"Is It Safe?"

Anybody remember this 1976 Thriller?  A classic indeed.  The Nazi Dr. Szell (Lawrence Olivier) would ask the unwitting Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) those famous words, over and over..."Is it safe?"  Babe, of course, had no idea what the heck Szell was talking about.

Striking similarity to us and the FDA, no?  Unfortunately, we're not holding a dental probe to the FDA's painful cavity.  Oh, if only we were.

Read on...

So how do we know that the food we eat, the products we use on our bodies and the drugs we take are safe?  I'm sure that we'd all like to believe that when we pick a product from the shelf, or worse yet, when we are prescribed some medication from our doctor, that we can rest easy knowing that someone, somewhere has run the appropriate gambit of tests to ensure our safety.  I mean c'mon now.  This is the United States of America, one of the best places to live on the Earth, right?  Certainly, we should have the best oversight of these things, right?  I mean is it at all possible that the FDA would allow a drug to hit the market that wasn't safe?

Anybody lucky enough to get a prescription for Vioxx?

So I'm sitting in a doctor's office the other day and in a very short period of time, no less than three different, very well-dressed, young and hungry people arrive toting a briefcase or small cart.  They would relentlessly beg the receptionists to see Dr. So-and-So or Dr. So-and-So if Dr. So-and-So wasn't available.  Clearly, these were drug company reps who were there to sell their wares.  These slick-talking, right-out-of college, gonna conquer the world boys and girls were the front line offense for the infiltration of drugs into the medical marketplace.  Anybody invest in pharmaceutical companies lately?  Well done.  Got a few extra bucks you could lend me? 

Now here's the kicker -- all three were kind enough to also be toting what appeared to be some rather luxurious "boodie."  Crystal and fine chocolates were two that I was able to see from my vantage point, which wasn't even that good.  I mean how obvious did they need to be in a waiting room full of patients?  Imagine the dialog. 

"Hello, Dr. So-and-So.  We've got this new drug we'd like for you to start prescribing.  Your patients will love it.  Here's some research on it, a big box of free samples....oh, and this lovely parting gift."

And this is legal.

This is the daily routine in the drug world.  It's how pharmaceutical companies make their money...and lots of it.  Yet they wouldn't make a dime unless the FDA gave them the green light.  This is an agency of the US Government, presently under the watchful eye of George W.  And so when we ask the question to our public servants: "Is it safe?" well then we MUST be getting the straight answer, right? 

Not bloody likely.

You see, like most Federal agencies, the FDA is under-funded, under-staffed and over-worked.  They are also subject to negotiations with some of the largest companies known to man or woman.  Here's a stunning statistic: lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying our government on drug matters every year.  And if that wasn't bad enough, roughly 10 times that is spent influencing nearly 700,000 doctors to prescribe certain drugs through free samples, educational grants and speaker fees...and don't forget the pricey chocolates.

So to whom are we directing our question when we ask "Is it safe?"  An overworked, underpaid and easily influenced group of paper pushers who have shown through time their inability to know much of anything about what's safe and what isn't.

So when the plastic companies, responding to the recent outcry about Bisphenol-A and Phthalates in our water bottles, settle-in on their position that the FDA has approved the use of these resins for years, we'll rest a bit easier, right?

It's time to take safety into our own hands.  It's time to take some personal accountability for what we put into and on our bodies [did you know that personal care products are completely unregulated?  That's right -- the stuff we use on our children with the words "natural" or "healthy" or even "organic" might be anything but...and usually is].  It's time to turn the bottle over, read the insert, do a little research, buy from the source, boost our knowledge, empower our own decision making and protect the health of ourselves and our families.  Ask questions.  Get other opinions.  Learn.  Take charge.

Then, and only then, will we know that "It is safe."

Comments

[amee]

the issue that sickens me most is the advertising that is done on these drugs, particularly on television- my god we are the "pushers" our parents used to tell us about- we are pushing drugs on our kids, on the elderly, on everyone and everyone. and we are the only country in the world that does this. this is a gleaming example of our warped capitalist society. we don't care about the cure- my god- the drug companies would loose way too much money--why are so many other countries offering what we call "alternative" treatments that are actually cures? because we are too afraid of the big biz of pharmaceuticals declining. pathetic.

we are profit motivated, under educated (and it our own fault) and an ill informed society. we go for wellness check-ups once a year tho we are not a wellness based society- we are a symptom covering one. we don't care what the cause of an illness is we just treat the symptom.