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LE Magazine July 2000
Date:________________________
To the Honorable ____________________
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
At a hearing of the Senate Health, Education and Pensions
Committee, held on March 20, 2000, the FDA sought a ten
million dollar annual appropriation beginning in Fiscal Year
2001 to police the Internet. I am vehemently opposed to my tax
dollars being used to fund the FDA, an agency that I believe
does not protect the public like it pretends to do.
In the FY 2001 budget proposal, the FDA is asking Congress to
pass a new law that would give the agency repressive powers
that would restrict the free flow of information on the
Internet. I ask that you vote against any proposed law that
gives the FDA more control over what I am allowed to read and
put in my body. Some of the unconstitutional authority the FDA
is seeking includes:
1 - Issuing subpoenas without a court order.
Giving the FDA this new power will create a litigation monster
whose annual appetite will rapidly exceed the ten million
dollars a year they are now seeking.
2 - Fining Internet pharmacies $500,000.00 every time
they sell a drug that does not meet the FDA's definition of a
legal prescription. This type of excessive fine will
enable the FDA to arbitrarily bankrupt any online pharmacy it
decides to target.
3 - Setting up "a rapid response team" to identify,
investigate and prosecute websites, i.e., the FDA is
seeking to establish a private army of storm-troopers to
summarily shut down any website it chooses.
Please do not be mislead by the FDA's pathetic attempts to
convince you that they are trying to protect the health of the
public by regulating the Internet. According to the April 15,
1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association,
adverse reactions to legally-prescribed FDA-approved drugs are
the fourth to sixth leading cause of death in the United
States. Since this article was published almost two years ago,
the FDA has done nothing to reduce the number of Americans
dying from dangerous drugs, yet the FDA now seeks ten million
tax dollars a year to attack alternative health and pharmacy
websites.
If the FDA convinces Congress to grant it more power and
money to attack health websites, American consumers will be
denied access to innovative therapies and pay a lot more for
their prescription drugs. I therefore ask that you write me
with your position on this issue so I will know how to case my
ballot this November.
Sincerely,
Name___________________________________________
Street___________________________________________
City_______________________ST_______Zip__________
cc: House Representative
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