Before Michigan parents can exercise their legal right to a vaccine exemption for their children, the state now requires them to answer a questionnaire about their personal beliefs, rating whether they “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” that vaccines are safe, important, and effective, The Federalist revealed. The mandatory online course, developed by University of Michigan professor Michael Rubyan and roughly 40 public health nurses, presents these three statements at the start and again at the end. What the state measures as “learning” is functionally indistinguishable from measuring whether a parent’s views have shifted toward agreement with the government’s position. There is no option for parents to decline answering. No “that is not the state’s business” button exists. The only available responses run from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” to “do not know,” which still constitutes a recorded answer about one’s state of mind. Parents receive no explanation of where their attitudinal data goes or who reviews it. The compelled-speech problem is obvious enough that parents can see it without legal training. But the deeper issue may be that Michigan’s own law never authorized any of this. The state’s vaccine exemption statute dates to 1978. Under MCL 333.9215(2), a child is exempt when a parent “presents a written statement to the administrator of the child’s school … to the effect that the requirements of this part cannot be met because of religious convictions or other objection to immunization.” That’s the complete legal test: a written statement delivered to the school. The legislature deliberately wrote “or other objection,” declining to probe what the objection is, whether it’s sincere, or whether the state considers it valid. One quiz question asks what a parent named Maria must do to obtain a valid waiver. Among the options: “Fill out and sign a waiver form at home and send it to the school.” That describes exactly what the 1978 statute requires. The course marks it incorrect. The “correct” answer: “Attend a vaccine education session and get a waiver from the local health department.” The post Michigan Forces Parents to Declare Their Vaccine Beliefs  appeared first on American Faith.

ANH founder Rob Verkerk explains why outdated food-drug definitions restrict consumer access to natural health options—and how a more proportionate system could better protect both choice and safety. Listen to the audio version of this article: The following is a transcript of an interview with Rob Verkerk, PhD, and ANH-USA’s Editorial Director, Michael Ames-Sikora. Today I’m speaking with ANH founder and executive director Rob Verkerk about Beyond Binary Food-Drug Definitions: A Case for US and EU Modernization. Accepted for publication on July 20, 2026, and expected to appear in spring 2027, the paper was written by Rob as lead author and principal investigator, ANH legal researcher Chimnonso Onyekwelu, and our general counsel, Jonathan W. Emord—the “FDA Dragon Slayer,” who holds the record for the most legal victories against the agency. At its heart, the paper asks whether laws that force products into either a food or drug category still make sense when modern science shows that foods and natural compounds can have meaningful effects on health. In the conversation that follows, Rob and I discuss the paper’s key ideas, what they mean for consumers, and how we can build a better regulatory system. Mike Ames-Sikora: Rob, you’re the founder and executive director of ANH. What made you want to tackle the way foods and drugs are defined? Rob Verkerk: Mike, it’s really been over 25 years that I have seen that definitions are the mechanisms that Big Pharma and Big Food use to control what you can buy, what you can say. Particularly in the drug area, the drug definition controls the therapeutic space. It also really impacts what someone can buy, what you can be told about a product, and also whether or not it’s going to actually be found in a practitioner’s toolkit. Ames-Sikora: Your paper argues that the law draws on increasingly artificial lines between foods and drugs. Why should anyone outside the legal profession care? And why should the average consumer care? Verkerk: Well, our paper goes back over 100 years, looking at 18 different jurisdictions around the world, but focuses especially on the US and the European system. And when you take that kind of bird’s-eye view of what has been going on for over a century, you see that the initial justification for having regulation around foods and drugs was extremely laudable. It was very well-meaning. It really was about protecting consumers from dangerous goods, mis-sold goods, mislabeled goods, and whether they were drugs or of foods. What you see over the passage of time is this sleight of hand in which essentially the definitions have now become mechanisms to control specific categories of products for the benefit of those corporations. So we now have a rather ridiculous situation where essentially foods and drugs, fast foods, and ultra-processed foods are amongst the most dangerous foods that we consume, yet they’re perfectly legal. They fit those definitions. They can be unsafe. And we’ve got a situation where drugs that are licensed, that can carry claims like safe and effective, are amongst the leading causes of death in industrialized societies. Peter Gøtzsche’s work suggests that the that drugs may in fact be the 3rd leading cause of death in industrialized societies like the US or Europe. Ames-Sikora: Yeah, and my understanding of that statistic too is that these are not abused drugs. These are properly prescribed medications that are used as intended. Verkerk: 100%. Yeah, properly prescribed medications. The 3rd or 4th leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Ames-Sikora: So you argue that these definitions can protect the pharmaceutical industry’s hold on the therapeutic market. How does that work? Verkerk: Essentially, if you want to make any kind of disease treatment, disease prevention claim, you have to be channeled down the drug pathway. So it doesn’t matter how much science you’ve got to show that turmeric or rosemary or black cohosh, name any botanical or nutrient out there, it doesn’t matter how much science says this might reduce your risk of disease, you are disallowed from making that claim. Yet if you’ve gone through the drug pathway, you’ve essentially paid to play in order to get your license. You can shout your claim from the rooftop. And in fact, what’s even more interesting, you can shout claims that the science that got you the license never made at all, given that you can also make off-label claims. So generally speaking, drug companies will get a specific claim, that’s their pay-to-play license, but then medical doctors will often use the products off-label. Now, if you’re selling a nutrient, even if it has similar effects, even if the science is comparable, even if the science is stronger than the drug with little or no side effects, you cannot make the claim because you cannot discuss the product in any way in relation to the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease. Ames-Sikora: Yeah, we saw this with the cherry and walnut growers. I remember covering that for ANH over the years. So what does this mean for prevention and for people who already live with chronic disease? Verkerk: Well, the biggest problem is that it means they can’t get the products that are most likely to be effective. The reality is that if we talk about prevention, primary prevention is actually trying to stop a disease happening in the first place. And we know the science around primary prevention is primarily around non-pharmaceutical interventions. So things like getting people to eat the right food at the right time in the right place in the right way, getting people to move in the right way or to respond to stress in a way that doesn’t harm them, or to spend less time sitting. These are all non-pharmaceutical interventions, and there’s very, very good science around them. Yet what’s happened is that the primary prevention space increasingly is dominated by pharmaceutical interests. So, you know, the use of vaccines to prevent disease, putting people on lifelong drug use, for the use of statins amongst those over 50, for example, which is a fantastic money spinner if you’re a statin manufacturer. The evidence is relatively weak in the sense that it doesn’t work for everyone, and for some people the side effects can be atrocious. Yet that’s viewed as a standard approach, either as primary or secondary prevention. So if you look at the incredible science that shows how micronutrients and botanical substances and other substances taken from nature’s treasure trove can be used to bring our body into balance–let’s remember that it’s not usually the drug or even the botanical, the nutrient that itself is creating the shift. What it does is change the environment or the pathway in order to allow the body to self-heal. We sometimes forget how much work our body, our immune system, our neurological system, our endocrine system is doing to get things back into order. And that’s one of the ways in which non-pharmaceutical interventions can be really, really critical for prevention. for lifelong prevention that would have a massive impact on reducing chronic and degenerative disease. But these definitions prevent anyone from talking about it, so it doesn’t find its way into the mainstream approach or vocabulary. Ames-Sikora: What has modern nutrition science revealed that these legal categories struggle to accommodate? Verkerk: Well, nutrition science has moved on a great deal. That’s one of our primary arguments in the paper, that essentially there’s a whole catalogue of science that shows that nutrients can have a profound effect on disease. Governments recognize this. Mike, you’ll know in our FDA Modernization Act challenge that is running currently, where basically we presented the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services with over 100 different nutrient disease claims that government agencies themselves are making. There’s a specific clause in the FDA Modernization Act that was written by none other than Jonathan Emord in the 1990s that basically said, look, you’ve reserved any kind of disease claim to the category of drugs. But because there are nutrients out there, how about a system that if you, as the authoritative agency, determines that the science says that there is a nutrient-disease relationship, then everyone can use that. That would avoid companies having to do lots of research on nutrients and disease, and then at the end of that, possibly after having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, to be told, sorry guys, you’re a drug, you can’t sell the product. So this is a fantastic pathway. Now there are— we found over 400 of these claims that the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Office of Dietary Supplements, the CDC, even the FDA are making. And we presented these to the HHS and said, look, we believe that these should be able to be used as authoritative statements under the clause in the FDA Modernization Act. And they’ve said, sorry, we have a little disclaimer that says these cannot be regarded as authoritative statements under the FDA Modernization Act. So it’s a crazy situation that says we are authorities that are making authoritative statements, but in this case, we’re not going to regard these as authoritative statements. So at the moment, they’re making none. And there’s still censorship of any nutrient disease claims. So we’ve got to push that particular roadblock over. Ames-Sikora: You know, Rob, critics might hear this and assume that you’re calling for less regulation, which could expose them to unsafe supplements or even false hope. How would your proposed approach continue to protect consumers from unsafe products and exaggerated claims? Verkerk: Well, basically, you’ve got to match the regulatory burden to the risk and the strength of the claim to the evidence. So there’s nothing that we’re doing in terms of modernizing definitions. That’s what we’re proposing—the definitions now are outdated and they don’t match the rapid development of nutritional science and health sciences. So essentially, what we would argue is that there is no additional risk at all. In fact, quite the reverse. It would reduce the risk because more people would be encouraged to take safer products that would essentially have a big impact on reducing their health risks, as well as ensuring that that there are adequate regulations already available that prevent companies from selling unsafe products. So yeah, unfortunately, that argument doesn’t hold a lot of water. And I think another part of our argument generally around some of the other initiatives that we have is that there’s always going to be a degree of uncertainty around any claim. And we strongly advocate this idea of communicating the amount of uncertainty clearly. And of course, Jonathan Emord was central in developing the qualified health claim regimen in the United States, and that’s what it’s all about.So it’s about accurate communication of the science, and at the moment the definitions prevent that. Ames-Sikora: What would a more sensible system look like? And if policymakers adopted one central recommendation from your paper, what should it be? Verkerk: It should be: modernize the definitions. We need to see the food definition broadened. We’ve known since the time of Hippocrates that foods can have medicinal effects. There is copious amounts of evidence for that. And of course, the drug definition massively overlaps the food definition with the exception of very specific exemptions. So the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act obviously gives an exemption for dietary supplements to make structure-function claims, but they cannot in any way relate to disease. Now, we need to have a system that allows claims about effects that will also be related to disease, but the system needs to be about proportionality. So you need proportionate assessment and not just an automatic push for products that are therapeutic in action to only be forced down the drug pathway. Ames-Sikora: Well, great. Well, I look forward to seeing this paper finally see the light of day and for it to get a reaction from the public and the scientific community. Verkerk: Yes. In essence, Mike, what the paper is about is laying down the intellectual academic foundation for why we need to change definitions. You’re going to be very involved, as I am, as all of us will be, in the advocacy program that actually works with Congress and with senators in order to change these definitions. And the interesting thing, we’ve done a lot of work in terms of what modifications may need to be made to bring them in line with the science. And it doesn’t involve a complete rewrite of the definitions. In fact, sometimes it involves only very small changes, but they can have profound effects, and they will work for millions of Americans. And that’s the solution. ANH-USA will launch a major advocacy program once the paper is published—and we’ll be looking for your support to push through amendments to various food and drug related definitions. Stay tuned!The post Who Decides What Counts as Medicine? Rob Verkerk Explains How to Fix the Food-Drug Divide first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Prescriptions of GLP-1 drugs to children under 12 are rising at extraordinary speed. Are we turning a childhood health crisis into a lifetime pharmaceutical market? Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE A national study found that 20,282 US children ages 8–11 with obesity but not diabetes received a GLP-1 prescription between 2019 and June 2026—a 310-fold increase. Wegovy’s safety and effectiveness for weight reduction have not been established in children under 12, and its adolescent evidence rests largely on one 68-week trial. New pancreatitis and vision warnings, together with surging FDA adverse-event reports, reinforce the need for stronger long-term surveillance. The GLP-1 boom is moving into the elementary-school years. A new Pediatrics study examined more than 3.5 million children ages 8–11 with obesity but not diabetes. Researchers found that 20,282 received prescriptions for drugs such as Saxenda, Wegovy, and Zepbound between 2019 and June 2026, representing 310-fold increase. Use remained uncommon overall—about 0.6 percent—and nearly 94 percent of recipients had severe obesity. These children are not simply seeking a cosmetic shortcut. They face a genuine health crisis and deserve a pathway to good health. But recognizing the problem does not require accepting the pharmaceutical industry’s preferred answer: placing ever-younger children on drugs that may need to be continued indefinitely while the conditions making them sick remain largely untouched. Prescribing Is Racing Ahead of the Evidence GLP-1 drugs can produce substantial weight loss and improve metabolic markers. For some high-risk patients, the benefits may be significant. The concern is the widening gap between adoption and long-term safety evidence. Wegovy’s current US label states that safety and effectiveness for weight reduction have not been established below age 12. Its approval for those over the age of 12 rests largely on a 68-week trial of just 201 patients—hardly conclusive evidence against the possibility of exposure lasting decades. Adverse effects were also common. In the trial, 62 percent of treated adolescents reported gastrointestinal reactions, compared with 42 percent receiving placebo. Nausea affected 42 percent and vomiting 36 percent. More than half experienced a maximum heart-rate increase of at least 20 beats per minute. New Safety Warnings And regulators continue to identify new risks. In January 2026, the UK medicines regulator strengthened class-wide pancreatitis warnings after receiving 1,296 reports, including 24 cases of necrotizing pancreatitis and 19 fatal reports. Vision concerns have also arisen. The European Medicines Agency concluded that non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION—a condition that can cause sudden vision loss—is a very rare side effect of semaglutide. In July 2026, Australia added class-wide warnings for this potentially blinding condition. Preliminary research presented at the 2026 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons found that, at five years, GLP-1 users had higher recorded rates of osteoporosis and gout. This was an observational conference study, so more research is needed to confirm this concerning safety signal. What we see in the news tells a different story of side effects. We hear about an ever-expanding list of the benefits of GLP-1 agonists. They improve heart health, protect your kidney, liver, and joints, give you better sleep, boost brain health—and maybe even slow aging. Nearly 300,000 FDA Cases But there is a story to be told about the harmful effects of these drugs. At ANH-USA, we reviewed the FDA adverse-event database for semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide. The search returned 295,785 cases. Annual reports rose fifteen-fold between 2021 and 2025, from 5,451 to 82,419. Nearly 82 percent were received from 2023 onward, and gastrointestinal disorders appeared in roughly one-third. These reports do not prove causation or reveal how frequently adverse events occur. The FDA warns that its system includes duplicate, incomplete, and unverified reports, while rising drug use also drives reporting. But the steep increase still demands stronger surveillance and better age-specific data—particularly when these drugs are moving toward younger patients. A Lifetime-Treatment Model GLP-1 drugs suppress appetite and slow gastric emptying while they are taken; they do not repair the food environment or build lasting metabolic resilience. A 2025 meta-analysis found significant weight regain beginning eight weeks after anti-obesity drugs were discontinued. That creates a dependency problem: a prescription in childhood can become an implicit proposal for years or decades of treatment. These drugs may have a role for selected high-risk patients, but they cannot substitute for prevention. America cannot inject its way out of a broken food system, sedentary living, and collapsing metabolic health. The 310-fold prescribing increase is a warning—not about the children, but about the direction of our healthcare system. People taking a GLP-1 medicine should not stop or change treatment without consulting a qualified healthcare professional. Please share this article widely in your networks. The post The GLP-1 Generation: Are We Medicating Childhood Obesity Instead of Preventing It? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A pending FDA guidance on new dietary ingredients underscores why the agency’s GRAS overhaul could determine which natural products reach market—and which are eliminated. Action Alert! Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE FDA guidance addressing the identity and safety evidence required for new dietary ingredients is undergoing White House review. GRAS determinations and new dietary ingredient notifications are closely connected, underscoring why GRAS reform has such a major impact on the supplement industry. FDA must increase transparency without creating regulatory burdens, suppressing innovation, and reducing consumer access. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is scheduled to release another set of guidance documents that will control how innovative dietary ingredients reach the market. A guidance titled New Dietary Ingredient Notifications and Related Issues; Identity and Safety Information About the NDI has been under review at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs since June 2, 2026. The guidance is not yet public, so we don’t know the details. But its title suggests that FDA will address the evidence companies should provide to establish a new dietary ingredient’s identity and demonstrate safety. We’re concerned these standards could significantly affect consumer access to a large swath of supplements. The NDI Bottleneck Under federal law, a “new dietary ingredient,” or NDI, is generally an ingredient that was not marketed as a dietary supplement in the United States before October 15, 1994. Unless an exception applies, a company must notify FDA at least 75 days before marketing a supplement containing an NDI and provide evidence that the product can reasonably be expected to be safe. The danger we’ve been calling out all along with regard to the NDI guidance is that the FDA is trying to turn what is meant to be a pre-market notification system into a de facto pre-market approval system. When companies can’t meet what will likely be absurd safety requirements the FDA demands, consumers will lose out on products that can support health. We’ve outlined the many problems with the NDI guidance elsewhere. Why GRAS Matters to Supplements GRAS stands for “Generally Recognized as Safe.” Although primarily a food pathway, it can also provide a route for supplement ingredients. The GRAS and NDI pathways are connected. An NDI generally does not require a notification if it has been used in the conventional food supply as a lawful food ingredient—including a GRAS substance—and will be used in the supplement without chemical alteration. For example, imagine a beneficial plant extract is first used in a nutrition drink after being determined to be GRAS. If the same extract is later sold in a capsule without being chemically altered, the company generally would not need to file a separate NDI notification. This pathway helps turn promising food ingredients into convenient supplements. We know that many companies make use of the GRAS pathway instead of the NDI pathway because in practice they get less pushback from the FDA. One analysis found the FDA deemed approximately 30 percent of NDI submissions as favorable, whereas the agency viewed 75 percent of GRAS notifications as favorable. This is all to say that changes to the GRAS system could make that route more difficult and expensive—and that is exactly what is happening. FDA has now proposed requiring companies to notify the agency whenever they conclude that a substance is GRAS. As we explained in our previous coverage and our white paper, ending undisclosed self-GRAS determinations would provide welcome transparency. But FDA estimates that a full GRAS notice takes approximately 180 hours to prepare. Its proposal also retains an outdated exception focused on natural ingredients consumed before 1958 and processed using methods conventional at that time. This could subject modern extracts, standardized botanicals, concentrates, and fermented ingredients to burdens designed for genuinely novel substances. And that’s the major problem with the proposed rule: it treats safe, natural, healthy substances the same as novel ingredients. There is no nuance, just heaps of bureaucratic red tape that will take away your supplements. If FDA simultaneously tightens NDI evidence requirements and makes the GRAS pathway more difficult, responsible innovators could be trapped between two costly regulatory routes. Consumers could face fewer products, higher prices, and a market dominated by companies able to absorb those costs. The final GRAS rule should create a lower-burden pathway for ingredients with at least 30 years of credible safe use, recognize appropriate modern processing methods, and protect timely filers from FDA delays. The public has until December 9, 2026, to comment on the proposed GRAS rule. We are in the process of preparing our substantive comments to the agency. If you haven’t already, leave your own message on the official GRAS docket telling the FDA to adopt risk-based GRAS reforms that protect transparency, natural-product innovation, and consumer choice. Action Alert! The post GRAS/NDI Double Trouble for Your Supplement Access first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A major hospital in New York City, Mount Sinai, will stop offering sex transition surgeries to children upon entering into an agreement with the Trump administration. The hospital will also pay a penalty and set aside $2 million for a fund offering medical care to those suffering from the consequences of “gender-affirming care.” “The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable medical providers that violate federal law and endanger children through so-called gender-affirming care,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “This agreement puts an end to these practices at Mount Sinai and provides meaningful relief for individuals who have already suffered harm.” “A growing number of hospitals, like Mount Sinai, have recognized the medical scandal of sex-rejecting procedures,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate. “While we are grateful when we secure resolutions to end this discredited practice and protect children, we must not and will not rest in our pursuit of justice for the victims it has left behind.” The Trump administration has taken numerous efforts to protect children from gender mutilation. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a peer-reviewed report exposing the dangers posed to children from efforts to change their biological sex. The report found that the harms of “gender-affirming” care are “significant, long term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked,” HHS said. The report concludes that “many U.S. medical professionals and associations have fallen short of their duty to prioritize the health interests of young patients” and listed specific criticisms against health professionals that fueled the dangers of gender-affirmation. The post Major Hospital Ends Child Transitions appeared first on American Faith.