The Alliance for Natural Health, a nonprofit organization committed to protecting access to natural and integrative medicine, has recently come up with a Congressional bill designed to stop government censorship of truthful, scientific health claims about natural foods and herbs, and restore free speech to natural health. The Free Speech About Science Act (FSAS), also known as HR 4913, will allow manufacturers and producers to reference peer-reviewed, scientific studies that highlight the health benefits of a particular food or herb that they grow or sell.

For too long, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have blatantly censored the truth about food, herbs and dietary supplements. These government agencies are supposed to be protecting public health and well-being, but they accomplish precisely the opposite by actively censoring the truth about natural products and working to keep the public ignorant about the health benefits of nutritional products. It’s all part of the plan to prop up the profits of Big Pharma by eliminating the competition.

Current law restricts health claims to drugs only The FDA says, ridiculously, that only pharmaceutical drugs are capable of preventing or treating disease. Even though this is scientifically false, the agency has structured the rules to categorize anything that treats or prevents disease as a drug. So if you eat walnuts, and those walnuts lower high cholesterol (which they do), the FDA declares your walnuts to be “drugs.”

Existing law dictates that if anything is advertised as providing health benefits without the FDA’s approval, it’s automatically considered to be an “unapproved drug”, even if it’s a common, everyday food like walnuts, cherries, grapes or oranges.

Amazingly, references to peer-reviewed scientific studies are not allowed to be made by companies without permission from the FDA because the agency considers this to be an illegal health claim. So if you sell walnuts, and your website merely links to published scientific studies that describe the cholesterol-lowering benefits of walnuts, then you can be threatened, arrested, imprisoned and fined millions of dollars by the FDA for selling “unapproved drugs.”

If you flee the country, you can be then be listed on INTERPOL as an international fugitive wanted for “drug offenses.” This is exactly what happened to Greg Caton, who was recently kidnapped from Ecuador by U.S. agents working on behalf of the FDA, brought back to the USA against his will, and sentenced to federal prison where he remains to this day.