IAHF List: The NY Times are a pack of pro Pharma whores and must be reined in. Please join me by sending your own letter to their editor to complain about Jane Brody's outrageous anti dietary supplement article- see below. If you have a subscription to the NY Times, please cancel it and tell them you're cancelling it. If you don't have a subscription, tell them you'll never buy the paper again from a news stand or vending machine and let them know you're forwarding your letter widely to everyone you know!

To the Editor: (letters@nytimes.com

I'm writing to complain about Jane Brody's outrageous April 8th spin piece "Potential for Harm in Dietary Supplements" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brod.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=science&adxnnlx=1207681561-sYqxEM9z8nKBFuu8iIC8VQ

Complete with an illustration of vitamin capsules depicted as bombs raining down from the sky, this obvious attack on the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 is clearly motivated by advertising revenue paid to the NY Times by pharmaceutical interests as is amply documented by Mike Adams in this article

Pharmaceutical advertising turns national newspapers into drug industry puppets

http://www.naturalnews.com/001482.html  Adams clearly documents that the NY Times, and other major newspapers have been chock full of pharmaceutical advertising ever since 1998 when the FDA started allowing direct to consumer drug advertising. He shows an article in the NY Times by Gina Kolata titled "Health Officials Urge Sharply Lower Cholesterol Levels", then right next to this article we see an ad for Crestor, a cholesterol lowering drug which is the same size as the article.

The message is clear, we're being led by the NY Times to believe that the answer to high cholesterol is to go to our doctor to get a prescription for Crestor.

With millions of dollars in advertising revenue being pumped into the NY Times by pharmaceutical companies, all it would take to get any writer fired who dares to publish an article favorable to dietary supplements is a single phone call. This is the lowest form of media whoring, and I'm disgusted by it. The NY Times was known, at one time, for its balanced reporting. That is clearly a thing of the past.

Data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers clearly shows the extreme safety of dietary supplements when compared with both prescription and OTC drugs. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 was passed in the face of a draconian FDA rulemaking effort that threatened to sharply curtail consumer access to dietary supplements. Its passage was made possible by the largest flood of mail to congress on any issue in the history of Congress- more mail than they even received due to the war in Vietnam. We don't need the FDA to protect us from safe dietary supplements, we need the FDA to protect us from dangerous pharmaceutical and OTC drugs, but its not happening due to the revolving door between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry.

Clearly, we have this same problem with major newspapers including the NY Times which should be warning people about the extreme dangers of fraudulently approved prescription drugs- not wasting our time with this sort of sensationalistic pro Pharma spin. Why don't you publish an article titled "Potential for Harm in Walking Across the Street"? I will never again buy a copy of the NY Times, and am forwarding my response to you widely.

John Hammell
556 Boundary Bay Rd.
Point Roberts WA 98281