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The U.S. Senate passed the FDA "drug safety" bill today (S.1082) with a 93-1 vote. A key amendment that would have called for genuine drug safety protections for consumers -- the Grassley amendment 1039 -- was defeated by a single vote (47 to 46). The new law deepens financial ties between Big Pharma and the FDA, doubling the amount of money directly paid to the regulator by drug companies, but it fails to explicitly protect foods and nutritional supplements from overreaching FDA regulation efforts. The new law also failed to end Big Pharma's monopoly stranglehold on American consumers, further blocking the ability of citizens, businesses, cities and states to import equivalent medications from countries like Canada (where drugs are far safer than those sold in the United States, by any measure).

Health freedom advocates such as Byron Richards of Wellness Resources (www.WellnessResources.com), John Hammel of the International Advocates for Health Freedom (www.IAHF.com), and myself (www.NaturalNews.com) sought to garner enough grassroots support for achieving the inclusion of key amendments in the bill, such as the Dorgan amendment which, for four days, appeared to end the medical monopoly that currently forces American consumers to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Although hundreds of thousands of consumers contacted their lawmakers to demand an end to the monopoly price fixing currently operating in the United States, lawmakers seemed confused and could not bring themselves to support any amendment that would have threatened the profits of Big Pharma. Ultimately, the Dorgan amendment was quickly defeated by the Cochran amendment, trapping Americans in a monopoly medical market that would be considered illegal by nearly everyone if a corporation like Microsoft attempted something similar.

S.1082 ultimately passed with amendments that primarily support the agendas of Big Pharma and the FDA, expanding the powers of both. Very few provisions were accepted that addressed the serious issues of corruption, conflicts of interest, television drug advertising or genuine drug safety.

Health freedom advocates are now characterizing the final bill as the, "Big Pharma Protection Act of 2007" due to its emphasis on protecting the monopoly drug market in the United States while doing very little to accomplish its stated goals of increasing the "safety" of prescription drugs.

Analysis by Mike Adams (opinion)

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