FDA Protects Pharma Profits, Not Health - Argues new Book
"Fight for Your Health" by Byron J. Richards is a new book about the FDA, the agency that has been hailed as the archetype of a protector of public health, a model of success to be emulated in countries all over the world. But the rosy picture is about to lose its shine. The agency that is supposed to control food and drugs in the USA is increasingly seen as a willing protector of industry policies and profits - to the detriment of the health of the American public.
Fight for Your Health - Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America
Byron Richards, who is a certified clinical nutritionist, has pulled together and documented the disturbing reality of an agency that is supposed to protect the public from harm but that is now under the control of those pharmaceutical corportaions it is supposed to be policing.
Much of the FDA's financing comes directly from the pharmaceutical industry, but those dollars have strings attached. Pharma executives want new drugs approved fast and they insist that "their" money be earmarked for only that purpose. That means safety of medicines is way down on the ladder of priorities, while speed of drug approval and protection of pharma's immense profits are at the top.
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Executives of the agency are directly connected with pharmaceutical interests, and have stated that their priority is the health and well being of their industry. They pit the fact that people die of disease against the "problem" of there being a drug approval process, as if more drugs automatically meant more health.
FDA-approved medical procedures including drugs have become the leading cause of death and injury in the US, but the number two man at the agency, Scott Gottlieb, who is a former Wall Street insider promoting hot biotech stocks to investors, says doctors are to blame when medicine kills the patient:
"In many cases, in many corners of medicine, it is not a drug that hurts someone, but the wrong decision making. A drug that is lifesaving in one context can be deadly in another. And separating the two scenarios sometimes turns on the slimmest amounts of hard-to-glean information and the very hardest and most personal of medical decisions. That is why all medical decisions to use powerful medicines, all of which have certain side effects, are fraught with a certain amount of risk. Whether it's advanced age, or other co-morbidities - there are many reasons why the risks sometimes outweigh the benefits of even the best medicines ... And that's not to say that we ever know everything there is about particular drugs. In fact, we seldom do. Even some of the oldest medicines still harbor certain mysteries."With that justification, the killing - of patients - continues. Drug company profits are more holy than the lives and health of you and me.
Image credit: Emma Holister
Collusion of the watchdog with industry is widespread and obvious, but the book sets these corrupt practices in a wider context, giving us a glimpse of what the future may hold. A public health plan has all Americans' personal health data registered in a government owned database, children being screened for their mental health and "appropriate" medication dispensed. Implantable computer chips are part of the plan, as well as human experimentation of new drugs right in the doctor's office. The right to sue drug companies in case of harm is being restricted and DNA will be collected to forward a new eugenics agenda. Of course natural alternatives to pharmaceutical medicines are under attack by the very agency that is supposedly protecting the public.
Byron's book is a wake-up call, not only for Americans but also for those in other countries who who have been conditioned to look at the FDA as the most reliable source of information for drug safety.
That is certainly the biggest lie and the one that does the most damage. We cannot and must not rely on the decisions and pronouncements of an agency that is clearly dominated by the industry it is supposed to regulate. Fight for Your Health makes it quite clear that consumers, but also medical doctors and health officials in America and indeed in every country, are on their own. The system is corrupt and will not help us - unless we succeed in changing the way it works.
If we value our health, we must inform ourselves of dangers and pitfalls as well as good, simple ways of keeping healthy. And our legislators must find a workable alternative to the FDA's clearly biased and - according to Byron Richards - treasonous approach.
Read the book:
Fight for Your Health - Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday August 30 2006
updated on Thursday November 18 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/08/30/fda_protects_pharma_profits_not_health_argues_new_book.htm
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