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The FDA – not what it is supposed to be – why we need individual efforts
Most of us have been raised to trust the big institutions of the US government. As the past few years and especially the most recent two have shown, these institutions are having problems. They seem to have lost their way, tending toward corruption, and/or just becoming generally ineffective and incompetent. The VA comes to mind.
Here is a recent article about the FDA, the government institution that is supposed to be monitoring the device makers to protect us from dangerous products. These are the same people that will be working with the device makers.
We all want to believe. But the evidence to support that belief isn’t there. Things look pretty bad.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/24/fda-opioids-big-pharma-prescriptions
“Brown, an anesthesiologist who chairs the FDA committee of specialists advising the agency on whether to approve new opioid painkillers, said he no longer had confidence in repeated assurances by the FDA leadership that it was taking the epidemic seriously and prepared to put public health above the commercial interests of drug makers.”
“The FDA was also embarrassed by revelations that officials responsible for opioid approvals were taking part in “pay to play” schemes in which manufacturers paid to attend meetings to draw up the criteria for approving prescription narcotics.”
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4 Replies
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Another article about lack of oversight from trusted governmental agencies. It’s just the state of government in the USA today. All under the same umbrella. Not just the current administration either, a slow degradation over many years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html
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This seems like something that it would be very reasonable for the community of surgeons to get behind. A lever to use for reform or rehabilitation of the FDA. Smoking is one of the worst things for healing, but the FDA’s efforts to minimize the number of smokers produced by big tobacco marketing efforts is at risk.
More smokers means more weak tissue, more disease, poorer healing, more need for mesh implantation and more mesh failures, both recurrence and chronic pain. Staying focused on only the few hours of surgery isn’t enough, if the goal is to produce a healthy patient. “I did my job” isn’t enough.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/health/tobacco-e-cigarettes-lobbying-fda.html
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If you use these words to search the internet you’ll find another very good article by the Guardian. I’d post the link but I get constant “Unapproved” rejections.
[h=1]Don’t pin the opioid crisis just on Purdue. The guilt runs wide[/h] -
Another article from the Guardian. Considering the recent tragedies with the Boeing 737, you can see that the big institutions are like giant machines, focused on keeping the business alive.
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