Ladies and Gentlemen, my senator, Rand Paul:
Under our current FDA laws, FDA says if you want to market prune juice, you can’t say that it cures constipation.
You can’t make a health claim about a food supplement or about a vitamin, you can do it about a pharmaceutical, but you’re not allowed to do it about a health supplement.
I think this should change. There have been several court cases that show this goes against not only the spirit but the letter of the law of the First Amendment. So this amendment would change that.
This amendment would stop the FDA from censoring claims about curative, mitigative effects of dietary supplements. It would also stop the FDA from prohibiting distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease. Despite four court orders condemning the practice as a violation of the First Amendment, the FDA continues to suppress consumers’ right to be informed and to make informed choices by denying them this particular information. It’s time for Congress to put an end to FDA censorship.
In other words, if the food giants and the drug giants want to lie and say their product cures cancer, they should be allowed to. If the product doesn’t do what the claims say they do and actually ends up killing you, well then the free market will step in and consumers will put that company out of business. Furthermore, the FDA saying “But these claims aren’t true, you can’t use them” is robbing our precious mega-corporations of the Founder’s God-Given Right(tm) to bilk you out of billions with false data and misleading studies. After all, if you’re not smart enough to be able to judge the claims on your own, you deserve to have the Invisible Hand take your wallet. And really, what better way to remove stupid people from the population than through food and drugs that are dangerous but freely available on the market without regulation? It’s win-win!
Freedom to be fleeced for everybody! What’s more American than that?
Frankensteinbeck
This has very little to do with megacorporations and everything to do with Rand being a quack doctor himself.
kdaug
Have I told you about my new line of Uranium Pills(tm)?
ETA: They’re all natural!
gaz
Bring back snake oil and “patent medicines” yay!
I wonder if Rand Paul began life this stupid, or if it was achieved through practice and hard work.
4tehlulz
Honestly, this just finishes the job Hatch and Harkin started in ’94.
Mr Stagger Lee
Somewhere in the afterlife, Upton Sinclair is facepalming and weeping tears. Lord please allow secession of the Red States!
Kyle
@kdaug:
Advertise them on Limbaugh’s show with the slogan “Liberals Hate ‘Em!”.
4tehlulz
@kdaug: Is that colloidal uranium?
beltane
@gaz: You’ve heard of nature vs. nurture? Rand Paul’s stupidity is a product of both.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
So then…we’re adding ‘The Jungle’ to the list of books meant as warnings that the GOP is taking as manuals?
Smiling Mortician
Whenever I’m feeling low, I just remember that I’ll never have to say this.
Chris Johnson
“Freedom to be fleeced for everybody! What’s more American than that?”
Back before the FDA — those were the days. And we were free to dump mining waste into the stream that folks downstream drank from, too.
4tehlulz
@Chris Johnson: But if that didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have fluoride toothpaste! Hidden hand etc.
/Randroid
lacp
I got a buddy who’s peddling ASEA. He thinks that shit really works.
Raven
@lacp: Remember DMSO?
amk
A quack is gonna quack for quacks.
PeakVT
Next up: Paul will introduce an amendment allowing people to yell fire in a crowded theater. Because it’s time to put an end to fire marshal censorship.
Also, too: I don’t fully comprehend the glibertarian mindset, but it often seems like they’re angry that the government might stop them from running a good con. Never mind that they don’t have one handy, but there’s always the possibility they could find a slick idea on the internet and suddenly have the chance to be rich without working.
LGRooney
I guess that means my Cheerios and my oatmeal and my English muffins are pharmaceuticals because the FDA censors have allowed them to state right on the packaging that they may help lower cholesterol and are heart healthy foods. As well, my yogurt says it helps regulate the digestive processes. The censors are getting pretty lax, if you ask me.
delphi_ote
What a disgusting liar. You’re free to make whatever health claims you want about a product PROVIDED YOU DEMONSTRATE SAFETY AND EFFICACY. You know, it actually has to be true… unlike the things Mr. Paul says.
Thor Heyerdahl
@beltane: But who won the dollar bet?
4tehlulz
@lacp: Salt water can be very effective, depending how it’s used. My homeopath says its only useful after coffee enema and a hy-colonic.
Sly
Haven’t you heard? “Big Pharma,” so they can make gobs of money on treatments that merely ameliorate symptoms, is engaged in a massive global conspiracy with the FDA/FTC to conceal perfectly legitimate remedies like homeopathy. I know this because some guy was selling a book about it on an infomercial I saw at 2AM.
4tehlulz
@delphi_ote: Not if you claim its a dietary supplement, then you don’t have to prove shit.
Citizen_X
WTF, is Paul involved in some homeopathic scam or something?
And I’ve got fifty Ameros that says that this
never happened. Bet you the “scientific articles” were infomercials in science-y drag.
Fluke bucket
Possible VP nominee?
Fluke bucket
Possible VP nominee?
Fluke bucket
Possible VP nominee?
gaz
Shit. Apparently we are all wasting our time.
http://www.improbable.com/2012/04/17/guardian-col-15/
Apparently, choosing politicians at random produces better results.
4tehlulz
@Fluke bucket: @Fluke bucket:
@Fluke bucket: I CAN’T HEAR YOU
Raven
@Fluke bucket: Kill it before it multiplies!
Fluke bucket
Holy Shit! I have often wondered how in the hell that happened to people. It is a red letter night!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Fluke bucket: No way. Romney is going to pick Romney ’94 as his running mate in a daring move to the center.
Dr. Squid
And rand Paul will demand a tax cut and preferential treatment so they don’t go out if business. Free market uber alles, until it threatens campaign contributions.
satanicpanic
Whoever sold him that rug on his head probably didn’t have to get their advertising approved by the FDA.
Brachiator
It ain’t the food giants or the drug giants. It’s the entire quack health industry, from phony herbal cures to alternative remedies to homeopathy and miracle cures and anti-vaccers.
I don’t know if Rand Paul has been thrown a bag of money by quacks or is just pitching the insane libertarian fantasy that if you have a free market for health, the John Galts of the world will be able to magically find home schooled and self taught medical doctors whose genius has been unleashed because they were freed from the bonds of medical schools and licensing requirements.
I don’t know which is more dangerous. The religious nutcase rejection of science or the libertarian rejection of science.
4tehlulz
@Brachiator: The religious nutjobs will at least give you a day off every week.
ed
Freedom Fleece! I think we have a new luxurious, emperor worthy item!
And this is right up his alley
“The libertarian-leaning Republican helped create a rival certification group more than a decade ago. He said the group has since recertified several hundred ophthalmologists, despite not being recognized the American Board of Medical Specialties — the governing group for two dozen medical specialty boards.”
Sorry for the faux news /credit /link http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/14/rand-pauls-doctor-credentials-questioned-lacking-boards-certification/?test=latestnews
lacp
@4tehlulz: Salt water, coffee enema and a colonic? Heavy-duty shit. Not to get too personal, but what are you being treated for? Vulcan brain parasites? Antimatter-Jesus viruses?
hells littlest angel
Damn. Only 36 comments and all the good jokes have already been made. If only I had taken Dr Marvel’s Spontaneous Joke-Making Pills!
Baud
If this is true, I assume it’s because pharmaceuticals have gone through FDA required testing, and the other items have not.
4tehlulz
@lacp: Yes. All that. In my colon.
Everything’s in your colon, and if alternative medicine has one thing to teach us, is that if there is nothing in your colon trying to kill you, then you need to appease your colon (generally with something you wouldn’t consider normally, like coffee, or tobacco), so it doesn’t try to kill you.
hells littlest angel
I wish Rand Paul would come to the aid of that guy who invented the cheap pill that you can add to water that creates a fuel that you can put in your gas tank and get 80 miles per gallon.
JGabriel
We must be freeeee! FREEE, I say, FREEE to believe stupid shit that’ll get us killed!
FREEE to tell people stupid shit that will get them killed!
And, MOST IMPORTANTLY:
FREEE to SELL people stupid shit that will get them killed!
.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
Hard to say. They’re both forms of right-wing Lysenkoism.
If I had to choose, I’d say the latter is more dangerous because it can be more cleverly disguised as “sound science” vs “bad science” and because the rhetoric of libertarianism can be molded to appeal to a wider audience. Who is against “freedom”?
Peter
I can’t wait to see HuffPo shilling for this amendment. They give space for all kinds of ‘alternative healing’ bullshit, so it should be right up their alley.
AA+ Bonds
Another bone tossed to the lunatic boomer Republican “small business owner” selling-snake-oil-out-of-my-pickup crowd
You’ve met these people, I’m sure – they are a trip, so to speak – dreams built on psychopaths they see on late night TV and read about in magazines, Timothy Ferriss and the like
One of those situations like aid to families with dependents, where right-wingers are not content even though they already live in a country where barbaric behavior is fully OK’d by the government
Seriously, if you want to sell wood pulp and claim it cures cancer, there are loopholes in the U.S. big enough to scheme a pyramid inside
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Baud: Not only required testing for safety and efficacy, but required regulation of manufacturing for actual contents, and amounts thereof, as described on packaging. All the kind of hyper-regulatory nonsense that strangles the free market. Just shoot me.
Citizen_X
@4tehlulz: Well then, is it like a…Fifth Colon?
AA+ Bonds
@PeakVT:
This is absolutely the foundation of a very vocal sort of conservative nowadays that I have tried to describe above
They see people on TV who have made tremendous wealth selling magnets and distilled water to people in need who will try anything that might help, and these bit players wonder aloud why they can’t use their obviously superior intelligence to achieve the same widow-swindling success
The answer usually comes down to a lack of luck, a lack of wealthy friends or knowledge of finance to buy suits and rent cars that create the appearance of wealth, a lack of social graces and a refusal to get a goddamned haircut – in other words, they lack the basics one needs to con rich rubes out of inheritances
Some of them may even have consciences that get in the way, who knows
Mino
Well, I see what epistemic closure is. Good grief.
AA+ Bonds
Long story short, this is not that mythical libertarian “consistency” against all odds – there is a definite constituency of down-and-out embittered men that Paul appeals to here, and ALL of them have tried to contact me through electronic media at some point
AA+ Bonds
There was some bit recently that hooked a bunch of my left wing friends back home, where a “reporter” for the Carolina Journal (the Art Pope-funded local geyser for Koch talking points) tried to rile up the quacks when a North Carolina regulatory board came down on a fellow quack for his quack-ass “medical advice” website
This made its way to Reason and from there to my less worldly-wise left-winger friends as a “civil liberties” issue because after all, libertarians are so “consistent” etc. (insert whatever fucked up myth you like)
When I pointed out that the original piece was an error-ridden smear piece written by a former 700 Club hack for an organization that they all know puts out mainly bullshit, well, some of them actually started doing research
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Rand Paul IS a quack. He’s an opthalmologist who isn’t board certified. Instead he claims to be board certified because he made his OWN board for the purpose of certifying himself. I can’t imagine he’ll need to go back into that business again, but quack interests are his interests!
Brachiator
@4tehlulz:
Yeah, but they will force you to go to church on that day.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Sounds like he’s more certifiable than certified.
And I agree with some of the other posters here that this crap is potentially dangerous because it abuses science in the name of freedom.
There seems to be a pattern developing here. Paul’s rant is not too far off from the Catholic Church’s attempts to ban birth control in the name of religious freedom, or the attempts by state legislators to dictate how doctors must treat and talk to women who may be pregnant.
Burnspbesq
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Yup. Right next to “Silent Spring” and “Unsafe at Any Speed.”
Mike s.
@kdaug:
fail, already regulated by the NRC.
Southern Beale
This is such BS. There are two major class action lawsuits going on right now about this, one is that POM Pomegranate juice making false health claims and the other are those Sketchers sneakers for claiming their shoes exercises muscles to make your butt and thighs look better. Both claims were false. I realize shoes are not a dietary supplement and maybe pomegranate juice doesn’t fit the “health supplement” definition either but if we’re filing lawsuits over products left OUT of the classification, clearly we need to be broadening the products for whom false advertising claims are a no-no, not the other way.
Here’s a thought, let’s be sure to include politicians under that heading. How about banning ALL false advertising?
Warren Terra
Hard to believe this insufferable asshole is an MD. Most MDs want to prevent their patients falling for health scams.
On the other hand, there is a whole industry of health scammers who are politically active and tied to the GOP; Mother Jones (iirc) had a good article on Multi-Level Marketing recently, that discussed some of this; ties to Mormonism are surprisingly strong (perhaps because they tend to have experience doorbelling); Orrin Hatch has been notorious for pushing for protections for the fraudulent “supplement” industry for about two decades that I know off offhand.
What sort of opthalmologist is Rand, anyway? The term seems to cover a range of professionals from the dude who sleepwalks through determining your eyeglass prescription to the highly respected surgeon who transplants retinas and the like, saving people’s eyesight.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris Johnson: Yeah, but it’s not like a senator from Kentucky has any reason to care about mining waste.
mattH
This is about the Nutritional Supplement industry, not Big Pharma; vitamins, herbs, Tahitian Noni, Nu Skin, etc. Their biggest beneficiary monetarily is Orrin Hatch. OrrinPAC gave Rand Paul $10k between 2010 and now, # 13 on his donor list.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Dr. Squid: Of course, you’re still dead.
FREEDOM!
Calouste
@PeakVT: You’re given them way too much credit. People become libertarians because they never got over their mom telling them to close their coat when it was cold.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Those shoes definitely worked to make my bad knee really sore. Not sure what else they do since I only wore them the once.
Steeplejack
@Warren Terra:
An ophthalmologist is an M.D. who specializes in the eye and is usually board-certified. Like a gynecologist or an oncologist.
The non-M.D. (but still health-care) person who does your eye exam (and sometimes other treatment) is an optometrist. Like a physician’s assistant.
The person who order the lens, fits your glasses, etc., is an optician.
Jason
Buy colloidal silver… the “dietary supplement” that cures cancer! And certainly /won’t/ turn you blue! Don’t believe those commie naysaying liberals in the FDA — cure your cancer today!
Xenos
GNC was a Bain Capital creation. At first it was not much more than a front for the ephedra distribution business, but they seem to have survived losing that line. There must be fat margins in that business because setting up a storefront in every damn mall in the lower 48 must have been ridiculously expensive.
Joey Maloney
@Southern Beale:
For a lot of politicians, they are. I mean really, how many times a day does Rmoney end up with his designer wingtip lodged in his gullet?
RossInDetroit
@Joey Maloney:
You win.
The delivery of your internets will be delayed one day due to the holiday.
jcgrim
Rand Paul and his ilk suffer from arrested development, the teenage man-boy passive aggressive syndrome:
http://www.alternet.org/story/155393/how_the_ayn_rand-loving_right_is_like_a_bunch_of_teen_boys_gone_crazy/?page=1
pseudonymous in nc
Christ on a cracker, it’s not as if the US doesn’t already have the most advanced quackery and snake oil sector in the world.
One reason why that exists is because there’s a large space before there’s access to actual medical care and advice: when it’s $100 to see a doctor and $30 for “Magic Pills Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About”, then you’ll find a lot of buyers for magic pills.
jefft452
“There was a time when Uncle Sam he had a fight with Spain
And many boys in bonnie blue were in the struggle slain
Not all were killed by bullets, no not by any means
The greater part by far were killed by Amour’s Pork & Beans”
RalfW
@gaz:
My thoughts exactly. I can just imagine the health claims my box of bran flakes will be making in Paul’s glorious world of free markets. “Cures brain cancer, impotence and dropsy!”
Er, well, something like that. Can a US citizen self-deport out of this clown country?
S. cerevisiae
Oh cool! I’ve always wanted to sell gen-u-wine snake oil, and because I’m half Indian mine is guaranteed to work.
How exactly do you get the oil out of the snakes?
Lancelot Link
Unfortunately, BigAltMed is a thoroughly bipartisan chunk of idiocy – Jared Polis (D-CO) is all over this shit, too, along with chuckleheads like this.
dj spellchecka
@Southern Beale:
a bit more on the pom story:
Then pom responded by running out of context quotes from the decision in a new set of ads….
http://www.alternet.org/story/155608/the_%22pom%22_pomegranate_scam%3A_the_truth_behind_the_company_and_its_billionaire_owners_?akid=8857.128398.JnGv1Q&rd=1&t=24
evinfuilt
@Smiling Mortician:
UP until last year I had to say “My Congressman, Ron Paul.” and for a short while, “My Congressman, the felon Tom Delay.” So happy to be out of there (though the one year in Sheila Jackson Lee’s district was nice.