Handcuffing the Lifeguard

The role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to protect and promote public health in America. In a sense, you can think of the FDA as the nation’s lifeguard when it comes to food and drug safety. But Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona does not want the FDA to do its job in the area of homeopathy.

An amendment by Representative Biggs to a necessary appropriations bill tells the FDA that it cannot take enforcement action on new homeopathic drugs if the drug meets the guidelines of an 1890 homeopathic manual. The only exception is if the Secretary of Health and Human Services has evidence that the new homeopathic drug is unsafe.

Representative Biggs’ amendment allows homeopathic drug makers to sell new drugs without proving their products are safe and effective, as long as they conform to a homeopathy manual written over 130 years ago, the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. The amendment only requires homeopathy drug makers to follow this book, composed before the airplane was invented, while stipulating the FDA can only take action based on evidence.

This is completely backward to how drug approval is usually administered in the U.S. and other countries. Normally it is the responsibility of the drug manufacturer to prove in advance to governing bodies that a drug is safe and effective.

The drug safety laws that Representative Biggs and the homeopathy industry want the FDA to ignore were put in place years ago for good reason – to protect the public against bad medicine. Don’t let Congress handcuff our nation’s food and drug safety lifeguard.

Please use this quick & easy LINK to tell your U.S. Representative to “oppose Representative Biggs’ Appropriations Amendment #4 [homeopathy FDA exemption] to H.R. 4368.”

Let’s keep our lifeguard unshackled.

Yours in republic keeping,
James Carroll
BFPNC Chair