Peanuts envy
Friday, February 13 2009
You probably already know that the peanut producer responsible for the massive salmonella outbreak deliberately lied to FDA officials about their products’ contamination. There is plenty of righteous wrath directed at the plant owner, but the FDA dropped the ball, too.
While this isn’t being treated as a health care issue, it is – indirectly. Granted, salmonella is rarely fatal and mostly treatable, which makes it easy to dismiss the problem for those of us with more pressing health issues. But the problem for every sick person in the country is this: the “D” in FDA stands for “Drug”. The same agency that missed the germs in your peanut butter (and about a million other problems) is also responsible for the safety of your medicines. Not a comforting thought, is it?
You’d think an agency so critical to the health and health care of Americans would be adequately funded, better staffed, and stronger in enforcement. But it’s not even a Health and Human Services (DHHS) agency. The FDA is in the Department of Agriculture. When the Wiley Act of 1906 established the Bureau of Chemistry in the Ag. Dept, there was no DHHS. The Bureau of Chemistry became the FDA, but stayed in Ag. even after the the DHEW was created in 1953 (later to become DHHS). And Ag. is one of those departments that mostly exists to serve the interests of the corporations in the industry.
Along with a raft of other needed health care reforms, it might finally be time to separate the F and D in that particular A. We still need better food protection from Ag., but why not move the drug testing and approval to Health and Human Services? HHS might still be vulnerable to the same sort of capture that plagues Ag., but at least there a drug safety agency would be under the relevant department’s mandate. After all, Secretaries of Agriculture don’t get appointed based on their understanding of medicine and health care – something that does come up in the occasional HHS confirmation hearing.
The peanuts scandal is symptomatic of a deeper dysfunction; if this is how the FDA is protecting our medicine supply as well, then keeping drug safety in the Ag. Department is – to go for the obvious – just plain nuts.
