US Far-Right Groups Target The FDA

The usual US Food and Drug Administration critics who have accused the agency of being either too lenient or too strict, depending on their point of view, are now being replaced by more strident and better-funded groups calling for the restructuring or even the dismantling of the agency.

Citizens for a Sound Economy is devoting a good part of its $10 million budget to this issue, and says plainly that the FDA may be doing more harm than good. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation is spending half a million dollars for a panel, headed by former health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, to design a drug-approval process that would replace the FDA with a private organization.

Washington Legal Foundation lawyer Daniel Popeo feels that an unelected regulator should not be allowed to have the power to decide who lives and who dies. To this end, the WLF, which campaigns for reduced government, has taken full-page newspaper advertisements aganst the agency in publications such as USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, depicting tombstones and coffins. One ad states: "FDA can delay medications and safety devices for years; too bad it can't delay the consequences," and another says: "If a murderer kills you, its homicide. If a drunk driver kills you, its manslaughter. If the FDA kills you, it's just being cautious."