Summary
Governments collapse when ineptitude and corruption reach such outrageous magnitudes that the citizenry has no choice but to revolt.
Since 1980, William Faloon and the Life Extension Foundation® have published articles exposing how over-regulation in the United States causes lifesaving medications to be delayed, or suppressed altogether. In this book, Faloon reveals in meticulous detail how consumers pay inflated prices for what are often dangerous and only minimally effective FDA-approved therapies.
While Pharmocracy uncovers egregious FDA incompetence and abuse, it is Congress that provides the FDA with enabling laws that result in needless suffering and death.
Pharmocracy presents factual and irrefutable logic to reform today’s broken healthcare system that is financially devastating the United States.
Praise for Pharmocracy
“Please read this book. Pharmocracy doesn’t just detail these problems, it gives us the solutions.”
—Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.
“There’s an entire world of reliable research-based scientific information about preventing illness and treating disease with safe natural substances—vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and other things—that’s being deliberately hidden from you! If you prefer patent medicines (“pharmaceuticals”), you are also being deliberately prevented from accessing them at the very best prices. No, I’m not kidding or exaggerating at all. If all of this information were made freely available, and barriers to access were eliminated, the cost of health care would drop dramatically within just a few years, and both as individuals and a nation, we’d be much healthier with much less expense.
Bill Faloon’s Pharmocracy details exactly why this enormous amount of information is being withheld, and describes precisely how it is being done, despite our Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He writes about the “barriers to access” to less expensive patent medicines (“pharmaceuticals”). Please read this book if you want to know why—despite miracle surgeries and diagnostic techniques—American health care is much more costly and less effective than it could be if we truly had freedom of choice, freedom of information and freedom of access here in these United States of America.
Pharmocracy doesn’t just detail these problems, it gives us the solutions. If you want access to this vast amount of reliable information and less expensive treatments that will help you and your family stay as healthy as you can as long as you can, please read this book and take action! Together we can get it done.”
—Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.
Preface
Introduction
Preamble
2011
FDA Says Walnuts Are Illegal Drugs
The FDA’s Most Heinous Drug Approval
No Real Healthcare Cost Crisis
2010
FDA Delay of One Drug Causes 82,000 Lost Life-Years
Deadly FDA Neglect
How Much More FDA Abuse
Can Americans Tolerate?
Drug Company Pleads Guilty to Health Fraud
2009
Why American Healthcare is Headed for Collapse
The Generic Drug Rip-off
Ending the Atrocities
Millions of Needless Deaths
2008
Would You Tolerate This Abuse?
The FDA Indicts Itself
The FDA’s Cruel Hoax
2006
Fish Oil Now Available by Prescription!
FDA Threatens to Raid Cherry Orchards
2005
Inside the FDA’s Brain
FDA Fails to Protect Domestic Drug Supply
2004
FDA Permits New Fish Oil Health Claim
FDA Approves Deadly Drugs,Delays Lifesaving Therapies
Dangerous Medicine
2003
Patient Advocates Sue FDA Over Drug Access
2002
The FDA Versus the American Consumer
Supreme Court Roundup
2001
Are Offshore Drugs Dangerous?
Drugs the FDA Says You Can’t Have
What’s Wrong with the FDA
FDA Suffers Second Massive Legal Defeat in Pearson v. Shalala
FDA Loses Case against Compounding Pharmacies on First Amendment Grounds
2000
Life Extension® Wins in the House and Senate
Americans are Getting Healthier—But the FDA Remains a Major Impediment
1999
The Plague of FDA Regulation
1998
Life Extension® vs. the FDA a Hollow Victory: Why the Agency’s Approval of Ribavirin is Inadequate
Epilogue
Appendix A: Send This Book to Your Members of Congress
Appendix B: Send a Letter to Your Members of Congress
Why You Should Join the Life Extension Foundation®
Index
Preface
Healthcare is bankrupting the United States. Medical costs have escalated to a level that individuals, businesses, and debt-laden governments can no longer afford to pay for it.
There is a real-world solution.
Congress can create new legislation that will allow free-market forces to drive down sick care costs, better enable disease prevention, and rapidly perfect curative therapies. This book provides factual documentation on just how broken the US healthcare system is today. It is over 300 pages long because there are at least that many reasons why healthcare costs far more than it should.
Until now, no one has identified and amalgamated the plethora of illogical regulations that directly cause healthcare to be so overpriced.
While this book attacks FDA corruption and ineptitude, Congress is the body of government that provides the FDA with enabling laws that ultimately result in needless suffering and death—while the nation descends into financial ruination.
Implementing free-market approaches can spare Medicare and Medicaid from insolvency, while significantly improving the health and productivity of the American public.
Pharmocracy provides an irrefutable and rational basis to remove the suffocating compulsory aspect of healthcare regulation and allow free-market forces to compete against government-sanctioned medicine.
This book documents how the free market can provide superior healthcare at far lower prices while better protecting consumers.
I fear that disregard of the obvious problems revealed in this book will condemn the United States to a downward economic spiral with little improvement in human longevity.
*****
From the Introduction
A fierce debate is raging as to who will pay for this nation’s skyrocketing “sick-care” costs.
Private companies have scaled back sharply on the healthcare coverage they used to provide. Employees now pay an increasing percentage of their medical insurance premiums, along with higher deductibles, co-pays, and no-pays (i.e., exclusions). Many businesses provide their employees with no health coverage.
Based on the median income in the United States, the typical family cannot come close to paying the staggering cost of healthcare themselves.
It seems rather odd, but since neither the private business sector nor individuals can afford today’s sick-care costs, the burden is increasingly being borne by the sector least able to pay, i.e., heavily indebted local, state, and federal governments. Even those covered by government insurance (such as retired veterans, municipal employees, and Medicare recipients) are facing higher medical insurance premiums.
The federal government is already saddled with a huge unfunded Medicare liability. No one has figured out where the money will come from to cover these future healthcare costs.
To put Medicare alone into context, the unfunded liability is now $24.6 trillion. Yet total federal tax revenue taken in annually (which includes Medicare premiums) is only around $2 trillion. As our president stated in 2010, we are approaching a point where government will have to spend more money on Medicare than on every other federal program combined!
This does not count the escalating costs of Medicaid (sick-care coverage for the poor) that are shared by federal and state governments. Medicaid is funded with current tax revenue and newly issued debt, but its spiraling growth has created a new multi-trillion dollar unfunded liability, and no one knows where the money will come from to pay it.
Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison because he took investors’ money and diverted it to other purposes. The federal government forced Americans to pay Medicare premiums their entire lives. Instead of those premiums being placed in a reserve fund for future use, they were squandered on whatever was most politically expedient at the time, which included overpaying—with tax dollars— those with the right connections.
While Madoff will spend the rest of his life incarcerated, no one talks about bringing civil or criminal charges against those responsible for the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the human race: Medicare, with its $24.6 trillion of unfunded liabilities.
Like the federal government, many local and state governments have also operated a Ponzi scheme of unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities they cannot pay. Since the federal government is mathematically insolvent, it seems ludicrous to assume that exorbitant sick-care costs can be resolved by any level of government.
While politicians aimlessly point fingers over who should pay America’s medical bills, please remember that there is a real-world solution. Healthcare in the United States is so tightly regulated that it in many ways resembles the inefficiencies of Maoist China, where the economy suffocated for decades from erratic and illogical governmental decrees. As China lifted its regulatory stranglehold, prosperity flourished. It’s time for US leaders to follow China’s example and stop over-regulating medicine!
*****
From August 2011 – FDA Says Walnuts Are Illegal Drugs
Life Extension® has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts.
Some of this same scientific data was featured on the website of Diamond Foods, Inc., a distributor of packaged walnuts.
Last year the FDA determined that walnuts sold by Diamond Foods cannot be legally marketed because the walnuts “are not generally recognized as safe and effective” for the medical conditions referenced on Diamond Foods’ website.
According to the FDA, these walnuts were classified as “drugs” and the “unauthorized health claims” cause them to become “misbranded,” thus subjecting them to government “seizure or injunction.”
Diamond Foods capitulated and removed statements about the health benefits of walnuts from its website.
Let’s take a look at the science supporting the consumption of walnuts to see what the FDA censored . . . and what you can do to stop it in the future!
Eating Walnuts Cuts Heart Disease Risk
Ingesting nuts used to be considered unhealthy because of their high fat content. This misconception has changed over the past 18 years as human studies have revealed sharply reduced incidence of heart disease in those who consume walnuts.
Unlike some nuts, walnuts provide a unique blend of polyunsaturated fatty acids (including omega-3s), along with nutrients like gamma-tocopherol that have demonstrated heart health benefits.
The March 4, 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine published the first clinical study showing significant reductions in dangerous LDL and improvement in the lipoprotein profile in response to moderate consumption of walnuts. Later studies revealed that walnuts improve endothelial function in ways that are independent of cholesterol reduction.
One study published by the American Heart Association journal Circulation on April 6, 2004, showed a 64% improvement in a measurement of endothelial function when walnuts were substituted for other fats in a Mediterranean diet.
As most Life Extension® members are aware, the underlying cause of atherosclerosis is progressive endothelial dysfunction. Walnuts contain a variety of nutrients including arginine, polyphenols, and omega-3s that support the inner arterial lining and guard against abnormal platelet aggregation. These favorable biological effects explain why walnut consumption confers protection against coronary artery disease.
The US National Library of Medicine database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and may reduce heart attack risk.
FDA Ignores the Science
The federal agency responsible for protecting the health of the American public views this differently.
In the FDA’s warning letter to Diamond Foods, nowhere is there any challenge questioning the science cited by Diamond Foods to support their health claims.
Instead, the FDA’s language resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny reins over rationality. To enable you to recognize the absurdity of all of this, I excerpted a few paragraphs from the FDA’s warning letter to Diamond Foods as follows:
Based on our review, we have concluded that your walnut products are in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) and the applicable regulations in Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR).
Based on claims made on your firm’s website, we have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.
Because of these intended uses, your walnut products are drugs within the meaning of section 201 (g)(1)(B) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(B)]. Your walnut products are also new drugs under section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(p)] because they are not generally recognized as safe and effective for the above referenced conditions. Therefore, under section 505(a) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 355(a)], they may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.
Additionally, your walnut products are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes. Thus, your walnut products are also misbranded under section 502(f)(1) of the Act, in that the labeling for these drugs fails to bear adequate directions for use [21 U.S.C. §352(f)(1)].
This verbiage makes it clear that the FDA does not even consider the underlying science when censoring truthful, non-misleading health claims. The chilling effect on the ability of consumers to discover lifesaving medical information is a wake-up call for all who recognize the ramifications of this latest act of FDA malfeasance.
