Americans Are Sick of FDA Corruption

A new survey done from Consumer Reports was released on April 16, 2007 showing that Americans are getting fed up with the FDA. The survey telephoned and spoke to 1,026 American adults and found some interesting responses.

Apparently, 96% of the people surveyed agreed the government should have the power to require warning labels on drugs with known safety problems. As Consumer Reports explains, "Right now, the Food and Drug Administration must negotiate safety warning labels with a drug maker." This is not currently being done because the FDA is getting paid a lot of money from the drug companies in order to not include such information.

Americans are also becoming more aware of the serious conflict of interest that the FDA has in drug regulation because 84% of the respondents agreed that drug companies have "too much influence over the government officials who regulate them." Also, over two-thirds of the people are concerned that drug companies actually pay the FDA to review and approve their drugs. The consumers are not the customers of the FDA, the drug companies are. What business wants to make their customers unhappy?

Pharmaceutical companies like to pick and choose their clinical findings to make their drugs look better than they really are. Apparently, we have caught on to this fact because 92% agreed that pharmaceutical companies should disclose the results of all of their clinical trials, not just the ones the end up producing positive results.

There is danger in the fact that the FDA cannot require any follow-up studies to be done on the drugs they approve for use. 93% of the respondents also think that the FDA should have the power to demand follow-up safety studies from drug companies so that this danger can be minimized.