(NaturalNews) Wait ... What?
The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) really
doesn't conduct any scientific studies on the very drugs it approves? No, it doesn't, and the facts surrounding this reality will shock and anger you.
This point was recently brought out – again – by the Alliance for Natural Health, in a
short video made in response to a bogus Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary, in which the taxpayer-funded network claimed that vitamin and nutrient supplements are
not regulated at all by the federal government.
While that is simply not true, PBS nevertheless repeated the claim, echoing what other government officials,
Big Pharma representatives and operatives of the traditional medical industry have said.
"The claim is that drugs are tightly regulated, while supplements are not regulated at all," the video says. "This is totally false but a recent documentary from the Public Broadcasting Service's
Frontline made the claim anyway."
The documentary went on to claim that supplements may actually be dangerous, even though there is a wealth of evidence noting that they are among the safest things humans can ingest when it comes to maintaining good health.
More at risk of dying from a PRESCRIPTION drug
What's more, as is usually the case when a government entity is shilling for Big Pharma, the alliance noted that PBS'
Frontline never made mention of the fact that prescription medications pose the real danger, killing more than 100,000 people a year.
[1] Also, the documentary completely whiffs on the fact that supplements must be manufactured according to strict federal guidelines, and that both
the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) oversee the supplement market. To think otherwise is to believe that other things we ingest – like our food – are similarly
unregulated.
But then comes the kicker – and again, this is something that
Frontline failed to mention: The FDA itself does no scientific studying of any drugs the agency approves.
"When a new drug is approved," the video continues, "the FDA analyzes the results of studies conducted by
the company applying for approval. That's right. Drug companies conduct their own studies on their
own products in order to gain market approval."
How's that for inducing honesty and transparency? The
drug maker that has a direct monetary stake in getting its drug approved gets to conduct its own study. That's really the epitome of the fox watching the hen house, wouldn't you agree?
But would a drug maker actually bring a drug to market without fully testing it, given the risks entailed in terms of lawsuits and injury claims? Yes – that has already happened, and on more than one occasion.
More than 60,000 deaths were eventually attributed to Vioxx, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory in the NSAID class used mainly for the acute pain of arthritis and pain related to menstruation. It has since been recalled from the market.
More than 80,000 died from taking Avandia, the Alliance noted further. Avandia is an oral diabetic medicine that was designed to help control blood sugar levels in
Type 2 diabetics.
Supplements are safer than food
Together, these two drugs have produced (thus far) more than 140,000 deaths, and yet they were both approved by the FDA based on their manufacturers' studies.
It's important to remember, as the alliance pointed out, that about 75 percent of retracted drug
studies are recalled because they contain fraudulent data and information, and this is getting more and more common as time goes on and there is more money at stake.
Another major difference between prescription medications and supplements, the Alliance noted, was that manufactured drugs always introduce a
foreign substance or chemical into our bodies, which can sometimes be toxic enough to kill us. Supplements, by comparison, are generally made of
natural substances – there is nothing foreign about them and, in effect, there have already been thousands of years' worth of human trials.
After receiving scores of complaints from viewers, the PBS network's ombudsman, who looks into criticisms from viewers,
admitted that, "Greater context should have been provided that made clear that, despite some serious examples of bad outcomes on the program, this is not a public health calamity."
Sources: [1] Null, G. Ph.D.
et al. (2011)
Death by Medicine: Praktikos Books. Link
here[PDF] ANH-USA.org YouTube.com Science.NaturalNews.com
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