Anti-Constitutional Activities and Abuse of Police Power by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other Federal Agencies

In recent years, there has been an upsurge of police activities in the USA, the nature of which most Americans would more readily associate with repressive dictatorships. We Americans have been educated to believe that democracy, due process, assumed innocence-until-proven-guilt, and Constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure are the laws of the land. On paper, these protections are there; but in reality, these basic Constitutional rights and freedoms have been gradually and steadily eroded away by new laws, judicial rulings, and bureaucratic decrees. One of the lesser-known but more significant leaders of this assault on American freedom has been the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Background to FDA Police-State Activities

As early as the 1950s, the FDA was engaged in aggressively spying on health-care providers who employed medications and approaches which were not considered "acceptable" by mainstream orthodox medicine. Notably, it was and has been the American Medical Association (AMA) which has dominated ideas within the medical community, as well as nearly all legislation related to health care. If the AMA dislikes a particular health care approach, they work to banish such methods within hospitals, and to suspend the medical licenses of any doctor who employs them. They have often been able to rely upon state licensing boards and legislatures, and even the US Congress, to pass laws outlawing natural healing methods and the non-MD practitioner (such as midwives, herbalists or acupuncturists).

Failing here, the AMA and friends in the drug industry have relied upon their allies in the FDA to aggressively assault the advocates of natural treatment methods. Many new health care discoveries have thereby remained "underground", never being allowed to flower productively in the light of day. Inexpensive, non-toxic and unpatentable natural healing methods have never been seriously or honestly evaluated by the AMA-FDA pharmaceutical-dominated medical establishment. Instead, policemen have been called in to simply arrest and jail the offending practitioners, seize their files, mailing lists and other property, burn their books, and otherwise trample the US Constitution into the dirt.

* Dr. Royal Raymond Rife was crushed when his new microscopical techniques demonstrated the pleomorphic nature of viruses and bacterium.

(1) * Harry Hoxsey's successful herbal formulas for the treatment of cancer, used in dozens of clinics across the USA in the 1950s, were stomped into oblivion by an enraged FDA, after Hoxsey refused to sell his formula to Dr. Morris Fishbein, then president of the AMA.

(2) * Max Gerson's dietary immune-boosting treatments for degenerative disease were criminalized by the FDA at the very time he published scientific evidence and clinical reports on their effectiveness.

(3) Today, none of these treatments are openly used in the USA, but only in clinics south of the Mexican-California border. The FDA also attempted to ban and burn Rodale's Organic Farming and Gardening magazine as "advertising literature" not covered by the First Amendment; many vitamin companies were advertising in it, and Rodale claimed -- to the annoyance of the chemical fertilizer and drug companies -- that the vitamin and nutrient values of plants were increased by use of natural-organic farming methods, thereby improving human health.

The FDA lost that case, but Rodale was forced to spend a fortune in legal fees to defend his right of free speech. Probably the most significant and blatant example of FDA aggression and anti-Constitutional activity is the case of Dr. Wilhelm Reich. The Reich Legal Case surpassed the Scopes Monkey Trial in legal and historical significance, as it clearly marked the willingness of the US courts to condone the censoring of speech, the burning of books, the unreasonable seizure of property, and the willful ignoring of written documents presented to judges.

Reich may not have been what one could call a "model legal client", but the willingness of the US courts to incarcerate him, burn his books, and in general treat him like a criminal, demonstrated how far legal technicalities and procedural issues had replaced the original intent and spirit of the law. Certainly, all the various judges who reviewed Reich's case and ruled against him, from the local and district court judges to the US Supreme Court judges, knew they were agreeing to censorship of speech and to the burning of books.

The judges also demonstrated no interest in any of the technical/procedural issues which would have weighed in Reich's favor, such as the fact that the prosecutor was himself Reich's former personal attorney, or that Reich had submitted documents (his "Response to Ignorance") to the lower courts which were, essentially, thrown into the trash. Indeed, the deep significance the courts gave to procedural technicalities in his case was exclusively to those matters which worked against Reich.

Clearly, they were out to "get Reich", no matter what. On the basis of legal technicalities, his many books and research journals were burned in incinerators by court order, and both Reich and a co-worker, Dr. Michael Silvert, were sentenced to over a year in prison. Reich died in prison, while Silvert committed suicide shortly afterward. Other FDA violations at the time included the warrantless invasions and searches of the homes of people peripherally associated with Reich. In one such case, a home was searched and Reich's books were confiscated from private bookshelves. School teachers and doctors who worked with Reich were fired from their jobs, in a manner reminiscent of the more purely political repressions of that time, the McCarthy period.

The Reich Legal Case has been discussed in detail elsewhere,(4) and so will not be repeated here, but its importance lies in the fact that the FDA was able to commit severe anti-Constitutional actions, indeed, murderous actions, against an internationally-known and respected scientist without so much as a peep of protest from the various academic "scholarly societies", "civil liberties" or "free speech" groups, etc. This lack of significant social protest was an encouragement and green light of approval to nearly every federal agency wanting to shape public or private behavior to one or another government policy. While blatant political repression of politicians has declined over the years, with increasing protections afforded to political speech, the political repression of unorthodox scientific discoveries related to health and sickness has not declined at all. In fact, repression of non-political speech has increased, especially when it is linked with concrete marketplace activities which conflict with official government policies or big business monopolies.

In the years since Reich's death, Constitutional protections against illegal seizure of property, assumed innocence-until-proven-guilt, and due process of law have been flagrantly violated and trampled into the dirt by the FDA leaders and field agents, who are increasingly teaming up with other arms of the federal bureaucracy to increase their power. Numerous medical pioneers have been assaulted and personally destroyed, in a manner so blatant and aggressive it makes Reich's treatment by the FDA appear almost gentle by comparison. The FDA's police-state activities are taking place all across the USA, but little of it is being reported in the mainstream media -- or if so, generally with biased justifications given for the FDA actions, that "the FDA is combatting health fraud" or "medical quackery". Here, the reader will be informed of more recent assaults by the FDA against the natural health movement.

The FDA alliance has destroyed the lives and work of numerous medical pioneers, as outlined above, usually without any charges being filed. They simply arrive at the offending clinic and home of the pioneer, break down the doors, shove guns into the faces of everyone present, seize and impound office and laboratory equipment, mailing lists, computers, files, bank accounts, etc., carting everything off to a warehouse where it is dumped. Even personal funds in a bank account are "impounded" (stolen!) by these government thugs, whom we may assume are, like DEA agents raiding a crack house, using drug-seizure laws to keep a percentage of whatever they steal! Amazingly, none of the major political parties have displayed alarm or interest in these FDA assaults. It has all been done with the full knowledge and approval of top politicians (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Gore) and Justice Department officials (Janet Reno). Virtually all of these politicians have consistently been sent letters of protest by the lawyers, friends, patients and co-workers of the various clinicians or small businesses who have been raided -- to my knowledge, nobody who has been raided by the FDA has ever received a friendly note or a helpful response from any of our political Royal Family.

These power elites either agree with the FDA, don't care about natural health matters, or are completely isolated from what is going on in the real world by layers of bureaucracy and "helpers", who censor the the pleas for help from their mail and telephone calls. The FDA raids demonstrate a serious erosion in the principles of government by law, due process, liberty and justice. For health matters, at least, we now have government by iron-fisted bureaucratic decree, with only the facade and illusion of law. Originally, the FDA was formed under the mandate of the Pure Food and Drug Act which simply required that products be accurately labeled as to what their contents are and to actually contain those ingredients, which is a necessary regulation in order for consumers to make informed decisions. However, this simple mandate has grown into a bureaucratic monster which has decreed itself the sole judge, jury, and prosecutor (with its own hit squads) on matters of medical efficacy. Since Reich's time, and through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the FDA has consumed millions of taxpayer dollars to wage its war against natural approaches to health care. The result is that our health care system is one big gigantic expensive mess, rife with official fraud, and a holocaust of victims due to the toxic and deadly side effects from ineffective "approved" drugs and horrific surgical mutilations. Nature, science, and compassion have been thrown out of the house of modern medicine, and the doors and windows have been barred shut, with armed guards posted outside.

The Congressional Battle

In spite of the damage done to many individuals, clinics and small businesses, the natural health movement continues to fight back, through legal means and by pressuring their elected representatives to restrain the FDA. But the FDA has its own supporters in Congress, and wants even more power and authority, so that it can go out and even more thoroughly "search and destroy" the natural health movement. New legislation has been offered into the US Congress which would grant the FDA the more complete and sweeping police powers it wants. In 1993, several new Congressional bills were proposed: the Regulatory Enforcement Amendments for the existing Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (H1662, H2597, H3642, S1982, S2135). Their sponsors are long-time FDA supporters and recipients of pharmaceutical PAC "donations" Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan), Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), and Sen Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio). The proposed legislation would grant to the FDA: * power to set arbitrarily low potency levels for vitamins and foodstuffs, and to forbid the sale of any vitamin or foodstuff which contained levels higher than the FDA mandates. * power to forcibly censor advertising of health claims in magazines and books. * power to embargo and destroy any imported product without proving its threat to the public health * power to issue its own subpoenas and to undertake warrantless searches, seizures, and electronic surveillance, based upon mere suspicion, without the need for court approval. * power to set its own punitive fines against anyone who fails to obey their demands -- up to $250,000 for individuals, and $2 million for businesses. * power to dictate to the Federal Trade Commission new regulations for censoring health claims in television and radio programs and advertisements. * power to pay informants a reward, up to $250,000, for reporting on suspected violators of FDA regulations.

Other related legislation was also proposed (SS732, S733, H940, Sen. Edward Kennedy sponsoring on behalf of the Clinton Administration), which would establish a "national registry and tracking system" for the vaccination of all infants and children, a prelude to the notorious "Smart Card" or "Health Identity Card", with total control over health care decisions by a centralized medical Big Brother. These bills, which are offered up in one version or another, year after year, mandate "social workers" to essentially become the new "health care police", calling upon every home in America, door to door, to "investigate" whether or not every child in residence would have all "mandatory vaccines". If not, the child might be blocked from enrollment in school, or the parents charged with "child abuse", and the child forcibly taken away by the state for adoption. Already, legal attacks for "child neglect and abuse" have been mounted by social workers and medical authorities against parents opting for home-birth, and against parents refusing to inoculate their children with potentially dangerous experimental vaccines.(24) Even breast-feeding mothers have had infants ripped from their arms, being charged with "child sexual abuse", by power-drunk "social workers", who did not approve of breast-feeding beyond two years.(25)

Coupled with the new, national health insurance initiatives, we rapidly approach the creation of a politically-directed, centralized network of "health spys" and "health police", whose ultimate goal would be to root out any and all forms of natural health care, self-responsible health care, or anyone who would exhibit signs of independent-mindedness or "disobedience to authority" regarding basic matters of child-rearing, sexuality, education or health. This is reminiscent of the KGB-neighborhood-spy systems of the communist nations, and the religious police of the fundamentalist Muslim nations. It is a clear and present danger to our democracy, given the fact that Americans today are prone to grant to white-coated "doctors" the same uncritical, unquestioning obedience as once was given to black-robed priests during the witch-burning period of history, or to communist-party functionaries during the Stalinist purges. Science, particularly medical science, is today the New Religion of Homo Normalis, and the witch hunt against heretic disobedient unbelievers is gathering steam.

Opposing the above FDA-AMA-Gestapo legislation was the Health Freedom Act (S784 and H1709) sponsored by Sen.Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico). This bill, which was passed in modified form, restricted the FDA on some of the above matters, preserving the rights of Americans to make their own essential health decisions -- regarding vitamins, herbs and food supplements, at least. There additionally are a few states, such as Alaska and Washington, which have passed specific legislation to protect natural health-care methods, though it is not clear that these laws do anything to restrain the FDA, which is governed by federal legislation. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) has also sponsored the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 1993 to restrain the "long arm of the law", and place the burden of proof on the government in asset seizure cases, where it belongs. These latter laws to restrain government power are a start in the right direction, but in fact do not go far enough to curb the persisting abuses. Wilhelm Reich's suggestion, that judges, prosecutors, and government officials who plot to throw innocent people into prison should themselves be imprisoned, is the kind of strong medicine necessary to prevent our social situation from spiraling into even more despotic conditions. Clearly, a Congressional Investigation with public hearings and testimony should be initiated in Washington, DC, to allow hundreds of ordinary citizens the right to come forward and tell their stories about US government hooliganism, in full light of day, and where the "mainstream" news media could not so easily ignore it. A Special Prosecutor should also appointed by the President, to investigate the blatant Police State activities of the FDA and other governmental agencies. FDA Commissioner Kessler should immediately be fired and investigated for his role in these abuses. All FDA leaders, field agents and lawyers, AMA officials, and prosecutors and judges who plotted, approved, or directed the invasions of clinics, laboratories and homes of medical pioneers, carrying out the massive seizures of property where nobody was ever charged with a crime -- those individuals should receive stiff fines and jail terms, with compensation paid to those whose lives and work was destroyed by power-drunk bureaucrats. Even those now-elderly FDA officials, prosecutors and judges who presided over the burning of Reich's books should be held fully accountable for their past abuses of power. These and other concrete steps must be undertaken if we are serious about our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and if the words "Land of the Free" are to have meaning beyond that of a mere slogan, recited mindlessly at political rallies.

Clearly, unless our social reformers and health-care pioneers are allowed to move from the present suppressed "underground" situation, and practice their arts openly in the social marketplace, free from constant FDA-police harassment, there will be no real health reforms or pioneering health breakthroughs to reach the general public. The battle lines are drawn, but the outcome is not clear or certain at all. Hanging in the balance is nothing less than the future of our remaining democratic and social freedoms.

For those interested in lobbying against further encroachments on our rapidly diminishing freedoms, the FDA will take e-mailed comments at FDADockets@bangate.fda.gov