Editor’s Note: This article is intended for information purposes only. Because state and municipal laws vary greatly, as do the circumstances of individual cases, readers are advised to contact an attorney for specific legal advice. © Scott C. Tips 2017

A nationwide internet campaign has been launched in Great Britain to rid Britain of a corrupt Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or at the very least to force the MHRA to divest itself of its pharmaceutical-industry conflict of interest by firing all employees with ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The MHRA (Britain’s FDA equivalent) is infested with drug-industry officers and leaders and it cannot possibly protect the interests of the British public as long as this condition endures.

Nor can the American public be properly protected as long as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is similarly infested. Just look no farther than Barack Obama’s appointment last year of the person to head the FDA — Dr. Robert Califf, a former board member and consultant for a company that served numerous pharmaceutical firms and worked for an Institute funded by the pharmaceutical industry. But the FDA’s description of him on its website hides these facts. So, it is beyond time for a similar campaign in the United States.

Drain the SwampSome seventy percent of Americans take prescription drugs. Yet, by approving drugs that kill, and denying Americans access to effective, inexpensive treatments that actually work, it has been estimated that the FDA is responsible for the deaths of at least 800,000 American citizens a year. The FDA’s website, though, admits to only 100,000 Adverse Drug Event Reports a year — deaths and injuries from drugs that the Agency approved.

The FDA has more than 15,000 employees and a budget of $4.9 billion (Fiscal Year 2016), which is a $424.8 million (9%) increase above FY 2015. The largest of its forty Washington, D.C.-area offices is located at its so-called White Oak Campus, 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland 20993. There is no better place to start “draining the swamp.”

The main players at the FDA have all too often been big pharmaceutical company transplants. Names such as Monsanto’s Michael Taylor, Dr. Margaret Miller, and Michael A. Friedman are just three that immediately come to mind. This revolving door formalized in 2001, with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration Alumni Association (FDAAA). FDAAA’s website says it is “a non-profit, non-lobbying organization dedicated to serving those who have supported the consumer protection mission of the U.S. FDA.” But, oddly enough, drug-industry lobbyists and public-relations people are well represented on its Board of Directors. There definitely seems to be a revolving door between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA.

This means the big pharmaceutical companies control their own drug approval, which is why Avandia, for example, killed 83,000 before the FDA reapproved it to continue killing in February 2010, Vioxx killed 149,000, opiods killed 194,000, and chemotherapy, a poison that maims and kills with horrific side effects, has killed, by some reports, up to nine million since the year 2000.

The FDA is supposed to protect the lives of American citizens; what they actually do is protect the grotesque profits of the big pharmaceutical companies, at the expense of American lives, in a complete abuse of their position. In fact, if you put “FDA corrupt” into a search engine, you will be swamped with examples.

The FDA is exactly the sort of corrupt Washington elite that President Donald Trump says he will destroy. Let us just hope that he fulfills that promise and includes the FDA on his list of places to be drained. Time will tell.

So far, as of the date this article was written, the leading candidate appears to be Jim O’Neill, a staunch libertarian being pushed by Trump supporter Peter Thiel. But we have seen important posts in other departments recently staffed by industry insiders, so do not count out yet another industry insider at the FDA just yet.

A Major Example of FDA MalfeasanceAs yet another example of its malfeasance, the FDA has banned a dozen inexpensive and natural potential treatments for cancer; none have side effects, and most are listed at www.chemokills.info. Instead, patients are driven to chemotherapy, which costs $60,000 a round, and from which the pharmaceutical industry quite profitably makes $200 billion a year in revenue. According to a report published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, chemotherapy is successful in just 2.1% to 2.3% of cases where 15,000 patients were studied.

One promising therapy, GcMAF, is an injectable glycoprotein native to a healthy human body. GcMAF has 300 scientists, 150 scientific research papers, and over 10,000 patients validating it. It has no side effects, and is one percent of the cost of chemotherapy. Despite that track record, the FDA has banned its use on both sides of the Atlantic, using their surrogate, the MHRA, in England.

If the FDA had simply allowed a truly free-market healthcare system to exist and operate in the United States, natural therapies could openly compete with conventional drug care. Instead, the FDA operates a protection racket for the medical mafia and the unfortunate result is a high annual death toll year after year and skyrocketing profits for the drug lords.

Supplements Targeted TooSimilarly, dietary supplements such as vitamins, minerals, and herbs can do far more good for our health than drugs can. So, they also make a natural target for the FDA to attack. As already reported in WholeFoods Magazine several times, starting in 2011, the FDA deliberately misinterpreted the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) when it issued a draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients aimed at crippling, or even eliminating, the dietary-supplement industry. To make sure the industry complied, the FDA even began issuing warning letters to manufacturers and distributors despite the Agency’s express promise to hold off on any regulatory action until after the draft Guidance became final. The result five years later is as we predicted: Consolidation in the industry as the small mom-and-pop operations fail or are bought up by the big corporations (including the drug industry) and a predicted decline in new-product development as innovation is stifled by regulatory constriction.

The Keystone or the Keystone Kops?One could even say that the FDA is the keystone in the $2.9 billion pharmaceutical-industry lobbying system, as it is controlled by the big pharmaceutical companies, doing their bidding, spreading Fake News to keep drug-industry profits at the hundreds-of-billion-dollar level. And since the FDA also controls drugs throughout the Western World, its lethal reach has extended from Britain, to Dubai UAE, to Russia, and beyond.

The number-one priority for everyone involved with health must be to get the new administration to either close the FDA down (unlikely) or at least padlock the revolving door of personnel between the drug industry and the FDA that has resulted in so much harm and injury to so many Americans and others around the World.WF

References1 Seehttps://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/medicines-and-healthcare-products-regulatory-agency.2 Carey Wedler, “Obama’s New Appointee to Head the FDA Is A Big Pharma Mega-Lobbyist,” Mint Press News, October 19, 2015, athttp://www.mintpressnews.com/obamas-new-appointee-to-head-the-fda-is-a-big-pharma-mega-lobbyist/210458/. 3 “Meet Robert M. Califf, Commissioner of Food and Drugs,” FDA website, November 15, 2016, athttp://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/ucm452317.htm. 4 Seewww.nofda.se. 5 CBS staff writer, “Study shows 70 percent of Americans take prescription drugs,” CBS News, June 20, 2013, athttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-shows-70-percent-of-americans-take-prescription-drugs/. 6 “FDA’s Fiscal Year 2016 President’s Budget,” FDA website, February 2015, athttp://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/ReportsManualsForms/Reports/BudgetReports/UCM432650.pdf. 7 Sheila Kaplan & Ike Swetlitz, “Trump considers naming FDA chief who would radically overhaul the agency,” Stat News, December 7, 2016, athttps://www.statnews.com/2016/12/07/trump-fda-oneill/. 8 Morgan G, Ward R, Barton M, “The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies,” Journal of Clinical Oncology, December 2004, 16(8):549-60, athttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849. 9 See, e.g.,www.mhracorrupt.st. 10 Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw, Freedom of Informed Choice: FDA Versus Nutrient Supplements, Common Sense Press, 1994.



A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley Law School, Scott C. Tips currently practices internationally, emphasizing Food-and-Drug law, business law and business litigation, trade practice, and international corporate formation and management. He has been involved in the nutrition field for more than three decades and may be reached at (415) 244-1813 or by e-mail at scott@rivieramail.com.

 

 

Note: The statements presented in this column should not be considered medical advice or a way to diagnose or treat any disease or illness. The opinions expressed in bylined articles are not necessarily those of the publisher.

Published in WholeFoods Magazine April 2017