Current House and Senate Bills Affecting Your Health Freedoms

There are a growing number of House and Senate bills that have the potential to affect your health freedoms.

Some of the most important of these bills are outlined below.

The Dr. Rath Health Foundation OPPOSES the following bills:

• H.R. 3156 (the Dietary Supplement Access and Awareness Act) would severely and negatively impact DSHEA by giving the FDA the authority to ban large numbers of dietary supplements or dietary ingredients from the market if they fail unreasonable and arbitrary risk/benefit assessments.
• S. 729 / H.R. 1507 (the Safe Food Act of 2005) would create a new federal food safety agency and undermine DSHEA by reclassifying supplements and regulating them as drugs.
• H.R. 2485 (the DSHEA Full Implementation and Enforcement Act of 2005) would give the FDA an extra $205 million between now and 2010 to regulate dietary supplements on the dubious grounds that it has not adequately used its authority to enforce DSHEA due to a lack of resources.
• H.R. 2510 (the Dietary Supplement Regulatory Implementation Act of 2005), similar to H.R. 2485, would appropriate an extra $205 million to the FDA to regulate dietary supplements.
• S. 2686 (the Communications, Consumer’s Choice and Broadband Deployment Act) would allow telephone and cable companies to restrict freedom of access to the Internet and, consequently, to websites providing lifesaving and health-promoting information about dietary supplements and other natural therapies..

In addition, the Dr. Rath Health Foundation is alarmed that international efforts to limit my access to effective dietary supplements, such as through the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the FAO/WHO Nutrient Risk Assessment Project, could further restrict health freedoms.

The Dr. Rath Health Foundation SUPPORTS the following bills:

• H.R. 2352 (the Consumers’ Access to Health Information Act) would codify into law the right for natural product retailers and manufacturers to legally discuss the many benefits of natural health products.
• H.R. 2486 (the Dietary Supplement Tax Fairness Act of 2005) would allow the costs of purchasing dietary supplements to be treated as medical expenses under federal law.
• H.R. 4282 (the Health Freedom Protection Act) would prevent the FDA from censoring Americans’ right to truthful information about the health-enhancing benefits of foods and dietary ingredients.
• H.R. 1545 (the Dietary Supplement and Healthy Meal Replacement Tax Parity Act of 2005) would allow people to claim a medical expense deduction for meal-replacement and dietary-supplement products that qualify, or will in the future, for FDA-approved health claims.