“In the year 1215, in England, the Noblemen got tired of King John’s arbitrary, tyrannical rule and they forced him at the point of a sword to sign the Magna Carta. He conceded certain rights of the people such as the right to trial by jury. Why did the Noblemen rebel? Because King John was so arrogant that he would proclaim–‘The law is in my mouth’– whatever he said was the law.” Nancy Lord, M.D., J.D., Attorney for Rodger Sless–at his trial in federal court in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
On June 17, 1994–779 years after King John was forced to give his subjects the right to a jury trial–Rodger Sless was cleared by a jury in New Mexico of 15 criminal charges brought against him by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)–a modern-day version of the tyrannical rulers of the past.
At Rodger’s trial, Nancy Lord used King John’s arrogant phrase–“The law is in my mouth” as a sword to slay the FDA. The central theme of Nancy’s defense was that Rodger is an innocent victim of an agency that rules by “the sword” rather than by law, and that–by setting Rodger free–they could strike a telling blow for freedom and justice in this country.
The Jury’s Decision
The FDA had accused Rodger of “introducing an unapproved new drug into interstate commerce” and fourteen other related criminal counts–all but one a felony–through his company, Tierra Marketing. The “drug” is Gerovital-H3 (GH3)–the legendary procaine-based Romanian “youth” formula that’s been used with satisfaction by tens of millions of people throughout the world for decades.
Rodger’s defense team–which included New Mexico attorney Richard Utman, Jr.–argued that GH3 is not a drug, that the FDA had acted arbitrarily, unfairly, and in violation of its own procedures, and that the FDA is “out-to-get” those who offer alternatives to FDA-approved drugs.
After hearing Nancy Lord’s impassioned plea to stand tall against the FDA…an agency, she said, “that has spun so completely out of control…that they are now…a band of armed terrorists,” the jury decided to set Rodger Sless free. After four days of deliberation, the jury acquitted Rodger on 11 of 15 counts and were deadlocked on the other four, with only one of the twelve jurors voting to convict on these counts.
A Terrorist Attack
For Rodger Sless, the nightmare began on April 8, 1993, when he was suddenly confronted by five armed agents from three federal agencies–the FDA, Customs, and the Postal Service–who stormed his warehouse from three unmarked cars. “PUT YOUR HANDS UP” they shouted, pointing their loaded, cocked guns at Rodger and his employees, who had no way of knowing whether they were about to be killed or arrested!
Instead they were just terrorized and traumatized, as they watched the tough-looking “G-men” seize virtually everything in sight–Rodger’s products, his records, and his equipment–including his computer.
Rodger had been warned about such raids by past victims of FDA terrorism. He’d been told that the FDA never gives their targets any warning, and that the raids are arbitrary and capricious. He had even tried to protect himself by using mailing addresses other than his warehouse. But he underestimated the FDA’s ability to nail its targets, the brutality of the agency’s tactics, and the psychological impact of being hit unexpectedly by government storm-troupers.
Rodger found it hard to believe that his government would treat him like a gangster for selling a safe-and-effective product that gave his customers such satisfaction. He simply couldn’t fathom why the FDA would assault him so brutally, when GH-3 is sold openly in Nevada and in healthfood stores throughout the nation. In short, he simply couldn’t believe that an agency of the United States government could have so little regard for the law, for the constitution, or for the welfare of the American people.
Recipe For Terrorism
The FDA’s recipe for terrorism is to refuse to tell its “subjects” what its standards are. The FDA refuses to be pinned down on anything. It won’t say what it will permit and what it will not permit. What it considers right or what it considers wrong. When it will take police action and when it will not. When it will throw people into prison or when it will invite them in for a friendly chat.
The FDA keeps Americans in a permanent state of uncertainty about the rules of the game. This enables the FDA to have total discretion–subject to change at any time–in enforcing “the law”. It enables the FDA to throw some people into prison for doing what it allows others to do with impunity. It allows the FDA to ban products as “unapproved new drugs” or “food additives” or to claim that they are “illegal” or “dangerous” whenever it wishes to. In short, it enables the FDA to do anything it wants to do without being accountable to anyone!
The result is the society envisioned by Franz Kafka in his chilling novels The Trial and The Castle. A world in which innocent people are accused, judged, and punished by unseen rulers for “crimes” against no one. Americans never know when they are violating FDA policy, whether they’ll be subject to FDA police action, or what that action will be. Those who openly challenge the agency, live in constant fear of its wrath–wondering if and when the FDA’s blood-drenched axe will fall on them.
A Raid Without Notice
One reason the jury set Rodger free was their rejection of the FDA’s illegal actions. They learned that the FDA’s raid of Rodger’s company had taken place without any official action to determine whether or not GH3 is a drug. No notice had ever been placed in the Federal Register, no comment requested from the public, no hearing ever held. At trial, the government could not produce a single note or telephone message to document the decision. In fact, there was no decision made. The FDA raided first and looked for violation of the law later.
The FDA tried to persuade the jury that they raided Rodger Sless without notice because of the “dangers” of GH3, but found it difficult to do so for the following reasons:
- 1) None of Rodger’s GH3 customers had been harmed;
- 2) GH3 has been sold over-the-counter in Nevada since the 1970s without adverse side affects.
- 3) GH3 had been sold under-the-counter in healthfood stores throughout the U.S. for years without danger.
- 4) GH3 has been used safety by tens of millions of people throughout the world for decades.
GH3’s remarkable safety record was presented to the jury by two expert witnesses–Joan Priestly, M.D., a physician associated with Citizens For Health, who has been successful in treating AIDS patients with nutrients; and Mary Ruwart, Ph.D., a pharmacologist who works at the Upjohn Company. When questioned under oath, even the FDA’s expert witnesses had to admit that the agency has no evidence that GH-3 is “dangerous”.
Is It Even A Drug?
The FDA, which assumes that whatever it says must be accepted (“The law is in my mouth”), assumed that the jury would accept its assertion that GH3 is an “unapproved new drug”, but this assertion was challenged by the defense which insisted that GH3 is, in fact, a “vitamin, not a drug”. Their contention was supported by the expert testimony of Drs. Priestly and Ruwart, who pointed out that GH3 is not plain procaine, but a buffered form of the compound with a low pH, and that the metabolites of GH3–PABA and DEAE are “vitamins that form the building blocks for folic acid and choline.”
They explained further that Rodger promoted GH3 as a means of giving people a greater sense of well being as they grow older. Since aging is not a disease, and improving one’s health is not a means of treating or preventing diseases, the defense argued that GH3 is not a “drug” and that its sale was not under the FDA’s jurisdiction. As Nancy Lord put it, if Rodger’s sale of GH3 was a crime, then “eating cereal for fiber with prunes for constipation and milk for calcium every morning would make you a drug addict!”
The Jury’s Fear Of The FDA
The defense persuaded the jury that they have far more to fear from the FDA than from Rodger Sless. As the trial went on, the jury began to understand that the FDA’s desire to regulate every health product on the market, and the illegal methods it uses to wipe out alternatives to FDA-approved drugs, is a terrible threat to the availability of nutrients, herbs, and other such products.
The jury’s fear of the FDA was fueled by testimony from the FDA’s Acting Deputy Director, Dr. Dan Spyker, who was questioned about a scientific paper he had written about the dangers of chili pepper. When asked if the FDA was planning to outlaw chili pepper, he replied that capsicum, the main ingredient of chili pepper, was already a prescription drug. This didn’t go over very well in an area where chili pepper is a very popular item.
The jury soon realized that if they thought they could get away with it, the FDA would ban (or force people to get a doctor’s prescription) for almost anything–Italian Salami, French Bread, Costa Rican bananas–perhaps even water and air. According to the FDA’s “logic”, both uncontaminated water and clean air are “unapproved new drugs” if promoted as a means of improving health. The idea of banning air and water is no joke. When bottled water was introduced to Americans, the FDA did ban it and tried to imprison its promoters because they said it was “better” than tap water.
The FDA uses terrorist tactics against those who threaten the medical establishment to “set an example” for anyone considering wandering “off the beaten path”. The jury acquitted Rodger Sless to show the FDA that honest, patriotic Americans will not stand for the fraud, deceit, and abuse being perpetrated by the agency. The jury’s message to the FDA was simple: “We know you want to gain more control over our lives and we aren’t going to let you!”
This sentiment was expressed by one of the jurors, Tania Chavez, when she was interviewed after the trial by the Albuquerque Journal. Ms Chavez said that the jurors “‘…worried that so much a part of our lives is going to be cut out.’ She said she buys herbal cough drops and medicinal teas that are plastered with FDA warnings. And she says she knows people who use curanderas, or traditional healers, and feared she might need to use one someday and be prevented by the FDA.”
The FDA’s Deceit
The FDA’s “criminal” charges against Rodger Sless illustrate another aspect of the agency’s deceit. In addition to being charged with selling GH3 (which he did sell), Rodger also was charged with selling two products that the FDA was very well aware he was not selling–Deprenyl and “counterfeit” Retin-A. The FDA charged him with the “crime” of selling Deprenyl when all they found was a small supply of the drug for his own personal use.
In the case of the “counterfeit” Retin-A charge, Rodger was selling a vitamin cream that was significantly different from Retin-A. The absurdity of the FDA’s charge was made clear by Nancy Lord in her closing argument. As Nancy put it in response to FDA attorney Gerald Kell: “Counterfeiting means imitation. It means fooling people. We’ve all seen knock-off designer clothes and perfume.” Nancy then held up a jar of the Vitamin A cream Rodger had been selling and a tube of Retin-A and said: “Does this jar look so much like this tube that the customer would be confused? All Mr. Kell could point out was that the tube is red and the jar is pink. If you can tell the difference between this jar labeled Vitamin A cream and this tube labeled Retin-A, then Rodger Sless is an innocent man!”
The Need For Fourth Amendment Protection
When media pundits were debating whether the evidence the police found at O.J. Simpson’s house should be suppressed because the police went in without a search warrant, several of them suggested that, perhaps, we don’t need fourth amendment protection any more. “After all, the fourth amendment was intended to protect us against illegal searches by British troups,” they said, “perhaps we don’t need that kind of protection today?”
The truth, however, is that we need fourth amendment protection far more today than in the 18th century. While it’s true that the revolutionary war was fought, in part, because British soldiers sometimes forcibly entered the homes of colonists without search warrants, there were relatively few British soldiers in the colonies at the time and considerable resistance to their actions.
Today in the United States, on the other hand, we have a powerful government that dwarfs the limited presence of the British in the 18th century. Today we not only have the government agents who forcibly enter private establishments without search warrants, we have something worse: a court system in which it is relatively easy for the government to persuade judges to give them search warrants, and a citizenry that largely supports illegal search-and-seizures. The fact that the FDA routinely terrorizes Americans is evidence of our need for real fourth amendment protection! The Fully Informed Jury
While the jury was being informed by the defense attorneys about the FDA’s terrorizing of Americans, they were handed leaflets outside the court-house by members of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) to inform them of their rights. They learned that, as jurors, they had the right to vote their conscience, regardless of what the law says. Their right to overrule unjust laws, or unjust federal agencies, is the last bastion of defense against a corrupt or immoral government. That they had the right to acquit Rodger Sless if they were convinced of his innocence–regardless of what they were told about the law, or about the authority of the FDA. A Prophetic Warning
By the time the trial was over, the jury was well aware of how threatened we are by government interference with our lives. In her closing speech, Nancy Lord took them back to revolutionary times, when even strong federalists–such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison–never dreamed that the government would ever attempt to take away freedom of choice in healthcare. As she put it:
“The idea of government control of medicine occurred to two people–Benjamin Rush, George Washington’s personal doctor, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson. Benjamin Rush warned that: ‘Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship…to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic…The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom’…But in spite of Dr. Rush’s prophetic warning, the right to freedom in our choice of healthcare is not part of the Bill of Rights. The founders never imagined that a trial such as this would ever take place in America. They never thought the federal government would even attempt to control what we keep in our medicine cabinets and kitchen cabinets.” A Telling Blow For Freedom In Healthcare
The victory over the FDA in New Mexico is of monument importance. It is a telling blow for freedom in healthcare at a time when our right to choose is threatened as never before by a medical establishment that wants to dictate what we put into our bodies, and an agency (FDA) that seeks to enforce this dictatorship at the point of a gun! The New Mexico victory proves we can score victories over this dictatorship and indicates that we can, eventually, overthrow it, provided we have the courage and determination to continue to fight for our freedom. Nancy Lord summed it up as follows: “We had a wonderful jury. Four of them joined us for dinner the night the verdict came in. These jurors knew exactly what the FDA’s agenda is and were very disturbed by the trial. The FDA does not have the support of the people in its oppression and tyranny over vitamins and supplements. Will the FDA eventually go the way of alcohol prohibition and the fugitive slave act? Stay tuned.”