FDA, FTC threaten Dr. Weil over immune-boosting supplements for H1N1 swine flu

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

In working to protect the business interests of vaccine manufactures, both the FDA and FTC have declared all-out war against any products that might offer consumers options other than vaccines. This week, that war against natural remedies reached the shores of Dr. Andrew Weil, who is perhaps the best-known alternative medicine doctor in America. In an intimidating, threatening letter jointly issued by the FTC and the FDA, these rogue government agencies threatened Dr. Weil with criminal prosecution for making true statements about his immune-boosting formula such as, "Astragalus ... is ... used traditionally to ward off colds and flu, and has demonstrated both antiviral and immune-boosting effects in scientific investigation."

This statement, although scientifically valid and true, is a threat to the profits of the vaccine industry, and so Dr. Weil's company is being targeted by the FTC / FDA vaccine racket tag-team for termination.

You can review the FTC threats against Dr. Weil on the FTC's own website: http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/Enforcemen...

Some of the threats leveled against Dr. Weil by the FTC include:

• Forcing Dr. Weil's company to refund ALL customers who purchased his immune support formula. (For no apparent reason other than to burden his company with such costs.)

• Subjecting Dr. Weil's company with "legal action in the form of a Federal District Court injunction or Administrative Order."

• Gunpoint seizure of ALL of Dr. Weil's nutritional products: "If your firm fails to take corrective action immediately, FDA may take enforcement action, such as seizure or injunction for violations of the FFDC Act without further notice."

• Subjecting Dr. Weil and his company to criminal prosecution: "Firms that fail to take corrective action may also be referred to FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations for possible criminal prosecution for violations of the FFDC Act and other federal laws."

• Adding Dr. Weil's company to a list of companies that have been found in "violation" of the FFDC Act.

These threats are signed by the top fearmongers running the censorship racket at both the FTC and FDA:

Mary K. Engle
Associate Director, Division of Advertising Practices
Federal Trade Commission

Roberta F. Wagner
Director, Office of Compliance
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Food and Drug Administration

Do you now see what a criminal racket the vaccine industry is running in America by invoking these tactics of tyranny? This is the kind of thing you might expect to see in China, where government officials arrest Falun Gong members who attempt to meditate in public, but you wouldn't think that in the United States of America -- "Land of the Free" -- you'd be threatened with arrest and financial ruin for simply telling the truth about a powerful herb with scientifically-validated medicinal properties.

The FTC's dangerous double standard
This FTC / FDA letter claims Dr. Weil has been promoting his immune-boosting formula "...without rigorous scientific evidence sufficient to substantiate the claims."

This might be taken with some level of seriousness if, in fact, the vaccine makers had any such evidence to substantiate their own claims that flu vaccines work at all. But as NaturalNews readers have already learned, flu vaccines are a scientific hoax lacking any honest evidence that they actually work. In fact, all the evidence points to the reality that they don't work. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027239_v...)

The FTC, you see, applies a completely different standard of proof against dietary supplements than to vaccines. According to FTC staff, "...the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. SS 41 et seq., requires that claims that a dietary supplement can prevent, treat, or cure human infection with the H1N1 virus, must be supported by well-controlled human clinical studies at the time the claims are made."

And yet, at the same time, there are no well-controlled human clinical studies backing the efficacy of vaccines. They simply don't exist.

Thus, vaccines can be approved based on wishful thinking while dietary supplements must be subjected to "rigorous scientific study."


Enslaved by the medical regime
How is that fair? It isn't. The game is rigged from the start to allow drugs and vaccines to be sold based on the flimsiest of evidence while natural remedies are routinely suppressed by holding them to an impossible standard.

This is similar to the way in which blacks were prevented from voting in America throughout the 20th century. The people who controlled the voting booths would issue "IQ tests" to anyone who tried to vote. The tests were rigged to fail all blacks while allowing whites to easily pass (and therefore vote).

The whole system was rigged from the start to create the illusion of fairness even though the outcome had already been pre-decided. This same brand of racism is now operating in modern medicine, except it's drugism instead of racism. But the outcome has already been decided by the FDA just the same: All natural products will be denied, while all vaccines will be approved. This is how the system is rigged.

Just so you understand how ludicrous this is, what the FTC / FDA tag-team is saying is that herbs, superfoods and other natural substances that are naturally biocompatible with your body are, in essence, guilty until proven innocent. Meanwhile vaccines made in a lab with synthetic chemicals, mercury derivatives and DNA fragments from diseased animals are considered safe and effective by default, even in the absence of any real science. Do you see how twisted and dangerous this whole system has become?


Censoring true statements to silence natural health proponents
Both the FTC and FDA have a long history of using tactics of extreme intimidation in an attempt to censor people who provide natural remedies that compete with sales of pharmaceuticals. When a doctor can't even make a true scientific statement about the medicinal properties of an herb without being threatened by the FTC, it's a sure sign that what was supposed to be a regulatory agency has now become a criminal racket serving the interests of Big Pharma.

Here's one statement the FTC / FDA letter "accuses" Dr. Weil of making: "Astragalus ... is ... used traditionally to ward off colds and flu, and has demonstrated both antiviral and immune-boosting effects in scientific investigation."

Is there anything false in that statement? Anything misleading? Not in the least. It's a statement backed by reality. Astragalus does, indeed, have powerful antiviral and immune-boosting properties. It works better than vaccines, in fact, at protecting people from the flu. See a long list of supporting statements from experts on this very topic right here: (http://www.naturalnews.com/027302_a...)

And yet for daring to make this simple, true statement on the internet, Dr. Weil has been threatened by the FTC with criminal prosecution. Our own U.S. government has threatened to arrest him, destroy his business, criminally prosecute him, confiscate his products, financially ruin his company and add him to a list of "violators." That sounds more like Nazi Germany than America, doesn't it? Yet it's happening in America right now.

What other "crimes" has Dr. Weil committed? He dared to make a second true statement about astragalus:

"The synergistic combination of immune modulators [found in the Immune Support Formula] is especially useful for those who tend to get every bug that goes around during the winter."

Once again, another true statement. It's like saying "vitamin C boosts immune function," or "vitamin D helps prevent cancer." Both are true statements, but both have been outlawed in America by the FTC racket. The truth, simply put, has been outlawed in America (and in Europe, too, for the most part. This censorship of natural remedies is global...)


FTC / FDA thugs and crimes against humanity
If you really think about what's going on here with the FTC / FDA intimidation tactics, you realize that if a pandemic really does start to kill people, it is these FTC / FDA bureaucrats who will have blood on their hands.

Why? Because even in a time when prescription anti-virals don't work, and vaccines are in short supply (and don't work anyway), these government thugs are running around silencing and intimidating the very people offering real solutions for immune system protection. When the virus mutates, rendering the vaccines worthless, and the anti-virals are long gone, how are Americans supposed to protect themselves against a pandemic virus? The FTC and FDA have made certain that all available "natural" options have been eliminated! Hospitals have been instructed to turn people away. The CDC has instructed states to stop tracking the H1N1 swine flu altogether.

In other words, these health authorities are hanging the American people out to dry. They're betraying the very people they claim to serve.

Should a pandemic unfold that really starts to kill a large number of people, these two agencies will be directly contributing to the deaths of people who could have been saved by natural remedies like Astragalus, or Reishi mushrooms, or Vitamin D, or other nutritional products. And while you may not call that murder, it is precisely the definition of negligent homicide. FTC and FDA officials are killing Americans with their continued assault on natural medicine that saves lives. I call it a crime against humanity.

And they're doing it for one reason: To protect a corrupt, quack-science vaccine industry whose products were only approved via fraud, in direct violation of U.S. law (http://www.naturalnews.com/027258_v...).

The "protection" racket -- it's all for your protection
To hear them say it, though, they're "protecting" people:

"FDA is taking urgent measures to protect consumers from products that, without approval or authorization by FDA, claim to diagnose, mitigate, prevent, treat or cure H1N1 Flu Virus in people."

At the same time, of course, the only products that receive approval from the FDA are vaccines and prescription medications. The FDA's official position is that there is no such thing as any herb, any plant, any nutrient or any dietary supplement that has any beneficial effect on the human body. As ridiculous as this sounds, it is precisely the current position of the FDA! Thus, no herb, plant, nutrient or supplement can EVER be approved by the FDA to protect against influenza.

As you've figured out, the whole game is rigged from the start. Herbs that have anti-viral properties will never be approved as anti-virals. And, frankly, for the people running natural product companies to try to play the "FDA game" is useless. You can never appease tyranny. Trying to "conform" to the requirements of the FDA and FTC is like Jewish prisoners trying to conform to the wishes of Hitler. You've been condemned from the start! Stop playing their game... stop bowing down to the false authority of the FTC and FDA. Only a handful of health product companies like Daniel Chapter One have demonstrated the courage to fight tyranny and take a stand for health freedom (http://www.naturalnews.com/026970_h...).

The FDA isn't interested in what works to stop the flu. It's is only interested in propping up the quack profits of one industry at any cost. And one day, that cost may be extracted in terms of dead Americans who could have been saved with natural remedies like Dr. Weil's immune support product.

And that, my friends, is what makes the FDA a criminal racket. It is being operated today as a blatant criminal enterprise that directly contributes to the suffering and death of the American people. These bureaucrats would rather see helpless victims die than lose a dollar of profit for Big Pharma. They have sold out the American people for the almighty dollar. Truth be damned.

It's time to end this medical police state
When true statements about botany are outlawed, and the only statements allowed to be made about H1N1 flu protection are based on profit-driven lies, and the very leaders who try to help the People (like Dr. Weil) are threatened with being arrested as criminals and having their companies shut down at gunpoint, that's when you know you live in a "1984"-style medical police state.

In American medicine today, you don't live in a free society. You don't have a free choice about medicine. You are given the false choice of which vaccine to take: Nasal or Injection. That's the choice you've been given. All other options (anti-viral herbs, homeopathy, vitamin D, etc.) are being eliminated "for your protection."

For all those who voted for Obama, by the way, keep in mind this criminal FDA racket continues to operate in full swing under the Obama administration, just as it did under the Bush Administration. Sadly, Obama has done absolutely nothing to halt the tyranny against natural product companies. In fact, under Obama, this action has been accelerated by the FTC and FDA. It's worse now than ever before, and with Big Government getting even bigger -- and more lawmakers calling for increased FDA funding -- this problem is only bound to get worse.

The U.S. Justice Department recently nailed Pfizer with a $1.3 billion criminal fine after prosecuting the company for paying kickbacks to doctors and committing marketing fraud (http://www.naturalnews.com/027276_P...). My only question is: When will the Justice Department investigate and prosecute the criminals at the FDA and FTC who are putting the lives of Americans at risk by destroying the natural product industry precisely as we face a global pandemic?

Dr. Weil was right: Astragalus herb really helps fight the flu:

The FTC and FDA are terrorizing Dr. Andrew Weil over his true statements about the immune-boosting properties of astragalus. According to the FDA, astragalus has no antiviral or antibacterial properties whatsoever and is of absolutely no use in the human body. Sound bizarre?

I thought so too. That's why I asked NaturalNews researchers to assemble a collection of statements in support of Dr. Weil's astragalus statements. This medicinal herb does, indeed, boost healthy immune function and offer protection against influenza. And because it's a multifaceted, complex plant-based medicine, it's not outsmarted by one particular viral configuration... it's useful against any flu (including H1N1 swine flu).

Here's what the experts have to say about astragalus and influenza...

Astragalus beats the flu
Clinical Applications: Astragalus is antiviral, carminative, antispasmodic, and hepatic. It improves glucose tolerance and acts as a vasodilator. In China, astragalus has been used as an energy tonic for deficient spleen qi and yang conditions. It has been used to treat wasting and thirsting conditions, as well as diarrhea, fatigue, and prolapse of the uterus. Astragalus is used to control fluids in cases of excess sweating and to reduce fluid retention.
- Fundamentals of Naturopathic Endocrinology by Michael Friedman, ND

Other Chinese doctors have found that astragalus offers more effective relief than the drug nifedipine (Procardia) for angina pain. More than 80 percent of angina patients improved on astragalus treatment without the dizziness, giddiness, heartburn, or headache that nifedipine can cause. Animal studies suggest that astragalus can help prevent the development of cholesterol plaques after an arterial wall has been damaged, which can keep the coronary arteries from becoming too narrow. Astragalus also is useful in the treatment of viral myocarditis, a flulike infection that affects the heart.
- Prescription for Herbal Healing: An Easy-to-Use A-Z Reference to Hundreds of Common Disorders and Their Herbal Remedies by Phyllis A. Balch, CNC

Also, since flu vaccines are formulated based on viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past, they may or may not be effective in preventing flu caused by this year's virus. Astragalus helps to build the immune system, and thus make you less vulnerable to the flu. Take 250 to 500 milligrams in the morning three times a week during the flu season. Note: Do not take this herb if you have a fever. American ginseng helps to boost the immune system and strengthen the body. Take 200 milligrams one-half hour before breakfast once or twice a week during the winter months.
- Smart Medicine for Healthier Living : Practical A-Z Reference to Natural and Conventional Treatments for Adults by Janet Zand, LAc, OMD, Allan N. Spreed, MD, CNC, James B. LaValle, RPh, ND

Consider taking ginseng or astragalus to promote health, stamina, and viral immunity. Take colostrum, beta-glucan, and other immune-boosting supplements. Take extra vitamin C and zinc. Follow the recommendations in this book on how to take natural medicines for beating the flu. For frail, older people, reduce the dosage by half.