Summary and Analysis
FDA building in White Oak, Maryland.
Anyone in the field of addiction recovery has witnessed the less-than-glowing morality of large pharmaceutical companies. One only has to scan one of the thousands of lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson or Purdue Pharma for it to be clear that these and many other corporations have placed corporate greed far above the health of their customers. And these are, lest anyone forget, healthcare companies. We are trusting them with our health and even our lives.
Additionally, the FDA is supposed to stand between us and any harm. As they say on their own website: “The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, quality, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products, and medical devices. The FDA is also responsible for the safety and security of most of our nation’s food supply, all cosmetics, dietary supplements and products that give off radiation.”
In this article for the Mies Institute, author Liam Cosgrove sites many examples of times pharmaceutical corporations and the FDA failed to protect our well-being. Even within the limited world of the causes of addiction and resources for recovery, there are too many examples of conflict of interest. Mr. Cosgrove’s article is a good reminder that those in the world of addiction recovery should be cautious about which companies and agencies they trust.
Excerpted from mises.org
Our healthcare system is broken, a fact nobody would have disputed in precovid days. Regulatory capture is a reality, and the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with examples. Yet we trusted private-public partnerships to find an optimal solution to a global pandemic, assuming a crisis would bring out the best in historically corrupt institutions.
Here is a brief list of less-than-savory behavior demonstrated by our titans of healthcare:
- Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson plead guilty to “misbranding with the intent to defraud or mislead” and paying “kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe [their] drugs,” resulting in fines of $2.3 billion in 2009 and $2.2 billion in 2013, respectively.
