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Aug. 19, 2011 - Project Camelot

01:47:07

PROJECT CAMELOT: INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN EMORD

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	Great.
	Okay, this is Carrie Cassidy from Project Camelot, and we are talking to Jonathan Emord.
	He is an attorney, a food and drug attorney, and I'm not sure if you want to classify what you do a little more specifically, Jonathan.
	And he was very much instrumental in terms of investigating what went on with the raw food raid That was involved the FDA and other issues as well.
	So Jonathan, what I'd like you to do is really introduce yourself and talk about how you got into this field and where you're coming from because it also says you're a constitutional lawyer and I'd like you to talk about that a bit.
	I practice constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies, and I have a particular emphasis on food and drug law.
	I came to Washington in 1985 during the Reagan administration to work in the Federal Communications Commission as an attorney there under Mark Fowler.
	I have an abiding conviction in protecting the First Amendment and limiting government power and protecting civil liberties.
	I've dedicated my professional career to those ends.
	Okay, wonderful.
	So how did you get involved in the FDA issue?
	I was vice president at the Cato Institute, which is a public policy Eric Pearson and Sandy Shaw who are designers of dietary supplement formulations and scientists and they were very popular figures in the 70s appearing on hundreds of episodes of the Merv Griffin Show and other shows and they explained to me that the Food and Drug Administration maintained a prior restraint
	on the right to communicate nutrient disease information to the public and that this was particularly egregious in several areas, including the censorship of the neural tube defect claims about folic acid reducing the risk of neural tube defects.
	They explained that that was contributing to numerous neural tube defect births that were preventable and to countless abortions related to neural tube defect births.
	So I looked into it, discovered that much to my shock and chagrin, the FDA was censoring truthful information that could save lives and could prevent neural tube defect births and other horrible abnormalities and agreed to sue the FDA on their behalf.
	And that then led to a decision called Pearson v. Schoenberg Shalala, where the I held FDA censorship of the folic acid claim and other claims unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
	And then after that decision, there were seven additional decisions that I won against the FDA on health claims and then also on administrative law issues related to arbitrary and capricious agency action.
	Okay, but in terms of who hires you, for example?
	Well, I'm hired by individuals, scientists, companies that are adversely affected by FDA action.
	Oh, I see.
	Okay.
	And in the case of the raw milk raid, how did you get involved in that?
	Various people who were consumers of raw milk contacted me explaining that the government had taken action that had interfered with their supply of raw milk and that they wanted to know whether there was something that could be done.
	And one group was here in Maryland across the river from where I'm at now in Northern Virginia and another group was in California and so they invited me to speak on the subject at a rally they had on Capitol Hill and I looked into it and discovered that I decided I would help them,
	and so we're looking at ways to try to overturn this FDA ban on interstate trafficking in raw milk.
	Okay, and it looks like your approach is very specific.
	In other words, it's on a case-by-case basis, as any attorney would be, right?
	Right.
	We carefully assess the issues and determine what the best approach is to achieve the objective.
	And in this case, that will involve going back to the FDA, laying a foundation for an appropriate appeal.
	The FDA will act, and then we'll sue them for that action.
	Okay.
	And, I mean, who pays you, ultimately?
	Because this kind of thing is fairly lengthy and expensive, I imagine.
	Groups raise revenue from the public.
	In this case, it's an unusual circumstance.
	We're ordinarily employed by individuals, scientists, companies.
	So in this case, there are groups that are forming that solicit contributions from the public, and then from those contributions, they pay our fees.
	Okay.
	Are you finding, though, that there are more abuses now, say, than there were ten years ago?
	Yes.
	Towards the end of the Bush administration and the entire Obama administration, the FDA has become increasingly more aggressive in its enforcement and unforgiving even for technical infractions.
	And this is part of an anti-competitive movement by the agency to protect the favored regulatee of the agency, the drug companies, from competition and also to limit competition to major food producers.
	Those are the ones that have caused the agency to effectively be a captive of their interests, and they've done that successfully by lobbying and also by succeeding in getting legislation passed that favors their position and regulations enacted that and they've done that successfully by lobbying and also by succeeding in getting It's quite a corrupt, anti-competitive environment that...
	That's not anything new in my book, The Rise of Tyranny.
	I explain how that has taken place over the last 60 years.
	And it's because it's in the self-interest of the political appointees in the agency to take actions that will enable them, when they leave the agency, to have lucrative employment.
	And so small guys really have little chance of affecting change in that environment because they have nothing to pay back, these political people, for their actions.
	Okay.
	What is it that the books that you've written, what areas have you covered in general besides, I mean, you know, tyranny is obviously a wide-ranging topic.
	But specifically, are you talking really centering on the drug companies and the abuses of the FDA?
	or do you widen that?
	I explained the And then the individual actors.
	So in The Rise of Tyranny, for example, I focus on the drug industry's takeover of the Food and Drug Administration.
	And I give specific instances where unsafe drugs were approved because of the lobbying of different drug companies over the FDA's own medical reviewers' objections remained on the market and caused the injuries that were predicted And only when products liability suits became extreme were those drugs then withdrawn from the market by the drug companies themselves,
	with the FDA defending those drugs even to the point of defending them all the way up to the day they were withdrawn from the market by the FDA. There are several examples.
	I'll just use a couple that will illustrate the point.
	With Vioxx, that's a painkiller.
	The FDA approved Vioxx even though in the information that was subject to review by the FDA that was proof that the drug increased the risk of heart attack three to five times above a comparable painkiller that was on the market that didn't have those effects.
	Medical reviewers objected to the approval of it, but it occurred anyway.
	Then when it got into the market, An adverse event report started to pour into the FDA of heart attacks and heart abnormalities, including various signs of toxicity.
	The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet published safety studies on the drug and came to the same conclusion, that is, that it increased the As time went on, the adverse spend reports became even greater,
	and FDA's medical reviewers asked the FDA commissioner, who was then Lester Crawford, to remove the drug from the market because they found the incidence of heart attack to be extreme and proof that the drug was toxic to the heart.
	He refused to take the drug off the market.
	Not only that, against their objections, two weeks before Merck withdrew the drug from the market itself, he approved the drug for use in pediatric rheumatoid arthritis patients for use in kids, even though there were some 140,000 heart attacks and 60,000 deaths from a heart attack, a number equivalent to the number of people who died in the Vietnam War.
	And then you have Merck.
	Profound example of undue influence and control over the agency in the drug Ketec.
	In the case of Ketec, which is an antibiotic made by Sanivia Ventus, the FDA's own medical reviewers during the review of the drug discovered that There were peculiarities in a clinical trial that was a central clinical trial for the indications that were desired for the drug.
	So they began to ask for evidence about the trial, and they asked for informed consents.
	We've got information about the principal investigator and where the trial was conducted and so on.
	And after a thorough investigation, they discovered that there was no clinical trial.
	They referred this to the FBI to investigate.
	The FBI investigated and the Justice Department brought criminal fraud charges against specific people who were involved in the clinical trial, not the company.
	That's interesting.
	In the end, even though the medical reviewers found that a central clinical trial for the drug was made up and urged the FDA commissioner to deny the application, the FDA commissioner overruled their And that is actually
	happening in the market.
	So the drug is out there today.
	And that's just another example.
	One more example is Avandia.
	Avandia is a type 2 diabetes drug.
	And it's also heart toxic.
	And information about its heart toxicity was published by scientists from Cleveland Clinic who studied the drug to determine that it would increase the risk of heart abnormalities and by a significant margin.
	And even though there was A congresswoman from California who's on the Energy and Commerce Committee and she had stated to the committee that her doctor put her on that drug and that she ended up with a heart murmur and her doctor took her off the drug saying that the drug was responsible for a heart murmur.
	She said, how could this be?
	There's not even a warning on the drug explaining the I was perfectly healthy.
	I had type 2 diabetes, took this drug, and now I end up with a heart problem for the rest of my life.
	And Commissioner gave her really no substantive explanation or answer for why that drug was on the mark without a warning.
	Then they finally caved in and put a This committee wanted FDA to do more.
	Even with all this political pressure on the commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, the present commissioner of the FDA, they convened a review panel.
	The review panel found that indeed of Andean was heart toxic, but the FDA commissioner refused to remove the drug from the market instead.
	Who presently take it and who are also the people at highest risk of having heart problems and restricting it for making it unavailable to other people.
	This, rather than saving people from the problem, she just protected the problem in the market that already exists.
	And by doing that, she enabled Santa Villaventus I'm sorry, not Santa Via Ventus.
	I think this is another drug.
	I'm not 100% sure.
	Anyway, the drug maker to slowly get out of the market and not suffer a significant economic hit from a sudden removal of the drug from the market.
	So the compromise was save the company financial loss by allowing all these people who are on it to continue to take it and suffer heart abnormalities.
	Okay.
	Now, you're mentioning Merck a few times.
	I wonder if there are certain drug companies, certain very large drug companies that are more prone to violate sort of, I guess, ethical behavior in this regard.
	Have you found that?
	Where?
	Hello?
	Okay, we seem to have frozen and actually lost Jonathan.
	We're going to dial again and see if we can get him back.
	Are you there?
	Okay.
	Well, that's typical because I asked a question that, you know, I'm sure they're paying close attention to what we're going to cover here.
	Can you hear me okay at this moment?
	Okay, for some reason your volume has gone down quite a bit.
	Could you say a couple more things?
	Yeah, you're quite distant.
	Is there a way you can raise your volume at your end?
	Probably not.
	Oh, no.
	Okay, well, let's continue to forge ahead and hope that this will work.
	The question was whether or not you found certain large drug conglomerates to be more prone to violating ethics and ethical behavior, in other words, keeping drugs on the market that shouldn't be on the market, and also sort of camouflaging, I guess, the health risks.
	Okay, now you have no audio at all.
	Can you hear me?
	How about that?
	That's better.
	I think it's difficult to pinpoint precisely which drug companies are responsible.
	Is that better?
	It's a little better.
	It's not great, but go ahead.
	There have been charges brought against Merck, against Eli Lilly, against Santa Other major drug companies, it seems to be common among the major drug companies that they use these approaches that cause the problems.
	That is, that they influence the FDA commissioner, that they are behind pushing drugs even when they have adverse effects, and that they heavily influence the conduct of Congress.
	As Dan Burton put it, Congressman Dan Burton put it, there is really no bill that if the drug industry wants it bad enough, it won't get it passed.
	So they have tremendous influence in the creation of laws and in the creation of public policy and in the creation of regulation.
	And they're represented by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association as a group.
	The drug industry is represented by that law The per-unit cost set by the drug industry for its drugs as part of the Medicare benefit for seniors.
	There was a specific provision in that bill put in there by the then-head of energy and commerce, Billy Tozza, who was a Republican appointee of the Bush administration.
	I mean, a Republican appointee of the Bush administration.
	Provision disallowed the federal government from negotiating down the per-unit price of drugs despite volume purchases through Medicare Part D. So in other words, whatever the drug industry set for the price of the drugs it would get, and it would get a check from the United States Treasury.
	The former inspector general of the United States, Dan Walker, said that that provision alone could bankrupt the United States.
	That was before the recession.
	And so it was outrageous that he put this provision in that would enable the drug industry to charge whatever it wants for its drugs, and the United States government would have to pay for it.
	He then resigned from Congress and became the executive director of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, making $2.5 million a year.
	Okay.
	So now in your book, Tyranny, what was the rest of the name?
	Tyranny.
	The Rise of Tyranny.
	Yes.
	When you're focusing, I assume, on the drug companies, right?
	Well, I take a look at the primary purpose of the book is to show that our constitutional republic created and designed to I think that the government, by the Founding Fathers, has principally since the 1930s been transformed from a republic into a bureaucratic oligarchy where 250 independent regulatory commissions now possess governing control on
	the federal level, to the extent that nine-tenths of all law made by the federal government is not the product of those we elect.
	But it's rather the product of regulation created by the unelected heads of these bureaucratic agencies.
	And so it looks at the FDA as an example over the drug industry, but it also looks at other regulatory agencies.
	And the basic point is that Our government was established, as the Declaration of Independence explains, based on two essential principles without which a republic cannot exist.
	And those principles are that the government is based on the consent of the governed.
	And secondarily, that a just government defends the rights of the governed.
	And in the context of these bureaucratic entities that possess combined legislative, executive, and judicial powers, there is no check on their use of power, either from the electorate or from Congress or from the courts in most instances.
	And as a consequence, they rule much as the absolute monarchs did in the 18th century.
	We don't want any check on power.
	This was precisely why the founders of the United States left Great Britain and created a republic.
	It was to ensure that sovereignty remained with the individual and that they wouldn't be victimized by absolute monarchs or absolute powers of this kind.
	There was near universal opinion at the time of the founding of the republic among Andrew Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, that as Montesquieu, in the spirit of the law, is a French philosopher who they regarded as a great authority, an oracle, they referred to him as an oracle.
	The notion was that if you combine legislative, executive, and judicial powers in single hands, You create tyranny because the person who has such enormous power is the judge, jury, and executioner.
	And there is no independent check.
	There's no limitation on their use of power to pursue their own self-interest.
	So that's what James Madison has described as the very definition of tyranny.
	And that's why it's called The Rise of Tyranny, because it focuses on how these bureaucratic agencies, equipped with all of this power, governing power, rule without restraint, and have replaced a limited federal republic with an unlimited bureaucratic oligarchy that is ranting terror down upon specific segments of the market that are disfavored.
	So in the case of The Food and Drug Administration, it's the dietary supplement industry because the dietary supplement industry poses a threat to the drug industry because if people are able to manage their own health, reduce their incidence of disease,
	and not become dependent upon drugs, they are liberated from the essential paradigm that the drug companies depend upon for their financial well-being and And success, and that is that everyone, sooner or later, has a crisis moment, goes to the hospital, or goes to a physician, is prescribed a drug, and is put on that drug.
	At some point, would be put on that drug for the rest of their lives, and they become a sure market.
	But if instead people take control of their own health, rely upon natural agents to diminish Appreciate that health is not simply something that you should be mindful of in a crisis, but is something that you should maintain on a daily basis.
	Then you become liberated from this paradigm, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the drug companies to profit off you from cradle to grave.
	Absolutely, and very well said.
	The movement has been in the direction of ever-increasing dependency on drugs, so we have all of the new psychiatric drugs that are designed to reach an audience.
	That is not necessarily ill, but is suffering some inconvenience.
	A lot of the drugs that are coming into the market that are different from times in the past are ones that are more or less convenience drugs.
	And so if children behave like children, they're described as having attention deficit disorder and then they're thrown on serotonin reuptake inhibitors and their behavior is modified.
	They become dependent upon those drugs and then for the rest of their lives they're We're required to take them in order to just survive because they're addicted.
	The government defines that dependency as dependency and not addiction through a ridiculous attempt to distinguish it, and that's all for the benefit of the drug companies.
	Disease states are created by the drug industry with some regularity.
	For example, metabolic syndrome, which was a creation of the drug industry, it's because they couldn't patent drugs for the specific conditions of hypertension and increased blood sugar or various other conditions that may oftentimes accompany one another readily.
	Rather, they needed a new definition and a new market to create new These conditions in combination, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sluggish feeling, plus high blood sugar levels.
	So they unite these things and then they create a new condition that they say when all these things are present, it's metabolic syndrome and therefore we're creating a drug to treat metabolic syndrome.
	And then get a new line of profits.
	They can call seasonal affected disorder, where in the wintertime people, because of lack of access to the sun, may feel more morose or more depressed because they don't have as much exposure to the sun.
	And then they create a drug to treat that seasonal condition.
	Incredible.
	So it's all of this nonsense and it's designed to make us regard drugs as a means to achieve a certain state of being and to consider that state of being to be a normal state.
	Okay, so in terms of the way you approach it, are you, for example, are you an advocate of natural foods and natural healing remedies?
	I guess you're well aware that that area is very much under attack at this moment.
	Do you yourself, for example, use natural products?
	I do.
	I take dietary supplements of various kinds.
	I eat organic foods, and I have for some time, 25 years.
	Anyway, I'm driven by my love of the Constitution and belief that individuals have to be sovereign in this I'm driven by freedom People have freedom of choice.
	I want them to be able to live the lives that they wish.
	So long as they don't harm another individual, they should be able to conduct their own affairs.
	Thomas Jefferson put it well in his first inaugural address when he said a wise and frugal government shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it is earned.
	And that's really what good government is all about.
	We have the opposite of that today.
	We have a government that wishes to replace our freedom of choice with a determination made for us based on what individuals with political power think is in our best interest, even if it disagrees with what we consider to be in our own best interest.
	So it's not enough that We're not to harm someone else, which is fine.
	They instead choose to impose restraints on our conduct on the assumption that it's not in our best interest or not in the best interest of the nation.
	There's no finer example of this abuse than in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama's health initiative.
	The individual mandate in that bill, everyone in the United States who presently does not have health insurance We'll have to acquire it on January 1, 2014 at a cost of between 5 and 15 grand a year on average.
	Now, a lot of people like alternative medicine, which typically is not covered by insurance, and a lot of people prefer to rely upon natural remedies rather than to go to the doctor all the time.
	And what this does is force them to pay five to fifteen grand for a system of care that they likely do not want and will use only because they're paying for it.
	So the care that is going to be offered is conventional care.
	It's going to be essentially what Medicare covers, which means any alternative treatment What we're talking about is not going to be covered by the insurance.
	All insurance must be a qualified plan.
	So what this does is it forces you against your will to purchase a system of healthcare, buy into a system of healthcare that you may not want, but it deprives you of the freedom of choice in the first instance.
	It's your right as an American The government,
	by laying this precedent, Article I of the Constitution defines the enumerated powers of Congress.
	There is no power in Article I to allow the government of the United States to force you to buy a private product.
	This will force you to buy private health insurance.
	But in addition to that, it lays a precedent to enable the government to compel you to buy whatever it wants you to buy in the public interest.
	So, for example, let's say that your diet is comprised of sugars and fats and Various foods that the government considers to be not in your best health interest.
	They could order you to document your purchase of food in healthy areas defined.
	They're already engaged in an initiative on this, by the way.
	Under the Appropriations Act 2009, the omnibus appropriations bill from 2009, the Congress ordered the FDA, the CDC, We're good to
	together recommendations that the industry stop marketing foods that have a certain level of sugar, a certain level of fat, certain other ingredients in it to kids.
	If this recommendation were followed, then kids would not be able to obtain readily pancakes or donuts or any other food that may be tasty but might have more fat.
	Of course, this is all based on a ridiculous paternalistic notion And should be able to regulate their diets instead of allowing them the freedom to do so or their parents the right to supervise that.
	And so in a state like this, if this ultimately comes to be, we will be slaves to the government.
	Absolutely.
	That's what drives me to fight the government.
	I came to Washington in 1985 during the Reagan administration sharing these same views with a large number of people that Ronald Reagan brought in from all over the United States to try to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
	He confronted A Democratic Congress that was antagonistic every step of the way.
	And now we have a government that really very much wants to go in the direction of government planning, taking away individual rights and ruining what's left, those fragments of what's left of our republic.
	And I love my country and I don't want this to happen, so I'm trying my best as a lawyer to try to fight it.
	Okay, and that's very inspiring really to everyone, I'm sure.
	I wanted to ask you a few questions.
	Codex Alimentarius, in a sense, I think you're talking about that, or talking around it, but But is this not part of what's going to come to be in 2014, or is it already in operation?
	The Codex Alimentarius is an international standard-setting body for the World Health Organization that sets food standards.
	And what has happened is that as food has become more of a political vehicle, As dietary supplements have become more politicized because of the drug industry's capture of not only the United States government,
	but of every government that regulates drugs all around, the interest in lobbying for those states to unify, come together and come up with a proposal that would reduce the presence of supplements and limit their And that is why the member states of the World
	Health Organization that are part of the Codex Alimentarius voted in favor of a measure that would require the member states to adopt regulations in their own countries to limit the amount of supplements, the potency of supplements, and to determine what steps should be taken to Remove them from the market.
	So this is a part of a promotion effort.
	Codex Alimentarius is a promoting effort.
	Each member state gets to decide whether it will enact legislation to codify the recommendations of Codex in some way.
	And Europe has been instrumental in promoting the Codex Alimentarius, particularly Germany.
	As a consequence, Europe has adopted through the European Food Safety Authority of the European Union draconian restrictions on supplements that are now being enforced by the member states causing literally hundreds of products previously consumed without incident and to the satisfying huge need in Europe to be And so those things are being removed from the market.
	All claims about them are also now forbidden, both claims about the health benefits and about the general effects of the product on the structure and function of the body.
	So it is now, we are in a new European dark age where science and Self-help in the health area are largely being forbidden so that this drug model can be the only one that operates.
	And I explain this in The Rise of Tyranny, or excuse me, in my book Global Censorship of Health Information.
	Okay.
	And are you, did you become familiar, for example, with various countries and what they're doing in this regard?
	In other words, how certain countries may be Limiting drugs and others may be allowing them, in other words, also natural remedies and so on.
	Because, you know, I have friends who travel a great deal and there's information that you can't even bring certain things into a country at this time.
	Completely harmless things, you know, like certain herbal remedies even, and so on.
	Places like Australia, I think, are limiting these things.
	Are you familiar with that?
	Yes.
	One of the things that I studied in preparation for writing that book, Global Censorship of Health Information, was the The law in every country where drugs were regulated.
	And what I discovered was that the model that has been adopted in the United States is basically the underlying regulatory construct everywhere else in the world.
	It's pretty clear that the drug industry aggressively promoted that model around the world.
	Succeeded magnificently in getting it adopted and then has also succeeded in enforcing it and ridding themselves of any form of competition about therapeutic treatments.
	So you find in every country of the Western world and increasingly in Asia and parts of Africa, That every claim of a health effect regardless of its truthfulness for a natural ingredient is either prohibited or restricted severely.
	And that creates a monopoly for therapeutic information in the drug industry so that the drug companies enjoy this state-sponsored monopoly and protection all around the industrialized world.
	And that gives them the enormous market advantage and power to be able to Influence not only what happens in the grocery store, in the health food store, and in the pharmacy, but also the decisions that are made inside the governments, those countries.
	Every government that regulates drugs is lobbied by the drug industry, and tens of billions of dollars a year are expended by the industry to Fill the coffers of politicians around the world.
	So it's not surprising then that when you're paying for politicians, regardless of their political stripe, you end up being able to call the tune.
	The FDA Associate Director of the Office of Drug Safety, David Graham, has testified that The drug industry controls the FDA and has enormous influence over the medical schools and other countries' regulatory agencies.
	He said that the people of the United States are virtually disabled.
	And that the FDA views the industry as its client whose drugs it hopes to authorize and promote.
	And so there's this enormous bias inside the FDA and inside the regulatory agencies around the world that regulate drugs in favor of the drug companies.
	And these regimes, you know, not a single one of them It conducts independent testing of the drug agents that are submitted for approval.
	The reviews are all of the drug industry's own tests, so there's this conflict of interest that is condoned by the system of review.
	Safety issues are never fully evaluated because the only time a safety issue arises in this system is if the drug industry itself, the drug company applicant, identifies the safety issue.
	Otherwise, the law in the United States and in Europe and throughout the industrialized world is the same.
	The drug industry is presumed to be submitting a Unless the industry itself identifies a safety problem.
	So you have these huge conflicts of interest.
	It's not only in their interest, of course, to make the drug appear efficacious, it's also in their interest to make it appear safe.
	And because there's no independent testing of the drugs, we never get the real picture through the drug approval process.
	In the United States, there have been several instances where FDA medical reviewers have discovered safety problems even though there's no independent safety testing by the agency, and that's rather extraordinary, but they've been that perceptive when they bring these problems to The attention of the people who run the agency,
	the political appointees, frequently they are told to redo their evaluations, they're ostracized, they're criticized, they receive bad reviews, they end up having drug applications taken away from them, given to others.
	If they don't cooperate and achieve the objective, Of political appointees, they suffer immeasurably.
	That's what happened to David Graham before he became a national figure and then the agency found it difficult to continue to persecute him.
	But it happens all the time to FDA medical reviewers who are bold enough to express their opinions and to explain when there's a problem, what the problem is and why drugs shouldn't be approved.
	So it's a sick environment.
	The drug industry also pays for the review of drugs.
	It's not only, as David Graham said, again, the Associate Director of the FDA Office of Drug Safety, he said, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
	And in this instance, under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, the drug industry pays for almost all costs associated with FDA's review of a drug.
	Literally paying for the review process.
	So it's not only that there's no independent scientific testing, it's not only that there's no independent safety testing, it's also that there's no independent funding.
	It's all from the drug industry.
	The drug industry controls the entire process.
	Absolutely.
	I wonder if you've looked into the groups, because early on you were talking about the various groups that were sort of targeted, if you will, for FDA sort of crackdowns.
	And I wonder if you could outline what those groups are specifically, and then possibly Also address, there's a link up between the drug industry and the military.
	And there's a procedure that goes on there.
	And I'm wondering whether or not you've ever had to work on a case in that way.
	So I hope you can answer both those questions.
	Well, every decision to prosecute is a political decision.
	The commissioner is ultimately responsible for every decision.
	The FDA is a dictatorship, and the FDA commissioner, Margaret Amber, makes all decisions.
	She may delegate the power and make a decision to another political appointee under her, a deputy director of an office, but she is ultimately responsible for every decision that is made.
	The decision of who to go after, where to expend agency resources in prosecuting parties is a political determination that she ultimately makes, and then she designates her head of enforcement to go out and do that work.
	As a consequence, it's not the case that FDA goes after everybody who breaks an agency rule.
	If that were the case, every company in the United States that is in the health business would likely be prosecuted.
	It is because the regulations are so prolific and extensive that they cover everything and they give you one basis or another to go after someone.
	So instead, the commissioner decides, all right, well, I'm going to go after this group or these group of people, or I want to go after this particular type of thing.
	So, for example, in the case of raw milk, the commissioner made a decision that she wanted to eliminate all interstate shipments of raw milk, go after the companies that produce raw milk and the individuals involved in it, and prosecute them to the nth degree to obliterate and prosecute them to the nth degree to obliterate raw milk production in the United States because she starts with the supposition that raw milk is inherently unsafe.
	That's being generous if you're not going to be able to do it.
	If you look at it from a more cynical standpoint, you see that after years of successful lobbying, the major food producers, particularly the major dairies, have won a big one here.
	They've been able to convince the FDA to use its resources That really pose no threat in the big scheme of things.
	I mean, consider how extraordinary this is.
	You've got an Amish farmer, Dan Alvier, in Kinzers, Pennsylvania, who has a couple hundred dairy cows.
	He produces a modest amount of milk by comparison to the big dairies, and he has no history of complaint as to the product.
	No one's saying they got sick from it.
	No one's died from it.
	People seem quite content about consuming it.
	And even with that history, FDA nevertheless targets him.
	They create a sting operation.
	They put him under surveillance for a year, as if he were a major drug lord.
	They pursue people who are bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illicit drugs into the United States in the same way they did this guy who was just simply milking cows.
	So they put him in this sting operation for a year.
	They create a safe house in Maryland.
	They put FDA agents there acting as husband and wife.
	They ordered from Dan 21 units of his milk.
	He ships it in a refrigerated truck across the border from Pennsylvania to Maryland.
	So they got him to put it in interstate commerce.
	And then he delivers it to them.
	Well, they take all that milk.
	He thinks that they're just a family buying his milk.
	They aren't.
	They're agents that are inducing him and trapping him to cross interstate lines, take the milk, they test it, convinced that they will find harmful pathogens in it.
	They don't find harmful levels of pathogens in it, so instead they go bring him to court on the technical violation, which ends up being devastating in this case, that he transported illegally in interstate commerce raw milk, unpasteurized milk.
	In violation of FDA's regulations.
	They don't have a single argument in their complaint that his milk was unsafe to consume, only that it was not actually pasteurized and was shipped in interstate commerce, and that it did not contain the labeling required of milk under FDA regulations.
	So they asked the court to award them As a punishment, the cost of the investigation.
	They want to make Dan pay for the year-long government investigation and sting operation, which would, if the court were to order it, force Dan out of business, make him sell all his cows and put an end to his operation.
	It's this kind of heavy-handed, gross abuse of power that is characteristic of this administration And Commissioner Hamburg's enforcement.
	You have all these people out there who are committing fraud or who are intentionally harming people that the government could expend its resources on to prosecute and get rid of.
	But instead, they spend tens of millions of tax dollars going after farmers who sell cherries, And represent that they might be good for your arthritis who sell milk that's raw, that's refrigerated, that people buy knowing that it's raw and want it.
	Some 6 million, 10 million Americans consume raw milk.
	And so it's extreme paternalism and it interferes with your freedom to consume what you will, what you wish to.
	It's just very disgusting because also, you know, the Amish, the Mennonites, even the Mexican communities in the United States are all very accustomed to consuming raw milk.
	And it's a part of their existence.
	It's a part of their culture and their way of life.
	So, you know, you have raw sushi, and they don't go after that.
	You have oysters, some people eat them raw, they don't go after that.
	You have chicken, which if not cooked properly could really cause problems, listeria, salmonella.
	All of these things are available, and the agency doesn't go after them, despite the fact that the risks of injury are equal to or greater than the risks they allege for milk.
	So you end up with this biased enforcement.
	Why does Commissioner Hamburg not break the chops of all the Japanese sushi places in the United States or Korean sushi places in the United States?
	The argument could well be made that sushi has bacteria and harmful pathogens and is causing injury or could cause injury.
	Or even steak tartare, raw meat that people eat.
	I mean, why are they allowing that to be sold?
	So, in the end, the truth is that anything that has nutrients in it is the It's the handling of these products that determines the relative safety.
	It's not the simple fact that they exist.
	So eggs are dangerous.
	They could be viewed, if they were viewed the same way as raw milk, they would be viewed as inherently dangerous because they are a breeding ground for pathogens.
	And some say, oh, but you don't cook milk.
	Well, you don't cook sushi in the ordinary course, and you don't cook steak tartare in the ordinary course, and you may have eggs that are cooked, but oftentimes eggs are uncooked and are put into various foods as uncooked elements.
	I mean, it's really a point that...
	The government should be concerned that proper handling of these things takes place, not that we should be deprived of the right to consume them at all.
	Right, but I wonder if, you know, obviously you're extremely well educated, and I wonder whether or not you investigate The sort of motivation or the agenda going on with the government and with the agencies.
	In other words, an overall agenda.
	And that involves things like some of the stuff they put in milk, which are, from what I understand...
	Substances that can alter brain chemistry, etc., etc.
	In other words, the fluoride in water, things that are clearly sort of known to be bad for health, and also sort of an overall dumbing down of the public that is a result of some of these policies.
	So do you look at that, do you look at the kind of like, I don't know, the hidden agenda that maybe if you connect all the dots in what they're doing now, worldwide even, but certainly can do it in the U.S. or worldwide regarding milk.
	In other words, they don't want, not only do they not want raw milk, I don't believe they want organic anything out there.
	And And so on.
	So do you look at the agenda behind that?
	Yes.
	James Buchanan is a Nobel Laureate in Economics at George Mason University.
	He is the head of a school of economic thinking called Public Choice.
	And he won the Nobel Prize in no small part because of his documentation of the actions of government players in regulating things and how those actions are largely based on self-interest.
	So he was able to show that the pre-existing theory that basically government was pristine and that people pursued agendas based on true commitment to the interests and welfare of the public generally, That really is false and that, by and large, government actors pursue what they believe to be actions that will benefit themselves in one way or another.
	And so what happened, based on that same theory, it really does apply and proves What we have in government, I mean, it's not...
	Commissioner Hamburg, let's take her for example.
	She, like every other FDA commissioner, has to be appointed by the president and approved by Congress.
	And the process for approval in Congress involves interviews, where she goes around and is interviewed by various members and has to answer their questions to their satisfaction or else they won't favor her nomination.
	The president, likewise, has to be satisfied that she's going to pursue an agenda that he thinks appropriate or she thinks appropriate.
	And so they go through this interview process.
	Well, right off the bat, no person who opposes the entities that have the greatest power, political power and influence, are likely to get anywhere.
	So what happens is Hamburg comes out of an environment where she's already proven as a bureaucrat that she can favor these very same interests.
	And she expresses, as she's being interviewed, an interest in pursuing and protecting the policies that benefit those entities that, That gives the members of Congress the President assurance that she's not going to rock the boat and go in a direction other than the pre-existing direction.
	So they therefore favor her and she becomes the Commissioner of the FDA. As Commissioner of the FDA, she has more power than the President of the United States or Congress or anyone else in the regulation of one quarter of The American economy, all health regulation.
	With that enormous power, she's subjected to lobbying constantly from industry groups that establish very clearly for her their power, their influence, and their ability to affect her future once she leaves office.
	So she very carefully determines what her positions are, mindful of the fact that if she takes a position that's going to hurt the economic It's going to affect her life while she's there, but it will also affect her future employability.
	It's this more than anything else that affects, is the reason why we have this mess where Where regulation protects the economic interests of the big guys, is anti-competitive, and really has very little regard in truth for the health and welfare of the American people.
	It doesn't matter, for example, to the FDA that Vioxx was approved, went into the market, caused 140,000 heart attacks and 60,000 deaths from a heart attack.
	It doesn't matter to the FDA that folic acid was censored for the claims about folic acid for women of childbearing age, that they should consume 400 to 800 micrograms of folic acid daily before they become pregnant in order to have a reduction of 40 to 80 percent in the risk of a neural tube defect that they should consume 400 to 800 micrograms of folic acid It doesn't matter to the FDA or to the FDA commissioner that that information was censored by the government for a period of 10 years.
	It just doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter to the FDA that drugs, various drugs like Vandia or drugs for bleeding risk that have been approved by FDA that actually increase your risk of clotting to the point of increasing your risk of heart attack.
	It doesn't matter to the FDA that those drugs have been approved or in the market.
	It doesn't matter that, you know, CeraVen, a drug for asthma, actually increases your risk of death from asthma many times.
	Okay, and I appreciate all of that, but I wonder when you're talking about that, whether or not you sort of acknowledge the idea, I mean, because the way you're framing it is that it doesn't matter, but I wonder about the idea that maybe it does matter on a more diabolical sort of sense of that, if you know what I'm saying here.
	In other words, that that's the intended result.
	Possibly not by, you know, sort of middle managers in that kind of setting, but that the people in charge, that's exactly what they want to see.
	In other words, I mean, I appreciate that you seem to have a very excellent background in constitutional law, but do you also have a background in things such as, you know, because this is Project Camelot, and I don't know how familiar you are with our material, but Things like the Georgia Guidestones in which they actually have an agenda that involves eliminating portions of the population.
	So that some of these things they enact actually have a wider purpose.
	Well, I think that if you ascribe too much intent on the part of these people, you probably go too far.
	Really, they very much love themselves.
	I mean, as most people who are in politics do, they And that's true of virtually every member of Congress who will pass legislation just because the legislation is favored by one entity or another.
	And if they can get away without public condemnation for it, they'll go for it.
	If it means, like in the case of Billy Tawson, he can get a job with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, he'll sell the entire treasury of the United States down the creek I'm sure there are probably some individuals who are evil and are delighted
	by taking steps that cause injury to others.
	I think for the vast majority of government actors who are in positions of politics, if pursuit of their own self-interest can It's all based on the fact that there's far too much power in government.
	There's far too much power, and we have left this limited federal public, which was ideal, and have instead created this bureaucratic oligarchy, which has unlimited power.
	So, you know, if you just think of yourself If you were put in a position where any decision you made would have the force of law and that you could determine the fate of anyone who's in an industry just by saying, all right, I think you should investigate them.
	I think that they are committing a crime.
	I want them to be prosecuted.
	That's enormous power.
	And when you have no check on that power, If you think of your own life, you know, okay, well, if I go and charge the executives in Merck with fraud and with corrupt practices and RICO, criminal RICO, and I get the year of the Justice Department and I give them the evidence for it, I'm the FDA commissioner, and they go after them.
	That will put a black mark on me that is severe for the whole drug industry so that when I leave, if I wanted to be a professor at a university with a paid chair from the drug industry, if I wanted to do nothing and be nominally on the board of directors of three or four different drug companies and get paid several hundred thousand dollars a year just for the privilege of having my name on their list of directors,
	if I wanted to have a career in politics or effectively It takes a person of great integrity.
	Absolutely.
	And unfortunately, that is not the kind of person in government today.
	The typical person in government is a pretty lowly character in political positions.
	I appreciate that.
	So, if you look for a unifying theme, It's not that there's some gargantuan beast that wants to kill people.
	It's that there are a whole bunch of little individual actors Who have significant power, but who are more interested in feathering their own nests than they are in protecting the nation.
	And this is true from a real, this is a little fundamental test, which is, do they abide by the rule of law?
	For example, I want all these cases against the FDA, and they have constitutional mandates in them that compel the agency to abide by the court's orders.
	And in every case, the FDA commissioner has refused to abide by the court orders, so much so that after I won that landmark case, Pearson v.
	Shalala, I was talking with a lawyer in the chief counsel's office at the FDA, and he said to me, just out of the blue, he said, I want to thank you, compliment you for winning your case.
	That's great.
	He said, I also want to tell you something.
	The FDA will never, ever, ever Follow the court order.
	And I said, well, what do you mean?
	It's a court order of the United States Board of Appeals, and it's a final and binding order, and it's a constitutional mandate.
	It's the most significant mandate that the FDA could receive.
	Are you telling me that they won't follow the rule of law, that they'll just chart their own course regardless of what the court says?
	And he said, I'm telling you that the FDA will never, ever, ever Abide by that court order.
	And that's exactly right.
	The FDA hasn't abided by the court order.
	We've sued them over and over again, and orders have come down against them, and they refuse to abide by these orders.
	And it's a lawless government.
	Why is it lawless?
	It's lawless because it's not in the self-interest.
	Of those in power inside the agency to abide by the order and they can get away with it.
	Okay, and I appreciate that.
	But I guess what I'm saying here is that, and that's a great illustrative point that you've just made, but I wonder if you know if they're telling, and first of all, I mean, you know, these people, they're going on, I assume it's even on the record.
	I mean, can you tape these people?
	Can you publish it?
	Can you go to journalists?
	And talk about it in newspapers.
	I mean, obviously you're You're talking to me and you're going on radio shows.
	I understand you weren't coast to coast.
	It's in my books.
	I mean, The Rise of Tyranny and Global Censorship with Health Information.
	I give specific instances where individuals within the government are taking actions that are lawless.
	And I give specific instances and cases and decisions.
	It's a well-documented history.
	It's not something that's new.
	It's been occurring for at least six For 60 years, the FDA has a long history of doing its own thing, even against court orders, and even against acts of Congress.
	As I point out in Global Censorship of Health Information, acts have been passed by Congress that have a plain and intended meaning, and the FDA commissioners refuse to abide by it.
	Recently, in an article that was written about Commissioner David Kessler, The author, whose name escapes me at the moment, who used to be the FDA chief counsel, explained that David Kessler said to his staff that he would not implement the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
	Now here you have an order of Congress, an entire regime of regulation.
	And he said, I am not going to devote any resources of this agency to implement The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act that I disagree with.
	Now, that's a lawlessness.
	If you were in the private sector and said, I am not going to abide by this law because this law, I think, is offensive, even though it's a criminal law and it applies to me, you would be prosecuted and thrown in jail.
	You're the FDA commissioner saying the same thing.
	He's saying in a worse situation.
	He's got an order that is directly from Congress to him and to his agency.
	He's saying, and it's one person as opposed to the entire nation, I will not do what I am ordered to do by law.
	And they do that and get away with it.
	Peter Barton-Hutt is the author of that article.
	Peter Barton-Hutt, who's the dean, we call him the dean of the Food and Drug Bar.
	Okay, but this kind of thing, in other words, is this popularized?
	Is this put out there in various articles?
	Do you find that journalists, let's say mainstream journalists, if you came to them with that story, would they print it?
	Mainstream journalists will not devote much attention to this subject, and the reason, I think, is rather clear.
	And it's the same reason why the major medical journalists offer so little coverage of the point and so often publish articles that have but a limited part of an overall clinical trial, a part that, say, gives a favorable result for a particular drug.
	And there's a long history of And others about this corruption, and that is The major medical journals are frequently financed by the advertising payments that come from them from the drug companies taking out ads in the journals and paying for grants to the universities and to various other educational institutions that make possible the journals.
	So they're all privately funded largely through the drug companies, so you can't bite the hand that feeds you because you won't be fed.
	And the same is true with the bigger picture.
	This is what is affecting everything.
	And when you have government is inherently prone to corruption and abuse of power because it's natural for those who wish to use the monopoly that the government has over police force and over the creation of law to come from the private sector, lobby for things that will have anti-competitive benefits for them.
	And this has been going on day after day, year after year for decades.
	It's not just a PR move that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on Washington law firms and lobbying firms for the drug industry on K Street in Washington and elsewhere in Washington to send an army of over approximately three lobbyists for every single member of Congress for the drug industry itself.
	It's not just because they like to have friends in high places.
	It's because they are performing the dirty business of causing legislation to be passed that has anti-competitive benefits for their industry.
	Absolutely.
	Whether it's Medicare Part D or whether it's this new dietary ingredient guidance out of the FDA, over and over and over again, they are hammering day in and day out to protect their market, to eliminate even the slightest threat of competition, to forecast where to eliminate even the slightest threat of competition, to forecast where the nation is going, and to make sure that everybody remains dependent upon their companies and their companies'
	It has become as important to their financial survival as it is to develop drugs, that they invest...
	The drug industry has spent a billion dollars over the last decade on lobbying on Capitol Hill.
	The highest paid lobbyists on Capitol Hill represent the drug industry.
	It's an enormous investment.
	Absolutely.
	And it's proof, you know, that you don't spend a billion dollars if you get no result from it.
	It's only because they are successfully currying favor that they spend that kind of money and will continue to spend it.
	Okay, well let me ask you this, and we do have some people, we have a chat room that's part of the live stream and people are from time to time asking questions, so I want to be able to get to their questions And also not keep you too much longer.
	But what I was wondering is if at this time you are threatened because you are perhaps...
	I don't know how many there are like you, in other words.
	What is your position?
	Because it seems that you're very clear, you're well-spoken, and you are getting out there.
	I don't know how long you've been...
	You know, a public individual, but is there a threat to you, to your family, to your situation?
	Is there any ramifications for what you're doing?
	Well, as I explain in Global Censorship with Health Information, when I first got into this business, The FDA had never been sued like that before with a constitutional challenge.
	And a senior member of the bar who I promised I would never reveal who he is, and so I keep his name a secret, even though he's not entitled to it.
	I'm a person of my word.
	When we started the conversation that I'm going to mention to you, I promised that I wouldn't reveal his name.
	In any event, he called me confidentially to tell me That if I undertook this business of suing the FDA, the suit had already been filed, but if I continued the suit, challenging their constitutional power, that I would become a pariah in the law,
	that I would be viewed by my colleagues as an upstart threat, and that I would soon have no clients, and that I would be alienating all those in the industry who depend upon cooperation with the agency, which is almost everyone, he said.
	And I would alienate members of Congress who would then view me as an upstart and a hothead, and ruin my career.
	He said, "Therefore, tell me the names and addresses of your clients, Let me contact them and explain to them why they are mistaken in pursuing this course, and let's stop this.
	If you do that, your future will be bright, so obviously you have some intelligence and you'll have a bright future in the food and drug bar, but you have to learn how to cooperate.
	That's how you get places in this bar.
	You don't threaten established institutions.
	You do not take on the FDA. You do not threaten the interests of major firms.
	You don't upset members of Congress.
	You understand what I'm talking about.
	And I said to him, I don't care about any of those things that you do.
	I don't care whether or not I'm a part of some group.
	I don't care whether I have no business in this industry again.
	I am doing this because my motivations are different from what you think they are.
	I was at the Cato Institute.
	I said, don't you understand who you talk to?
	You didn't research my background.
	You obviously don't know who I am.
	I am not interested in living a life that is in violation of basic principles And look back at my life and say that I was nothing more than a pedestrian hacker who worked for people because they paid me money and violated my principles in the process.
	What worth would my life be that?
	I said I would rather have truth and an opportunity to Have salvation derived from good works than spend my life serving as a slave with financial interests of one group or another.
	It wasn't important to me to do that.
	So he said, well, if you keep doing what you're doing, you will destroy your career.
	And I said, fine.
	So I went ahead.
	And proceeded with the case.
	He predicted disaster, that it would fail, and there was a good chance it would win.
	It was an uphill battle.
	It was very hard to win that case.
	It's always hard to defeat the government.
	But we succeeded, and we succeeded again and again and again and again after that.
	We had very good fortune.
	We fought vigorously.
	But I would rather be in the position of David than in the position of Goliath.
	I don't want to be an ogre that is bearing down upon an entire nation, depriving people of liberty.
	When I started my career, I was at a law firm, and I was asked by a partner in the firm To draft comments in favor of an odious thing called the Fairness Doctrine.
	I start off at the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was a rule that gave government bureaucrats the power to second-guess the editorial judgments of broadcasters whenever they broadcast on a controversial issue of public importance.
	And I always viewed that rule as a violation of the First Amendment, as an essential deprivation of editorial freedom.
	And I absolutely hate the rule, would not stand for it.
	It's against my basic principles.
	It's against the Constitution.
	I took and swore an oath to uphold the Constitution when I became licensed to practice law.
	It wouldn't have required an oath.
	I believed in the Constitution.
	That's why I started to practice law.
	So anyhow, I refused to do it.
	I was just a kid.
	I was only six months into the practice of law as an associate.
	And the partner said to me, what do you mean you won't write those comments?
	I chose you to write those comments.
	I like your writing.
	I want you to write those comments for this company.
	I said, I can't do it.
	It's against my principles.
	And I said, I won't do it.
	And he said, well, you're going to get fired because that's in subordination.
	I'm your boss.
	I'm telling you to do this work.
	I said, you know, that's the consequence I'm willing to take because I just will not violate the First Amendment for you or for anybody else.
	I'm just not going to do that.
	So, he said, alright, well I'm going to go to the partners and find out what will happen to you.
	He had a meeting of the partners in the firm and he recommended I be fired and they all talked about it for a while and a couple of weeks went by.
	And I, frankly, I mean, he told me if you get fired you realize you're not going to be able to be rehired by another firm in this city, Washington D.C. because everybody will find out you were fired.
	Which is not saying you were told, you know, your future's not bright here.
	Go look elsewhere.
	You're being fired for insubordination.
	And if you're fired for insubordination, you're not going to get another job.
	I said, look, I'm not going to violate my principles, even if I'm homeless.
	I'm not going to violate my principles.
	I won't do that for money.
	I'm not going to do it.
	So, that's your choice.
	If you think that you want someone like me out of your institution, that's your choice.
	You own this institution.
	But I'm not going to do it So anyway, they talked about it, and then finally they decided what to do, and one of the partners came in to me and said, well, you got a lucky break.
	They decided that they wouldn't fire you, but don't ever do this again.
	If you're asked to do an assignment, don't ever tell somebody that you're not going to do it again.
	And they said, do you...
	Will you agree to that?
	And I said, no, I won't, because if it violates my principles, I'm not going to agree to do it.
	And I said, well, you better hope that we don't ask you something that violates your principles.
	You're acting awfully high and mighty.
	You're supposed to be a lawyer who works for this firm, not the other way around.
	The firm doesn't work for you.
	I said, okay, well, fine, thanks.
	That's why I do this.
	I'm not in this because I want to be a lawyer.
	I'm in this because I want to try to save the Constitution and restore to this country a republic.
	It's an enormous undertaking.
	I might be the only person out there willing to do that.
	I think Ron Paul is another good example of someone who's dedicated his life to this.
	Well, might I suggest the White Hats?
	Are you familiar with them?
	Okay, well, I'll send you their latest communique.
	They work, well, for one faction of them work in the financial sector, trying to expose a lot of the graft and corruption that's going on in major government offices, including in the presidency and so on.
	Well, it's good to hear that there are more people driven by principle rather than other motivations.
	I mean, just life is too short for me to not be preoccupied with trying to do something that I think is important in principle.
	I love the Founding Fathers.
	I love the creation of this country, the principles upon which this nation was built, the idyllic circumstance.
	It really was an extraordinary event, the most extraordinary event.
	Here in the United States in the 1770s, and that extraordinary achievement has been rendered really a historic anomaly, when instead it should be the governing basis.
	We have long been viewed by the world as a great bastion of liberty.
	We've given up that mantle.
	It's not just from things like the Abu Ghraib incident And we've done that by allowing our republic to be transformed into this unlimited bureaucratic oligarchy.
	And in my lifetime, for the benefit of my children, but for the benefit of my country, I want to restore that republic and the freedom that was quintessentially the All of the other woes that have been associated with big government would disappear.
	We would not be a nation on the brink of total economic ruin.
	We would be a country characterized by innovation, by achievement from individuals acting in their own self-interest through the marketplace, giving to people interested in obtaining their goods, the goods that perfectly satisfy their needs.
	And we can have that greatness Every achievement our country has ever had has been predicated on free-thinking individuals who've created innovations that have transformed and uplifted the nation, our standard of living.
	And we shouldn't buy this bill of goods that comes from Washington, that somehow these people who largely can't even get a job in the private sector, who end up in politics, think they know better than you do how to run your life, are going to tell you everything about how to do everything they don't know anything about doing, which is how to run every industry in this country, how to produce goods and services, how to create the future,
	as President Obama likes to put it, creating the future. as President Obama likes to put it, creating the future.
	Well, it's not his point, it's not his privilege to create America's future.
	We'll create his own future, thank you.
	And that's going to be created by individuals acting freely, choosing what they think is in their own best interest, trying to make a better world for their families and for the future generations.
	It's not going to be government doing it.
	It's going to be a private initiative.
	Absolutely, and well said.
	Okay, so I have some questions here in the chat, and before I get to them, I think Some of them are related to vitamin D and sunblock.
	Vitamin D, vitamin D3, I believe that they're doing some legislation against this in certain areas and perhaps you can talk about that.
	I'd also like you to get into the whole cancer issue because that's a huge part of the drug industry and that And natural cures for cancer are much more plentiful now than ever before.
	And lastly, I'd like to ask you whether you're familiar with Jim Humble and MMS. Vitamin D is an extremely promising nutrient because there are over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles associating vitamin D with various It's not only that vitamin D in combination with calcium significantly reduces the incidence of osteoporosis,
	osteopenia, precursor to osteoporosis, when taken throughout a lifetime, but it also has very major roles to play in methylation and then normal cell metabolism, and therefore it reduces the risk of cancer and various other ailments.
	So vitamin D3 is a great And really a fantastic and expensive nutrient, and information about it should be rightfully in the marketplace for consumers, but it's not about its therapeutic effects precisely because the FDA censors it.
	So that's the vitamin D3 story in a nutshell.
	But as far as, I'm sorry, what was the second question?
	Cancer.
	The whole cancer.
	Cancer is one of those circumstances where when you need your freedom the most, the government is taking it away from you and you realize how precious your freedom is.
	Many cancer patients realize just how precious their freedom is when suddenly they're caught up in a circumstance where the typical answer When you have cancer, except rare circumstances like Hodgkin's disease, non-lymphatic Hodgkin's disease, where chemotherapy actually has shown to be affected.
	In almost every other circumstance, chemotherapy and radiation treatment neither extend the length of your life with cancer nor improve the quality of your life with cancer.
	So the question becomes, why do it?
	Why put yourself through an ordeal that results in you becoming highly susceptible to secondary infections and going through extreme pain, nausea, vomiting, gastric upset, bone pain, various other pains, gastric upset, bone pain, various other pains, headaches, nausea, etc.?
	Why go through a constant ordeal when in the end the probability is almost nil that you will have an extended lifespan?
	Beyond what it would be if you just carried on with no treatment whatsoever.
	It's also most unfortunate that when you need to have an option out of this system, which provides so few chemotherapy and radiation, you want to try an experimental treatment for your cancer, You end up getting into this system where if the government, FDA, doesn't allow you to have access to an experimental drug, you can't have it.
	I represented Zachary McConnell.
	He was an eight-year-old boy with a P-E-T, P-N-E-T, a very aggressive brain tumor.
	And he had undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatment and had A severe adverse reaction to it.
	He lost half of his body weight.
	He had extreme headaches and to the point where he would bash his head against the wall to try to relieve the pain and the pressure.
	And the tension that he was experiencing.
	And then he had gastric upset issues that were profound.
	He couldn't keep any food down.
	So here he is, literally one half of himself at age eight because of chemo and radiation.
	His own oncologist and immunologist told his parents that this is not going to cure his disease.
	He's going to die from his disease if We continue the rounds of chemo and radiation.
	It's not going to make any difference.
	He's not going to survive.
	So they recommended against him.
	They said, look, he's lost half his body weight.
	He's in a very fragile condition.
	He's highly susceptible to secondary infection.
	If we continue with this, it's only going So they were generous.
	A lot of oncologists and immunologists would just carry on this dogmatically to the end, even though it creates this horrific concentration camp-like environment for the poor child.
	So they said, you need to just try to find something else.
	And so they did.
	They searched and they found Dr.
	Brzezinski, Stanislaw Brzezinski in Texas, Who was experimenting with a drug called antineoplastins.
	And they went down there and Dr.
	Brzezinski said, I have to get FDA approval to put him on the clinical trial.
	But because this is a very aggressive tumor, we need to get him on some treatment right away.
	I'll put him on antineoplastins.
	He was on antineoplastins for a month.
	They took MRIs.
	They found that his tumors were shrinking in his brain.
	And then came word from the FDA.
	Dr. Robert DeLapp, head of the oncology products division at FDA, sent a letter to the parents and to Dr. Bittes.
	Brzezinski said that the child had to be removed from the clinical trial.
	He didn't meet the eligibility criteria.
	That the evidence from the MRI that was sent to the FDA could not clearly show reduction in tumor size beyond 50%, and that therefore he shouldn't be on the experimental trial, and that he should go back to the radiation chemotherapy.
	So against his own doctor's recommendation, the FDA is ordering the child back for chemo and radiation.
	It was at that point, of course, that his parents realized that they're And their effort, their most precious effort, the most significant effort they had undertaken in their entire lives, the fight to keep their child alive, they were being denied the right to fight for their child.
	They were being forced to go back and give their child a treatment that would kill him and that they knew would kill him.
	And they refused to do it.
	They refused to take him back.
	So they tried to fight legally.
	So they contacted me.
	And I argued to Dr.
	Gallab that he ought to change his mind.
	He refused.
	My question is humanity.
	He still refused.
	And then I went to Congress, and I found Congressman Dan Burton, who was then the head of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
	And he had a great heart and a great mind and was wonderful, and brought in the FDA commissioner, sat the commissioner down and threatened him, told him that if you don't let this child have access to this drug, I want you on national television.
	I'm going to have you answer, not only for him, but for every child in a similar circumstance that you have denied the parents the right to fight for their child's lives.
	Who are you to say that this child should not have a chance?
	You're condemning that child, and I'm going to make you account for it.
	I want the American people to see just how inhumane you are.
	So, that had a sobering effect on him.
	He realized that it was not in his self-interest to maintain the position.
	So, miraculously, I got a letter from Dr.
	Gallap after they insisted that they only made scientific determinations, no determinations based on politics.
	They sent me a letter saying they had re-examined the documents that were submitted to them and that Lo and behold, they had misunderstood the MRIs and actually there was evidence of the efficacy and Josh should be on the clinical trial.
	So they let him on the clinical trial.
	But it was too late, unfortunately, because it took over a month for us to convince the FDA to change its position.
	The tumors had aggressively grown in his brain.
	There was no drug to stop its movement.
	So, unfortunately, the little boy died, and he died largely as a result of what the federal government did to him.
	But this is the kind of thing that really shows us that Where we need help the most, where there are no clear treatments, where the FDA-approved drugs are not curative.
	We are denied the freedom to fight for our own existence because we're dependent upon the FDA, unfortunately, to make a decision on whether we have a right to receive it.
	I'm sure if the President were in this situation, it would be different because of his political position.
	And it's a horror that in this country, your position in the food chain in politics can determine whether you live or die, but it really can't.
	Absolutely.
	Okay, well, thank you very much for that story.
	It's quite sobering to hear that kind of a story, but I think it goes on more often than not, to be honest.
	And I appreciate that you fought the way you did for this particular child.
	I'm sure that it's very important that that kind of information get out there.
	Okay.
	At this moment, I guess what we should do is we can wrap this up.
	I think that they're – I'm going to look through the chat as I'm talking to you here and see if there's any questions that perhaps got – you know, might have been missed.
	And there's a lot of chat going on, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of questions here.
	Hold on a second here.
	Yeah.
	Offhand, just to the chat room, if you have any questions, please type them in caps.
	We would try to ask some last minute questions of Jonathan.
	I guess what I would like to say is that perhaps you could talk a little bit about where you're going to go from here.
	I see that you've written two important books.
	Are you writing a third book?
	Do you feel that you're having an impact and you seem like a very, very well-balanced individual?
	Do you feel you sort of sound like you're out there sort of Fighting the good fight on your own.
	Are you a member of a group beyond the, what did you call the Cato Institute?
	Yes, I used to work for the Cato Institute many years ago in 91, I think it was, I can't remember exactly, but many years ago.
	My career is dedicated to protecting the interests of private parties against government I continue to sue the Food and Drug Administration trying to fight things.
	I'm going to be fighting this new dietary ingredient guidance which would cause about 50% of all supplements on the market to be rendered illegal.
	It'll destroy the industry so I'm trying to fight to prevent that from happening.
	I'm writing a book called Restore the Republic.
	which will explain all the constitutional doctrines that are now in exile.
	They've been exiled by interpretation in order to condone the growth of bureaucratic oligarchy from the 30s to the present.
	And I call for a restoration of those principles that protect against unlimited government and restore the republic.
	And in addition, I explain in this book Specifically an agenda for saving the country from economic oblivion and for restoring the republic in both the constitutional principles and in the actions of the nation.
	And so that's coming out.
	It'll have a foreword by Congressman Ron Paul.
	And that'll be out in, I think, November.
	I've written four other books, Freedom Technology and the First Amendment, The Ultimate Price, The Rise of Tyranny, and Global Censorship of Health Information.
	So I'm trying to present an option for people to realize that although it is the eleventh hour for the United States, it's not the end.
	We can save this country if we do the right things.
	So I'm giving an agenda to do that before the 2012 elections, and I hope it'll help influence the choices that people make so that they throw the rascals out.
	They're responsible for the ruination of this country.
	We restore our great nation to its true greatness that it deserves and ensure that, once again, liberty and individual sovereignty is at the centerpiece of our country rather than having the government be the sovereign.
	Okay.
	And my last part of the question was, do you feel that you have a group of similar groups There is an informal working group of lawyers from around the world who are dedicated to advancing Many of the principals,
	actually all of my principals around the world, they became interested in these issues because of my writings and because of the cases that I've won, and they've tried to duplicate that in Europe and in I want to export these approaches that I take and the principles that I've argued for to other countries.
	We meet twice a year.
	We are in contact with one another in conference calls about four times a year.
	The Alliance for Natural Health It's a group that hires me to suit the FDA with some regularity, and that group is outstanding.
	Again, we share the same principles and interests by and large, and so that's one group that I favor quite a bit.
	I really do like Ron Paul.
	I think Congressman Ron Paul has been able to unite across the country a large number of people who are dedicated to liberty and he's been instrumental in helping create this Tea Party movement.
	It's good to see people interested in liberty and protecting themselves from excess government and that's the direction that we have to go.
	And the positive message at the end is that the history of the world is inevitably in the direction of greater protection for individual liberty.
	Even though we have these moments of digression, they always come with catastrophic consequences for the economies and for the governments themselves.
	Government is but a parasite that lives off the productive elements of society.
	So if it becomes so parasitic that it renders the private sector anemic, it ultimately kills its host and therefore collapses itself.
	That was the history of the Soviet Empire.
	That's why the Soviet Union collapsed, because it so destroyed the private engine and so replaced it with a very oppressive government.
	The people ultimately rebelled and they throw off this yoke of oppression.
	That's the same thing that is going to happen in the United States if the government continues to take over the private sector.
	It's an inevitable course.
	It's a sad, tragic move.
	My hope is to prevent Rather, my children live in a free country than instead be both in a state of servitude because they have to pay for the debts of this enormous monstrosity and also be controlled by it.
	I don't want that to happen.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you very much for that, Jonathan.
	You know, very well said.
	And I hope that we can get a lot more people to listen in on this interview here because...
	I think you've said some very, very vital things and you've voiced it very, very well.
	And I think there are people out there that would find that very valuable.
	Last question was, are you aware of MMS and Jim Humble?
	No.
	Okay.
	That's okay.
	It's just someone we've interviewed who some people have found value in his...
	His cure for cancer and for other...
	He's specialized in malaria initially and he's been under threat and actually on the run from prosecution in various countries, etc.
	But many people across the world stand by his products.
	And we do have several interviews with him, so if you're interested, you could certainly watch them and find out more about it.
	You know, and I believe there are many people like him out there creating natural cures at this time that are not being allowed, and so on.
	I know of several people who actually go outside the United States in order to be able to take certain cures for cancer and other things.
	Okay, well, is there any, I guess I will let you go, is there any country out there that you feel might be moving more towards freedom in terms of health and where the drug companies don't have dominance at this time?
	Unfortunately, no.
	You might say that some of the are more open to experimental drugs and to public access to drugs and haven't bought into the entire drug paradigm yet but really there is no industrialized country in the world where we have the freedom that we deserve and that's a real tragedy.
	I think over time it will come about and I think that it's inevitable but I think for the moment the fight rages on and We just have to be increasingly clever and successful in order to avert catastrophe in this country and make sure that people have freedom of informed choice.
	Absolutely.
	Okay.
	Thank you very much, Jonathan.
	I hope that we can follow your trajectory and your career and the other cases that you are involved in.
	Please do keep in touch and perhaps we can Revisit this discussion sometime in the near future.
	If you have anything that you want to get publicized when your new book is out, feel free to contact me.
	Thank you very much.
	Okay, thank you.
	Bye-bye.

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