MD pledges cancer patient "die in" if CAFTA passes, limits vitamin supplements, USA

Main Category: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine
Article Date: 20 Jul 2005 - 17:00 PDT

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Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, a pioneering practitioner of leading edge nutritional medicine in the United States, has taken a strong stand on the CAFTA bill currently being considered in the House of Representatives. He promises that, if CAFTA passes, is signed into law, and winds up limiting the ability of Americans to get high dose nutritional supplements, many of his cancer patients will sit in at their Congressmen's offices "until they die."

In his private practice in New York City, Gonzalez treats patients, most of them with cancer, exclusively with nutrition, supplements, and detoxification, avoiding conventional therapies and so-called integrative approaches that attempt to combine orthodox treatments with complementary adjuncts. In 1999, after publishing a pilot study in a medical journal on the success of his treatment on advanced pancreatic cancer patients, Gonzalez received an unprecedented $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a prospective clinical trial of his therapy. That trial is still underway.

On July 15, 2005, Gonzalez wrote letters to his Congressman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The subject was Gonzalez' vehement opposition to H.R. 3045 CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement which is scheduled to be voted on by the House before the end of the month. CAFTA has already passed the U.S. Senate by a close vote.

Gonzalez provided me with copies of his letters and gave me permission to publish and comment on them.

Gonzalez critiques CAFTA and its potential to limit Americans' freedom to access nutritional supplements. In addition, he informs the two members of Congress that if CAFTA passes the House, is signed into law, and results in supplement freedom being curtailed, his patients will sit in at their Congressmen's offices "until they die." In the letter to Hastert, Gonzalez adds, "That will include your office, incidentally, since they perceive you as being in charge of the House."

CAFTA, along with NAFTA, GATT, activities of the United Nations' (UN) WHO (World Health Organization), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), and CODEX, is one of an alphabet soup of policies, programs, and highly bureaucratized and unresponsive international agencies that, in the context of an increasingly globalized one world economy, are coming together to change the way of life and impact personal freedom in individual nations, including the United States. As has become clear only recently, CAFTA represents a potentially serious threat to Americans' (that is, residents of the United States') ability to purchase nutritional supplements, especially at therapeutic (high) dose levels.

For almost a decade, a relatively small number of analysts, medical professionals, journalists, consumer organizations, and activists has been monitoring developments re: CODEX and how CODEX might affect freedom to buy and use a range of nutritional supplements in the U.S. and other countries. The CODEX issue has been particularly difficult to unravel and to educate and mobilize consumers around - very much unlike earlier struggles regarding nutritional supplements, which always involved a single piece of legislation in the U.S. Congress that was identified as either bad or good by proponents of nutritional medicine and freedom of medical choice.

This summer, a number of developments, involving CODEX, CAFTA, a decision by a court of the European Union (EU) on regulating supplements in the EU member countries, etc., are accelerating the recognition that limitations on nutritional supplement freedom in the US are fast approaching. Previously, that dire scenario may have seemed unlikely to come to pass, but in fact, as Gonzalez contends, It can happen here.

© By Peter Barry Chowka
p.b.chowka@gmail.com
members.aol.com/pbchowka/gonzalez-cafta.html

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