Pig Intestines, Downer Cows

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Views > March 17, 2008
Pig Intestines, Downer Cows
By Terry J. Allen


Corruption and incompetence in federal bureaucracies are enough to make your blood run thin.

In February, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) admitted that it had allowed into the country tainted, reportedly untested heparin. Distributed by Illinois-based Baxter International, the blood thinner was injected into thousands of vulnerable patients and was linked to adverse effects in more than 800 people, as well as 19 deaths. Given the flawed reporting system, the actual toll is unknowable. But it was preventable.

Baxter imported much of the 35 million vials of heparin it sold last year in the United States from Changzhou SPL. The Chinese company included crude heparin squeezed from the intestines of slaughtered pigs processed in filthy kitchen factories that would make a backwoods meth lab look like an Intel clean room.

The FDA never inspected SPL or most of the 3,249 firms on its list of approved importers, and never tracked the supply chain.

Funding for inspections is down nearly 30 percent under President Bush, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for FDA funding. At the current rate, the FDA would need more than 13 years to cover all the approved foreign firms. Meanwhile the administration panders to Big Pharma by banning the importation of high-quality, low-priced drugs manufactured in Canada.

Clearly, the current FDA head, Andrew von Eschenbach—an old friend of Bush—is doing a heck of a job.

Federal agencies—such as the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—are hobbled by ineptitude and in thrall to political and corporate interests.

FEMA, the poster child for criminal negligence, has sat for two years on hard evidence that trailers warehousing Hurricane Katrina victims were exposing residents to dangerous levels of formaldehyde, linked to cancer and lung disease. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3566/pig_intestines_downer_cows/

[madokie]

1. This really pisses me off

5 years ago, almost 6, I had a DVT in my left leg and spent many days in the hospital with a heparin drip in my arm. When I came home they sent with me 5 vials ready to inject but what got me was I was told that each one of them syringes cost upwards of 2000 bucks. For that much money and the little amount of heparin involved looks like they could have inspected each and every vial coming into the country. In fact it should never have been coming in country when we have labs to make it right here in our own country.

[marmar]

2. Good grief....

"In fact it should never have been coming in country when we have labs to make it right here in our own country."

Exactly.

[shanti]

3. you know how it goes...

it's all about the bottom line$$$$$$! :mad: