You are on your own: FDA gets an F

From today's NYTimeshere

The nation’s food supply is at risk, its drugs are potentially dangerous and its citizens’ lives are at stake because the Food and Drug Administration is desperately short of money and poorly organized, according to an alarming report by agency advisers.

The report, made public on Friday, is the latest and perhaps most far-reaching in a string of outside assessments that have concluded that the F.D.A. is poorly equipped to protect the public health. It was written by three members of the F.D.A. Science Board, an advisory panel that reports directly to the agency’s commissioner, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach. The three authors in turn had 30 scientific advisers.

Surprise surprise. No one is overseeing our food supply for the garbage in it. No one is overseeing our medication supply b/c of big pharma.

Your money isn't going to your health or welfare. It's knotted up in eyewreck.

Barbara J. McNeil, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and one of the report’s authors, said she was stunned at the agency’s sorry state.

“This was the first time that a group of people got together and really looked at all the areas that the F.D.A. has to cover,” Dr. McNeil said. “We were shocked at the scope of its responsibilities, we were shocked at how little its resources have increased, and we were surprised at the conditions those in the F.D.A. had to work under.”

FDA is under resourced in every way. So bad they cannot distinguish between road salt & table salt. Don't believe me?

“Reports of product dangers are not rapidly compared and analyzed, inspectors’ reports are still handwritten and slow to work their way through the compliance system, and the system for managing imported products cannot communicate with customs and other government systems,” the report stated.

The agency often misses significant product arrivals because its computers are so poor that they cannot distinguish between shipments of road salt and those of table salt, the report said.

When you want to shrink government to the size of fitting down your tub drain, you are a capitalist of the most vicious variety.

Garret A. FitzGerald, a pharmacologist from the University of Pennsylvania and adviser to the authors, said the report was raising an alarm because “this is a crisis.” Dr. FitzGerald pointed to a series of food and drug scares that have demonstrated how little oversight the F.D.A. provides.

He blamed a “cabal of Congressional majorities and presidential administrations that has serially stripped the agency of assets.”

I am an m.d. If we cannot supply our citizens with reasonably priced healthy foods, affordable and SAFE medications what's the point? We have an agency whose mandate it is to oversee our food and medication supply. But unless it is properly funded with INDEPENDENT minded scientists, nutritionists and other health professionals, it's a waste. Unless it's given the financial resources and equipment to do the job, why have it. Our government is abandoning it's citizens and flunking at it's job. This is ONE tiny example of the mess we are in.

going to meditate.