Online publication only

March 5, 2010

We did it!

It's all thanks to the action that you took.

Hundreds of thousands of messages poured into the Senate opposing Senator McCain's bill, the bill that would have wiped out current legislative protections for dietary supplements. More and more messages were arriving by the day. The entire Congress began to take note. Senator McCain was embarrassed by our ad whose headline pointed out that he was misrepresenting and did not seem to understand his own bill.

Word is now racing around Capitol Hill that Senator McCain met with Senator Orin Hatch, a champion of natural medicine, and told him that he is withdrawing his support for the bill he authored, the so-called Dietary Supplement Safety Act (S 3002). This means that the bill as written is now dead.

Is this the end of the story? No. Having given his word to a fellow senator, McCain is not likely to resume his support for the bill. But we do need to see a declaration from McCain himself. We will need to see if McCain will try to offer some modified version of the bill. And there has also been no word from the other co-sponsor of the bill, Senator Dorgan.

We will keep you posted. In the meantime, it is time to celebrate your accomplishment. The democratic process worked. The people spoke and a powerful senator reversed course. It was all because of you, the active citizens willing to take time and make the effort to defend natural and sustainable forms of health and healthcare in the often hostile environment of Washington, DC. As we all know, Washington is ringed today with special commercial interests. They have millions of dollars of campaign contributions to hand out and gigantic lobbying budgets. But in the end, politicians have to answer to the people.

Thank you!

Gretchen DuBeau, Executive Director
Hunter Lewis, President

Alliance for Natural Health USA

Original Action Alert: Senator McCain Files New Bill That Attacks Your Access to Supplements and Repeals Key Sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act