Does the FDA Even Try to Keep our Food & Drugs Safe?

by D. Cupples |  We pay the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) billions each year.  In exchange, the FDA is supposed to protect us consumer-taxpayers from unsafe food, drugs, cosmetics, etc.

I didn't dream that up: the duty is stated on the FDA's Website.  

Despite that clearly articulated duty, the FDA's performance has been spotty for years--some would say due to over-friendliness with drug companies.

Maybe I'm putting it too nicely.  I'll try again.  For some years, the FDA seems to have promoted drug companies' interests over our interests.  

Still too watered down?  Okay.  Last try: evidence suggests that some of FDA's decision-makers have been downright corrupt.  

This month's Time Magazine has an article entitled, After Avandia: Does the FDA Have a Drug Problem?

In May 2007, we at Buck Naked Politics did a blog post entitled The FDA's Latest Pharma-Friendly Sins.  It addressed the FDA's highly questionable actions regarding the drugs Avandia, Vioxx, Ketek, and Viagra.

The FDA approved Ketek for public sale despite allegedly knowing that clinical-study results were fraudulent.  Despite studies linking Vioxx to heart attacks, the FDA waited two years before requiring a stronger warning label. 

Then there's the wildly popular Viagra, which was linked to a strange form of blindness: the FDA waited a whole year to require a stronger warning label.

Then there was our blog post in November 2008, which cited a Washington Post article stating that the FDA had learned about traces of melamine and cyanuric acid ( toxic chemicals) in baby food, yet the FDA inexplicably delayed informing the baby-feeding public about it.

I'm glad that after three-plus years, major media is again spotlighting the FDA's questionable reliability.  The health and safety of us consumer-taxpayers is, after all, in the FDA's hands.

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[daniel noe]

Growing up I always had the impression that the FDA made things TOO hard for drug companies trying to get approval, overregulating and barring some potentially life-saving drugs from production entirely. I also know that the time it takes to get approval is so long that drug makers have few years to make a profit before their patents run out. Now I hear more and more stories like this one.
I'm not sure which problem is worse (too few drugs, or too many), but either way it may be time for an overhaul.

[John Carter]

the FDA controls too much in my opinion.. we should stop depending so much on them...

[Donna]

no matter what the FDA does, they are the authority on this matter, we can't stop them so we have to trust them , questioning whatever they do is in vein

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