Nice story, but it leaves the wrong impression
Uncle Pharma's Mischief in a Bottle
By Greg Critser
Greg Critser is the author of "Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World." His new book, "Generation Rx," will be published by Houghton Mifflin in January 2006.November 29, 2004
Let's get this straight….
A major pharmaceutical CEO gets hauled up in front of Congress to do the congressional version of a perp walk. The executive's company stands accused of one of the worst drug screw-ups in recent history.
Meantime, an FDA official, a scientist with an impeccable scientific track record who had managed to predict almost all of the major drug recalls, testifies that the drug should have been targeted for intense study and possible withdrawal up to three years earlier. The CEO is lauded on the business page for his affability and straightforwardness. The Food and Drug Administration is nailed on the front page for not doing its job. The scientist is profiled as a "devout Catholic," a "loner" and being against RU-486.
To ask the obvious: What is that all about?
The answer is an uncomfortable one for most Americans, who pride themselves on having a solid sense of anti-business populism. It is this: For many of us, "pharma" has become family, and the FDA has become the scorned black sheep of the clan, no matter what it does.
Perhaps more precisely, in our minds and our culture, pharma has become Uncle Pharma, a go-ahead fellow who, like one's occasionally errant but always charming bachelor uncle, shows up unannounced on the doorstep brandishing exotic trinkets from some far-off land, trinkets so amazing that they seem to transform your little world before Uncle, without a word, vanishes into the void. Against him, the FDA can hardly compete. All it can say for itself is "no," a distinctly un-American command if there ever was one.
The problem is the FDA isn't trying to compete. The FDA is complicit…they suppressed the warnings of the scientist.
