The U.S. Congress has reached agreement on a House / Senate compromise regarding the recently passed FDA reform legislation that aims to improve the safety of pharmaceuticals. The bill will now move to the White House where it is expected to be signed by the President.
While this new FDA reform bill still lacks crucial safety provisions for U.S. consumers (such as banning direct-to-consumer drug advertisements), it at least kept two key provisions intact that may help prevent drug companies from engaging in the routine deceptions that have propped up
industry profits at the expense of public safety:
1) Big Pharma will not have immunity to lawsuits brought by consumers harmed by dangerous prescription drugs. As you may know,
drug companies (and even the White House and
FDA) have lobbied for granting drug
companies blanket immunity from all injury lawsuits. This would have been the ultimate insult to American consumers, but a huge victory for drug companies (whose
products arguably are the most dangerous products currently being consumed by Americans, with the exception of tobacco products).
2) Drug companies will eventually be required to publicly disclose the results of drug trials by publishing them on the internet. As NaturalNews reported in
an article published yesterday, the White House strongly opposed this provision, and
drug companies, of course, are terrified by the idea that they might actually have to disclose the
results of their drug trials. They would rather keep consumers ignorant of the safety of
pharmaceuticals, it seems. But this new agreement by the House and
Senate will, it is claimed, require drug companies to start
publishing these clinical trial results online.
Of course, all this doesn't mean that drug companies won't find some new way to game the system, deceive consumers and block meaningful
FDA reform. Nearly every clinical trial published today is already rigged to deliver results that favor drug companies, and it is a well known fact in the drug testing industry that individuals and companies who don't deliver favorable results quickly end up jobless or blackballed from the industry. Thus, there's a huge flaw in this idea that publicly publishing clinical trial results will instantly make drug companies honest.
The science is dishonest in the first place, and clinical trials are rigged from the start to produce favorable results while minimizing the emergence of dangerous
side effects.
Not much reform in the FDA reform bill
Even worse, there's really not much
reform in the FDA reform bill in the first place. There's no call for a criminal investigation of the crimes that have been committed against the
American people by top FDA officials, nor is there any attempt to use RICO Act laws (racketeering laws) to investigate the organized crime ring currently being run by Big Pharma and the FDA. There's no call for
the FTC to investigate the
monopoly pharmaceutical pricing practices that now require Americans to pay as much as 550,000% markups on pharmaceuticals (the highest prices in the world, by far). It's interesting that the
FTC will sue Microsoft for monopoly marketing practices but won't touch Big Pharma for monopoly pricing on prescription
drugs.
Overall, there's really not much reform in today's FDA reform bill. There's not even a
ban on direct-to-consumer drug advertising -- an unjustifiable practice that's directly responsible for the huge increase in drug side effects (adverse events reporting) and drug
deaths over the last few years. As I have stated on this website many times, it is no exaggeration to say that the number of Americans killed by FDA-prescription drugs each year greatly exceeds the number of Americans killed in the entire Vietnam War. Big Pharma and the FDA, it seems, have declared war on the American people, and while the body bags keep mounting up, the best that
Congress can come up with is blocking Big Pharma's attempts to acquire legal
immunity from all drug deaths. That's not exactly progress.
Fascinating, isn't it? What's clear in this bill is that
Big Pharma is still running Congress. Not entirely, though. Members of Congress have been able to desperately latch on to a couple of provisions in the bill in order to proclaim that they have worked diligently to protect the
health and safety of the American people. But all they've done is rearranged the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. The cruise liner of American health has a gaping hole in its hull, and it's taking on water and sinking fast. Congress can proclaim victory while it heads for the life rafts, but the truth is that most Americans are going down with the ship. We are the least healthy advanced nation in the world, and we're not getting any healthier.
Big Pharma and the FDA (with a little help from processed food manufacturers) have destroyed the health of this nation, and they are working hard on destroying its economy, too. It will take
America three generations to recover from the damage done by this criminal-minded industry, and history will judge Congress harshly for its blatant unwillingness to put a stop to this system of modern
medicine that has become the No. 1 threat to the American people.
No war, no terrorist action and no viral pandemic has even come close to the number of Americans killed by FDA-approved prescription drugs. Medicine has, in fact, become the pandemic. Health care has become a threat to health, and the FDA now operates as the enemy of the people it once vowed to protect.
Reform the FDA? Don't be silly. There will never be any serious reform effort as long as the Big Pharma puppeteers continue to control both Congress and the White House. Much like the TSA attempts to create the illusion of airport security, the U.S. Congress has only created the illusion of FDA reform. The same criminals are still in charge, and the same drugs are still killing our fellow citizens by the tens of thousands.
If this is FDA reform, God help us all when the next President starts talking about
health care reform.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In 2010, Adams launched NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Thursday, September 20, 2007
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