http://www.hsibaltimore.com/ealerts/ea200807/ea20080716a.html
FTC bullies an herbal supplement company and the company fights back
Down By Law

Out in New Mexico, some little guys are fighting some big guys who
happen to be government guys who also happen to be acting like bullies.

Do you tend to root for the underdog? Do you enjoy seeing bullies get
their comeuppance?

Then I've got a good story for you…

Dark shadow

Let's say there's a government website that acknowledges evidence that
milk thistle is "hepatoprotective" (that is, it protects the liver). And
let's say there's another government website that offers this quote
about milk thistle: "It has been used for thousands of years as a remedy
for a variety of ailments, especially liver problems."

Okay. As it happens, you manufacture and sell a milk thistle product, so
on your website you post something like this: "The National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (a division of the National
Institutes of Health) states that milk thistle has been used for
thousands of years as a remedy for a variety of ailments, especially
liver problems."

What are you doing? You're stating the truth about an historical fact.
Not only that, it's a fact backed up by a direct quote from a government
agency.

Guess what? You can't do that.

Who says? The FTC. And they're willing to take away your company and
bankrupt you to prove their point.

So what do you do? Most companies roll over and comply when the FTC
shadow darkens their door. But not you. You sue the bullies. And you
just might make history.

Way over the top

For about 15 years, Mark and Marianne Hershiser have operated Native
Essence Herb Company, just outside of Taos, New Mexico. They started
their business with a single herbal tea, then slowly expanded to offer
many individual herbs and herbal formulas.

This past spring they received a letter from the Western Region of the
FTC, stating that they had violated the FTC Act by making deceptive
claims. Acting like a "good cop," the Western Region letter notes that
the Hershisers could avoid litigation from the FTC "bad cop" by removing
the claims from their website and signing a settlement agreement.
Failure to respond would result in legal action that would include,
"…appointment of a receiver to exercise control over the company…and an
asset freeze…"

The letter states that the FTC also directed the Western Region office
to seek from the company an amount equal to revenues from the sales of
certain products - that is: ALL revenues accumulated over the years the
products were sold.

In other words: Comply or we'll take your business and bury you in debt.

Late last month the Hershisers responded in a way no one had ever
responded to such a letter. They sued. Citing the First Amendment, the
Hershisers claim they have the right to truthfully inform customers
about the historical uses of individual herbs (as noted on government
websites) and to share the conclusions of government-sponsored studies.

In a statement issued by the office of Richard A. Jaffe, the Hershisers'
attorney, Mr. Jaffe said, "This is a precedent-setting case. The issue
has never been litigated; it not only affects the Hershisers, but all
companies which sell herbal products."

We can only hope that someone at the FTC is squirming uncomfortably. And
hopefully that discomfort will steadily increase as the case goes on.

You can be sure I'll closely follow the Hershisers' progress, and I'll
keep you posted on how they fare in their fight with these government
bullies. Meanwhile, you can read more about their case (and contribute
to their legal fund, if you like) at this website: herbalinformation.com.

Sources:
"Native Essence Herb Company Sues FTC" Business Wire, 6/25/08, reuters.com
"New Mexico Lawsuit challenges FTC Censorship" Voluntary Trade Council,
6/28/08, voluntarytrade.org

http://www.naturalnews.com/023514.html
(NaturalNews) Big Pharma is constantly finding new ways to destroy the
natural supplements market, in much the same way that the American
Medical Association once sought to destroy the chiropractic industry
(for which it was later found guilty of conspiracy in U.S. courts, by
the way). The latest attack against vitamins comes from an FDA petition
filed by Medicure Pharma, Inc., which has astonishingly asked the FDA to
ban the sale of Vitamin B6!

Vitamin B6, of course, is a naturally-occurring nutrient found in
numerous vegetables, nuts and whole grains. Its natural form is called
pyridoxal 5'-phosphate or P5P for short. It's an essential nutrient for
expectant mothers, growing children and anyone who wishes to be healthy.
It's absolutely crucial for healthy blood cell function, and it's used
in over 100 enzymatic reactions involving protein metabolism.
... (continues) ...

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Praise for NaturalNews and Mike Adams:

"Mike Adams is the best health and natural products writer on the scene
today."

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(www.OrganicConsumers.org)

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- Dr. Jack Singh, founder, the Organic Food Bar Company

"I'm so impressed with the work that you're doing and the information
you're disseminating, it's just vital for people to get this sort of
information."

- Michael T. Murray, author of The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods and The
Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine

"Mike Adams has one of the best websites on the Internet. His articles,
podcasts and books will improve your life, and possibly save it. As a
journalist he is relentless in his questioning, always asking insightful
questions to expose the truth. Masterful!"

- Suzy Cohen, R.Ph., Author of The 24-Hour Pharmacist
(www.DearPharmacist.com)
   

So why would a pharmaceutical company petition the FDA to outlaw the
sale of this essential nutrient? It's simple: Because Big Pharma wants
to market its own form of Vitamin B6 and call it a "drug."

Medicure Pharma, Inc., has been studying the clinical effects of Vitamin
B6 (which they call "MC-1") on humans. This is part of a process for
receiving FDA approval on MC-1 as a "drug," and then marketing this drug
through the conventional medical system (and selling it at markups that
can reach 500,000% over the cost of the actual ingredients).

This issue was reported by the Alliance for Natural Health, an
outstanding health freedom organization that deserves your support. You
can read about this Vitamin B6 issue (along with links to the petition) at:
http://www.anhcampaign.org/news/hand-ph...

Obviously, it is in the financial interest of Medicure Pharma, Inc. to
not only receive FDA approval for their "MC-1" version of Vitamin B6;
it's also crucial to eliminate the competition. After all, if people
knew MC-1 was just Vitamin B6, they could go out and buy it on their
own, for a fraction of the price of a prescription drug. This is most
likely why Medicure Pharma petitioned the FDA to outlaw Vitamin B6
supplements: It's the simplest and easiest way to eliminate the
competition and guarantee profits!

Screwy logic, biopiracy and Big Pharma scams
So what's the logic behind banning Vitamin B6? It's simple: Medicare
Pharma wants the FDA to declare Vitamin B6 to be "adulterated" because
it contains a drug. Which drug does it contain? Well, MC-1, of course!

Do you see the circular reasoning here? Vitamin B6 is a
naturally-occurring vitamin, but if a drug company gets FDA approval on
Vitamin B6 (with a different name), then that very same drug company can
petition the FDA to ban Vitamin B6, claiming it contains their drug!

I know this sounds incredibly stupid. And it is. But it isn't
unprecedented. In fact, the very same thing happened with red yeast rice.

A few years ago, drug companies discovered that red yeast rice (a
natural supplement) contained powerful, natural compounds that balance
cholesterol levels. These compounds are called lovastatins (sound familiar?)

Drug companies ripped off the lovastatin molecules from red yeast rice,
then patented them. Once they achieved FDA approval for their "statin
drugs," it was easy to file a petition requesting the outlawing of red
yeast rice, claiming the supplement was "adulterated" with drugs! Which
drugs? Statin drugs, of course -- the very same drugs that were isolated
from red yeast rice in the first place!

This is why the FDA has been on a terror campaign to outlaw red yeast
rice supplements. They've sent warning letters to online retailers and
threatened numerous companies with legal action. The point of all this
is to eliminate red yeast rice from the marketplace because it competes
with statin drugs. And it's the exact same strategy now being following
by Medicure Pharma in its attempt to get the FDA to ban Vitamin B6.

Was it a move out of financial desperation?
Medicure Pharma, by the way, is losing its shirt. It recently received
notice from the American Stock Exchange that it would be "delisted"
because it no longer meets the minimum requirement for shareholder
equity vs. ongoing fiscal losses. In other words, the company is losing
too much money and has too little shareholder equity to even stay listed
in the American Stock Exchange.

This might explain its decision to petition the FDA to outlaw the sale
of Vitamin B6 (P5P). If consumers were unable to buy the vitamins, many
would have no choice but to seek out the company's own patented,
high-profit MC-1 version of the vitamin, and that would generate a
windfall of profits!

Making money in the pharmaceutical industry, you see, is not about
helping people in any real way; it's about limiting their options,
controlling the marketplace, and forcing people to buy products from you
at monopoly prices.

This is, in fact, the underlying business model of the entire
pharmaceutical industry: Selling drugs at monopoly prices while
outlawing competing products. Any approval by the FDA is, in effect, a
license to engage in monopolistic market practices. And remarkably, the
FDA even enforces this monopoly by threatening, intimidating and raiding
the warehouses of competing product companies, especially if they're in
the "natural" products industry.

Even more remarkably, the FTC, which claims to protect fair market
practices in the United States, has utterly ignored the monopoly
practices of Big Pharma. Yes, the same government office that went after
Microsoft for creating a "monopoly" user interface in Windows seems to
have no interest whatsoever in going after drug companies engaged in
widespread, fraudulent monopoly marketing practices that are bankrupting
the entire nation! (How's that for selective enforcement of trade
practices?)

We must either stop the FDA, or lose all access to herbs and supplements
Do you see where all this is ultimately headed? If the FDA is allowed to
keep banning nutritional supplements while promoting the very same drugs
synthesized from those natural sources, it could allow Big Pharma to
commit widespread biopiracy, stealing all the good medicine from nature,
claiming patent protection on the useful molecules, and getting the FDA
to outlaw virtually all the natural substances from which those
medicines were first derived.

It's not a particularly brilliant strategy, but it is exceedingly
effective at defrauding the public out of trillions of dollars in
dishonest profits. And the fact that this is going on today gives
additional support to something I've proposed for quite some time:
Ending all patent protection on medicines, genes and seeds.

I say, there should never be a financial incentive for corporations to
deny the People access to information and products that could halt
disease, end suffering, and enhance their health. And yet today's
conventional medical system is set up precisely to profit from the
ongoing disease of the People.

It is a system that offers no cures, no education and no honest
information to the public about real health solutions. It only offers a
lifetime of ever-more-expensive patented pharmaceuticals that lead to a
downward spiral of bad health and bad debt until more and more American
families are left diseased and penniless, victims of a profiteering
system of medicine that trades lives for profits as the foundation of
its business model.

It is time for radical -- revolutionary, in fact! -- changes to our
system of medicine, and I believe that begins by ending all patent
protection for medicines, genes and seeds. These things belong to ALL
the People, not just the rich, white fat cats who take home $300 million
annual salaries by fraudulently selling dangerous prescription
medications to people who are only harmed by them.

Watch NaturalNews tomorrow, for I'll be publishing a grassroots action
article that dares to call for revolutionary action designed to rebuild
a new health care system following the coming collapse of the American
Empire.

You sense it coming, don't you? A year ago, you were skeptical, but now
you know it's true: Skyrocketing fuel prices, hiking food prices,
collapsing real estate bubbles, the demise of the U.S. dollar in
international markets, failed wars and massive inflation caused by the
Fed's bailout of rich white bankers... these are all signs of a modern
Roman Empire that's about to collapse under the weight of its debt,
disease and disastrous war mongering.

The end of American as we know it is coming. And it will be replaced by
a new nation, built upon the ideas of people like you and me (those of
us who can still think clearly because we're not all drugged out on
Ambien...)

So read NaturalNews tomorrow to learn about what we need to do after the
coming collapse of the U.S. government to rebuild a nation based in
individual liberties, Free Speech, true health and respect for nature.

In the mean time if you want to send your comments to the FDA on this
Vitamin B6 petition, the web page for you to file a comment on this
Vitamin B6 issue is located here: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/c...

To file a comment, you have to click the little text balloon beside the
phrase "Add Comments." It's difficult to find on the page, which just
goes to show you that the FDA isn't really interested in people adding
comments in the first place.

http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Health&Medicine/+Doc-Health&Me
dicine-Cancer/CansemaStory.htm

"Dr. James Watson won a Nobel Prize for determining the shape of DNA.
During the 1970's, he served two years on the National Cancer Advisory
Board. In 1975, he was asked about the National Cancer Program. He
declared, 'It's a bunch of sh.t.'

"In 1953, a United States Senate Investigation reported that a
conspiracy existed to suppress effective cancer treatments. The Senator
in charge of the investigation conveniently died. The investigation was
halted. It was neither the first nor the last of a number of strange
deaths involving people in positions to do damage to those running the
nation's cancer program.

"In 1964, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spent millions of
dollars to stop an alternative cancer treatment which had cured
hundreds, if not thousands, of cancer patients according to documented
records. It was later disclosed that the FDA had falsified the testimony
of witnesses. The FDA lost the court case because the jury found the
defendants innocent and recommended that the substance be objectively
evaluated. It never was. Instead, it was totally suppressed.

"In the early 1960's, two New York City doctors, one associated with the
leading cancer center in America and the other the medical director of a
Brooklyn hospital, decided to inject live cancer cells into 22 unknowing
patients. When they were discovered, Dr. Chester M. Southam of the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. E.E. Mandel of the Jewish
Chronic Disease Hospital of Brooklyn were put on "probation" for a year.
The three physicians who "blew the whistle" on Dr. Southam and Dr.
Mandel were dismissed.

"For many years, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American
Cancer Society (ACS) coordinated their "hit" lists of innovative cancer
reseachers who were to be ostracized. One investigative reporter
declared the AMA and ACS "for a network of vigilantes prepared to pounce
on anyone who promotes a cancer therapy that runs against their
substantial prejudices and profits."

"In the late 1950's, it was learned that Dr. Henry Welch, head of the
FDA's Division of Antibiotics, had secretly received $287,000 from the
drug companies he was supposed to regulate. In 1975, an independent
government evaluation of the FDA still found massive "conflicts of
interest" among the agency's top personnel.

"In 1977, an investigative team from the prominent Long Island newspaper
Newsday found serious "conflicts of interest" at the National Cancer
Institute (NCI). In 1986, an organized cover-up of an effective
alternative cancer therapy, orchestrated by NCI officials, was revealed
during Congressional hearings.

"These examples are only the tip of a huge iceberg. The cancer
establishment now has a 50-year history of vast corruption, incompetence
and organized suppression of cancer therapies which actually work.
Millions of people have suffered terrible torture and death because
those in charge took payoffs, played it safe, had closed minds to the
innovative, or simply were afraid to do what was obviously and morally
right...

For Chardonney9. This isn't colloidal silver, but you'll find great
potential here for an alternative treatment of your hepatitis c.
http://www.skepticreport.com/lighterside/bluefairies.htm

http://www.goodhealthinfo.net/cancer/fda_panacea.htm

The FDA's Panacea

    It is strange that we do not speak about Hitlers in the plural, as
we speak about Quislings. The small Hitlers are around us every day,
tormenting us with their promises, rejoicing in our weaknesses,
demanding our trust, our lives, while remaining totally indifferent to
everything except their thirst for power.

—Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler

Answering a knock at the door of his Lake Charles, Louisiana, home about
8:30 a.m. on September 17, 2003, the man found three U.S. marshals with
semiautomatic weapons who wanted to know if he was Greg Caton. When he
said yes, they asked him to step out of the house and handcuffed his
hands behind his back, claiming they had a warrant to search his home.

“Search for what?” he asked.

“First of all, we need to know where the battery acid is,” one marshal
replied.

“Battery acid?” Caton exclaimed. “I don’t have any battery acid in my home.”

The marshals entered the house, taking him along, and sat him down,
handcuffed, while they searched. Other marshals assisted, until, Caton
estimates, eight of them were going through his home. He asked no fewer
than four times to call his attorney, but they refused to allow it. When
he asked why, since he’d been arrested, their reply was, “You’re not
arrested—you’re a detainee.”

“This, to me, was the most amazing thing of all,” Caton says, “as if
somehow that wording changes what is in fact happening. When I brought
that up to my defense attorney, he said, ‘They’re not supposed to do
that.’ I said, ‘Well, can’t we do something about it?’ He said, ‘No,
because it’s your word against theirs—they can do whatever they want.’ ”

* * *

Greg Caton was a victim of “Operation Cure.All,” an initiative begun in
2001 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade
Commission. A press release on the FTC’s web site says, “FTC, FDA and
other law enforcement agencies move to stop Internet scams for
supplements and other products that purport to cure cancer, HIV/AIDS and
countless other life-threatening diseases.” Unfortunately, the FDA has
used this as an excuse to shut down businesses and arrest people whose
products, though not recognized by conventional medicine, actually
work—and are inexpensive and have few, if any, side effects.

At the time of the raid, Greg Caton, an herbalist and inventor, was
founder and president of three companies. One, Lumen Foods, made soyfood
products. Another, Preservx, made a food preservative Caton invented and
patented that can be used in much smaller quantities than other
preservatives. The third, Alpha Omega Labs, sold what the FDA and
conventional medicine call “unproven” remedies for cancer and other
health problems.

Many of these remedies Caton and his wife, Cathryn, a naturopathic
doctor, had developed, some based on old formulas registered with the
U.S. Patent Office. His web site, www.altcancer.com, contains extensive
information and advice on dealing with cancer and other illnesses. The
site says, “our primary focus is on ‘plant medicines’ that are proven to
meet three criteria: (1) They must work, (2) They must be safe, and (3)
They must be sufficiently inexpensive so that the average worker can
afford the product(s) without distress.” He offered a money-back
guarantee on everything he sold.

Alpha Omega’s first product and one of its most popular, Cansema Salve,
contains chaparral, a traditional remedy for cancer, along with zinc
chloride and other ingredients to facilitate its action. Starting with
that one product, Caton built up his line to 350 or so items, some of
which he had traveled the world to find. He had about a hundred thousand
customers worldwide and grossed about a million dollars a year.

One product he carried was called hydronium, or H3O, a weak solution of
“scalar energized” sulfuric acid used for a variety of topical
applications, such as skin funguses, bites and burns, sore throat, and
disinfectant. Caton is refreshingly candid on his web site, and in the
case of H3O, this may have gotten him into trouble. In an extensive
discussion, he says, “This is a solution you can easily swallow (more
comfortably if diluted to a pH of 2.0, granted) at acidic levels, which,
if we were talking about any other acid in the 0.0 to 0.5 pH range,
would have potentially severe health consequences.”

Caton’s web site has testimonials about H3O—as it does about many of his
products. He sold thousands of bottles to customers all over the world
and hadn’t received a single complaint. Until, that is, a woman in
Indiana used Alpha Omega’s Cansema Salve and H3O and a product from
another company for what appeared to be a cancer on her nose and
suffered damage. She filed a lawsuit against both companies, but an
affidavit filed eight months after the raid doesn’t mention Alpha Omega
or its products.

Alpha Omega’s records indicate that a year and a half after the incident
with her nose, she attempted to return the H3O and another product, H3x,
unopened. Alpha Omega declined, because the product was more than three
months old, but the question arises how she could have suffered harm
from the H3O if she never opened it. She also bought two more jars of
Cansema Salve more than a year after the incident with her nose and
returned them unopened for a refund two months later. Caton’s attorney
points out, in a document filed with the court, that of the two
companies involved, Alpha Omega “is the only insured party.”

Around the same time, a surgeon in Texas used H3O as a disinfectant to
rinse out the site of a partial hysterectomy he performed. The patient
developed “various complications,” according to the lawsuit she filed,
which she blamed on the H3O “as well as the care and treatment” by the
surgeon, the hospital, and the holding company that owned the hospital.
In an August 2002 letter, a year before the raid on Alpha Omega, the
Texas State Board of Medical Examiners cleared the doctor of wrongdoing
after an investigation, saying “the evidence does not indicate a
violation of the Texas Medical Practice Act.”

These were the only lawsuits filed against Alpha Omega during its decade
in business. From the FDA’s point of view, however, Caton was cynically
selling battery acid and other dangerous products to unsuspecting
customers, and he had to be stopped.

Caton says that the manufacturer’s safety data sheet (MSDS) and skin
sensitivity test for H3O show that on human tissue, the product has the
same corrosivity or causticity as water. Although neither document says
this in so many words, the erythema/edema (skin redness/swelling) test,
done on six rabbits by a testing laboratory in New Jersey, does show no
discernible effect in two cases and a “very slight” or “barely
perceptible” effect in four cases after twenty-four hours.

After seventy-two hours, no effect is discernible in any of them. The
report says that the product “is not considered a primary skin irritant
according to 29 CFR, Section 1910.1200. App A (1), 2001.” H3O was sold
as a concentrate and was used in this form for the tests. Used as
directed, it would be diluted approximately one hundred twenty-eight
times (one ounce to a gallon of water).

The MSDS presumably intends to convey the same message but doesn’t do it
quite so clearly. It says the product is “Non corrosive per 49 CFR
173.136,” that no labels are required, and that it “Contains no
hazardous ingredients according to these citations.” Under “Effects of
chronic over exposure,” it says “None” for eyes, skin, and inhalation
and that ingestion is “Not a likely source of exposure. Dilute with milk
or water.”

On the other hand, the sheet also says, “May be harmful if swallowed”
and “Keep out of eyes and off skin.” It says users should wear safety
glasses or goggles and impermeable gloves and that “A well ventilated
work environment is recommended.” This appears to be boilerplate
language that would be reasonable for any chemical one worked with on a
regular basis, as opposed to something used occasionally for therapeutic
purposes. Again, this applies to the concentrated version.

* * *

At the same time the FDA was searching Caton’s home, other marshals were
searching his business premises and several properties he owned in Lake
Charles, much to the consternation of his employees and tenants. The
government brought in trucks to Alpha Omega and confiscated large
quantities of raw materials and finished products, which they
subsequently destroyed—essentially finding him guilty before his case
was even heard. The centerpiece of the operation was a special truck for
transporting hazardous materials, with “Sulfuric Acid” signs on the
sides, which they used to haul away the H3O.

Cathryn Caton had been at the gym that morning for a workout, along with
the Catons’ seven-year-old son, and arrived home just as Caton was being
arrested. A neighbor who saw what was happening came out and took charge
of their son, so Cathryn could respond to the situation inside.

The Lake Charles police chief, a former FBI agent, had also arrived,
Caton says in a letter, and “told me to my face that he could ‘rip up
the floors and tear out the walls’ if ‘we don’t get what we’re looking
for.’ I will never forget this as long as I live. I was sitting at the
West facing end of my dining room table with handcuffs on behind my back
when he told me. I was really, really concerned that they were going to
destroy our home.”

As it turned out, Caton was not only a detainee but an arrestee, and he
was sent to the parish jail. “Jail” conjures up the image of a couple of
cells in a police station or behind the sheriff’s office in an Old West
frontier town, but in fact, Lafayette Parish Correctional Center is a
prison, where Caton was held for two months without being charged and
for another six after that, without bail, on the premise that he was a
flight risk.

The government threatened to arrest Cathryn Caton and to file Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) charges against her, Greg,
and their employees, on the basis, Caton says, “that AO labs was huge
conspiracy to hurt the public with dangerous drugs.” They also
threatened to arrest his employees as unindicted co-conspirators. (In
fact, two of his Lumen Foods employees were subsequently arrested on
drug charges. Caton doesn’t know if these were justified or not.)

The prospect of both Catons in prison carried the implicit threat of
foster care for their seven-year-old son. Because of this, the Catons
signed papers appointing Cathryn’s brother, in Texas, guardian for their
son. They then sent their son to live with him for the entire fall
school semester.

Caton was a flight risk because, the FDA contended, he had three
passports and a pilot’s license and had flown as recently as the
previous month (August 2003). They also claimed two guns he had in his
home were for the purpose of harming federal agents. They made these
claims in court, under oath, Caton says.

However, he didn’t have three passports—he had two, one of which had
expired and was punched “VOID.” He didn’t have a pilot’s license—he had
taken flying lessons, and the last time he had flown, according to the
pilot’s log, was in August 2001, not 2003. The two guns were in his
wife’s name, and they were purchased, he says, before Y2K, as a
precaution. Nevertheless, when all the charges were added up, he
potentially faced a long stretch in prison.

“They used perjurious statements to even raid my house to begin with,”
Caton says. “They told a judge I was telling people to drink battery
acid, and I’ve got the Department of Justice report to show that.” FDA
agent John Armand was insistent about this in a meeting, Caton says,
recounting their conversation.

“Yes, it’s battery acid. You know it’s battery acid. It’s sulfuric
acid—it must be battery acid.”

“Would you like to see the MSDS sheet?” Caton asked.

“No, we don’t need to see that.”

“Would you like to see the skin sensitivity tests that were done in New
Jersey, showing that this is completely noncaustic, noncorrosive?”

“You know that’s not what it is.”

Ultimately, the government offered Caton a plea bargain: one count of
mail fraud, one count of introducing an unapproved new drug into
interstate commerce, and forfeiture of all his commercial property.

The mail fraud charge was for selling the H3O. Despite the absurdity of
the government’s claim that he was selling battery acid, why did they
insist he plead to it? Caton has an answer for that. “It’s like the
story of the guy who gets caught lying, and he looks you in the face,
and he says to you, ‘That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.’ ” This
obtuse, maddening attitude of a bureaucrat caught in an error or an
outright lie ultimately came to be something of a grim joke for the
Catons, illustrating the groundlessness of the government’s case.

Caton recounts that the FDA contacted the manufacturer of the H3O,
asking how to dispose of the battery acid. The owner of the company told
them it wasn’t battery acid and asked how they got that idea—a question
they didn’t answer. The owner subsequently received a call from the
hazmat disposal company the FDA had retained, asking how to dispose of
it. His reply was that the easiest way was probably to drink it.

The charge of introducing a new drug into interstate commerce was for
shipping a bottle of Cansema Tonic III to Plantation, Florida. The
recipient wasn’t specified, but the FDA happens to have a field office
there.

The government’s pièce de résistance was its demand that Caton forfeit
all his commercial property, plus $950,000. The rationale was that funds
from Alpha Omega had been commingled with those of his other two
companies and had “tainted” them. The FDA arrived at the amount from an
analysis of his financial records, which they’d also seized—it was
ostensibly what he’d defrauded customers out of. His assets were worth
only about half what they demanded, so they agreed to settle—for
everything he had.

Caton owned three buildings. He’d already had to sell a building in
which he had $500,000 in equity, as well as the Preservx company (now
called Global Preservatives) and its associated patent, for “pennies on
the dollar” to pay his legal bills. Of the remaining three buildings,
one was where Alpha Omega and Lumen Foods were located. Another was a
storefront building. The third was a house, worth about $45,000, that
he’d intended to sell to one of his assistants. Altogether, the
buildings were worth about $400,000, although he owed about $180,000 on
the mortgages. The FDA was going to let him keep his home and the
processing equipment for Lumen Foods.

Caton wasn’t sure whether the government would sell the buildings or let
him continue to lease from them. He estimated that if they sold, they
might end up with $150,000—not much for all the paper shuffling
involved. However, it had emerged earlier that the FDA believed Caton
had large sums of money stashed in offshore accounts. In fact, Caton has
reliable information that the night before the raid, fourteen federal
and local agents had a party at a local casino, celebrating what they
thought would be a large haul the next day—which, he says, their
departments would have shared in.

As it turned out, there were no offshore accounts. Caton is not a rich
man, although he probably could have become one from his cancer remedies
alone. He had fulfilled the three criteria he and his wife had
established when they founded the company: his products worked, they
were safe, and he charged reasonable prices. His customers’ many
testimonials confirmed this. Ironically, his generosity had cost him
dearly, because he’d had to scramble just to cover his legal expenses.
On the other hand, of course, if he’d had more money, the FDA would have
just taken it.

The belief that he had large offshore bank accounts may actually have
been one of the factors motivating the FDA’s raid. Caton, who has become
something of an unwilling expert on the subject (his eight months in
jail gave him a lot of time to read), points out a quotation in a book
by William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower:

“The DEA, other federal and state agencies and police are seizing
houses, boats, cars, airplanes, real estate, furnishings, bank accounts
and other assets belonging to people suspected of involvement in drug
trafficking, or belonging to their spouses, often without a conviction
and whether or not the assets seized were tied to the alleged crime. . .
. The government agencies are selling these assets and using the
proceeds for anything from patrol cars to parties. The expected value of
forfeitures is at times a determining factor in the question of who to
raid. Police are routinely planting drugs and falsifying police reports
to establish probable cause for cash seizures. . . . As of early 1999,
there was $2.7 billion in the federal government’s ‘Asset Forfeiture
Fund’ alone.” (p. 270–1)

Caton also points to a letter in the the April 15, 2004, Wall Street
Journal that quotes former judge John Yoder, first head of the Justice
Department's Asset Forfeiture Office in the Reagan administration:

“When I set up the Asset Forfeiture Office, I thought I could use my
position to help protect citizens’ rights, and tried to insure that the
U.S. Department of Justice went after big time drug dealers and big time
criminals, rather than minor offenders and innocent property owners.
Today, overzealous government agents and prosecutors will not think
twice about seizing a yacht or a car if they find two marijuana
cigarettes in it, regardless of where they came from. I am now ashamed
of, and scared of the monster I helped to create.”

* * *

Reading through the thirty-eight pages of the eight-part plea agreement,
one cannot but be struck by the monstrous fabrications, profound
cynicism, and complete imperviousness to reason they display. The
agreement claims Caton knowingly created “a scheme and artifice to
defraud purchasers” and that “to facilitate the scheme and the artifice
to defraud, the defendant purchased buildings at the two locations
described.” So he didn’t just own the buildings—he purchased them
deliberately to defraud people.

It’s hard to decide which is worse—that the government actually believes
this or that they knew it was ridiculous and went ahead with it anyway.
One thinks of Bob Dylan: “How many times can a man turn his head and
pretend that he just doesn’t see?” Can one seriously believe, looking at
the depth of information on Caton’s web site, the extent of the
knowledge it reflects, the variety of products, the hundreds of
testimonials, that he’s out to defraud people—unless one were already
predisposed to view any alternative treatment as a fraud?

The potential prison time for the plea bargain was five years for the
mail fraud and three years for introducing an unapproved new drug, but
the government told him that realistically, he was looking at 41–47
months, less time served. Also, his cooperation with the FBI gave the
judge considerable downward discretion.

Cathryn Caton had sent out an appeal to Alpha Omega customers, asking
for letters—testimonials, character references, requests for leniency—to
present to the judge. She received a barrage of emails that, when
printed out, yielded a two-inch-thick stack of letters.

The judge was already quite sympathetic. At the hearing where Caton
entered his plea—after eight months in the parish jail—the judge pointed
at him and said to the prosecutor, “Why is this man still in jail?”
(Caton had previously appeared before two other judges.) The judge then
released him on bond. As Caton put it, “This judge does not like
prosecutorial misconduct, and this thing has got misconduct written all
over it.”

Not content with destroying Caton’s livelihood and holding him in
prison, the FDA proceeded to assail his reputation by giving the
Associated Press a story that ran in Lake Charles and Lafayette papers.
It gave the FDA’s version, quoting government officials and the attorney
for the woman who had named Caton in her complaint but omitted him from
her affidavit. The articles made him look only slightly less
reprehensible than an axe murderer. Neither Caton nor his lawyer was
contacted for their side.

At the sentencing hearing, the judge rejected the prosecution’s
contention that Caton had intended to cause harm with his products and
sentenced him to the minimum possible under the sentencing guidelines:
33 months, which he'll do in a minimum-security prison. With time served
and good behavior he’ll do 20, of which the last six may be in a halfway
house.

In all, Greg Caton estimates, the FDA took $250,000 worth of materials
and $400,000 worth of buildings. This doesn’t include what he lost in
the distress sale of Preservx and the one building he sold, his legal
fees—which amounted to $50,000 for the criminal charges alone—or the
ongoing revenue from Preservx and Alpha Omega.

After Caton was arrested, his wife had T-shirts made up. The front says,
“I survived an FDA raid on September 17, 2003.” The back is like a rock
band’s tour schedule, but instead of concert dates, it says “Other FDA
survivors,” then “In remembrance of Dr. Royal Rife, Harry Hoxsey and all
others that have contributed to alternative healing methods and for the
freedom of choice.” This is followed by the names of eight victims of
FDA raids, the last being Greg Caton’s. At the bottom is a picture of
Uncle Sam pointing outward, with the caption “Coming soon to a city near
you.”

“One of the sacred principles of American life is that private property
is respected,” Caton says. “I don’t even want citizenship in a country
that’s capable of doing this. I’m a manufacturer. I have equipment, I
have inventory—raw goods, finished goods, goods in process, goods
already prepared to ship that are on the bay door waiting to go out. You
can’t run a business if the principle of private property isn’t respected.

“If you’re an herbalist and you do what we do for a living, and you have
extensive knowledge and you’re very good at what you do, if at any given
time they can just come in and take your property, real property, take
equipment, take inventory, take goods—just take it all, like they did in
my case—you can’t operate in that kind of an environment.

“We’ve reached a point in our journey on the road to becoming a police
state where federal agents can get up on the stand, they can raise their
hand, they’re under oath, they can lie in the most egregious ways, and I
guess judges aren’t going to do anything about it. I brought this up to
two different defense attorneys, and it was like, blasé—looking at me as
if, ‘Are you naïve? So what? They lied—so what? Do you never get out of
the house? Don’t you know what’s going on?’ That was the real mindblower
in this whole situation: there’s nothing special about me or my case.
This goes on all the time.”

While Greg Caton was in jail, FDA agent John Armand told one of Caton’s
lawyers that he’d been getting calls from all over the world, from
people who had used Alpha Omega’s products, protesting what had
happened. Cathryn Caton had been getting calls too, from customers
crying, saying nothing else worked and that it was a matter of life and
death. She referred them to the FDA.

* * *

Although asset forfeiture may have been on the FDA’s mind when they went
after Caton, they’ve been raiding proponents of alternative remedies for
decades—since long before asset forfeiture was an option or the term
“alternative remedies” even existed. The FDA, in fact, has a long and
distinguished history of ruthlessly exterminating anything that competes
with conventional treatment, particularly for cancer.

It’s been observed that the FDA is heavily influenced by the medical and
pharmaceutical industries. Its favoritism had become so flagrant that,
as James Carter, M.D., points out in Racketeering in Medicine, “In June,
1990, Marvin Seife, the former head of the FDA’s generic drug division,
was the fifth FDA official to be indicted by a federal grand jury on
charges of perjury. . . . Four of Seife’s former employees at FDA have
already been convicted on corruption and racketeering charges. Five
industry executives, three companies and one consultant have been
convicted of similar charges.” (p. 165)

Conflicts of interest are still rampant, as a September 25, 2000,
article in USA Today points out: “More than half of the experts hired to
advise the government on the safety and effectiveness of medicine have
financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies that will be
helped or hurt by their decisions.”

And as Shannon Brownlee reports in the April 2004 Washingtonian, “More
than 60 percent of clinical studies—those involving human subjects—are
now funded not by the federal government, but by the pharmaceutical and
biotech industries. That means that the studies published in scientific
journals like Nature and The New England Journal of Medicine . . . are
increasingly likely to be designed, controlled, and sometimes even
ghost-written by marketing departments, rather than academic scientists.”

Considering the FDA’s enforcement efforts, or lack thereof, toward
pharmaceutical manufacturers, its insistence on a mail fraud charge for
Caton’s H3O seems more than a little hypocritical, A study in the April
15, 1998, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports
that 76,000–137,000 people die each year from adverse drug reactions.

Despite this, according to the February 2003 Consumer Reports, the
number of warning letters the FDA sends to drug manufacturers “about
false or misleading drug ads has dropped precipitously, from more than
100 per year in the late 1990s to just 24 as of November 2002.” A drug
company’s misleading ad campaign may have run its course before the FDA
gets around to sending a warning letter, if it does at all.

The listing of warning letters on the FDA’s web site shows that the
downward trend has continued to the present. (The Consumer Reports
article also details a number of other questionable practices by the
industry.) Even drugs with proven harmful or fatal effects are merely
taken off the market. The manufacturer is not raided, its assets are not
seized, and its officers do not do time.

Like the pharmaceutical industry, the medical establishment is not
blameless in attempting to suppress alternative remedies. In 1976, in
what came to be known as the Wilk case, several Chicago-area
chiropractors sued the American Medical Association (AMA), which they
claimed had conspired to destroy their profession. The case went on for
fifteen years, in the course of which nearly a million pages of
documents, many from the AMA’s files, were disclosed.

As author John Robbins put it, “It was revealed quite clearly that, for
many years, the AMA had deliberately and systematically conspired to
destroy not only chiropractic, but midwifery, homeopathy, naturopathy,
and herbalism. The whole collection of what we call wholistic and
alternative medicine had been the AMA’s target for destruction.” The
case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the chiropractors won.

The medical and pharmaceutical industries’ interest in disparaging
alternative treatment is understandable. Several studies published in
medical journals point out that the number of visits per year to
alternative practitioners now exceeds visits to conventional physicians,
with most people paying out of their own pockets. This has been going on
since at least 1990 and is due to more people “seeking alternative
therapies, rather than increased visits per patient,” according to a
1998 study in JAMA. Clearly, all these people can’t be dupes of scam
artists.

* * *

Considering that half of American men and a third of American women will
come down with cancer, the question must be asked: whom is the FDA
“protecting”? The agency has effectively become the enforcement branch
of the medical and pharmaceutical industries, which want to preserve the
status quo. The pharmaceutical industry can’t make any money on natural
remedies, and the doctors don’t want to lose the vast amounts of funding
poured into cancer research.

It’s been said that those with serious illnesses are vulnerable to
fraud, and some may be—although they’re equally vulnerable to a doctor’s
pitch for conventional treatment that doesn’t work. But unlike in
decades past, virtually everyone now has access to a wide variety of
health information on the Internet—and they’re using it.

A survey in 2000 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that
“fifty-two million American adults, or 55% of those with Internet
access, have used the Web to get health or medical information.” Of
these, 91% “have looked for material related to a physical illness.” And
“for the 21 million health seekers who say they were swayed by what they
read online the last time they sought health information . . . 70% said
the Web information influenced their decision about how to treat an
illness or condition.”

People are looking elsewhere because they’re realizing that the Western
approach is expensive, debilitating, and often ineffective—that it
treats the symptoms rather than the cause. We’re in the middle of a
changing paradigm—changing from the concept of attacking disease to one
of eliminating it by restoring balance.

Surely we, as adults, have the right to choose the type of healthcare
treatment available to us without the government unilaterally
eliminating our options. Isn’t it time for the FDA to heed what the
patient at one alternative cancer clinic said to them during a raid?
“We’re all adults here, making free-will choices. Why don’t you get out
of here and leave us alone?”

Aside from restricting our healthcare choices, what justifies the FDA’s
gestapo/KGB tactics in smashing, intimidating, demoralizing, and
bankrupting its targets, even before a trial to determine their guilt or
innocence? What justifies seizing their assets, impounding their
computers and business records, confiscating their personal papers and
effects, destroying their products and ingredients, and holding them in
prison for extended periods?
Very few people can do what Caton and others like him have done. It
takes tremendous initiative to come up with a product that works, make
it available commercially, and assume the risks of being put out of
business and perhaps imprisoned by the FDA.

Perhaps most important, Caton resisted the temptation to get rich on
other people’s suffering, which can’t be said of the pharmaceutical
industry. He could have made much more money and put enough away to
cover his eventual ruinous legal expenses—but he didn’t. Shouldn’t we be
encouraging and rewarding people like this rather than persecuting them
and destroying their lives?

http://www.goodhealthinfo.net/cancer/forbidden_fruit.htm

The Forbidden Fruit

Jason Vale, a New Yorker and former arm-wrestling champion, used apricot
seeds to cure his own cancer and then began selling them on the
Internet, along with injectable laetrile. It does sound ludicrous at
first, but the idea has been around since the fifties, and the medical
profession has been ridiculing it and trying to stamp it out for just as
long, without success. Apricot seeds contain a cyanide compound that
targets cancer cells.

In Vale’s case, at least, the FDA sent him warning letters. He
subsequently signed a consent decree saying he would stop, but he
continued selling. He was tried for violating the consent decree,
convicted, and sentenced to five years and three months. With time
served and good behavior, it could be about half that.

According to one report of the sentencing, the judge said he didn’t
believe the numerous letters he had received, in which satisfied
customers of Vale’s claimed the apricot seeds had “saved them,” and that
some letters were “over the top” in alleging an FDA–pharmaceutical
industry conspiracy. Although Vale’s conviction was for violating the
consent decree, his imprisonment is ultimately a result of selling
apricot seeds as a cure for cancer. Vale’s case is documented on his web
site, www.seedoffaith.com.

Upon Vale’s conviction in 2003, the FDA issued a press release, which
quotes then FDA commissioner Mark McClellan: “The FDA takes seriously
its responsibility to protect patients from unproven products being
peddled on the internet by modern day snake oil salesmen such as the
defendant in this case. There is no scientific evidence that Laetrile
offers anything but false hope to cancer patients.” The press release
also quotes prosecuting U.S. attorney Roslynn Mauskopf: “This office
will not tolerate any disregard for the lawful orders of this Court. Nor
will it tolerate fraud, especially when it foists dangerous products on
a vulnerable public.”

These sanctimonious, Soviet-style pronouncements merely repeat the
conventional line about laetrile. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
(MSKCC) in New York, the nation’s largest cancer treatment facility, has
claimed for decades (and still claims, on its web site) that “research
has demonstrated only the absence of beneficial effect” for apricot
seeds, otherwise known as amygdalin, laetrile, and vitamin B17.

However, Ralph Moss, Ph.D., who was assistant director of public affairs
at MSKCC for five years in the mid-seventies, noticed during his time
there that the institution’s claim about laetrile’s ineffectiveness
contradicted what its own research showed. When he pointed this out, he
was fired.

Moss went on to write books about alternative approaches to cancer and
other health problems, pointing out the substantial representation of
pharmaceutical, petrochemical, and automotive industry executives on the
MSKCC boards of directors and managers. He cites this as the reason for
MSKCC’s persistent lack of interest in natural remedies for cancer
(which would conflict with the pharmaceutical industry’s agenda) or
environmental causes of cancer (to which the petrochemical and
automotive industries contribute significantly).

And

http://www.goodhealthinfo.net/cancer/fda_cozy_relationship.htm
The FDA's Cozy Little Relationship

Relationships between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry have led
to a “revolving door,” in which pharmaceutical executives go to work for
the FDA, making regulatory decisions on matters affecting their industry
and sometimes even their own former companies. When their time at the
FDA is over, they go back to higher-paying jobs in the industry.

A web search for “FDA revolving door” turns up numerous examples, but
it’s no longer necessary even to go to the trouble. The revolving door
was formalized in 2001, with the creation of the Food and Drug
Administration Alumni Association (FDAAA).

The FDAAA’s web site says the group is “a non-profit, non-lobbying
organization dedicated to serving those who have supported the consumer
protection mission of the U.S. FDA.” Oddly, however, pharmaceutical
industry lobbyists and p.r. people are well represented on its board of
directors.

Among the FDAAA's goals are to “enable former colleagues to stay current
on major scientific and regulatory issues facing FDA, educate the public
about the vital work of the FDA . . . ,” and “assist FDA in recruiting
alumni with specialized expertise and institutional knowledge during
critical situations.” The web site also says that the FDAAA’s “core
mission is to help alumni stay in touch with the issues of the day
facing FDA and support the Agency’s public health mission through
expertise-sharing, training and outreach opportunities.”

The FDAAA’s revenue “is primarily derived from member dues and outside
contributions.” As far as outside contributions go, “support from other
persons and institutions is welcome.” To facilitate recruiting alumni,
the home page has industry job postings—and the site can be accessed
from a link on the FDA’s site. The FDAAA’s logo incorporates the FDA’s
logo. In fact, the FDAAA’s office is in the same building as FDA
headquarters in Maryland. Its motto is “Serving Those Who Have Served.”

The chairman of the FDAAA, John C. Villforth, writes in the
organization’s first newsletter (November 2002) that in looking into the
idea of an alumni group, “we discovered that NIH, SSA, HCFA and
Congress, among others, have active alumni associations; other agencies
such as NRC, EPA and OSHA do not.” Perhaps it didn’t occur to them that
the latter three, like the FDA, are regulatory agencies and may not have
thought it appropriate for their officials to be fraternizing with
employees of the industry they regulate.

Villforth is on the board of directors of Vasogen, which makes heart
drugs, and EduNeering, which provides regulatory compliance “learning
solutions.” He has also been on the boards of other medical companies.

A few other examples:

The FDAAA’s treasurer and chairman of the finance committee, Jerome A.
Halperin, is president and CEO of the Food and Drug Law Institute
(FDLI). FDLI’s web site says its “500+ members comprise manufacturers
and suppliers of medicines . . . medical devices, food and cosmetics . .
. law firms, consulting firms, associations, and others.” Interestingly,
the stated goals of the FDLI, according to its web site, are quite
similar to those of the FDAAA: “providing high quality education and a
neutral forum for the generation of ideas and discussion of law and
public policy for its legal, policy and regulatory communities.”
Halperin was formerly vice president of technology for CIBA-GEIGY (now
Novartis) and in 2001 was appointed to the board of directors of
PharmQuest, which provides software to accelerate drug development.

James S. Benson, a member of the FDAAA board of directors, is also on
the board of Medical Device Consultants, “a leading consulting and
contract research organization for the medical device industry,”
according to the press release announcing his appointment to that
company’s board. He was formerly executive vice president for technology
and regulatory affairs at AdvaMed (formerly HIMA), which he has
described as “a trade association that represents more than 800
manufacturers of medical devices, diagnostic products, and medical
information systems.” The press release said Benson was the “lead
strategist for the association’s regulatory agenda.” FDAAA board member
Elizabeth Jacobson is executive vice president of AdvaMed.

Wayne L. Pines, another FDAAA board member and chairman of the
activities committee, is “president of regulatory services and health
care” for APCO, a “global communication consultancy”—a p.r. firm. Pines
“provides strategic counsel to clients facing crises or media,
legislative, regulatory or marketing problems.” Board member Gerald F.
Meyer is a senior consultant at AAC Consulting Group, which, its web
site says, “provides a full range of support and compliance assistance.
. . . offers a team of former high-level FDA officials and industry
experts.”

For those who might be suspicious of all this togetherness between the
FDA and employees and board members of the industries it ostensibly
regulates, the FDAAA has a code of ethics. Unfortunately, its
lofty-sounding but carefully worded constructions do not inspire
confidence. It says, for example, that members aren’t allowed to
“influence FDA policy or action in a manner other than that which [sic]
any member of the general public is legally entitled.”

Of course, if you have personal access in a social setting to FDA
regulatory officials who approve your product or could hire you or whom
you might hire, you’re already in a more favorable position than “any
member of the general public”—especially the small alternative
businesses the FDA feels it has a mandate to persecute.

Members aren’t allowed to lobby, either—but they don’t need to lobby.
They represent a community of interests. All they need to do is
network—for example, at a wine tasting at the Bretton Woods Conference
Center in October 2004—and they’re already way ahead. Whatever happened
to the idea of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety?

Violations of the ethical code are reviewed by . . . the board of
directors. If a violation is corroborated, the executive committee “may”
impose sanctions, including warning, suspension, and expulsion. So the
worst that can happen for an attempt to influence an FDA employee that’s
so flagrant it can’t be ignored is expulsion from the organization.