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Department of Health and Human Services Approves Fictitious Medical Device Review Board Led by a Dead Dog

Sunday, March 29, 2009
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: medical review boards, health news, Natural News

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(NaturalNews) Just how trustworthy are medical review boards that review and approve medical devices? In a Government Accountability Office (GAO) sting, investigators were able to invent and register a fictitious review board with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), complete with a fictitious panel of doctors and a canine president named "Truper Dawg" (named after a real pet dog that had long since passed away).

Names of other board members on the fictitious organization approved by the Department of Health and Human Services included "April Phuls" and "Timothy Wittless." These names apparently did not raise any suspicions at the HHS. (Perhaps the U.S. government thought the review board was being run by a group of badly-named rappers?)

But that's not all: To check out the credibility of existing Independent Review Boards (IRBs), the GAO invented a fictitious medical product called Adhesiabloc -- an adhesive gel used as a kind of "stomach superglue" following surgery. A proposal to begin a clinical trial of this adhesive gel on humans was submitted to an FDA-recognized IRB company, and the company approved it! This, despite the fact that the clinical trial called for pouring one liter of this adhesive gel into the stomach of patients.

Misleading the misleaders

The IRB that fell for the ruse was Coast IRB, LLC of Colorado Springs, which after being caught, charged that the GAO investigators violated federal law by misrepresenting themselves when they submitted false credentials to the review company.

But isn't this exactly what a medical review company is supposed to notice and prevent in the first place? This company seems to think they can trust everything they're told by any person or company applying for review, regardless of whether the medical products in question make any sense at all.

Coast IRB is one of 6,300 IRBs (Independent Review Boards) that certify pharmaceutical trials and medical device trials for consideration by the FDA.

The next time you considering using an "FDA-approved" medical device or pharmaceutical, remember this simple truth: In America, the Department of Health and Human Services will certify a fictitious review company headed by a dog!

If the GAO can pull this off after running the sting on just 3 companies, imagine how many of the 6,300 IRBs are certifying fraudulent, dangerous or outright deadly medical devices and pharmaceuticals right now!

What this fiasco really shows is that the medical device oversight system in America today is a complete joke. With the right paperwork, a medical device company could get review board approval for practically anything. And with the HHS accepting the credentials of fictitious review boards, the overseers of the review boards are so incompetent in their own jobs that the credibility of the whole system must be called into question.

Combine this with the corruption at the FDA, and you have to really wonder: Just how safe are the medical devices and pharmaceuticals being used by over a hundred million Americans right now? The answer, of course, is that many of them may have simply been rubber-stamped by dishonest or incompetent review board companies and HHS bureaucrats who have now been utterly exposed as either criminally dishonest or shockingly incompetent.

Sources for this story include:

Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811179572353181.html

Associated Press: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS05NrOriTuDXEIj3I4...

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/business/13sting.html?ref=business

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About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, and he has authored and published several downloadable personal preparedness courses including a downloadable course focused on safety and self defense. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography 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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