Americans believe health comes in drug bottles and the few in the medical community who know differently (they ALL should but are hypnotized by drug claims) aren’t advertising the truth.

 At the FDA they’ve long forgotten it’s the public they’re supposed to be serving.

Drug Culture Created by the FDA

and Big Pharmaceutical Companies

Costs Government Programs Heavily

Obama plans to put a new health care system in place doomed to failure at huge expense, personal-healthwise and economically to the country . . .  as we mentioned in rant #4, there are four main reasons why: 

A.    Government spending programs seldom work. 

B.     The two earlier programs, Medicare and Medicaid, did not help and only made health and cost trends already in place much worse.

C.    And mostly because, the President is NOT expected to address FDA re-organization or clean up in his new program: huge mistake, HUGE!

D.    Additionally, as far as is known, the President is not expected to address a single one of the points brought up by health educator Rajjpuut in his blog series “A Far Better Health Care Alternative.”

          American medical scientists have time and time again concluded research that underlines the simple fact that there is absolutely NO need for new drugs that mask pain but do not help cure the underlying problems. There are enough old pain medications at large, and the newer ones are just far more expensive and much, much more dangerous. But the drug companies keep cranking them out and despite the best medical advice ever known (First Do No Harm!), the FDA keeps approving them. The pure cost in money; the cost in iatrogenic ailments (problems caused my errors from doctors, nurses or the hospital itself; or by reactions to medicine) in money and lives; and the cost to the U.S. government all demand that the FDA deny approval to about 90-95% of all such drugs.

          However, the FDA in its inanity and corruption (see Rajjpuut’s earlier FDA rants) doesn’t even deny approval to 10% of these dangerous new concoctions. Year after year the list of horrendous side-effects for new medications we hear advertised on TV grows longer and more virulent. 

          Drug companies then go out of their way to see that their dangerous, expensive concoctions become popular:

A.      Nurses are paid by drug companies for using their products when they have that discretionary power

B.      Schools get paid thousands of dollars monthly for every child they help get prescribed for psychiatric drugs like Prozac or Ritalin.

C.      Doctors routinely get visited by drug sales men with huge amounts of literature “pushing” their drugs and even kickback offers and bonus offers if certain “quotas” are

 met

D.      A, B, and C above are clearly abuses that endanger the patients and the government’s coffers. The FDA which has the power to stop A, B, and C above from happening

never does anything . . . never.

The biggest abuse of all, however, is that drug companies routinely pay scientists and doctors on government advisory panels to recommend their drugs. And often the payments even come for recommending their drugs in front of FDA evaluation hearings and the FDA condones the practice.

Drug companies can now legally bribe** the FDA to hasten their drugs onto the market. 

It’s all a huge pack of lies, deceit, shady practices and outright corruption that endangers the public and costs the government immense amounts of money every second of every day. The FDA knows but will not tell you that:

A.      An aspirin a day makes strokes much more likely

B.      Almost all sunscreens cause cancer but don’t do much to prevent skin cancer (since sunscreens have become common, American skin cancer rates have risen dramatically, far worse than people under the tropic sun typically encounter)

C.      Lowering cholesterol does nothing to stop heart attacks.  The 33-year old high-cholesterol lie is the most profitable charade in the history of medicine making all the quack medicine salesmen ever known look like Honest Abe.

D.      Estrogen therapy is an extraordinarily dangerous practice.

E.       Roughly 60% of the most frequently prescribed drugs for the elderly are found on lists of drugs NOT to be given to elderly persons.

F.       Every prescription drug has dangerous side effects, nevertheless 20% of them have NO printed warnings on the packaging.

G.      Average Americans consume fifty pounds worth of prescription, non-prescription, and over the counter drugs every year (400 times more than Rajjpuut does!)

H.      People who don’t need drugs are now going into their doctors and demanding certain drugs they’ve seen advertised on TV.

J.        The FDA could IMMEDIATELY stop every one of these sad situations, the FDA does nothing!

            At the FDA they’ve long forgotten it’s the public health they’re in the business of protecting; and the public they’re supposed to be serving but the President, congress, and the American Public needs to remember that key fact RIGHT NOW!

The first necessary step in any health care change is to UNDO, REDO and UNcorrupt the FDA.

Live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut   

**   the correct term is "bribe" but the FDA calls them "expedited evaluations" or "expedited reviews"

Regular readers of Rajjpuut’s little rants will recognize a strong personal antipathy toward the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). That once great organization created in 1906, the very year that Upton Sinclair’s monumental novel/expose` “The Jungle” hit the bookstore shelves, has degenerated into the most corrupt federal organization in America. Rajjpuut, health educator he, believes that only a complete top-to-bottom remake of the FDA will allow any health care plan, now or in the future, any hope of success.