The FDA: Pharmaceutical Industry Pawn?

Like other government agencies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is filled with appointed officials who have close ties to the industries that they’re supposed to be monitoring. According to a study conducted by USA Today, “More than half of the experts hired to advise the government on the safety and effectiveness of medicine have financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies that will be helped or hurt by their decisions.”⁶⁰ The study also found that at more than 90 percent of FDA advisory committee meetings, at least one committee member had a conflict of interest by having a financial stake in the topic or drug being discussed.⁶¹ As a result, the FDA often makes decisions that benefit corporations and hurt consumers.

One area where the FDA has let the public down is in its refusal to adequately regulate the use of growth-promoting drugs in factory farms. Leading health organizations—including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association—have warned that the use of powerful pharmaceuticals by the farmed-animal industry poses a serious threat to human health.^62,63,64 Despite the well-documented health risks that these drugs pose to humans, the FDA has refused to take the appropriate steps to regulate the use of hormones, antibiotics, and other drugs and chemicals in farmed animals—and in some cases, the FDA has gone out of its way to protect factory farms and drug manufacturers at the expense of public health.

The FDA has also failed to adequately enforce rules that are intended to slow the spread of mad cow disease. In a report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the FDA’s enforcement of the ban on feeding cows back to cows, the GAO found that “the agency had failed to issue warning letters to violators [of the feed ban] and inspection records were incomplete, inconsistent, inaccurate, and untimely.” The report revealed that though the FDA found that hundreds of feed manufacturers were not following the rules, the agency only sent two letters of warning to violators of the feed ban.⁶⁵

The FDA has also recently been involved in other widely publicized scandals that clearly illustrate the fact that the agency’s ties to the industry are overshadowing its better judgment. For instance, the FDA has been accused of pressuring its scientists to “water down” findings that indicated the drug Vioxx doubled consumers’ risks of heart attacks and strokes.⁶⁶ Vioxx has since been withdrawn from the market, but up to 55,000 people may have died because they took the drug.⁶⁷ After listening to testimony from FDA scientists about the Vioxx scandal, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said that the agency had grown “far too cozy” with the industry that it is supposed to regulate.⁶⁸ Similarly, the FDA has failed to adequately regulate genetically altered foods—the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that the FDA missed “obvious errors” in its review of genetically modified crops.⁶⁹

Bovine Growth Hormone: A Case Study in FDA Corruption

A prominent example of the FDA’s yielding to the wishes of the farmed-animal industry and big pharmaceutical companies is its approval of the use of a genetically engineered hormone, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in cows used for milk. This hormone is manufactured by Monsanto, the same company that brought us Agent Orange and PCBs and then convinced the U.S. government that these chemicals were safe—though it’s now clear that they are potent carcinogens.^70,71

Like Agent Orange and PCBs, rBGH has been linked to cancer in humans. Scientists have shown that when cows are injected with Monsanto’s rBGH, they produce milk that contains between two and 10 times as much IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) as regular milk, and IGF-1 has been shown to cause cancer in humans.⁷² Despite the fact that the use of this genetically engineered hormone can hurt humans who drink cow’s milk, the FDA approved its use.

How Did This Happen?

The U.S. is the only country in the industrialized world that has approved the use of rBGH in animals used for food, and the story of how it happened is just another example of the coziness between government agencies and the industries that they’re supposed to regulate.⁷³

When the Canadian government reviewed Monsanto’s application for the approval of rBGH in that country, Canadian health officials testified that Monsanto attempted to bribe them in order to have the drug approved. Apparently, the Canadian government is less pliable than its counterpart in the U.S. because in 1999, Canada joined the rest of the developed world—with the exception of the United States—in banning the use of rBGH in Canadian cows.⁷⁴ “It is clear that the FDA put the interest of Monsanto above its duty to protect the health of the American consumer when it approved BGH,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, echoing the sentiments of consumer groups, scientists, and public health advocates who watched in disbelief as the FDA continued to support Monsanto and rBGH.⁷⁵

In addition to allowing Monsanto to sell drugs that have been shown to cause cancer in humans, the FDA has also refused to label milk from cows who have been treated with rBGH—despite the fact that the vast majority of American consumers support this type of labeling.⁷⁶ The person in the FDA who was responsible for the agency’s refusal to label rBGH milk, Michael R. Taylor, used to be a partner at the law firm that represents Monsanto—and he landed a cushy job at Monsanto after he left the agency.⁷⁷

Read more about the hormones, antibiotics, and other contaminants in animal products.