We asked the FDA to say no to Pharma.
I do not mean we asked politely.
I mean we built a regulatory agency whose entire function is to tell the most profitable industry in the world that it cannot do what it wants. We staffed it. We funded it. We gave it authority. We call this public health infrastructure.
The name is the thing we did.
We did not build anything to protect it when Pharma pushed back.
Pharma pushed back. This was not a surprise. This was not a betrayal. A company told no by a regulator will attempt to remove the regulator. This is not corruption. This is a business model. Corruption implies deviation from the norm.
This is the norm.
Pharma funds the media. Not as a side arrangement. As the operating budget. Pharmaceutical advertising is the financial infrastructure of American health journalism. The news about the FDA is brought to you by the companies the FDA regulates. This is disclosed in the fine print.
The fine print is the point.
When the FDA says no, the media covers…
