When The Media Says “Experts” They Mean Paid Corporate Shills (part 2)

Originally posted on Quora October 30, 2022

The Revolving Door Between the FDA and Big Pharma

Before the plandemic, there was a well-documented phenomenon of FDA employees and commissioners leaving the regulatory agency to work for the corporations they approved drugs for. In 2016, a BMJ study found that out of the 26 FDA medical reviewers who left the agency after reviewing drugs in the hematologyoncology field over a 9 year period (2001–2010), 15 went on to employee or consultant jobs for the companies they had helped get drugs approved for. A separate study by Science Magazine found that 11 out of 16 medical examiners who worked on 28 randomly selected drug approvals left to become employees or consultants for the companies they had approved drugs for. In 2019, it was acknowledged that 9 out of the last 10 FDA commissioners, going back 38 years, had gone on to work for Big Pharma. But all of this well documented MSM reported conflicts of interest was memory holed with the roll out of the mRNA vaccines in late 2020 and early 2021, even though former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb had left his position, on June 28, 2019, to join Pfizer’s board of director’s less than 18 months before Pfizer received emergency use authorization from the FDA, on December 11, 2020. Stephen Hahn, who was the FDA commissioner until January 2021, gave Moderna emergency use authorization only 6 months before being appointed the chief medical officer of Flagship Pioneering, the VC company that funds Moderna. It should be noted that this is a phenomenon that crosses party lines; while Gottlieb was appointed by Republican presidents Bush, as deputy commissioner, and Trump, as commissioner, others, like Margaret Hamburg and Jane Henney, were appointed by Democrat presidents.

NIH employees receive undisclosed royalty payments from Big Pharma

A 2005 BMJ study uncovered $56 million in royalty payments from the pharma industry to the NIH for research discoveries they had licensed to the former. In total, 916 NIH researchers had received payments between $9700 and $150,000 for medical innovations sold to the industry. This was controversial at the time because it undermined the informed consent of patients in a clinical trial. This scandal was also memory holed until Senator Rand Paul brought it back into the spotlight, during a congressional hearing, when he questioned Fauci over royalty payments NIH employees received from Vaccine makers. In October 2021, watchdog group ‘Open The Books’ filed a FOIA request which revealed that from 2010 to 2016, 27,000 royalty payments were made to 18,000 NIH employees totaling $193 million. The NIH redacted who had made the payments and who had received the payments.

Big Pharma pays for 45% of the FDA’s Budget and 75% of their Drug Research Approval

Two more glaring but little-known conflicts of interest is that almost half of the FDA’s budget comes from user fees paid by the very companies it is supposed to regulate and upwards of 65–75% of it’s drug research budget comes from big pharma user fees. So, when shitlibs dismiss the analgesic properties of herbs like Kratom and CBD for not having FDA approval we need to remind them that this is precisely because there is no multibillion-dollar corporate slush fund to study them and buy FDA approval.