The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a Leftist-controlled federal agency that regulates and often interferes with foods, human and veterinary medications, biological products, and medical devices. For each of those goods, the FDA pretends to ensure that they are safe and effective, while instead often delaying approval in an expensive game of lobbying. Bureaucrats at the FDA aspire to land much better paying jobs in Big Pharma, which distorts their decision-making.
The FDA employs 17,000 people and regulates nearly one-fifth of all consumer goods sold in the United States.[1] The FDA regulates all food, except for meat and poultry, which are regulated by the Department of Agriculture.
The FDA also regulates cosmetics based on safety, and regulates electronic products that emit radiation for safety.
FDA regulates information presented to the public based on accuracy and understandability. Generally, the FDA regulates marketing, labeling, and promotion of drugs, rather than the off-label uses of approved medications.
In practice, the pharmaceutical industry influences the FDA and distorts its policies in several powerful ways. The pharmaceutical industry will offer higher paying jobs to preferred FDA employees and consultants. Conflicts of interest by persons in advisory positions to the FDA have been rampant.
Regulatory capture occurs when a government agency becomes "captured" or controlled by the very industry the agency is intended to regulate. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the FDA, which approves pharmaceutical drugs for release to the public, has been captured by Big Pharma, which funds 45% of its budget and dominates career staffing at all levels with technocrats throughout its bureaucracy.[2]
Kennedy claims that after the Reagan administration proposed abolishing the FDA in the 1980s, the FDA responded internally with a search for a pandemic to justify its existence.
The FDA does not regulate physicians, who are primarily within the jurisdiction of the states for many issues but subject to federal law with respect to controlled substances and billing of government and insurance programs. As the Congressional Research Service explains:[3]
“ | To market a prescription drug in the United States, a manufacturer needs FDA approval. ... But FDA traditionally has not regulated the practice of medicine. Physicians, therefore, may [from the standpoint of the FDA] prescribe an FDA-approved drug for indications that FDA has not reviewed for safety and effectiveness. ... FDA regulates the drug and the manufacturer. Each state regulates clinicians and pharmacies. ... The FFDCA [Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act] does not give FDA authority to regulate the practice of medicine; that responsibility generally rests with the states. | ” |
According to a whistleblower, the FDA has put monosodium glutamate, referred internally as E621 in the FDA's E-number ID system, into many consumer food products, which has resulted in many wrongful deaths as E621 is a harmful chemical.[4]
Categories: [United States Government Agencies]