Food and drug safety: Who's REALLY in charge? Q: I'm a new Health eTips reader and am a bit confused by your opinion of the FDA. I was always under the impression that the FDA was formed to protect the public from dangerous foods and drugs, but many of your letters have disparaged it. Can you explain why your opinion of the organization is so low? Dr. Wright: In 1906, Congress passed the Food and Drug Act in response to scandals in the food industry reported by Upton Sinclair and others. The already-existing Bureau of Chemistry (then a division of the Department of Agriculture) was given the responsibility of implementing and enforcing the law, and eventually the department's name was changed to what we now know as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But, unfortunately, the agency's name isn't the only thing that has changed over the years. Like nearly all other Federal regulatory agencies, the FDA has gradually been "captured" by the very industries it's supposed to regulate. The capturing of "regulators" by the "regulatees" is common knowledge in the nation's capital, but little known to the American public. Regulatory agencies are usually formed as the result of some sort of public outrage over a particular problem. But eventually the public loses interest, and that's when the industries being regulated move in for the kill. With no one really scrutinizing them, they gradually start striking agreements, slipping things past, hiring (at much higher salaries) employees of regulatory agencies, getting their own employees hired by the agency regulating them, and just generally (for lack of a better term) "sucking up" to the agency regulating it until it "captures" it. As you've read in previous eTips, the patent medicine industry has done an excellent job of capturing the FDA. The agency has "approved" countless patent medications that have later turned out to be hazardous -- even deadly -- to the very people they were supposed to help. Any organization that has more regard for the industries it's supposed to be regulating than for the best interest of human health just doesn't rank high in my esteem. | 
