All agencies created to protect the health and welfare of the public were compromised under Bush .......effectively neutralized and castrated thru budget cuts and the appointing of pro-business heads by the Bush administration.

I don't think judges, the fed DA or regulatory agencies should be appointed by the president ........ no matter who the president is or what party is in power. It should be obvious to everyone that this compromises their integrity and effectiveness.

As a pharmacist, I can say that the FDA has become a handmaiden of the pharmaceutical companies ........ a group of lying thieves without any ethics whatsoever.

Years back the FDA supported and "rammed thru" legislation that required them to pay the FDA fees for processing drug applications.

This was done under the pretext of "saving the taxpayers" money.

Beware whenever the drug companies offer to spend money ...... they want and expect something in return ...... they give a damn about the public (in fact the number of deaths from "approved drugs" has skyrocketed in the last decade due to the "sinking" of the FDA's integrity ...... drugs that the companies knew were hazardous continued to be sold on the market ...... making them murderers).

As a consequence of the passing of this bill, the FDA gradually became dependent on the drug companies for a large part of their operating funds .......

As the drug companies knew they would ....... the FDA became a junkie ....... addicted to their money and as addicts will do whatever their pushers want them to do, so the FDA became their enablers.

The drug approval process was corrupted.

The problems in the FDA can be solved with simple legislation just as all the problems can that now exist in our corporacracy.

But the legislation will not be introduced and passed as long as our elected officials put the interests of the corporations ahead of the public they were elected to represent.

Legislation :

1) Let the public once again pay for the drug approval process ....... keep pharmaceutical company money out of the process.

2) Our pharmacies are loaded with "me too" drugs ........ whose appearance parallels the loss of patent protection on older drugs which are much, much cheaper, just as effective and often safer. Unless a drug can be shown to offer significant risk/benefit results over older drugs, the drug should not be allowed into the market.

3) Patent extensions should not be given to drugs just because the company has received approval from the FDA for use in a different patient population (ie,ex., new approval for use in pediatric patients).

4) Patent extensions should not be granted just because a pharmaceutical company comes up with a different dosage form (ie., immediate release vs delayed release vs timed release) of an older drug.

5)Patent extensions should not be given simply because a company comes out with the active chemical moiety of what was previously a "prodrug" (active chemical moiety derived in the body by the processing of a chemical precurser by the body).

6) So-called advisory committees (staffed by physicians and researchers from outside the FDA ..... usually specialists in one area of medicine ...... ie, cardiology, rheumatology, etc)should not contain anyone who is receiving or has received funds from the pharmaceutical companies (as researchers, publicists, educators, clinical trials, CE reps, etc).

7) Employees of the FDA should not be allowed to become employees of a pharmaceutical company (the very people they are supposed to be regulating) for a period of ten years from the time they leave the FDA (this prevents "favors" by FDA employees to the drug companies in exchange for lucrative "payback" from the drug companies when said employees quit the FDA).

This reveals the amount and depth of corruption in just one agency of the US government.

Do you think other agencies of the government(be they regulatory or administrative) are any different.

It is common for congressmen and administrative personnel to quit their positions to go to work for private corporations that they were involved with in their official govt positions after they have done favors for those corporations and sold out the public interests.

Some things are so obvious that one must wonder why they are not "obvious" to anyone else that is capable of basic reasoning.

Congress should pass a law which forbids any govt employee from working for any private company they oversaw, regulated or did business with as a govt employee, for a period of ten years after leaving their govt position.

This is just common sense in avoiding the betrayals the public suffers from those who cannot resist temptation.

Yes, our govt is corrupt from top to bottom.

Can it be remedied ? Yes, easily with simple legislation.

Will it be done ???? No, the foxes (govt employees who profit from the unethical corrupt behavior) will not restore security to the chicken house until forced to by the public.

The public can no longer trust the govt to do their jobs ..... the public will have to constantly and continuously push their representatives to do the right thing (with a threat of removal by any means if necessary).

When are the american people going to get tired of being lied to ?????? When are the American people going to realize that the loss of manufacturing was a precurser to the disassembly of the middle class? When are the american people going to realize that the rich are greedy and want it all ???? When are the american people going to realize we all work together and prosper together or fail ? When are the american people going to realize they personnally will have to change things with their time and energy?

When will they get tired of getting a big rubber dick up their asses each and every day ?

I have heard that the Pharmaceutical Companies are proposing a candidate for the FDA head (who worked at the FDA for many years ...... the very years when the agency was deteriorating and hijacked by the drug companies).

Surely, Obama could not be stupid enough to appoint such a person ???