NHA Current Activities

Act Now or Kiss Your Supplements Goodbye Forever

Senator Durbin’s damaging bill could be days away from passage!!

Within days, Senator Dick Durbin will reintroduce the Adverse Event Reporting legislation that will destroy supplements and health freedom. Surprisingly, some supplement industry groups are ready to concede and give up the fight for health freedom.

Is there any more self-defeating philosophy than “the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t know”? This phrase implies that accepting a bad situation is wise—because things could always get worse. Why would anyone want to live with such a negative outlook?

As certain supplement industry groups adopt this philosophy in their stance on non-causal Adverse Event Reporting (AER), this Congressional bill becomes even more dangerous. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) may be presenting this bill any day now. Industry groups capitulate and accept defeat by reasoning that, “If we don’t accept the current non-causal AER bill, Durbin will come up with a bill that’s even more damaging. So we might as well just accept AER.”

Worst Case Scenario

These misguided souls are missing the entire point: non-causal AER will destroy health freedom and the nutritional supplement industry in one fell swoop! What could be more damaging than that? Under AER, dietary supplements can be associated with adverse events like heart attacks and strokes—even if supplements had nothing to do with, and did not cause, these events. In our frustrating age of frivolous lawsuits, the result is predictable: Joe Smith suffers a stroke and sues the manufacturer of the vitamin C he takes every day. The floodgates open wide and the entire nutritional supplement industry is buried under groundless lawsuits.

The industry will be further buried under the paperwork required to record and organize the millions of adverse events that may be associated with supplements under AER. Always the first to shirk responsibility and flee at the first sign of trouble, the insurance industry will drop all coverage for supplement manufacturers. Mom-and-pop health food stores will close their doors forever, and supplement makers will dissolve into nothing. Thousands will lose their livelihood, millions will lose good health and all will lose health freedom.

It is hard to imagine a scenario worse than this nightmare, which makes it all the more puzzling that certain supplement organizations are willing to agree to AER—just in case fighting it brings a worse fate. Can you imagine what America would be like if it operated under this weak-minded “devil that you know” mentality? Perhaps there would have been no American Revolution, just in case the new regime was more oppressive than the old. Perhaps women would not have fought for equal rights, and minorities would not have fought for civil liberties, just in case they were defeated and faced a harsher future. Such complacency would have destroyed the foundation of our very nation—just as it will destroy our health freedom!

 Fight for Freedom

Non-causal AER is a catastrophic threat we must face now. Don’t let Dick Durbin take your vitamins away: Send a fax today, and send another tomorrow! Fax Durbin at 202-228-0400, and tell him you are outraged at his efforts to implement non-causal AER. Fax key vitamin players in Congress, Senators Tom Harkin at 202-224-9369 and Orrin Hatch at 202-224-6331. Let them know that they will go down in history as traitors to the nutritional supplement industry—and to you, the health-minded consumer—if they continue supporting non-causal AER. Fax Senator Michael Enzi, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, at 202-228-0359. Tell him that you demand the freedom to take nutritional supplements.