to my house one time to
question me as to my intentions, which I assure you (and the FBI) are
entirely honorable.

Oversight is vitally necessary, or very large numbers of people could end
up totally losing faith in our government, and I don't want that to happen.
As troubled as our country is right now with the Clinton situation, we
still live in a free country— we just have to KEEP it that way, and the FDA
has NO RIGHT to trample on the will of Congress or upon the will of the
people! The FDA must immediately withdraw the second paragraph of their
draft Codex comments, along with the "Risk Assessment" document, as you
requested in writing, Congressman Burton, and some people such as
Dr.Yetley, and Dr.Lewis should immediately be fired from their jobs for
ignoring your wishes!