The Publisher’s Desk

This month, we are introducing a new product called Neo40® Daily, along with Salivary Nitric Oxide Test Strips. We’re very excited about the research behind this product and its ability to restore nitric oxide levels, giving it applications in a number of health concerns. Additionally, the test strips offer a new way to measure nitric oxide levels instantly. Please see the first in a series of articles about nitric oxide in this newsletter.

Health Freedom: The Latest News

Last month, I told you about the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011 (S.1310, “The Durbin Bill”) and the FDA’s NDI guidance. The exact wording of the bill is now available.

As expected, the bill gives the FDA and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) the power to decide the safe levels and combinations of nutritional supplement ingredients. If the bill is passed, supplements would be controlled by the FDA and IOM, two agencies biased against nutritional supplements.

The FDA’s NDI guidance is FDA’s newest way to try to give drug companies the right to patent supplements and make them available by prescription only for 10 or 100 (or even more) times what they cost now. The biggest problem: this will create such huge barriers for supplement manufacturers that it will be more difficult and expensive to produce the supplements.

Both the Durbin bill and the proposed NDI guidance would give the FDA broad new authority to ban supplements or supplement ingredients on arbitrary grounds, with no rules or standards. This would drastically reduce the number of supplements and supplement potencies, raise prices substantially, impact our ability to enhance our own health, stifle supplement innovation, and cost millions of supplement industry jobs. See last month’s column for more information.

S.1310 has been referred to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Please ask your senators to oppose it. And please tell your Congresspeople that the FDA’s NDI guidance is bad for consumers and is infringing upon health freedom rights.