In 1969 the FDA commissioner issued a dire warning: The FDA protects the drug companies not the people

Written by Jo Nova

A reminder that the dark influence of corruption started decades ago:

It may have seemed like things went off the rails in the last two years, but it couldn’t have been achieved without fifty years of work. The absurdities just felt like they came out of nowhere.

Herbert Ley sounds like a great man. From Wikipedia:

His three years at the FDA came during the time when the FDA grew from an insignificant agency to the key agency protecting consumers; during that time 300 drugs were removed from the market.^[4] After he left, Ley stated that he had “constant, tremendous, sometimes unmerciful pressure” from the drug industry and that the drug company lobbyists, combined with the politicians who worked on behalf of their patrons, could bring “tremendous pressure” to bear on him and his staff, to try preventing FDA restrictions on their drugs.

There’s a sad article in Woroni (Canberra) in 1980 lamenting the reach of drug companies. An antibiotic called Panalba had been sold in the US from 1957 generating $18m in revenue for Upjohn. By 1968 30 experts from the National Academy of Science declared that it was harmful and should be removed from the market. Commissioner Herbert Ley testified that as many as one in five people using it had an allergic reaction and twelve people had died. (Imagine stopping a drug now for 12 deaths?) The FDA finally forced it off the market in the US in 1970. Due to a legal loophole in 1980 the same drug company was still selling the drug in 33 other countries under the name “Albamycin”. Presumably the Big Pharma lobbyists were on good terms with those 33 other drug approval agencies.

Related:

Big Pharma spends twice as much on advertising as it does on developing cancer drugs.

• Is $15 billion in advertising enough? It’s Big Pharma protection money so the media won’t mention the bodies

Conflicts of Interest, anyone?

• “There is almost a billion dollars a year going into the FDA Budget from the people we regulate”
• Big Pharma spent $4.7b lobbying Big Government which never affects rules, regulations or drug prices, right?
• Would $350 million from Big Pharma be enough to buy Fauci and NIH approval — Who knows, it’s a secret.

h/t Charles