Rabbi Grossman Critiques the Mishna Brurah

The Chofetz Chayim and the Vilna Gaon: Similar Halachoth, Dissimilar Approaches

March 20, 2016

This past semester we had the opportunity to review the topic of the time concerning the weekly onset of the Sabbath. Using the Mishna Berura (to Orah Hayim 261) as a base text, we saw how in the olden days, the prevailing view was that the halachic day starts at sundown, and therefore if one wished to add to the Sabbath by accepting it while it was still Friday, he would have to accept the Sabbath, i.e., desist from performing forbidden labors, sometime before sunset. We also how Rabbeinu Tam believed, based on his understanding of the relevant Talmudic passages, that the halachic “sunset,” the dividing line between the halachic days, is something that occurs everyday almost an hour after the setting of the sun that we are used to seeing. At the time, applying Rabbeinu Tam’s opinion was revolutionary. For centuries, the Jewish people greeted the Sabbath queen and saw her off at certain times of the day, and then slowly, they started doing so later. The weekly Sabbath shifted by about an hour, and that eventually became the prevailing custom among us, such that both the Shulhan Aruch and the Rema assume that the halacha follows Rabbeinu Tam. While there were notable holdouts who did not completely accept the new definition of the cut off line between days, like the Shach and Yemenite jewry, Rabbeinu Tam’s position held sway until the Vilna Gaon came around. The Vilna Goan completely rejected Rabbeinu Tam’s approach because it simply does not fit with reality. What celestial phenomenon actually happens about an hour after sunset? Most of the stars, whether, small, medium, or large, are already out by that time. It was better to revert to the classic understanding of sunset as explicated by the Geonim and Maimonides: sundown is sundown, and the Sabbath must start by then, and it departs only a matter of minutes afterward. The Chofetz Chayim, by mentioning the Vilna Gaon’s opinions concerning most halachoth, helped popularized the Gaon’s overall approach, and today the momentum has shifted. Most Jewish communities accept the Sabbath by sundown on Friday, and allow their constituents to begin forbidden labor well before even an hour has passed from the sundown the following day. Rabbeinu Tam would not be too satisfied with the status quo today; he ruled the way he did because he believed that the halacha should fit with the ancient cosmological models that the ancient Hebrews shared with others in the Near East, and felt that the sages later viewing the world and the orbits of the spheres as did the Alexandrian astronomers was improper, despite their stature.

Here’s where it got interesting. Rabbeinu Tam and the Shulhan Aruch and the rest specifically adopted one position and outright rejected the other, while Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon took the second opinion and rejected the first. All of the pos’qimtook sides on the issue, each one for his own reason(s), but the Chofetz Chayim does not present his readers with sufficient arguments for or against each position. Instead, he just presents the opinions as being at odds with each other and identifies who subscribes to each opinion, and then he rules that both opinions be ideally followed. We should take in the Sabbath according to the earlier definition of sunset, but end the Sabbath according to the later opinion. This overall approach of trying to satisfy all major opinions was popularized by the Chofetz Chayim, but is, in a historical sense, the most revolutionary. And this shows us the defining difference between the methods of the Vilna Gaon and the Chofetz Chayim, even though it was the Chofetz Chayim who made the Vilna Gaon’s views so well known: The Vilna Gaon ruled like the view that he felt fit the Talmudic sources and the reality, while the Chofetz Chayim did not weigh the merits of individual views, and instead sought to somehow satisfy all of them.

We then saw a number of the classic cases we discussed previously, where most notably, the Mishna Berura does not mention the actual opinion of the Vilna Gaon on the matter because, presumably, it stands at complete odds with the view the Chofetz Chayim was trying to advance.

In 31:8 the Chofetz Chayim is trying to advance the position that a blessing should not be recited when donning t’filln on Hol Hamoed, and the Vilna Gaon’s “lenient position” on the matter can be used as a “weight” to counter the position that a blessing should be recited on donning t’fillin. This would give the reader the impression that the Vilna Gaon ruled that t’fillin are worn without a blessing on Hol Hamoed, whereas in  reality the Vilna Gaon believed that there was no question about the blessing, because he held like the Shulhan Aruch, which ruled that t’fillin may not be worn on Hol Hamoed at all. Citing the Vilna Gaon accurately would have wrecked his entire thesis.

In 583:8, the Mishna Berura, in a discussion concerning the practice of Tashlich, neglects to mention the opinion of the Vilna Gaon: that tashlich should not be done on Rosh Hashana, nor by a body of water. Citing the Vilna Gaon would have eliminated the entire point of the discussion. The same can be said about the entirety of mark 605. The Mishna Berura has much to say about how to perform kapparois, even though both the Shulhan Aruch and the Vilna Gaon prohibited them.

In Orah Hayim 2 and 8 the Mishna Berura discusses the issues of ad hoc head coverings when reciting blessings, and the idea that Jews should always wear hats even when indoors. He does not mention that the Vilna Gaon wrote that “the rule of the matter is that there is never any prohibition of going about with an uncovered head,” and that it is only during the times of the prayer that one should cover his head out of respect. Once again, the Vilna Gaon’s opinion is not mentioned,  because it is in such stark contrast to the view the Mishna Berura favored.

The Vilna Gaon would often mention who subscribed to views that he rejected; I know of no instance where the Mishna Berura cites the Vilna Gaon and then rejects his opinion.

The entire issue of reading part or all of the last verse of Parashath Zachor multiple times has its basis in  a  practice of the Vilna Gaon as cited by the Mishna Berura. Ma’aseh Rav 133 and 134 mention that the Vilna Gaon himself would be the one to read Zachor in the synagogue, and that he read the word as zecher, with a segol, as opposed to the traditional vowelization, zeicher, with a tzeirei. In Diqduq Eliyahu, the Vilna Gaon seems to say that the difference between the two vowels is the yud-like sound that is a natural part of the tzeirei vowel, much like the long hiriq (ee as in “bee”) has a natural yud sound. This issue is surprising, because as we wrote earlier, there are many disputed vowelizations throughout the Torah, and many actually affect the meaning, but in this case, there is no known manuscript or classic text that has the word zeicher vowelized with a segol, and even if such a variant vowelization existed, it would not change the meaning of the word. The Vilna Gaon also felt that the word should also be zecher in Psalm 145:7 (“Ashrei”), even though, once again, we have no such version. Be all this as it may, the Vilna Gaon apparently favored one view over the other, but it was the Chofetz Chayim who popularized trying to somehow satisfy all opinions.

But why did the Vilna Gaon feel that the word zeicher should be re-vowelized? Granted he made similar recommendations with regards to the prayer liturgy, and spent his life trying to edit the exact texts of the Talmud and Midrashim, but those are not part of the received Biblical text, the masora, and he did not suggest any other re-vowelizations throughout the entire Bible, nor did he attempt to reconcile some other known vowelizations that are subject to dispute. Why did he seem to care about only one word in the entire Bible, and is it more than a coincidence that it happens to be in the one minimally parasha read every year by command of the Torah?

Here is how I see it. The Vilna Gaon likely did not really say that zeicher should be revowelized! Having a segolate noun of the tzeirei-segol form (e.g., sheivet, tribe, and neizer, diadem) is just as valid as the double segol form (e.g. kesef, silver, and qesher, knot). In the commentary  P’ulath Sachir to the printed versions of the Ma’aseh Rav, the author mentions that the Vilna Gaon’s students actually do not agree on how the Gaon said zecher/zeicher. Some dispute the Ma’aseh Rav, and claim he really said zeicher with a tzeirei. So what happened?

The Vilna Gaon was not always the regular Torah reader. That is why it was a novelty for him to be the reader for Zachor. He would normally only go up to the Torah for the sixth aliya. Further, he believed that the reading of Zachor was biblically ordained, and told his students that that was his opinion, so they naturally paid more attention to that reading, especially when their holy master was doing the reading. Next, the Vilna Gaon’s Hebrew definitely did not sound like that of  other Litvaks. It, like very other of his practices, was colored by his objective adoption of what he believed to be right, and therefore was unusual. (He also declined to speak Yiddish like the rest of the Jews, and strove to only speak Hebrew.) His vowels were the objective ones he describes in his other seifer (sefer?). While Ashkenazis allows for a segol that sounds like the e in “bet” and a tzeirei that sound like the ay in “way,” in truth the tzeirei should not have such a strong diphthong yud (y) sound, and in the Gaon’s opinion, the tzeireiwas actually somewhere between the two sounds, similar to the way both the segoland tzeirei are pronounced in Modern Hebrew. Next, in the entire Parashath Zachor, the vowel tzeirei only occurs once in a syllable that is both open and accented, i.e. most distinguished from a segol: in the word zeicher! Therefore, when the Vilna Gaon read that word properly, to some students of his students it sounded like what they knew was his version of a tzeirei, but to the less knowledgable students, it did not sound like a true, hard, Ashkenazic tzeirei, so it must have been a segol! This is similar to the fallacy that Ashkenazis is any pronunciation system that includes a weak sav and some sort of qamatz that is different from a patah, or that the forms of checkers or handball that are unusual are “Chinese.” The vowel was weaker than a tzeirei, so it must have been a segol. What about the tzeirei in eith and Amaleik? Wouldn’t they have noticed that those were weak? Not as much, because those syllables are closed and therefore less noticeable.

To sum up, the Ma’aseh Rav is not reporting that the Vilna Gaon felt the word should zeicher should be vowelized with a segol, but rather that the Vilna Gaon did not, when the time came to speak proper biblical Hebrew, pronounce a tzeirei exactly like the way the other Ashkenazim were doing, and this fits with the Vilna Gaon’s life-goal of escaping the misguided “poilisher minhagim” that dominated in Europe.

Much like eating an inordinate amount of matza in a short period of time has come to overshadow the commandment to remember facets of the Exodus, the over pronunciation of the words of Zachor has now overshadowed the message of the parasha, and this is due in part to the Mishna Berura’s over simplification of this issue, turning it into just another mahloqeth that needs to have both sides satisfied.

From Avraham Ben Yehuda, here.

Take Your Money Out of the Bank!

Two BIG Reasons NOT to Keep Your Cash in the Bank

It’s bad enough depositing your money into a bank account and earning essentially zero interest on it, or in some countries, having a negative interest rate.

It’s even worse knowing that once you deposit your money in a bank, it’s not really yours anymore. You have turned over your property to the bank in return for a debt claim. You become an unsecured creditor holding an IOU.

Worst of all, there’s the “bail-in,” which we all became familiar with during the 2013 banking collapse in Cyprus. Some uninsured depositors got half of their money back, although, at one bank, customers received nothing of their deposits over the “insured” amount.

In 2014, the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) – representing the world’s 20 largest economies – declared the Cyprus model should apply globally. They did so in a mind-numbing tome entitled Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution.

Deposits in banks that are “too big to fail” will be promptly recapitalized with their unsecured debt. And… guess what? The largest chunk of unsecured debt is your bank deposits. Insolvent banks will recapitalize themselves by converting your deposits into worthless bank stock. This avoids taxpayer-funded bailouts that proved politically unpopular during the last financial crisis.

Oh, and get this… the G20 has also declared that derivatives – the toxic contracts Warren Buffett calls “financial weapons of mass destruction” – are secured debts. Since your bank deposits are only unsecured debt, guess who gets your money if the bet goes the wrong way for the bank? Answer: It’s not you.

Heads, the bank wins. Tails, you lose.

It’s practically guaranteed, too, that in the next financial crisis, there’ll be a whole slew of bank failures. That’s despite the fact that the mainstream financial media assures us that central banks have imposed higher capital requirements, stress tests, etc., on banks to ensure that when the “big one” hits, your deposits will be safe.

Don’t believe a word of it. The amount of capital that banks hold compared to the money on deposit is frighteningly low. In the US, the five largest banks have a capital ratio as a percentage of assets of only 6% – although that’s double what it was in 2008. In effect, if every depositor in a bank demands their money back simultaneously – the classic “bank run” – the largest US banks could repay only six cents on the dollar before they ran out of money. And since most banks don’t keep a lot of cash on hand, it could even be less.

It’s worth remembering that historically, US banks were much better capitalized. For instance, in 1842, US banks had an average capital ratio of 60% – ten times that of the largest banks today. That was an era in which bank competition was based on safety because no deposit insurance was in effect.

This chart from Bloomberg News says it all:

Sure, in many countries your bank deposits are “insured.” In the US, the first $250,000 in your account qualifies for deposit insurance through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But for every $100 on deposit, the FDIC has only $1.06 with which to back it. Doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy about the safety of your bank deposits?

Continue reading…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Meir Ettinger On His Torturers

BY ON

The following article was Meir Ettinger’s most recent blog post. It was written just before he was arrested and it was posted on August 4th on Hakol Hayehudi in Hebrew, once he was already in jail. Some of Meir’s blog posts have been cited in the media as part of the evidence against him. Here we present one of Meir’s posts and allow the readers to judge for themselves whether it is grounds for administrative detention.

Did Moti Yogev burn the house in Duma?

This past week we’ve witnessed an all out attack by the media on Jewish terror. Representatives of the state of all stripes and sizes have condemned these recent attacks. Yet beyond condemning the attacks, they have really been assaulting Jewish values as a whole while hiding behind the guise of condemning violence or murder.

What they really mean can be heard in the words of those who were less successful in hiding their true motives. For example we can look at Yair Lapid, whose words we will quote below since they reveal what the self-proclaimed “knights of justice and equality” are really fighting.

Yair Lapid said (translated from the original Hebrew), “We’re at war. He who stabs young people at a Pride March, the terrorists who burned a baby in Kfar Duma- they are the enemy. Those who burned the Church next to the Kinneret- they are the enemy. A person who throw stones at security forces- he is the enemy, because stones kill. Members of Lehava- they are traitors who assist the enemy at times of war. He who threatens to attack the Supreme Court with a D-9 bulldozer- is a traitor helping the enemy at a time of war.”

What is the connection between Moti Yogev and the home in Duma? What is the connection between Lehava that opposes assimilation and the arson of a church? The answer is simple, Lapid is inciting a culture war. The media outrage and assault is not really about compassion for innocent victims or opposition to violence it’s about sticking it to those with Jewish pride.

Culture War

Yair Lapid, speaks for all of them. He knows how to explain himself clearly and he understands that the media assault is not about burning a house, or about innocent victims. It’s not about violence or murder. It’s not even about how we conduct our wars or about the boundaries of the law. Lapid’s war is a culture war.

But still, how can we be so sure that it’s not human life and murder that matter so much to those in the media? The answer is in the way they so casually relate to the lives of Jews. They silence murder committed by terrorists and they create rules of engagement with stone and firebomb throwers that put Jewish lives in danger. The media and the left blatantly support Arab terror against Jews and by extension, at the very least, are indifferent to Jewish life.

So if human life is of little concern to them, why the media assault? Once again one of their own, President Reuven Rivlin, said it best in his own words. “Sadly, until now we have dealt with Jewish terror lightly. Perhaps we did not internalize that against us stands a dangerous, determined, ideological group that has set for itself the goal ofdestroying the delicate bridges we have so carefully constructed. I believe that the more we recognize that we are standing against a real danger to the State of Israel, we will be more determined to fight them and uproot them entirely. “

So what are those delicate bridges so carefully constructed? The answer can be found in the concept that has been absent from Rivlin’s lips the past year. Rivlin has worked tirelessly to distort and render meaningless the entire concept of ‘Judaism.’ In Rivlin’s (and many others) opinion, a Jewish State can be both “binational” and “Jewish” at the same time. The national identity of the Jewish people is not related to its uniqueness in contrast to the nations of the world, and Jewish identity is certainly not related to fulfilling the Mitzvot. Everyone must respect one another’s view, even if it violates one’s own beliefs.

Rubi Rivlin has worked to blur the lines between a “Jewish State” and the policies those very words imply. He has tried to claim that distorted, liberal, modern culture encompasses Jewish heritage. He stands guard over all the imaginary and false bridges he has built between Judaism and leftist, liberal democracy.

The Shin Bet is not a security agency!

The Shin Bet has for many years been running to the media claiming that it is terrorism when Jews uproot a tree or commit other petty crimes in response to the Arab intifada, which, in contrast, the Shin bet has tried to silence.

The Shin Bet shouts in our ears, “Jewish terror, Jewish terror, Jewish terror,” while at the same time attempting to cover up and ‘contain’ the daily incidents of stone throwing and molotov cocktails committed by Arabs. The Shin bet has transformed acts of protest committed by teenagers who could no longer bear the daily attacks against them, into terrorism. In committing these actions the Shin Bet has led many Jews to the realization that the agency responsible for their security and safety, has the blood of dozens of Jews on its hands. Rather than protecting Jews’ safety, the Shin Bet has acted as a political tool.

This is the same Shin Bet that calls Arab terror, “popular protest.” They consider firebombs thrown at vehicles, “popular protest.” This is the same Shin Bet that thinks so little of Jewish life that they have closed checkpoints, and reopened security roads to Arab traffic. And why? All in order to guard the “holy, delicate bridges.”

The head of the Shin Bet (during the release of prisoners in the Shalit deal) took personal responsibility for the murder of Malachi Rosenfeld, Dani Gonen, and all the other Jews who would yet be murdered by the terrorists who were released. These are not the hands of an organization that cares about the safety of Jews, rather those of a group attempting to shape public opinion behind the scenes. It is for that reason that they redefine protest as terror and terror as protest. It is for that reason that they draw such silly cartoons and create imaginary hierarchies of ‘secret, underground,’ Jewish terror organizations. All for one reason- to guard the identity of the State of Israel as as that of leftism and assimilation.

So what can we do against this media assault? For one, we simply must not be alarmed. Against the delicate bridges of liberal culture being thrust upon us, we must rekindle the bonds that connect us to a love of G-d and our Jewish heritage.

“They” have delicate bridges, bridges of lies. It is said that the Hebrew word for ‘lies’ has no feet and thus that lies have no foundation. Therefore they are scared and stressed, but we will not fear their media assault. “I am a wall” says King Solomon- our connection is strong and it gives us the strength to stand up against all the imaginary walls and smokescreens to say without fear what is truly a Jewish State.

From Hakol Hayehudi, here.

Gold As Guard Against Government

The So-Called Relic (Finally) Roars Back

Economist John Maynard Keynes is often quoted as calling it the “barbarous relic.”

Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin said he would build toilets out of it, as the ultimate symbol of capitalist waste.

More recently, economists have claimed it was “irrelevant,” was “no longer a currency,” and it gave investors “a false sense of security.”

I’m referring, of course, to gold – element #79 on the periodic table (symbol: Au).

For at least 50 centuries, Homo sapiens have used gold as a medium of exchange. It’s easily divisible, transportable, and durable.

Gold is also scarce. If Goldfinger were to come to life and somehow seize all the world’s gold, it would fit into a cube with sides of less than 70 feet each.

Scarcity makes gold difficult for governments to debase. Many have tried, of course, primarily by alloying it with much less valuable metals. Royal dynasties in Rome, China, France, and England all followed this practice. Governments achieved the same goal by increasing the quantity of supposedly gold-backed currency in circulation, without increasing gold reserves. But this policy led to price inflation in the countries that practiced it and eventually forced the US – and effectively, the rest of the world – to gradually abandon the gold standard. Its last vestige was swept away in 1971.

Since 1971, global central banks have created hundreds of trillions of dollars, yen, euros, and other fiat currencies out of thin air – monetary units backed only by the “good faith” of the issuing government. Central banks pump these fiat currencies into their respective economies to maintain growth. Most of this new money has been created since 2008 when the world entered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This hasn’t led to economic growth, so in a sign of increasing desperation, central banks have also imposed negative interest rates. Negative rates mean lenders literally pay businesses and consumers to borrow money. They also penalize savers for hoarding it.

In theory, that policy should force consumers and businesses to spend their money, rather than save it. That hasn’t happened, so central banks keep pushing rates lower. In Switzerland and Denmark, for instance, the rate the central bank pays on deposits now stands at –1.25%.

In a world with a gold standard, gold prices would have skyrocketed with all the newly created fiat currency sloshing around in the financial system, not to mention negative interest rates. But while gold prices rose sixfold from 2001 to 2011, over the next four years, they fell more than 40%.

Gold’s price decline wasn’t matched by a decline in central bank money creation. Some experts account for this disconnect by observing that bullion banks – banks that lease bullion from central banks – made massive leveraged bets against gold in futures markets. One development that facilitated this strategy is the appearance of securities whose value is tied to the price of gold, such as SPDR Gold Trust (symbol: GLD).

GLD and similar securities give investors a convenient way to purchase gold without needing to store it securely. But these securities also give speculators the ability to bet on gold prices without taking physical possession. This led to a massive growth in “paper gold” transactions – metal that effectively exists only in cyberspace. In September 2015, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) revealed that the ratio of paper gold to gold that could actually be delivered had spiked to 200:1.

This strategy also served the interests of central banks and governments. With gold prices stagnating or worse, investors who might have wanted to purchase gold as a hedge against a currency collapse or negative interest rates would instead purchase government bonds, stocks, or other paper assets.

That strategy stopped working in 2016. In the US, the stock market is off to its worst start in its history. Markets in other countries aren’t doing much better: in Japan, stocks are down 15.35% for the year; in Germany, 10.63%.

The barbarous relic, though, has prospered. While investors haven’t been flocking to gold to build 24-karat toilets (although a few exist), gold prices have increased 13.88% since the beginning of the year, including a stunning one-day gain of nearly $50 per ounce (more than 4%).

One reason for this recovery in gold prices is that a growing number of investors are demanding physical delivery of gold. This makes it harder for central banks to slam down gold prices via massive shorting of paper gold. Leading the pack in this regard is the Bank of China, which in January alone added 580,000 ounces of gold to its reserves. That’s especially notable because China’s foreign currency reserves have fallen sharply in recent months, as it tries to prop up its domestic currency and collapsing the stock market.

But the most important reason gold is rebounding, I believe, is the financial alternatives to it have become increasingly less attractive. That’s the only plausible reason China, with its bleeding foreign exchange reserves, is buying so much of it.

Then there’s the “bail-in” issue. Following the 2013 model pioneered by Cyprus, governments worldwide have quietly adopted the bail-in model. For Americans, that means your accounts in domestic banks – possibly earning negative interest rates if former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has his way – could be vulnerable. Instead of getting your money back if the bank fails, your IOU (yes, that’s the legal status of a bank deposit) would be forcibly exchanged for worthless bank stock.

Sure, the first $250,000 in your account qualifies for deposit insurance through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But that reassuring FDIC logo on your bank’s front door masks the fact that the FDIC Insurance Fund has a reserve ratio of 1.06%. For every $100 on deposit, the FDIC has only $1.06 with which to back it.

And when a banking crisis hits, it won’t occur in a vacuum. It will likely coincide with a collapse in stock prices, real estate, and other assets. It might take some time to retrieve funds from your insured bank account. That’s true even if the feds create more money out of thin air to honor the FDIC’s commitment.

Uninsured deposits, of course, would be bailed in. That prevents those inconvenient – and politically unpopular – bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks.

More and more people have decided to prepare themselves for the plundering of their wealth by getting a portion of their nest egg assets out of the financial system by buying gold. For me, that’s about 25% of my net worth.

Given the alternatives, can you think of any reason not to join us?

Reprinted with permission from Nestmann.com.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Managed Media Misleads on Medicine

PBS Abandons Fair and Balanced Journalism

 By Dr. Mercola

PBS’ Frontline recently did a hit piece on the supplement industry (see above video if you haven’t already), and your response to them about my Frontline article had a dramatic impact. You clearly have made a difference by pointing out their glaring bias!

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler — whose job it is to review criticism from viewers and “ensure that PBS upholds its own standards of editorial integrity” — received dozens of emails, plus a number of phone calls.

In his words: “All of them were critical, some sharply.”

On February 5, Getler published a long, detailed review of the critique received, Frontline’s responses, and his own findings. If you have the time it would be worth reading Getler’s article as you can see how many people felt this was a shoddy piece of journalism.1

While I extend my gratitude to Getler for his common sense admission that vitamin supplements do not pose “a public health calamity” as the show unfairly insinuated, I simply must set the record straight yet again, on the issue of regulation, since he and PBS continue to portray a seriously distorted and inaccurate narrative.

Dietary Supplements Are Fully Regulated by FDA Under DSHEA

While supplements are not regulated as drugs, they are fully regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). As the name reveals, supplements have been subject to their own specific set of regulations since 1994. As stated on the FDA’s website:2

FDA regulates both finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients … Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA):

  • Manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements and dietary ingredients are prohibited from marketing products that are adulterated or misbranded.

That means that these firms are responsible for evaluating the safety and labeling of their products before marketing to ensure that they meet all the requirements of DSHEA and FDA regulations.

  • FDA is responsible for taking action against any adulterated or misbranded dietary supplement product after it reaches the market.”

Which part of “FDA regulates both finished dietary supplements products and dietary ingredients” is confusing enough for anyone to conclude that regulation is absent, missing, or otherwise nonexistent?

More to the point, how can any competent investigative journalist make such a blunder as to misrepresent supplements as unregulated when the law has been in force for more than two decades? Is it ignorance? Is it negligence? Or is it agenda-driven obscuration?

Pre-Marketing FDA Review of Supplements Versus Drugs

Getler reiterates a quote by the acting FDA commissioner, who during the PBS program said that the FDA “does not do any review of dietary supplements before they come onto the market.”

While this is true, appropriate context is needed. The implication is that, were supplements regulated as drugs, they would undergo FDA review prior to marketing and would, therefore, be safer.

On the face of it, that seems to make sense, but the reason why this logic is fatally flawed is that the FDA’s pre-market review for drugs simply involves reviewing the manufacturers own tests.

The FDA does not perform ANY — yes, you read that correctly, ANY — independent testing to verify the manufacturer’s results before approving a drug. They merely rely on the submissions of an industry that has consistently and repeatedly been found guilty of nefarious behavior in this area.

The classic example is Merck withholding studies they performed on Vioxx prior to its release that the drug had cardiac toxicity. They voluntarily removed the drug about five years after its FDA approval, but not before the drug killed 60,000 people.

Contrary to Popular Belief the FDA Does NOT Independently Evaluate Drugs

Contrary to what Getler and PBS would have you and the public believe — the idea that the FDA does independent objective premarket evaluations — the “FDA does not develop or test products; FDA experts review the results of laboratory, animal, and human clinical testing done by manufacturers” only.3

The lack of independent verification of drug companies’ claims is a major problem, as fudging and manipulating research has become commonplace. Investigations have shown that most of the scientific misconduct occur in the drug literature (compared to general biomedical literature).

Nearly 75 percent of retracted drug studies are attributed to scientific misconduct such as data falsification and fabrication. Imagine the potential for tragedy when a drug is based largely on pure fantasy or wishful thinking!

Vioxx and Avandia are but two examples of exceptionally dangerous drugs making it through the FDA’s review process. Between them, these two drugs are responsible for more than 143,000 deaths.

So exactly how would the FDA’s review of manufacturers’ studies make nutritional supplements any safer than they already are?

Legally Prescribed Drugs Kill Hundreds of Thousands Annually

When taken as prescribed, drugs of any category kill more than 106,000 people per year, and 2 million Americans become seriously ill every year because of toxic reactions to drugs.4

So the notion that regulating supplements as drugs would make them safer is not based in reality. Current drug regulations allow very dangerous drugs to be marketed, and action is only taken AFTER problems become apparent and severe.

Tens of thousands need to die before a drug is finally removed from the market. It should be a great comfort to everyone to know that the FDA does not drag its feet when it comes to taking dangerous supplements off the market, though.

Ephedra-containing diet pills, for example, were removed5 in 2004 after being linked to 155 deaths6 from overdosing. Avandia alone — taken as prescribed — killed 83,000 between 2001 and 2007.

The idea that supplements are harmful is not supported by the data. Quite the contrary, yet investigative journalists, like Frontline and CBC, consistently fail to mention statistics that put things into proper perspective. For example, a 2012 report7by the U.K.-based Alliance for Natural Health International showed that adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs are 62,000 times more likely to kill you than food supplements.

According to the annual report8,9 from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, there were zero deaths from vitamins, minerals, or any other dietary supplement in 2014. Meanwhile, Tylenol is linked to about 500 deaths annually. The idea that supplements should be regulated as drugs is rooted in financial interests. The supplement industry impinges on drug industry profits, and that’s the only rationale for this campaign to impose drug regulations on supplements.

Supplements Are the Safest Category of Consumable Products — Even Safer Than Food

Supplements are the most regulated food. They ARE NOT drugs. Supplements are consumed by the majority of Americans and Canadians, and statistically, it’s quite clear they are by far the safest consumable product there is, and least likely to hurt or kill you.In fact, most junk food is FORTIFIED with vitamins.  Modern agriculture has favored yield over nutrition, causing poor soil conditions, disease outbreaks, and a less nutrient-dense food supply.   If one is to avoid vitamin fortified junk foods, doesn’t it make sense to eat real food and intelligently use supplements to create a balanced diet?

Food sickens 48 million Americans each year; 128,000 of them severely enough to require hospitalization, and 3,000 die from food poisoning – and tens of thousands die from antibiotic-resistant infections that are primarily caused by our CAFO produced meats.10

Meanwhile, there were 3,249 adverse event reports for dietary supplements11 in 2012. The No.1 adverse event from supplements was choking, primarily in the elderly. Unsupervised children swallowing pills and heart palpitations due to the ingestion of too many diet pills, libido enhancing supplements, and energy drinks were also among the top problems reported. Again there were no deaths.

Choking is hardly an adverse effect warranting increased regulation, as it is a hazard that goes along with swallowing any food, drug or supplement. As for experiencing side effects from taking too many pills, let me remind you that prescription painkillers are the No. 1 cause of overdose deaths in the U.S., killing approximately 16,600 people each year.

Yes, people don’t always follow dosing instructions, but when it comes to supplements, it’s exceptionally rare to incur serious, permanent harm or death when taking too much. If any value is given to statistics, supplements set the bar for safety that all other consumable products, including drugs, should be measured by.

Supplements Are Also Regulated by the FTC

Supplements are also regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).12 This agency regulates the advertising of supplements, but it has a close working relationship with the FDA. Aspects of advertising covered by this regulation include but are not limited to:

  • Express and implied claims
  • Clear and prominent disclosures
  • Amount, type, and quality of evidence, and the relevance of the evidence to the specific claim
  • Claims based on traditional use
  • Use of DSHEA disclaimer

As explained on the FTC’s website, it “enforces laws outlawing ‘unfair or deceptive acts or practices’ to ensure that consumers get accurate information about dietary supplements so that they can make informed decisions about these products.” Any and all advertising “must be truthful, not misleading, and substantiated.”

Given the fact that supplements are regulated both by the FDA under DSHEA and the FTC, it is wildly irrational to state that supplements are unregulated unless one is lying. Frontline and CBC are not saying supplements could be regulated better. They imply supplements are marketed like Snake Oil and Magic Unicorn pills in some Wild West era of lawlessness!

In addition to the FDA regulating both ingredients and final products, supplements must also follow Current Good Manufacturing Processes (CGMP),13 which also falls under FDA jurisdiction.

It appears it’s up to informed readers and viewers to educate journalists (and health professionals) of their error, and to set the record straight whenever this fallacy is presented as fact. So, if you ever see supplements presented as “unregulated” again, I hope you step up to the plate and let them know that misrepresenting LAW is simply not acceptable by any journalistic standard.

Deceptions occur in all categories of commerce, and the supplement industry is no exception. But, when the government has to choose where it applies its limited resources for enforcement – shouldn’t it start where you find the highest body counts? That would be the logical priority, but not when you have the best government money can buy. If the policies don’t favor Big Pharma, Big Bank, Big Ag, Big Oil, Big Military, you can bet those resources will be applied elsewhere.

If you want to avoid unsafe supplements, the best way to do so is to stay away from the ‘gas station’ varieties. Those categories are typically focused on weight-loss, sexual performance, muscle growth & energy boosters. These categories have a history of being illegally spiked with pharmaceutical ingredients, so please think twice before purchasing these substances.

Do You Believe the Media Is Providing You With Fair and Balanced Journalism?

Frontline responded to the critique in my first article, saying:14 “The overarching allegation is that FRONTLINE, the CBC and The New York Times are all doing the bidding of nefarious forces — Big Pharma, Big Food, or some other hidden power pulling our strings. What nonsense.” Is it really nonsense to believe the media is manipulated by financial contributors with very big pocketbooks?

“FRONTLINE was not involved in any aspect of the selection or placement of these spots, which were sold by PBS and run across PBS.org through automated process. (Further, to be clear, FRONTLINE does not have any sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company, as some viewers erroneously alleged.),” Frontline writes.

As I pointed out in my first article, the sponsor list for PBS15,16,17 includes drug companies, junk food companies, and pesticide producers. Are we really to believe that PBS is just the middle-man, accepting funds from all of these industries, yet have NO influence over the programming? Just how much money is PBS getting from these companies?

If they want to disguise themselves as the “Public” Broadcasting Company, they should prominently disclose their corporate funders when they provide reports that have clear conflicts of interest. Moreover, while initially I did not delve into Frontline-specific sponsors since Frontline wants to make it “clear” that they do not have any pharmaceutical sponsorship, I will address it now.

Frontline Sponsors Include Several Foundations With Drug Ties

Frontline is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Information about Frontline, including its sponsors, can be found in WGBH’s Sharing The Vision member’s guide, and on Frontline’s FAQ page. Frontline is funded through the support of PBS viewers and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They also receive “major” funding from:

  • John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,18 which provides financial. support to the Human Vaccines Project;19the CDC Foundation20 (which “works closely with foundations to build programs that address specific health threats”); and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health21 (which promotes “solutions to four major global health threats” and has  worked to develop various vaccines)
  • Reva and David Logan, founders of the Reva & David Logan Foundation for Social Justice, Scholarship, the Arts and Investigative Journalism, which has co-funded drug research with Solvay Pharmaceuticals22 —a company that manufactures more than 30 drugs in the U.S. including Norlac RX, Zenate, Zenate Advanced Formula and Zenate Prenatal, all of which are prescription multivitamins
  • Jon and Jo Ann Hagler23 on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation. Jon Hagler served on both the World Bank’s Pension-Finance Committee and on the Finance Committee of the Rockefeller Family Fund. The World Bank helps fund vaccines and partners with vaccine and other drug companies. The Rockefeller Foundation helps fund the “Golden Rice” project with Gates to develop GMO rice with beta carotene genetically engineered into it.

Jon and Jo Ann Hagler established two endowed chairs in hematology and oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital,24 which partners with “pharmaceutical, biotech, venture capital and philanthropic communities.”

  • The Ford Foundation,25 which in June 2014 made a two-year, $800,000 grant toward a new cross-platform Enterprise Journalism Group within Frontline “that will deepen the series’ in-house investigative bench.” By 2014, the Ford Foundation had given nearly $20 million to WGBH (PBS) over a 55-year period. The Ford Foundation has a long history of funding global projects that include vaccines.

More Frontline Funders With Drug and Vaccine Ties

Frontline also receives funding from:

  • The Park Foundation:26 “a longstanding series funder.” In 2004, the Park Foundation also funded the Pan American Health Organization book project: “Vaccines: Preventing Diseases and Protecting Health.”
  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded Frontline in the past, especially “major funding” for the 2010 to 2011 broadcast season.27 In 2014, Gates was taken to task for its massive funding of NPR, Frontline, PBS NewsHour and Teaching Channel.28 Questions were raised as to whether impartial reporting was really possible in light of Gates’ massive influence. In 2012, Frontline again announced that it is partially funded by the Gates Foundation.29
  • The Tow Foundation,30 which co-funded a joint three-year fellowship program between Frontline and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.31 Columbia University receives a lot of money for drug research. The Tow Foundation was recently recognized by Inside Philanthropy for making “very large contributions” to various “pet projects of the TOW family,” including medical research.32

All of these groups have links, both major and minor, to drug companies and vaccine research and support. So how can Frontline claim non-biased, non-slanted, independent journalism when their bread is being buttered by a list of foundations that have a history of funding and supporting the drug paradigm?

Like It or Not, PBS, Frontline and CBC Are Bedfellows in This Debacle

Moreover, no matter how “accidental” or “random” the junk food ad featuring Cheez-Its (made with vitamin enriched flour) and Dr. Pepper (soda is a major cause of our obesity epidemic) right before the show might have been, the show featured a food ad that is harmful to health. And I don’t think it’s “nonsense” to point out just how hypocritical that came across.33 The effect was quite striking!

It’s impossible to view it without getting the idea that Cheez-Its and soda are good while supplements are bad. And I question whether that combination was entirely accidental.

Frontline also complained that it was “unfair” to link their show to the CBC’s shoddy hit piece on supplements, calling it an “attempt to tarnish our work by erroneously linking it to an entirely different program at the CBC.” Any rational viewer will clearly see this link is not in error. PBS partnered with CBC to create this Frontline program.

All three are linked through this partnership. Frontline wants you to believe it is an independent agent, with no financial ties to anyone, not even PBS. This simply fails to line up with reality, especially when the program fails to prominently disclose its funding sources. This atrocious lack of transparency leaves no other rational conclusion other than it’s a massive conflict of interest that endangers the “public” while accepting money from some of the worst multinational corporations on the planet.

You CAN Make a Difference! Write Your Local PBS Station Now

Since PBS is a public broadcasting station, they should publicly disclose their financing. PBS and Frontline, which have had an exemplary track record of providing fair and balanced reporting in the past, utterly failed to do so in this instance. For some reason, they partnered with CBC, which for the past year has been running an organized campaign against supplements, and this bias was clearly revealed in this “Supplements and Safety” episode.

This kind of biased (and inaccurate) reporting is unacceptable. If you agree, I urge you to write your local PBS station with a strong message of your dissatisfaction with their programming and clear collusion with industry.

You can also contact PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, whose job it is to perform independent reviews of PBS programming to ensure it stands up to journalistic standards and integrity. You can contact him by clicking the “Send an E-mail” on the PBS Ombudsman’s webpage, or call him at (703)-739-5290.

Following are some suggested talking points:

  • Any and all potential conflicts of interest of experts interviewed should be disclosed
  • PBS corporate funding for programming should be publicly disclosed
  • Supplements cannot be accurately portrayed as “unregulated,” since they are regulated by the FDA under DSHEA, the FTC, and Current Best Manufacturing Processes. This is grossly negligent and endangers the public into further vitamin deficiencies (at least two out of every three people are deficient in vitamin D alone)

CBD Now Considered an Unapproved New Drug

The drug industry wants supplements to be regulated as drugs, and this is why such efforts are put into making you think the supplement industry is unregulated, even though it’s not true. Here’s an interesting example of what happens when a simple plant extract becomes a drug.

According to the FDA, once a drug company files an Investigational New Drug (IND) application34 for a supplement, it suddenly becomes a drug, and no one can market it as a supplement going forward — unless the substance has a history of being marketed as a supplement that precedes the IND. In the case of cannabidiol (CBD), the FDA claims a drug company was first on the scene.

British drug company GW Pharmaceuticals gained IND status on a CBD product in 2007, and eight CBD supplement manufacturers were recently issued warning letters35,36 from the FDA for marketing “unapproved new drugs.”

CBD shows massive potential in the treatment of seizures, and you can be assured the price difference to families for the same product — a CBD supplement versus a CBD drug — will be exorbitant. It’s going to be a boondoggle for big pharma that might even make Martin Shrekli37 proud!

Continue reading here…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.