A Pharmaceutical firm trying to ban Vitamin B5

Part of this series will also give you cause to rethink the reliability of the 'gold standard' double blind placebo trials that the company's hang their 'hats' on.

Anyway, I thought I should share a bit of information with you about a petition organized earlier this year to counter a citizen's petition lodged by a pharmaceutical firm Medicure Pharma to the FDA. The objective of this petition is to ban the active form of Vitamin B6 called pyridoxal-5'-phosphate. The reason submitted by Medicure Pharma? I quote:

"Pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs must be protected from companies that may seek to market the ingredients in those drugs as dietary supplements..."

"The marketing of such products has the potential to undermine the incentive for the development of new drugs because many people may choose to purchase the supplements rather than the drugs."

The reality is that this form of Vitamin B6 is the natural form and has been available in food since we humans first walked the earth. I accept that it is not common in supplements because it is much more expensive than the 'normal' form of B6, but we have been using it for years as it is MUCH more effective. The body has to convert the common form of Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) to the active form pyridoxal-5′-phosphate. However, many people cannot effectively make the conversion which is why we use it.

You may think that is OK... if this form is banned we can always revert back to the 'pyridoxine' and get our Vitamin B6 that way even though it is not as effective.  But... hang on... that may not be possible either because the 'pyridoxine' converts in the body to pyridoxal-5′-phosphate (although not very effectively) so the Pharma company will put forward as part of their argument that ALL forms of B6 should be banned because some of it ends up in the body similar to the drug that they are trying to develop.

In my view the efforts that this company is making to ban Vitamin B6 is scandalous and they should not succeed.

If you would like to know more about this and perhaps actively do something about it, I would suggest that you go to the website at 'Alliance for Natural Health' and learn more by clicking here (Article: Action Alert: Natural, Bioavailable Forms of B6 in Peril!)