That may seem like an inflammatory headline. It probably won’t after you read this.
A week or so ago I got an email from someone with the Union of Concerned Scientists — a watchdog group of scientists who, among other things, keep track of science abuses — saying they had released the results of a survey about science abuse at the Food and Drug Administration. Scientists at the FDA had responded to the survey, and many said that their opinions were ignored and even suppressed if they disagreed with results the FDA wanted.
Since this wasn’t really my field, I didn’t respond to the email. Obviously, I’ve changed my mind. With what went down at NASA over the George Deutsch affair, and with everything else we’re seeing from this antiscience government, I’m realizing that any scientific suppression is fair game for me to air out here.
What also changed my mind was reading Michael Stebbins’ article in Seed magazine about this: The FDA Is a Cauldron of Discontent. It’s a short article, but damning in its implications. And the webpages documenting this at the UCS are even scarier. Here’s a choice quotation:
“Scientific discourse is strongly discouraged when it may jeopardize an approval. . . . Whenever safety or efficacy concerns are raised on scientific grounds . . . these concerns are not taken seriously.”
What has happened to us? The scariest thing about that quotation, to me, is that it wouldn’t surprise me to hear it from a scientist in any number of government agencies. Scientific suppression is that widespread, and covers that wide a swath.
The FDA is directly responsible for approving drugs that we all take. Our lives depend on this! Stebbins, the author of the Seed magazine article, also writes a good blog called Sex, Drugs, and DNA, rang the alarm about this FDA suppression, and he complains:
Somehow every major news agency and most major newspapers missed the story. This is perplexing to me.
Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me. Even though the New York Times broke the story on NASA and George Deutsch, and it was extensively covered by science blogs, when I talked about this at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis in February, most scientists there had not heard of Deutsch. I found that although the scientists were very concerned about the suppression of science by this Administration, specific examples outside their own field were unknown to them.
This concerns me a great deal. How do we fight something if we don’t have the big picture?
One way is to educate yourself, of course. I read a lot of blogs– my blogroll on the right hand side of this page has a list of some of the blogs that fight antiscience. They have links to others, and so on. It doesn’t take very long to skim all those blogs, especially if you use an aggregator like Bloglines or any number of others. These blogs are not just people in their pajamas banging away on their keyboards; many of these are from respected scientists, science journalists, and people in the trenches who are fighting this war on science.
Hmmm… I almost wrote "encroaching storm" there in that last line, but that’s not accurate: we’re in the storm right now, and it’s at full gale. Science is sacrificed constantly today for political reasons, and it must stop.
Mid-term elections are coming up in November. Investigate your Senator and Congressperson. Find out where they stand on these and other important issues, and on November 7, 2006, take a stand.
I will. Suppressing science is the very essence of antidemocracy– it keeps the public in the dark about reality. Knowledge is our strength, and the ballot box is our weapon.
I’ll leave you with this, from Thomas Jefferson:
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
July 27th, 2006 at 11:54 am
I love that quote from Thomas Jefferson. It reminds me of what great minds were involved in the creating of our government. It’s a shame how things have changed.
Once again, great posting Phil.
July 27th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Well and truly spoken, we must take the mantle that is commended over to us from our founding fathers and stop this destruction of our base of knowledge.
This could be the second burning of the great library.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” -Thomas Jefferson
“We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations; their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there’s not this kind of federal cufflink.” George W. Bush -Fritsche Middle School, Milwaukee, March 30, 2000
See, GW is on the same page as Thomas Jefferson.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I have to agree with Phil. My wife works as a scientist in the pharmaceutical industry. She’s been warning me of the degradation of the FDA since the day we met.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
I’m not sure your Jefferson quote fits. Ideally, everyone would be educated and rational enough to evaluate drug claims, and the role of government would stretch no farther than being an honest broker for such information. That would be the Jeffersonian case. That’s not possible, though, or half the populace would be swilling laudanum and cocaine as they were a century ago. At a minimum, you have to force manufacturers to test and label, and insure the honesty and adequacy and clarity of that testing and that labeling. But how much further than that? Good science is paramount, but beyond guiding that testing and communicating, it’s mute on just how the regulating is done. Do you prohibit the distribution of ineffective or even dangerous drugs, or just make sure that virtually anyone can trivially learn of that dangerousness or ineffectiveness?
This is the realm of politics, not science. Should we, say, back off on the outright restriction of drugs (and I’m not particularly talking about drugs of abuse, here) in exchange for tighter regulation of marketing? I suspect the drug companies would fight this — in terms of dollars spent, marketing seems to be even more valuable to them than R & D. But Jefferson would seem to suggest that this would be a good move — clear the air of misleading claims, appeals to emotion, and perverse monetary incentives and let the and the public, with the guidance of the medical establishment, decide. The FDA becomes just the honest evaluator and disseminator of claims (with strict rules to avoid conflicts that might compromise that honesty).
Yes, science is degraded, perverted, and ignored by government. It’s not peculiar to this administration or this congress (recall that the laws which removed herbal and other “natural” medicines from the FDA’s purview happened in the 1990’s). We’re getting closer to the pre-FDA state of Lydia Pinkham’s and Elixir Sulfanilamide for all. But we’ve been headed here for a while.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
To an extent and speaking broadly, this is a global problem, not just an American one. The link in my byline points to a place where I wrote about this, distilling what people have said about antiscience in America as compared to antiscience in India. (Comparisons and contrasts are always good!)
To head directly to the source, check out Meera Nanda’s essay in Social Epistemology (PDF link). I quote the first two paragraphs:
July 27th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Only one in six took the survey, so people may think that the takers had a disproportionate number of disgruntled workers. Still, 17% say that FDA leaders explicitly asked them to provide inaccurate or misleading information to the public. Also 43% say political appointees had interfered with their work.
Maybe a few in congress will get wind of this. Those with authority should review the responses to the essay questions. The researchers suggest means to empowerment.
July 27th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Phil, you’re probably onto something hugely important when you describe how scientists are not yet aware of the big picture and are still only aware of what’s happening in this field. Your blog is serving a great purpose by putting the big picture together or, at the very least, emphasizing that there is a big picture and that we should look at it.
The problem cannot possibly be turned around if those who are agreed on the problem’s existence are still not comparing notes with each other and putting together the big picture.
July 27th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Small correction to the above. It should read: “how scientists are not yet aware of the big picture and are still only aware of what’s happening in their own fields.”
July 27th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
In ten, twenty years this problem will solve it self. China will start to leap ahead of not just the US but the world in general.
When they have sattelites we can’t detect, bio weapons we can’t protect against and missiles that can hit any target on the planet with an acuracy of a square foot, science will regain its popularity.
I am probably exagerating a little bit, but them there Chinese are taking science very seriously, and they don’t seem to be hindred by the kind of political/philosophical stuff that impeded the soviet science.
But then again, if china becomes the technologically superior force on the planet, the nutters will just claim the US was punished by God for having gays in the army or something like that.
July 27th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
One of the many crappy spin-offs of this, as if the situation itself weren’t bad enough, is that this will only fuel all the alt medicine woos out there in their anti-establishment rantings.
July 27th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
[...] Such rare genius shaped (Science on) this Earth, otherwise burdened mostly by myopic mortals. [...]
July 28th, 2006 at 1:49 am
The difficulty is that GW is talking about schooling, which is an entirely differnt thing from education altogether. Schooling takes people and tries to fill them up with the prevailing views, facts and opinions and to make them conform to society’s view of things. True education draws out the talents and the discernment of the person so that they can make their own mind up.
It’s no wonder that the people who founded America seem different; they didn’t have schooling foisted upon them.
Scientists need to stand up for what they believe, and resist conforming with the prevailing view, whether this is with the FDA or any other organisation, or else what will be the reason for having them.
And before anyone points out that most scientists are schooled and highly educated, look at the people who made most of the important discoveries in science – Edison for one – most of them were not, and it didn’t make them poor scientists.
July 28th, 2006 at 2:34 am
Joshua: my fears exactly. It’s disturbing to me that the scientific community will remain largely oblivious of this news, but the altmed community will be leaping to point out that they knew it all along, and the FDA really is in the pockets of the Evil Drug Companies(tm).
July 28th, 2006 at 4:29 am
It may have been this website http://www.slate.com/id/2114963/ that first stated that “Information is the oxygen of democracy. Day by day, the Bush administration is cutting off the supply.”
Scientists can’t operate without observations, and legislators can’t make informed decisions in a vacuum.
This is all purposeful — the Bush administration seems all-knowing when they are limiting access to facts. But those facts would probably show that Administration policies are not well-founded and might actually be contrary to the survival of humanity.
July 28th, 2006 at 5:34 am
Fiona Berry said: “Schooling takes people and tries to fill them up with the prevailing views, facts and opinions and to make them conform to society’s view of things.”
The scary thing is that the anti-science ‘educators’ can back up their stance with the threat of the hellfire of eternal damnation for any pupil who has the temerity to question their disinformation.
This possibly accounts for the high percentage of people who believe in the biblical creation story and deny evolution.
It takes a long time and a strong mind to break through that kind of conditioning.
–
July 28th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Fiona Berry:
Edison was an inventor/engineer/businessman, not a research scientist. To perform effective research one must be schooled in what has gone before however, one must also be able to put aside cultural conditioning ( classical memorization of socially accepted “facts”) and see the way reality actually works.
As Mark Twain noted,” Schooling didn’t get in the way of my education,,,”.
AS far as the FDA is concerned, it did an admirable job of guarenteeing the purity and effectiveness of most drugs before it became a dictatorial estate after the Thilidomide scare of the 1960s.
Now it attempts to dictate what we can ingest. It’s my body. I’ll do with it as I damn well please. If that results in death, well, that’s my call, not theirs,,,
Gary 7
July 28th, 2006 at 10:18 am
“Now it attempts to dictate what we can ingest. It’s my body. I’ll do with it as I damn well please. If that results in death, well, that’s my call, not theirs,,,
Gary 7″
EXACTLY! Our society is fast heading toward “Anything ‘bad’ (as defined by those in power) is forbidden and anything ‘good’ (again, as defined by those in power) is mandatory”! I can remember when my father had seatbelts put in our car (Not only did it come from the factory without seat belts, but the dashboard was a vast expanse of unpadded sheet metal). Now, there are four different sizes of child restraints and parents can be arrested and jailed for not having their child in the “proper size” restraint.
July 28th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Hey Phil,
I believe that it was Nick Anthis at The Scientific Activist who broke the story on the George Deutsch scandal. This all happened before he moved over to scienceblogs.com, so the original articles are in the archives. Here are a few:
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/breaking-news-george-deutsch-did-not.html
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/deutschgate-in-media.html
July 28th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Kaptain K, don’t forget also that there seems to be a trend towards “if we don’t believe in it, it doesn’t exist” (global warming, evolution, The Big Bang). What’s next, labeling all with “Theory of” in front of them? Oh wait…
July 28th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Man. Now I’m even more happy that I keep myself healthy through good diet and exercise and don’t have to rely on medications very often….
July 29th, 2006 at 1:02 am
BA, while this situation at the FDA is deplorable, there is another aspect of it that ought to be heard.
I work for a contract manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals.
We mostly manufacture material for use in clinical trials.
Several of our customers come to use with potential treatments for so-called “orphan” conditions, meaning clinical indications for which there is currently no treatment. For at least one of these, the patients have formed a pressure group to get the treatment approved as fast as possible.
The FDA recently started an initiative to fast-track approval for drugs that treat orphan conditions. It appears that, in at least some cases, the patients themselves would rather have a treatment that has not been tested to the “accepted” standards than continue to live with the consequences of their condition.
And, from our perspective as a contract manufacturer, we could be audited by the FDA at any time (also by the EMEA and the MHRA, which serve largely the same function for, respectively, Europe and the UK). This is a big driving force to maintain our quality standards.
So, while the suppression of scientific findings is contrary to everything for which science stands, the impact of this crime against knowledge (to coin a phrase) at the FDA may not be as large as you seem to think.
July 29th, 2006 at 9:17 am
“It appears that, in at least some cases, the patients themselves would rather have a treatment that has not been tested to the “accepted†standards than continue to live with the consequences of their condition.”
I find it interesting that some people think in this manner. For some reason they consider a drug in-progress to be somewhat like an unfairly supressed cure for what ails them. The whole purpose of drug trials is to determine their efficacy in the first place. If it’s not even finished being researched, how could it even remotely be known to be preferable to no medication at all? A drug in-progress might, by due process, even be found to produce side effects worse than the condition at which it’s directed.
July 29th, 2006 at 11:32 am
OK- given the beliefs of the current Administration and their allies in business, organized religion, etc., is it too far a stretch to imagine that they might try to make sure that they stay in power one way or another, given that God himself mandated the Shrub’s run for the presidency? The voting machine issues, for instance. What would they do [wag the dog] if it looks like the voters will throw them out? They’re already well entrenched in the Supreme Court, there’s Texas gerrymandering, school boards, and on and on.
They are right, we are wrong. God is on their side and the world will go to Hell if they don’t prevail. How far would YOU go if you believed all that? Oh, yeah- they have the guns…..
Jess Tauber
July 29th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Mark, sometimes these orphan conditions are rare enough to be largely ignored by the medical profession, but debilitating enough that the sufferers welcome any alternative. This is especially true if they have participated in a clinical trial and noticed an improvement in their quality of life. When the trial comes to an end, they find they must wait either many months (if they are also participating in the next clinical trial) or several years to have access to the treatment again.
Typically, an experimental drug takes 5-7 years to gain approval. It must pass through three phases of clinical trials (labelled, rather imaginitively, phases I, II and III). Very roughly speaking, these answer the questions (I) is it toxic?, (II) does it work as well as the existing treatment, if there is one? and (III) what are its side effects? (but not always in that order). Each subsequent phase of clinical trial uses a larger number of volunteers than the preceding one.
Those conditions where the side effects could be worse than the condition itself (as opposed to those conditions where nothing imaginable is worse than living with the condition) tend not to be the ones that generate patient pressure groups.
July 29th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for the comment. I’m aware of the stucturing of clinical trials. My wife is in pharmaceuticals (receptor occupancy), and I’m about to submit myself for a Phase 3 trial targeted at fibromyalgia.
I guess my comment wasn’t aimed explicitly at orphan conditions in particular so much as people in general who don’t understand the nature of scientific progress. Until certain statistical criteria are met, thoroughgoing scientists don’t consider a discovery to have been made to an acceptably high level of probability. It really touches on the whole controversy about the “war on science” that has so much presence on this website.
July 30th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
This reminds me a bit too much of some suicide stories I’ve heard. Different friends of the suicidal person each had different clues (one had been given some of the person’s prized possessions, another knew of the person’s depression, etc.). If they had put them together, the conclusion would have been startlingly clear. But they didn’t, at least until it was too late.
What’s happening here is similar. Different scientists are seeing suppression in different ways, but there are very few efforts to put all the evidence together. Some outsiders, however, are starting to see it, fortunately. But that leaves the problem of what is to be done? Do we complain that the current administration is anti-science? How much good will that do if they appeal to their base by saying that science itself is anti-religion?
I’m at a loss. For now, I’m just going to keep analyzing and passing on information. I applaud you for doing the same, Phil. Keep up the good work.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:07 pm
This skepticism for govt authority and truthfulness is well placed. I like the comment about “schooling”. It is something you do to a badly trained horse to make it docile. It is not what we want for our children.
My eyes were opened when I learned that the twin towers came down at near free fall speed. The only explanation for this is the use of explosives. Fire could not do it.
I was intrigued when I noticed on your debunking of the moon landing hoax that FOX had run a show supporting the hoax early in 2001. Was FOX under govt orders to “school” the citizens? Was the public being innoculated against conspiracy theories so that when the greatest conspiracy of all time occurred the govt theory would be believed rather than the much more credible theory of govt complicity?
How come the three reports produced by the govt did not look at the possible use of explosives though it is very obvious from the videos of building 7 coming down that it was a controlled demolition? Why did they ship away the steel so fast, avoiding independent examination? Why were the inside traders never prosecuted?
If there were a more general understanding of the truth about 9/11 we would put two and two together a lot more often about other things. We might for instance wonder why heart disease has gone up steadily the more we avoid animal fats and use vegetable oils.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:29 am
[...] Charles Daney of Science and Reason is hosting this edition of Tangled Bank #59. It’s full of excellent science reading to keep your brain ticking over the summer. I found Bad Astonomy’s rant on the FDA and the war on science particularly interesting. [...]
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:29 am
[...] Charles Daney of Science and Reason is hosting this edition of Tangled Bank #59. It’s full of excellent science reading to keep your brain ticking over the summer. I found Bad Astonomy’s rant on the FDA and the war on science particularly interesting. [...]
August 6th, 2006 at 3:23 am
[...] Loose Change Second Edition was 100x better than Fahrenheit 9/11. You can watch it now online. And yes, I’m asking you to watch it now. Their film made much more sense to me than what I’ve been spoonfed by “the media” on information surrounding September 11th. Not to quote my favorite skeptic out of context, but even the original Dr. Phil is starting to get pissed off over what’s happening with our world these days (Is the government trying to kill us?). Make up your own mind, my friends – don’t let someone else make it up for you. 911, damn lies, government, lies, september 11th, terrorism, truth, wtc [...]
August 12th, 2006 at 9:18 am
Wow… How fortunate I feel to have stumbled across you!
Phil, the folks in New Orleans are unfortunately experiencing something I relate precisely to what you’ve talked about here – science and its misuse.
They are living (or dying) as a result of the “Hurricane Katrina Damage Survey” written by Timothy Marshall and now being used by major insurers to avoid or diminish the payment of claims from Katrina.
I’ve got to leave a link or two, I’m sorry if that isn’t the proper protocol on your Blog.
This personal Blog explains how “Marshall’s survey concludes that sustained winds were below Category 3 and that there was no tornado damage along the coast” and a lot more;
http://michaelhoman.blogspot.com/2006/08/haag-engineering-insurers-best-friend.html
This Sun-Herald article explains how Marshall himself says his survey ought not be used for this purpose;
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/15168737.htm
Those folks could use all the help they can find!
Thanks,
Mark
November 20th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
[...] So, bush appoints someone with absolutely no experience in emergency management as the head of FEMA but was an election campaign manager, an anti-science propagandist to construct the agenda for NASA, and now an enemy of contraception and a member of a group that lies about women’s health to head a federal organization that is in charge of sexual and reproductive health. Nice. [...]
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December 18th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
i hear all this stuff about the government trying to kill us. Just rasieing awareness will not do anything if you are truely serious compile this evidence and bring it up in the supreme court because it is a direct viloilation of the consitution and by the words of are forefathers this gives us the consitutional right to overthrow the government.
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:26 am
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May 13th, 2008 at 6:12 am
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December 11th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
In our monetary based society the government has determined that it is too costly to kill you, but rather, your hopeless addiction to the multiplicity of conveniences that the government provides for you on a daily bases – compiled with the plague of complacent ignorant fools who refuse to examine, investigate, and educate themselves about the manner and methods in which these conveniences are provided will allow you to kill yourselves slowly and voluntarily without much incident.
The bottom line is this, you will eat your poison because most of you do not know what poison is if it where served right in your face, which of course it is and has been on a daily basis, especially if they decide to package it in a new trendy energy drink called “POISON”
You and your children will continue to breath in thousand of chemical pollutants in our air everyday because “you cannot do anything about it” ignorance and laziness will not let you help us see how crazy this is.
You will continue to stuff your carts full of FDA approved genetically modified food from Monsanto and other companies like them at Giant, ignorance and laziness will not let you know it.
I could go on and on but what is the point, most of you are so hopelessly addicted to the current way of life coupled with your inability to unlearn that it is pointless to try and change your minds.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:48 am
This government must be stopped…they are killing us (and themselves in the process) all to make a buck…
April 13th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
[...] concerning drugs and herbal remedies. Where does it end? How many have to die? Is this just another conspiracy theory or is there enough fact here to go after the FDA? All I know is there will have to be an [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
We all know what’s going on and why… it’s the same as it’s been for centuries… the accumulation of power… power coming from money… so the greedy get the money to get the power… the ONLY way things will ever change is for civilization to come to a halt… a reset of sorts… sucks, but that seems to be the pattern both from the past and based on current events, what’s emerging… after all now we have countries controlling the weather!!??!! … where will it all end in the race to control the world? By the world as we know it to reset. That will put the power back where it belongs… in the hands of the citizens. A glance at basic government economics clearly points out that creating disease is profitable, creating “drug wars” is profitable, creating “natural disasters” is profitable, creating “any war” is profitable, creating avenues for the sale and distribution of illicit drugs is profitable, creating more laws that result in incarceration is VERY profitable… the only thing the U.S. government is concerned about is power… funded via higher and higher profits through a maze of avenues like listed above.
Things will eventually change… the REAL change, the kind people are looking for won’t come from some slick talking polititian… no this change will come as a direct result of mother nature saying, “she’s had enough”.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
I recently found out that sodium fluoride which is put in 70% of the US’s water supply is actually a deadly poison. I researched the fluoride chemical and its deadly effects. They did a test between two cities. City “A” had sodium fluoride in the drinking supply and city “B” did not. City “B” tested to have healthier and less cavity corroded teeth while city “A” tested worse with deadly effects. Fluorides are poisonous to the human body and can cause brain damage, bone damage, and cancer. Calcium fluoride is known to help teeth, unlike sodium fluoride, which is the long term effect of plant fertilizers leaking into the earths natural water supply. This has been proven for years, but the ADA (American Dental Associate) denies it. The only warning is the label on the side of a toothpaste container that says “Children Don’t Swallow”. If there are non-believers I want you to google “Is Sodium Fluoride A Poison”, you will so-only find out. The government is trying to kill us… slowly, by making us sick and having us spend more money on pharmaceuticals and surgeries. Which is also why Obama’s heath plan will never fall through, because thats how we make money here in the USA. But that’s a different story. Kind of funny, because I set up conventions for Pharmaceutical companies.