FDA hopelessly corrupt & Possible Solutions

Jonathan Emord is a Constitutional attorney who has defeated the Food and Drug Administration seven times in federal court.  He was on the Coast to Coast AM radio show about a month ago and gave some very revealing information about the agency that regulates what we can legally put into our bodies.  He had some decent solutions as to how “We the people” can possibly take the power back from such an out of control agency that seeks to revoke our rights to choose concerning healthy food, nutrients and supplements, not to mention drugs.  The link (?, having trouble attaching link) is http://www.emord.com/radio.html#George_Noory and you can hear the interview there if you scroll down a bit.  His interview begins around the nine minute mark of hour one.  

But for those of you with little time to listen to two forty minute sound clips I am including some highlights of his dialogue.  

I must say listening to Emord’s discussion of the FDA was both enlightening and infuriating.  That an agency can abuse such a position that effects so many millions of lives is simply unconscionable.  I could go on and but Emord will do a better job:

“The FDA doesn’t conduct any scientific, clinical trial of any drug it approves.  It relies entirely on the industry to determine whether the drug is safe not.”  

“The FDA maintains a blanket censorship on any claim of nutrient disease association.  (An example would be) prune juice reduces constipation.  If you were to put that on the label of a prune juice bottle you would be committing a felony, even though it’s true.”

“The tragedy is we really do have a system that is financially controlled by the drug industry, the influence is extraordinary, the evidence in support of that is immense . . . It’s horrendous that an agency of the government that is commissioned purportedly for the purpose of protecting public health is more an agent of the drug industry.  The FDA’s office of drug safety associate director, David Graham, has said, “The FDA is inherently biased in favor of the pharmaceutical industry, it views industry as its client, who’s interest it must represent in advance, it views its primary mission as approving as many drugs as it can regardless of whether the drugs are safe or needed.”

“It’s interesting how this whole thing works because it’s very mercurial, and I’ll try to explain as best I can.  If you’re a drug company you’ve invested in research to identify not that a drug will actually ameliorate a disease or cure a disease but rather that it will affect one marker of a disease in a way that is cognizable so that it will reduce its presence . . . And with that proof in hand, and with control over the clinical evidence (you do your own clinical evidence - natural conflict), you file your petition with the FDA.  At the point you’ve spent approximately $600,000,000 (Six hundred million dollars!)  It’s a game only, because of the FDA’s regulations, that the wealthiest monopolies in the world can play.  You get, now, your investments in.  Now you don’t have enough clinical evidence on safety for two reasons:  if you did thorough safety studies and it showed that the drug caused harm your $600,000,000 investment is gone.  So you don’t do the safety evidence that you need to.  And the FDA’s weird system works this way:  if the drug company doesn’t present evidence that there’s a safety problem, the FDA presumes that the drug is not unsafe.”

“Now you’d say, ‘Hey, look, if the drug’s unsafe, why would a drug company put it in the market?’  Here’s why:  It is extremely difficult to show causality in a sick person.  It’s extremely difficult to show that your heart attack came from Vioxx.  You’re a sick person, you’re in the hospital, you have a heart attack, it could be due to any number of factors, Vioxx is one possibility, but it’s only one.  And the proof of causality is so hard that you can make hundreds of millions of dollars off of the drug before you take it off the market.”

“The most pressing problem we have is that the FDA is unaccountable to the courts, the Congress and the American people, and that it operates as a dictatorship and the individual’s in charge of it pursue their own self interest at the expense of the American people . . . What we’re really talking about here is the creation of a bureaucratic oligarchy in the United States.  It’s not just the FDA that’s running this country, it’s numerous federal agencies that are empowered to legislate that are unelected.”  

“To solve the FDA you’ve got to neuter it.  You have to take the power away.  What I’ve recommended is that we pass a bill that I wrote for Congressman Ron Paul that would eliminate the FDA’s ability to impose prior restraints on health information, leaving it with the power to prosecute after the fact when the government finds fraud but only when it can prove statements to be false.  So truthful information would come as it does in every other instance into the market and those who are engaged in fraud would be specifically prosecuted.  The other thing that we need to do is to take away from the FDA the drug approval power.  FDA is hopelessly corrupt, there’s no way it can be reformed, the interests are so powerful in influencing the judgment there.  We’ve got to make it a blinded system.  What I’ve recommended . . . is that we take that power and have the Justice Department accept drug applications, make ‘em blinded, take out the drug industry’s name, make the drug industry forbidden under penalty of felonious prosecution for their officers to communicate their interest in the application.  Take the application, farm it out to Universities that are identified as centers for drug testing and evaluation, have them do it in secret, and then they produce a report after testing the drug and determining its relevant safety and efficacy whether it’s approved or not.  This would then decentralize the process, leave it up to academics, get politics out of it and enable us to determine whether drugs are safe or not.”  

“It is possible that we could overwhelm the agency if we had enough support to do it in these funds.  We could file petition after petition after petition on all of the nutrients for which there is science, push it through the agency, get them to, of course, deny it, sue them, and then force them, through these court orders, to let it out.  Now what would happen if that were to be the case would be a transformation of the American grocery store and health food store.  There would be more information there to help guide people on health choices, and suddenly, suddenly, there would be a change in dietary habits in this country that would result in a significant lowering of disease and prolongation of life.”  

It’s an excellent interview and the fact that he’s already defeated the FDA seven times in federal court makes a good case that we should get behind Jonathan Emord and his cause of “neutering” the FDA.  His website is www.emord.com  

Magnificent health to you all!

Francis

Wendy's picture

Thanks Francis-

Not mentioned in your synopsis is also the fact that there's a revolving door at the FDA between drug company employees and the FDA, so that loyalties are clearly to the drug companies (where the big money is - no worker for the government gets paid much). This is all talked about in the film Future of Food. Lately I am concerned about food from the gulf coast region. With an absolutely disfunctional FDA to oversee things, I suspect that even food that is labeled organic may be full of toxins. More reason to buy local and know your food source, something that is impossible if you are buying from a corporation (supermarket).

Hope everone redoubles their efforts to eat healthy food and research holistic solutions to health problems so as to reduce and ideally eliminate any dependancies on drugs. I've been battling asthma for the last 3 years but with much effort and careful eating, I very rarely have to resort to medication now.

These drug companies and food factories will simply fall by the wayside if we stop supporting them.

Wendy

 

Wendy's picture

The Gathering Spot is a PEERS empowerment website
"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"