The Chinese Answer To FDA Corruption:
06/02/07
Deadly Serious About Drug Safety In China...
Opinion By Nurse Mark
The Chinese Republic is often an inscrutable one.
In many instances they struggle with problems
similar to ours: population growth, runaway bureaucracy, pollution, corruption
in government, spiraling energy costs, crime.
It is in their solutions to many of these problems
where they differ so radically from us.
Take as an example their solution to the problem of corruption in their highest
government officials. You see, in the US,
government officials who accept bribes or are found to be in positions of
"conflict of interest" (for example, being at the head of a regulatory agency
and having ties to the businesses that the agency regulates) are at best
rewarded with promotions to greater power and wealth, and at worst (if they are
caught, and if they must be "made an example of" for political reasons) they are
fined or sent away to some "Club Fed" prison to serve a minimal amount of time
practicing their golf swings, writing their autobiographies, and running their
businesses from their well-appointed "cells."
In China? The fate of those caught and convicted of
such corrupt activities is simple and brutal: death by execution. Once enamored
of public execution with a bullet to the back of the head, China has "softened"
and modernized, with mobile killing vans now providing quick cheap death by
lethal injection. In a news article this
week the Associated Press reports that China's former top FDA regulator was
found to have taken bribes from Chinese Drug companies to expedite the approval
of drugs without their being fully tested for safety. Zheng Xiaoyu has been
convicted and sentenced - to death.
According to the AP article, one example given was an antibiotic that caused 10
deaths last year before being pulled from the market.
10 deaths. That
seems rather pale in comparison to the numbers of deaths resulting from FDA
"approved" drugs in this country; Avandia, which the drug maker estimated in
it's own research killed 35,000 last year, Vioxx, which killed anywhere from
50,000 to 120,000 depending on who's numbers you believe, and others - virtually
all of which had either been "hustled" through the approval process, or had
safety concerns and warnings hushed or covered up or ignored by the regulators
involved. Hundreds of thousands of deaths.
But there any similarity ends.
China takes corruption very seriously. Deadly
seriously. And a man's life will be taken because he committed acts that harmed
others. Convicted of corruption, this former official will be executed.
America also takes corruption seriously. Deadly
seriously. Thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands will die
because our highest regulators and officials value power and wealth over the
lives of Americans. Never convicted of corruption, these officials are rewarded
with promotions, wealth, power, and prestige. After leaving their well-paying
government posts these now-former-officials often find themselves further
rewarded with high-paid jobs at the very same drug companies that they were once
charged with "regulating." So. Which
country has it right? |
