FDA's own scientists report pattern of intimidation, censorship and scientific fraud that undermines public safety

Friday, July 21, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: the FDA, crimes against humanity, chemical holocaust

In a truly astonishing survey just released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Food and Drug Administration's own scientists describe the agency as an environment of intimidation, censorship and scientific fraud. A survey of 997 FDA scientists revealed that forty percent feared "retaliation" for voicing safety concerns over prescription drugs in public. Over one-third of the scientists didn't even feel safe expressing safety concerns inside the agency, behind closed doors!

Intimidation and censorship have been well documented at the FDA, and this survey adds further weight to the evidence that the FDA has been utterly co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry and now serves Big Pharma's commercial interests rather than anything resembling a commitment to honest science or public safety. Time and time again, it has been the courageous actions of independent FDA scientists, taking a stand despite intense intimidation and censorship from the agency's top officials, who have warned the U.S. public about dangerous prescription drugs like Vioxx.

Literally tens of millions of Americans have been harmed by FDA negligence over the last decade, and well over one million have been killed by FDA-approved prescription drugs -- many of which were approved based on fraudulent scientific data the FDA conveniently chose to overlook. Through its abandonment of public safety and scientific integrity, the FDA has now become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people, dwarfing any threat posed by terrorists.

The FDA's nuclear bomb

Imagine a nuclear bomb detonating over Seattle, Washington. A hundred thousand citizens might be instantly killed, and two million (or more) could be seriously injured from the fallout. As horrific as that image may seem, this is what happens in America every single year from prescription drugs under the watch of the FDA. Allowing the FDA to continue operating as it does today kills as many Americans as detonating a nuclear weapon over a major U.S. city each year.

And yet most lawmakers and government officials pretend the big threat to the safety of Americans is found somewhere else, in a foreign land, rather than right here at home. If anyone in the Bush Administration really cared about protecting the lives of Americans, they would summon the military to surround the FDA and start arresting the criminal-minded officials who run the agency. It is time to hold FDA decision makers accountable for the chemical warfare they have waged against the American public, and at the same time set free the honest FDA scientists so they can tell the truth without fear of being silenced.

Scientific fraud is routine at the FDA

Because right now, many of those scientists are being routinely intimidated to alter their conclusions in order to fit the political agenda of top FDA officials. A shocking 18.4 percent of scientists surveyed report that they "...have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document."

In this environment of such scientific fraud, reported first-hand by FDA scientists, to imagine that our system of drug approvals has anything to do with "evidence-based medicine" is nothing short of preposterous. All the billions of dollars in advertising, propaganda, donations to politicians and bribery of doctors can't cover up the sobering truth: The drug industry today is a massive criminal enterprise operating in broad daylight, and the FDA is its chief enforcer. It has nothing to do with honesty, integrity or even health, but everything to do with generating obscene profits, exploiting patients and controlling information through intimidation.

Sixty-one percent of the respondents, the survey results show, knew of cases where "Department of Health and Human Services or FDA political appointees have inappropriately injected themselves into FDA determinations or actions."

Is it really any surprise? The politicians are running the FDA, and crimes against the American people (which would be considered terrorism or treason if committed by anyone else) are routinely overlooked.

Lame proposals for reform don't cut it

Across the nation, to anyone who has been paying attention, we're beyond the point of realizing that something needs to be done about the FDA. But every proposal I've seen so far falls short of solving the problem. They're little more than a collection of wimpy wrist slaps that try to force the FDA to act with integrity while ignoring the culture of corruption and criminal-minded behavior that characterizes the agency's top officials.

These prescriptions for reforming the FDA mirror conventional medicine's flawed philosophy, by the way, by focusing on treating symptoms while ignoring the root causes of disease. At the FDA, the continued pattern of scientific fraud, intimidation and censorship is only a symptom of a deeper, fundamental problem: The fact that top FDA officials are, in fact, corrupt, criminal-minded bureaucrats who are responsible for the deaths of countless Americans. You can't cure this cancer by treating its symptoms; you have to get rid of the cause of the cancer.

We don't merely need reform, we need prosecutions. We need to hold these FDA officials accountable for their crimes against the children, adults and senior citizens of this country who have been needlessly harmed (and killed) by prescription drugs that the FDA absolutely knew were dangerous.

We are not talking about crimes of money here. This isn't some Martha Stewart insider stock trading scandal, or even an Enron-class hoodwinking of shareholders. The damage done by the FDA is way beyond the realm of finances. Our family members are dead due to FDA negligence. Our brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, and even many of our parents have been outright killed by a homicidal system of medicine that maximizes Big Pharma profits at the expense of human life... a system whose key architect is the unapologetically corrupt Food and Drug Administration.

Who will declare the Emperor has no clothes?

Almost no politician, it seems, has the courage to stand up and speak the truth about the FDA. Drug company money for reelection campaigns is simply too valuable. Sen. Charles Grassley, however, is an exception to the rule. He continues to speak out against the FDA and push for serious reform. Likewise, Rep. Ron Paul, a lifelong champion of freedom in all its forms, continues to support the Health Freedom Protection Act, a bill that would help end FDA tyranny and restore health freedom to the people.

As Americans, we must declare an end to FDA tyranny and demand our own Nuremberg-style trials for disgraced FDA officials. I'm sure Dr. David Graham and other key FDA scientists would be more than willing to testify at such a trial, if the nation could ever find the courage to subject the FDA to the scrutiny of real justice.

Personally, I don't understand why Americans continue to tolerate tyranny in medicine. They witness the events of September 11 and rally for war on somebody -- anybody -- but when our own drug companies kill a hundred times as many Americans right here at home, all they do is sign up in droves for the latest Medicare discount drug sham. It's almost as if the more drugs are prescribed, the more the American people are losing consciousness, and they are left as mind-numbed zombies who can only follow orders, but can never question the reality spoon-fed to them by a Big Pharma-controlled news media.

Because we know the "official" information sources these days are mostly spouting utter nonsense. In this FDA survey, for example, only 47 percent of the scientists think the "FDA routinely provides complete and accurate information to the public." Think about that for a minute. It means that 53 percent believe the FDA provides inaccurate information to the public!

And yet mainstream news sources continue to parrot FDA warnings, press releases and press conferences as if the agency possessed something resembling authority. In reality, it has no authority whatsoever, only tyranny. It rules through intimidation and censorship, not good science and public education. As a result, it has no genuine authority, and no one who is aware of the facts of the situation assigns any kind of credibility to the agency. The FDA is simply one more rogue extension of a federal government that has become a considerable threat to the very people it was supposed to protect and serve.

Prescription drug deaths: The silent holocaust

So why isn't the public up in arms? Why aren't we rallying for war against the FDA? Because the deaths are silent. There's no footage for the evening news: No explosions, no missile attacks, and no crumbling high-rise buildings... just millions of Americans dying in their hospital beds after succumbing to prescription drugs the FDA assured them were perfectly safe. It's a silent chemical holocaust. And there's nothing to film for the evening news... nothing the viewers will want to see or admit to, anyway.

But you can visualize it in this way. Imagine if the FDA owned a B2 stealth bomber armed with nuclear weapons manufactured by pharmaceutical companies. Imagine that each year, it flew the stealth bomber over a major U.S. city and dropped a nuclear bomb directly onto the civilian population. Consider the number of deaths and injuries that would follow. That's what's happening right now in terms of the number of people killed each year by FDA negligence.

With FDA-approved toxic chemicals now the dominant form of so-called medicine in the United States, we are nuking our own population with chemicals that will ultimately harm them or kill them. To call this "scientific medicine" stretches the very definition of absurdity.

I have to wonder: Would the people demand reform if the FDA actually conducted nuclear bombing raids on U.S. cities? Would lawmakers finally stand up and say the FDA should stop bombing our cities? Or would the FDA brush off the critics and simply slap a black-box warning label on the side of the B2 stealth bomber that said, "Warning: This bomb may kill you," and then continue the bombing runs?

As long as powerful corporations keep making money, it appears that nothing can stop this chemical warfare being waged against the American people. No number of deaths is too high, it seems, for a conspiracy of medicine that trades lives for dollars with each passing minute. Shame on the FDA, Big Pharma and every single person who continues to draw a paycheck (or a cash bribe) from these organizations of evil. To continue working for these organizations is to actively contribute to a system that exploits living persons, that has no regard for the value of a human life, and that drains the health and cash of our fellow human beings in order to maximize profits for corporate shareholders.

So I have a question. Why do we still tolerate the actions of this Food and Drug Administration when it is so blatantly engaged in crimes against humanity? Why isn't the FBI conducting armed raids on the agency right now and marching these criminals away in handcuffs?

And when do the FDA trials start? Because when they begin, I want a front row seat.