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FDA complicit in Americans' deaths
by Hazel Burke
| June 1, 2008 |
Remember the Bush Regime claiming that Canadian drugs were dangerous for Americans? Might be counterfeit, might not be up to the stringent American standards? Remember how we weren't supposed to go across the border or use the internet to fill prescriptions?
Well, that was all total bullshit. The truth was actually the same reason we suspected all along -- simply that the drug companies charge less in Canada because Canada has price controls -- and Americans pay the highest prices of anyone in the world for drugs made by American companies!
How do I know this? Well, drugs sold in America that are "legal" have been known
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| | Pre-excerpt from article: The plans are inadequate to protect consumers, said Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the FDA. Dingell is pushing legislation requiring drugmakers to pay new fees to fund more inspections.
Dingell said he's been urging FDA commissioners for years to do a better job guarding against tainted drug imports.
"We're letting a bunch of bastardly importers or exporters abroad send in this appalling kind of crap that's killing our people, and we're not checking it or correcting it or addressing it at all," Dingell said in an interview. |
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for years to have dangerous and deadly components, and the FDA has done jackshit about it. If anything, the Canadian drugs might even be safer, because, at least, they have a government which governs instead of slutting out whatever corporations want.
Tainted drug imports set off warnings, not FDA action| |
Excerpt: Two Americans died and 15 suffered seizures. The suspected cause: The epilepsy medicine they depended on stopped working because of a counterfeit ingredient from overseas.
The case of the flawed drug, made by a company that no longer exists, began unfolding in 1988. Since then, Food and Drug Administration employees and government investigators have called for stronger policing of imported substances used by U.S. drugmakers.
The agency received a "wake-up call" this year after the deaths of 81 people who took the blood thinner heparin, according to a top FDA official. The drug was contaminated by an ingredient from China. In fact, interviews with 10 former employees revealed that alarms about safety went unheeded for two decades, as imports soared. Documents show that FDA staff members raised concerns in 1988, 1991, 1993, 1996 and 2002.
"It was no surprise," said Carl Nielsen, who retired in 2005 as the FDA's director of import operations and policy, referring to the heparin case. "Especially when you consider how little FDA oversight there is." ...
U.S. drug companies turned to ingredients supplied by businesses in China and other countries with lower labor and regulatory costs to save money, said Joe Acker, president of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association in Washington, a trade group.
The value of imported medicine and drug compounds reached $48.9 billion last year, up more than 30-fold from $1.57 billion in 1990, according to the Census Bureau. U.S. pharmaceutical companies buy about 80 percent of their ingredients abroad, according to the FDA. |
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Hazel Burke
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