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The FDA's War Against America's Health
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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/11/no_author/the-fdas-war-against-americas-health/
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For most of my life, I have observed the FDA belligerently suppress natural treatments and any unorthodox therapy which threatens the medical monopoly while simultaneously railroading through a variety of unsafe and ineffective drugs regardless of how much public protest the agency meets.

As such, I do not hold the FDA in a positive light, especially given that during COVID-19, I (like many others) spent hundreds of hours trying to get the agency to allow the limited use of off-patent therapeutics for COVID-19—all of which ultimately went nowhere due to the unjustifiable roadblocks the agency kept putting up.
Note: given my familiarity with the FDA’s conduct, I felt the odds were against those endeavors succeeding, but I nonetheless exhausted myself supporting effective alternative therapies because I didn’t want to live with the knowledge I could have done something that could have prevented the unfolding tragedy but chose not to.

Over the last year, and especially since Trump won the election, I have received a lot of inquiries as to how the FDA could be reformed over the next four years. Given the importance of presenting the issue correctly, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to look at both sides of the question.

In medicine, “sensitivity” denotes how likely a test is not to miss something that’s there, while “specificity” denotes how likely a test is not to have a false positive. The great challenge with these two concepts is that there’s almost always a trade-off. Hence, as you increase one, the other reciprocally declines (e.g., as the PCR cycle threshold was increased on COVID tests, while it was harder to miss an infection, you also became more and more likely to get false positives from the tests—which is frequently what happened). In turn, many issues in medicine result from a poor balance between the two (e.g., Peter C. Gøtzsche made a good case that the sensitivity for routine breast cancer screening is too high, which leads to many women being erroneously diagnosed with dangerous breast cancers and subject to unnecessary treatments).

This same trade-off also exists throughout politics as there are often two conflicting positions (e.g., wanting a robust death penalty to serve as a deterrent against violent crimes but also not wanting to execute innocent individuals), and in many cases the eventual position that’s settled on is the result of a prolonged battle that eventually reaches a midpoint between sensitivity and specificity that while not ideal, is begrudgingly acceptable to both sides. In my eyes, the most important thing to understand about this dynamic is that it typically takes an incredible amount of work to reach the functional compromise that’s eventually settled upon, so if the existing process is scrapped (e.g. because people who are polarized on the issue can only see it from their side’s perspective) what follows (e.g., a complete lack of police enforcement in high crime areas) is often much worse than what preceded it.

In the case of the FDA, the agency’s situation has run into a similar issue—the FDA is expected to keep bad foods and drugs off the market while not blocking good ones from getting to the public. While this seems “simple,” it’s actually an incredibly challenging task, and the agency’s history is one of it frequently abysmally failing at both—even when its leadership was composed of dedicated public servants who put the wellbeing of the American people before everything else.

Crime Against the Food Law

In the late 1800s, food producers would constantly sell adulterated food, while early pharmaceutical companies would sell a variety of proprietary medicines with secret ingredients that were inevitably things like opium and alcohol. Gradually, public outrage built around this, particularly since journalists and newspapers were willing to expose the issue (e.g., Upton Sinclair’s 1904 book The Jungle played a pivotal role in awakening the public to the immense problems with the meat industry).

Eventually, in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, which gave the Bureau of Chemistry the authority to ensure products sold in America were accurately labeled (e.g., no hidden opium or counterfeit foods), and that the food was not adulterated.

While the publicly strongly supported this law (e.g., the public did not want to eat potentially dangerous food additives), the industry resisted and relentlessly fought Congress not to pass the law, using many of the same lines and ploys we would see today (e.g., industry lobbies would always appear to shut down any attempts to legislate against this). Eventually, it passed with the compromise that the courts would be the means to challenge enforcement actions by the law.

The director of the Bureau of Chemistry (and thus the first head of the FDA), Harvey Wiley, felt very strongly about the dangers of chemical additives being put into our foods and in 1905, began a series of tests where he gave young healthy government volunteers (e.g., those most resistant to chronic poisoning) higher doses of the additives commonly being used in foods and was able to demonstrate the recipients gradually became ill.

Now, I want to say this, because I regard it as important. For fifteen or twenty days, or even longer in some cases, no visible effects were produced in what you would call “symptoms.” The young men had normal appetites and performed their work without any discomfort, and had no complaints. After that time they began to eat their ration with some little discomfort. They were under obligation to do it, but they often said: “I wish you could let this go ; I don’t want it.” Their appetites began to fail. At the end every one of their appetites was very badly affected, and some of them were unable any longer to eat the full amount. Of course we never required anything that was impossible. They developed persistent headaches in most cases, followed by general depression and debility. It was extremely well marked in every instance.

It had a worse effect in the food when they knew it was in the food, because it became repugnant to them.

Unfortunately the effects in some cases were very much prolonged. Some of the young men—the experiments ended in July, or in June, the end of the year—and some of the young men complained even through the summer, and it was late in the autumn before they recovered their full normal appetites.

Note: the additives Wiley tested were boric acid and borax, salicylic acid (aspirin) and salicylates, benzoic acid and benzoates, sulfur dioxide and sulfites, formaldehyde, sulfate of copper (used to green produce), and saltpeter (nitrates).

In turn, a schism gradually developed in the scientific community, where Wiley (and many other respected doctors and physiologists) argued evidence showed those additives were dangerous. At the same time, a variety of scientists (who were paid off by the food industry) misleadingly testified to both Congress and then later the courts that the additives were “safe” or necessary (e.g., to prevent microbial food poisoning).

He came up and introduced himself to me [Wiley] and attempted to make some apology for his part in the activities of the Remsen Board [which was created to sabotage the FDA]. He realized very keenly the condition they were in, in espousing the cause of adulteration, becoming the paid agents of the adulterators, and incurring the universal condemnation of the press and the people of the country. Dr. Herter was then a very sick man. In a few months from that date he died.

Initially, the honest scientists (fully backed by the public) won, and Congress gave the Bureau of Chemistry the full authority to clean up the food. Still, the industry was relentless, and after failing in the courts (even in friendly jurisdictions), decided to target the executive branch directly, and successfully convinced the Secretary of Agriculture to sabotage Wiley’s work. At first, President Theodore Roosevelt vigorously opposed these efforts, and protected Wiley, but eventually he sided with the industry, and created a board (not authorized by the 1906 Food and Drug Act), which overrode everything Wiley tried to do.

Roosevelt’s about-face in turn, occurred for four key reasons.

•The food law that was passed was different from what Roosevelt had initially wanted (he wanted it to focus on meat, but the eventual meat provision that was added at the very end differed was considerably altered).

•He experienced an increasing number of complaints that the Food and Drug Act was costing industry and trading partners money.

•The Secretary of Agriculture forced Wiley to testify against Roosevelt’s position on importation taxes for Cuban sugar in front of Congress (which greatly offended Roosevelt).

•When Roosevelt was alerted to the fact Wiley wanted to remove saccharin from the marketplace (Roosevelt’s favorite sweetener), this exchange took place (which due to its consequences, tormented Wiley for decades):

This answer was the basis for the complete paralysis of the Food Law. Turning to me in sudden anger the President changed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, and said: “You tell me that saccharin is injurious to health?” I said, “Yes, Mr. President, I do tell you that.” He replied, “Dr. Rixey gives it to me every day.” I answered, “Mr. President, he probably thinks you may be threatened with diabetes.” To this he retorted, “Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot”

Note: I share this passage to illustrate how things that go catastrophically awry can often result from one unfortunate domino rippling out over decades.

In turn, while courts, state governments, legislatures, and most importantly the public supported what Wiley wanted to do, key parts of the executive branch did not. As such, his agency’s enforcement ability continually declined (e.g., virtually no enforcement actions were allowed to be brought against the thousands of cases of food adulteration they encountered), his inconvenient scientific research (e.g., on the dangers of arsenic, food colorings and preservatives in foods) was blocked from publication, partially successful attempts were made to frame him and evict him from his post (along with other types of retaliation occurring against other government employees who tried to fight for clean food), and once Taft became president in 1909, it became even more challenging for Wiley to enforce the laws (e.g., Taft overturned the ban on selling fake whiskey).

Note: in parallel to this, the Department of Agriculture created a “Bureau of Soil,” which usurped the Bureau of Chemistry’s responsibility for analyzing soil around the country (but ultimately never got anything meaningful done). This was highly problematic as it both handicapped the Bureau of Chemistry’s ability to do research, but also removed the systematic analysis of the chemistry of the nation’s soils (which was/is necessary as the trace minerals present make a considerable impact on the health of the plants and those who eat them). Likewise, another agency (the Bureau of Standards) decided it wanted to expand its influence and partnered with industry to create a variety of profitable technologies (that lay outside its Congressional mandate) while simultaneously usurping the Bureau of Chemistry’s resources and responsibilities to advance its own interests.

Eventually, in 1912, Wiley, one of the most respected public servants in the country, resigned because he realized he could do more to help the public as a private citizen than within the government and in 1927, the Bureau of Chemistry was turned into the FDA (at which point it lost the ability to do many of the critical functions it had provided to monitor the safety of the country). Far later, Wiley wrote the book “The History of A Crime Against The Food Law” (which can be read here and details much of the same abhorrent behavior we see now happening over a hundred years ago). To quote one newspaper from the time:

He [Dr. Wiley] has been practically without power to put the law into effect against strong offenders. He has been humiliated by being overruled by his subordinates. He has suffered from an inefficient administration of the Department of which his bureau is a part; for the venerable Secretary of Agriculture is too old vigorously to administer his great Department. Yet Dr. Wiley, purely for patriotic reasons, has suffered this hindrance and humiliation till some change might come which should unshackle him. On the outside the bad food and drug interests—or some of them—have maintained a lobby in Washington, have kept “syndicate” newspaper writers in their pay to write about the unfairness and the injustice of the law and the unreasonableness and “crankiness” of Dr. Wiley. One such organization—or pretended organization—some time ago sent a threatening letter to all the most important periodicals, saying that large advertisers would withdraw their patronage if they published articles favorable to the law!

To illustrate how much things remain the same, a series of investigative reports have recently shown that the lobbyists from the processed food industry are now working fervently behind the scenes to block RFK’s nomination and prevent him from reforming the industry as Secretary of HHS. Beyond the tactics being remarkably similar to what Wiley detailed the industry doing over a century ago, they also touch on a central point Wiley raised—the only way to create change in this industry is to coax the public at large to demand it, as the moment you rely upon the members of the government to fix it, lobbyists will crush those efforts. In turn, had RFK not created the Make America Healthy Again Movement and been very strategic in how he leveraged its clout, we’d never have a chance of cleaning up the food supply.
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