fda exposed

FDA EXPOSED


NOVEMBER 24, 2004. Dr. David Graham, associate director of the FDA office that oversees drug safety AFTER drugs are on the market, has been testifying before Congress in the wake of the Vioxx scandal.

Graham is making several points: the FDA is not equipped to prevent another Vioxx-type disaster; once a drug is approved by the FDA, it's very hard to pull it off the market; and his own office is very junior to the FDA dept. that approves new drugs in the first place.

In other words, Graham is on the losing team.

And the FDA has very little chance of getting the horses back in the barn once the door is opened.

Yes, but who organizes the FDA in such a way that drug companies get this incredible benefit/break/favored treatment? Who decides that the dept. inside the FDA that approves new drugs (after brief inspection/ after short-term studies on safety and efficacy) is much more powerful than the dept. that could later yank these drugs off the market because they are inefffective and/or dangerous?

It's an organizational rig-job.

Graham has exposed how the rig works inside the FDA.

The FDA is basically set up as a brother in arms of the drug companies, and no one has been doing anything about it.

A loose analogy: during the Hoover years of the FBI, there was no true investigation of organized crime in the US because Hoover claimed organized crime didn't exist.

Every large organization has its pecking order, and at the FDA the chiefs who approve new drugs are much higher than the peons who try to take dangerous drugs off the market later on.

This also a way of passing the buck. "Oh, XYZ is killing people right and left? Well, that's not our concern. We only do the initial approval. You'll have to go to another dept. that handles death and maiming. They have an office in the cellar."

Of course, no federal agency bears responsibility for its ordinary day-to-day actions. There are never any mass firings or criminal prosecutions.

Imagine that you personally had this kind of immunity. You could steal, lie, and even kill, and you would be backed up by fed cops and courts and judges and prosecutors and jails and a whole host of impenetrable regulations.

100,000 people in the US die every year as a result of the adminisitration of FDA-approved drugs. These drugs also produce 20-30 million serious adverse reactions and 2.1 million hospitalizations.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com


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