Bill Dalton: Evil science
"Ask yourself, why would reputable scientists who worked for the FDA do that? It’s hard to believe," columnist Bill Dalton writes.
Evil manifests itself in many ways. Violently sometimes. Quietly, other times.
Most people probably don't remember a Kansas City pharmacist named Robert Courtney. In the 1990s, Courtney admitted to diluting life-saving cancer drugs – some costing as little as $5 – to boost his profits.
Authorities estimated he watered down 98,000 prescriptions, affecting 4,200 people undergoing chemotherapy. Prosecutors speculated hundreds may have died from receiving ineffective doses. He was a greedy monster motivated by money, feeding off the suffering of cancer patients. Simply horrifying.
One wonders what motivates the bureaucratic "monsters" working today at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. How many Americans will quietly die because of them in the years to come?
Just as Courtney flew under the radar, most people probably didn’t notice the FDA recently blocked publication of several scientific studies showing that vaccines for COVID-19 and shingles are safe. The studies found that, given the available evidence, “the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.”
Those studies, which by the way cost millions of tax dollars, went into the government's trash can so the public, doctors and hospitals wouldn’t know about them.
Why would our government do that?
Critics suspect it’s because the Trump administration inexplicably doesn’t want widespread access to lifesaving and disease-preventing vaccines. It has already drastically cut research funding for new vaccines.
Why does our government want you to risk getting sick and perhaps dying?
The New York Times asked an FDA spokesman why the studies weren't published and he explained that the authors “drew broad conclusions that were not supported by the underlying data.”
Now ask yourself, why would reputable scientists who worked for the FDA do that? It’s hard to believe. What’s easier to believe is that the frightened bureaucrats working beneath Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who’s made no secret of his opposition to vaccines — were afraid of getting fired if they published the studies.
The Times reported that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's serving as interim leader of the CDC, also canceled the publication of a report concluding that the COVID vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and ER visits last winter. Odd, isn't it?
Critics called the FDA's actions "medical censorship.”
“At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership,” said Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a Harvard University medical professor who studies FDA regulations.
Jeanne Marrazzo, a former high-ranking National Institutes of Health official and chief executive of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, called the FDA’s actions a “pretty active act of sabotage.”
Sabotage on a level similar to Courtney’s, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Courtney was just released from a halfway house with five years left on his sentence. He’ll be on supervised release, meaning he must check in with a probation officer but is pretty much a free man.
Needless to say, the families of his victims aren’t happy. Even U.S. Rep. Sam Graves and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri expressed strong opposition to Courtney's release.
But when it comes to the frightened bureaucrats at the FDA suppressing medical information, rest assured you won’t hear a peep of protest from congressional Republicans.
Now that he's out of prison, perhaps FDA officials will offer Courtney a job. He certainly seems qualified.
— Bill Dalton is a former reporter and editor for The Kansas City Star and worked for several Michigan newspapers. He spends summers on the family farm near Fennville. His novel “The Bank Game” — a crime thriller — is available from Amazon along with “Dalton’s Bend.”
