The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Wall Street biotech insider gets No. 2 job at the FDA

I don’t know Scott Gottlieb, (in fact, I never heard of him before tonight) when I read that this man of many talents had gone from a Wall Street Biotech specialist to the number 2 guy at the already disastrously Pharma and Biotech Friendly FDA.

As if we did not have enough problems with the FDA, the opportunity to appoint a pro-health, rather than a pro-corporation number 2 person has, at least in this go around, been lost. According to The Seattle Times, Scott Gottlieb is a physician, an internist a biotech industry analyst. He apparently holds pro-industry beliefs which, if implemented, will make the Pharma Friendly FDA even more prone to take positions to support and assist the pharmaceutical iand biotech industry (to the steady detriment of the people of this country). For example, he believes that if early results in an experiment show that a drug is endangering people, that information should not be released early despite the harm that the clinical trial is doing. Not good for people, I would say!

It is no news to anyone that the FDA is hostile to natural medicine, trumping up imaginary “dangers” of natural products while turning a blind eye, a deaf ear and a silent tongue to the deadly side effects and toxicity of patent medicines, better known as drugs. Approximately 200, 000 people die from drugs in America each year at a minimum. The real figure is probably several times higher, by the way.

Biotechnical innovations like genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are dangerous, too, but their dangers are more subtle. All that the FDA asks of a corporation is a voluntary evaluation to make sure that a genetically modified something-or-other has “substantial equivalence” to the un-engineered something-or-other. If it does, on to the market it goes. We find out later that it is bad for the environment or that fatal allergies result from breathing its pollen or …..To Be Determined. The corporation-enamored regulatory agency in which Gottlieb has taken the number 2 job probably needed a health advocate, not an industry analyst.

Gottlieb’s interests are clearly focused on corporate issues. And I expect him to carry out the real mission of the FDA beautifully: to promote and protect the pharmaceutical (and biotech) industry . People will undoubtedly die because of the regulatory actions he will carry out but he will be right in line with the rest of FDA policy.

Now, that’s not what the FDA likes to tell you about its mission. No, they say it is to promote and protect the public health. But if you had to determine its actual mission from its behavior in suppressing natural treatments and protecting dangerous drugs (think Vioxx and then think of the 40% of drugs which are recalled within 5 years of being put on the market after the dangers which their manufactures’ and, often, the FDA itself, knew about before they were allowed on the market, subsequently killing people.) what would you conclude?

Looking at its behavior objectively, whom would you say the FDA is bent on protecting? Yours or Big Pharma’s? Whose interests are promulgated? Yours or Big Biotechna’s?

Even the AMA has finally gotten the idea: an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association calls for reform of the FDA since it can not be trusted to take care of our interests. Although the AMA reportedly has over $10M of its retirement fund invested in the drug industry, its editorial states ” “It is unreasonable to expect that the same agency that was responsible for approval of drug licensing and labeling would also be committed to actively seek evidence to prove itself wrong.”

I agree. What I don’t agree with is the choice of a person to fill the powerful number 2 slot who is clearly interested — and apparently, quite expert — in focusing on the economic impact and corporate issues of the biotechnical industry. Is that what the American people need in the wake of disaster after disaster caused by the absolute disregard of what is good for people in favor of what is good for companies?

How committed to what is good for us will Dr. Gottlieb turn out to be? Let’s watch closely.

Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director