By Daisy Luther
There was a time when “FDA Approved” was a vote of credibility. We could purchase a product and feel safe because the government watchdogs had checked it out thoroughly before allowing it to be sold.
Now, “FDA Approved” means “The company that produced this product has enough money and clout to allow it to be sold.”
Many people rely on the FDA as a source of knowledge and safety. Their recommendations mean something to folks who feel as though someone is watching out for them and that in America if something was bad, the government wouldn’t allow it to be sold. They believe that the drugs are tested and approved for our benefit and that the manufacturers of Big Pharma are at the mercy of the fierce protectors who are advocating for the people.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be further from the truth. This is all part of the giant marketing deception perpetrated on a trusting public.
Some people are so snowed by what the FDA does that they want it to be even more powerful. There is actually an “alliance for a stronger FDA” whose mission reads like a diary entry from a hostage with Stockholm Syndrome.
With responsibility for products that comprise more than 20% of all national consumer spending, theU.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) oversees aspects of several industries that are key to our nation’s growth and prosperity.
A science-based, predictable, and efficient FDA helps these industries — including the food, drug, medical device, and cosmetics industries — to innovate and to create high-paying jobs here in America while improving our balance of trade.
The Alliance for a Stronger FDA works to ensure annual appropriations that will adequately fund the FDA’s essential missions, and we believe that the American people expect this too. There is no backstop, no other agency, that performs this critical work.
The federal government gives the FDA about $8 per year for each American (an “appropriation” of $2.561 billion for FY 2014). Nowhere else in the federal budget does so little money need to go so far. The FDA has just 10,000 employees to monitor food safety, review the safety and efficacy of medical products, assure the safe use of those medical products, and protect the American people, their pets, and their farm animals from poorly made, counterfeit, and illegal food, drugs, and cosmetics.
Recent research on a variety of topics has led me to note some astonishing facts about the GMO Food and Drug PushersAdministration. Like a bad penny, it seems whatever topic I’m looking into, the FDA keeps turning up. The FDA has a central role in the increasing tyranny in the United States and we, as taxpayers, are funding them to do this. Be warned, you aren’t going to like what you read below, but unless you are mired in intractable cognitive dissonance, you’re going to see a pattern of abuse and deception.
The FDA’s Perpetual Conflicts of Interest
First of all, it would be nice to believe that the group who decides whether foods and medicines are safe for our consumption is unbiased and benevolent. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Let’s take a look at the leadership – the head of the snake – and the ties of those leaders to Big Agri and Big Pharma. Some previous tsars/commissioners are:
2016: Dr. Robert Califf
Califf is a cardiologist who was a tenured professor at Duke University School of Medicine. He’s long been criticized for having deep financial ties to Big Pharma. He worked closely with drug companies and convinced them to do large, expensive clinical trials that were very profitable for Duke. Califf was a paid consultant for Merck Sharp & Dohme, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and Eli Lilly per ProPublica from 2009 to 2013. In the disclosure information for an article published in the journalCirculation in 2013, Califf shared that he was a consultant for Gilead – the drug company that recently came under scrutiny for outrageously priced hepatitis C drugs. The price for a 12-week course of treatment with one of the drugs was initially set at $84,000.
2010: Michael Taylor
Taylor’s most recent resume entry: VP and attorney for SatanMonsanto. One of Taylor’s “accomplishments” for Monsanto was writing the rules that allowed recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone into the American food and milk supply, and forcing dairies who labelled their milk as rBGH-free to also state that there was “no difference between their hormone free milk and the chemically enhanced milk.”
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2009: Margaret Hamburg
Hamburg served on the board of directors of Henry Schien, Inc. previous to her appointment to the throne of the FDA. Henry Schien, Inc. produces amalgam dental products – products that contain toxic mercury. Hamburg spearheaded the legislation that allowed mercury to be allowed in dental products (without a required warning for the consumers) during her time at the FDA. Hamburg was recently named as one of the defendants in an $800 million RICO lawsuit. The suit accuses Hamburg of playing a role in a conspiracy to approve Levaquin, an antibiotic drug known to cause severe (and even deadly) side effects, in order to financially benefit her husband’s hedge fund which held very large financial positions in Johnson & Johnson, makers of the drug.
2006: Andrew von Eschenbach
A Bush family friend, von Eshchenbach has a background as a drug peddler for Big Pharma and as the head of the National Cancer Society. Some highlights of his reign over the FDA were the speedy approval of Avandia, a medication for diabetes that had the unfortunate side effect of a 43% increase in heart attacks among those taking it; and accusations of corruption and intimidation by the FDA’s own scientists.
The FDA Promotes the Death of the Family Farm
But if that cast of characters isn’t enough to shed doubt on the veracity of any claim made by this organization, take a look at the following facts and tell me that they’re looking out for people instead of corporate interests.
The FDA seems to be busily striving to regulate the family farm right out of business. The FDA has gone “SWAT Team” on producers of raw milk and cheese, performing armed raids on small farms, seizing and destroying inventory and handcuffing farmers to haul them off to jail.
The FDA keeps adding “food safety” requirements to small organic farms while doing nothing about the factory farms’ abundant use of pesticides and toxins.
The FDA pushed the Food Safety Modernization Act which could eventually shut down farmer’s markets across the country – or at least make the food more difficult and expensive for farmers to produce. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), “The regulations could erect new barriers to these important markets for small and mid-scale farmers unable to bear the expense of compliance.” Find the regulations here.
With all of these new (time-consuming and pricey) legislations that farmers must adhere to, the price of local organic produce is skyrocketing, making the product unaffordable for most Americans. This, in turn, reduces competition for the huge factory farms and their GMO-tainted, chemical-sprayed products, allowing a huge profit at the end of the day for Big Agri.
The FDA crackdown on health food stores and promoters of natural remedies is reminiscent of cops raiding a meth lab full of junkies. Since 1987, facilities such as the Life Extension Foundation, vitamin manufacturers, health food stores, natural pet food stores and naturopathic medical clinics have been raided by agents waving assault rifles. Owners and employees have been arrested and convicted of crimes. Countless merchandise and literature has been confiscated. What was the crime committed by these natural healing companies? They don’t tithe to the Church of Big Pharma.
The FDA is busily “harmonizing” the United States policies withCodex Alimentarius. Codex is the United Nations’ sinister plot to be in control of the food consumption of the world, as per Agenda 21. Codex promotes chemical agriculture, heavily medicated livestock and genetically modified produce. It’s all done under a do-gooder disguise – the CA Commission states its goals as “protecting the health of consumers, ensuring fair trade practices and promoting coordination of food standards.”
Codex actually outlaws the sale of vitamins of beneficial dosages, as well as natural remedies. According to Mike Adams, the founder of Natural News, “the FDA will “harmonize” the U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with global Codex requirements which make illegal virtually all healthy doses of vitamins and minerals. Under full Codex “harmonization,” America will be left with a dead food supply and the health food stores will be virtually stripped bare of dietary supplements. Selling vitamin D at a reasonable dose such as 4,000 IU per capsule will be criminalized and products will be seized and destroyed by FDA agents who recruit local law enforcement to bring in the firepower.
The FDA can overlook the horrible side effects and suicides caused by anti-depressant and psychiatric pharmaceuticals while issuing terrifying safety advisories about St. John’s Wort, a remedy that has been used successfully for hundreds of years.
The FDA can bypass the deadly e-coli outbreaks occurring in massive factory farms where the animals are squeezed in so compactly that they can’t turn around, but they make onerous legislation about the use of manure on organic farms, taking run after run at farmers for the age-old practice of using manure as compost.
The FDA can cheerfully tell the American people, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to see here” with regard to the ever-rising radiation levels in milk and meat, post-Fukushima, but they raid the dairies of Amish farmers who sell milk right from the cow, as it has been consumed for centuries.
The FDA wholeheartedly supports genetic modification of our crops and livestock.
The FDA endorses more than 3000 additives and preservatives in our food.
The FDA promotes chemical pharmaceuticals over natural remedies.
The FDA wants to oversee homemade soap with costly regulations that could put artisanal soapmakers out of business, but allows toxic ingredients like pthalates, formaldehyde, parabans, and many more in commercial soap without the same type of oversight.
The FDA wants to oversee homemade cotton feminine hygiene supplies as “medical devices”, but has no issue with the bleach and glyphosate in store-bought tampons.
So what does “FDA Approved” Really Mean?
Do you really, honestly think that FDA approval means anything other than the fact that the “approved” company has enough money and influence to purchase it? The FDA wants to be in control of ALL things ingested by the American people. The FDA is simply an enforcing tentacle of the big business organized crime syndicate that actually runs the United States.
The FDA is completely and irrevocably corrupted. The mission of the FDA was to protect the citizenry from the greed of the big corporations, but now the department has sold out and is working directly on behalf of those corporations, while pretending to be on “our side.” Not only do FDA bigwigs benefit from the corporations whose agendas they push, we pay them to do it – as taxpayers, we are paying for the FDA to sell our health to the highest bidder, regardless of the consequences.
We can safely add FDA board members to the list of traitors to the American people who should be prosecuted and harshly punished for their crimes against us.
There is no bottom line but the bottom line of the balance sheet.
You can read more from Daisy Luther at her site DaisyLuther.com, where this article first appeared.
Daisy Luther is a single mom who lives in a small village in the mountains of Northern California, where she homeschools her youngest daughter and raises veggies, chickens, and a motley assortment of dogs and cats. She is a best-selling author who has written several books, including The Organic Canner, The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget, andThe Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource. Daisy is a prolific blogger who has been widely republished throughout alternative media. On her website, The Organic Prepper, Daisy uses her background in alternative journalism to provide a unique perspective on health, self-reliance, personal liberty, and preparedness. You can follow her on Facebook,Pinterest, and Twitter.