Heparin Deaths

As if they had been reading this blog, the New York Times and the Rachel Maddow Show today blasted the FDA’s “chicken guarding the hen house” choice of inspectors. The FDA has allowed industries being inspected to be the ones who hired the FDA inspectors. For the Rachel Maddow video, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#29561173

The New York Times, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/business/06food.html?_r=1 said:

“With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors like Mr. Hatfield. And the problems go well beyond peanuts.”

The total abrogation of its responsibility to regulate has left both of the FDA’s mandates – food and drugs – vulnerable. The NY Times article highlights peanuts and salmonella. The Heparin Catastrophe is the poster child for what is wrong with the FDA’s drug inspections. But the spirit of deregulation has harmed Americans in virtually all aspects of their lives.

One must ask, what was the SEC doing all those years, giving Bernie Madoff and Citibank, clean bills of health? What was the Justice Department doing worrying about Martha Steward and not Wall Street?

Ronald Reagan’s infamous quote: “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” has left a legacy of a broken economic system, grossly disproportionate income distribution, corruption, and now, disease. We must allow government to go back to monitoring business. We must stop the absurd out cry outcry against a mild return to a progressive tax system. And we must use the Justice Department to prosecute crimes, not curry politic favor. For those who have been killed or made sick by Baxter’s greed, there must be justice.

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Attorney Gordon Johnson
Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447 :: Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

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