Turning Point USA

Have you heard of a medicine called NAC? Well, you should know about it and exactly why our government is doing the dirty work of Big Pharma to have it banned.  

According to the Journal of Risk Management, NAC or N-acetyl cysteine is a derivative of an amino acid that your body uses to create its own master antioxidant. This gives it a wide therapeutic window and a very low likelihood of toxicity. Cursory medical studies have shown that NAC may help prevent colon cancer in people with some types of colon polyps.

NAC is offered as both a low-priced supplement and an inexpensive prescription drug. The prescription was FDA approved in 1963, and the supplement is one of the most popular in the United States. As a supplement, NAC has been successful for liver protection and even to treat hangovers. As a prescription, it has been used by hospitals for decades to treat acetaminophen overdoses. It is also beneficial in treating lung disease.

STOP RIGHT THERE. HARD STOP. FULL STOP. We all know that COVID can manifest as a lung disease. Can NAC treat COVID? Short answer, YES! This isn’t fake news, snake-oil science, or a conspiracy theory. Steven Crowder’s website summarizes the facts extremely well. Here you go:

• NAC was found to reduce the expression of tumor necrosis factor and proinflammatory cytokines, which contribute to the eventual “cytokine storm” seen in severe COVID-19. Sources: Biochemical Pharmacology, Medicine, Frontiers In Immunology
• NAC also specifically scavenges the peroxides released by white blood cells, which cause edema and further lung injury. Source: Free Radic Biol Med
• A portion of COVID patients require a ventilator, which by itself can result in ventilator-associated pneumonia. NAC was found to be useful as a prophylaxis against this form of pneumonia and reduced the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia by about 20%, down from 46.6% to 26.6%. Source: Medical Gas Research
• NAC appears to inhibit the chemical RNA that viruses like COVID need to replicate in host cells. Source: PLOS.
• There’s evidence suggesting that NAC also directly inhibits COVID by binding with a COVID enzyme and interfering with virus replication.
• NAC could potentially serve as an alternative to hydroxychloroquine, which can cause cardiomyopathy and seizures. Source: ChemRxiv
• Right as the FDA decided to ban NAC and threaten anyone who carries it, the treatment was entering into phase 2 of a large-scale clinical trial. Source: Clinical Trials

But WAIT! Don’t waste your money on overpriced gas by rushing to the store, because NAC is nowhere to be found. So, no one can get a cheap, safe, widely-used  antioxidant that can help treat COVID? That makes no sense. 

Here’s what happened. Recently, the FDA fired off warning letters to supplement companies indicating that they are marketing “unapproved” cures for hangovers, which the FDA shockingly calls a “disease.” Some of these products contain NAC. The FDA argues that NAC cannot legally be considered a supplement because it is also approved as a drug. Pursuant to federal law, any substance approved as a drug before it was sold as a supplement cannot be sold as a supplement. All of this means that the status of NAC as a supplement is currently in dispute and it is virtually impossible to find.

According to the Alliance for Natural Health, “A search through the government’s clinical trials database shows considerable interest from the pharmaceutical industry in NAC. There are  currently 17 trials looking at NAC, in both drug and supplement form, in the treatment of COVID . . . Note that NAC drugs are currently available in generic form since it is off-patent, but a company could bring a new branded NAC drug to market if it was proven effective for an additional indication.” 

Essentially, because it is off-patent and generic, NAC is very cheap. According to the Harvard Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, about 90 percent of all new drugs approved by the FDA over the past 30 years are little or no more effective for patients than existing drugs. Then why are new drugs produced? Well, when the old ones go off-patent, meaning generics can be produced, the costs go down and profits are decreased. Therefore, new drugs are made with new patents making them more expensive and more lucrative.

This means BIG BUCKS FOR BIG PHARMA. This also means big losses for people who could potentially use NAC to easily, quickly, effectively treat COVID. This is life or death. This is corruption. The Alliance for Natural Health seems to have it all figured out, “What seems to be occurring here is that the FDA is clearing the market of affordable NAC supplements in an effort to eliminate competition for NAC drugs that could be coming to market in the next few years. This would be another outrageous example of the FDA doing Big Pharma’s dirty work.”

When people say trust the FDA, think twice. They are on the payroll of Big Pharma. In 1992 Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. This allows the FDA to get paid to review fees from drug companies. One would think that the government organization that analyzes potentially deadly drugs should be unbiased and prevented from receiving payments that could be seen as bribes, but they are not. The dangling carrot of money clearly works: median FDA review times have dropped from 27 months in 1993 to 10 months in 2016.

Because of this lucrative relationship, it would not be crazy to assume that the FDA is doing the dirty work of Big Pharma by removing inexpensive NAC supplements from the market to eliminate competition for NAC drugs that could be coming to market in the next few years. If true, this is government corruption at its finest. Keep yourself safe because clearly, the government is not doing so for you.