Follow The Money

 To discover a person’s priorities, discover how they spend their money, to know what a person values, know how they spend their money, to find the truth, follow the money.

In this time of growing concern for the health and safety of the American public, the outcry with regard to the performance of the Food and Drug Administration continues to grow. The American people voice their concerns, and every sector of the modern media provide a platform to those concerns.

The concern is communicated as criticism, and outrage. The media publishes the stories of the importation of tainted animal food products, contaminated raw materials used in Heparin and lead based paint covered toys from China, E-coli tainted produce from California, Samonella from peanut manufacturers in Georgia.

A healthy, well informed, transparent Democracy at work??

The media convert complaints to bylines, anger to sound bytes, and yet they fail to seek the information that would allow the taxpayers, to alter the reality and to hold their elected officials accountable.

The citizens’ perception of reality is reflected by the news organizations, but it is also in large measure, developed by the news organizations. Journalists parrot the citizens, the citizens parrot the journalists, and the shining light of truth and knowledge grows dimmer.

The same news organizations that publish the public outcry, are also the organizations that promote candidates and agendas, neglecting the traditions of their trade, the discovery of truth and the enlightenment of the people.

The following are a list of facts, that are publically available, pointedly relevant, and always unreported by today’s media;

• FDA currently employs 9300 people.
• IRS currently employs 83,600 people.
• 2009 annual operating budget of the FDA is 2.4b USD.
• 2009 annual operating budget of the IRS is 11.4b USD.
• FDA budget represents an increase of 5.7%.
• IRS budget represents an overall increase of 4.3% (the enforcement program realizes an increase of 7.0%, while the taxpayer support program realizes an increase of 0.6%).
• IRS 2009 Budget Brief attributes the increase in enforcement to the ROI (5 to 1) realized by the Enforcement Programs.
• The same brief states that the primary reason for upaid taxes handled by the Enforcement Programs, remains the complexity of US tax code.

The 2007 achievements reported by the FDA in their 2009 budget brief include;

• published comprehensive plans for food defense, food safety, and import safety
• negotiated and signed food and medical product safety agreements with China
• expanded FDA’s capacity to detect radiological contamination of food by 150 percent
• launched a national initiative to strengthen state food safety programs
• issued a current good manufacturing practices rule for dietary supplements
• approved a second-generation smallpox vaccine to enhance U.S. preparedness
• approved the first U.S. vaccine for humans against H5N1, the avian influenza virus
  approved the sixth seasonal influenza vaccine, allowing manufacturers to produce a record number of flu vaccine doses
• approved a decellularized heart valve, a new drug-eluting stent, and the first artificial cervical (neck) disk
• approved new treatments for hypertension, Crohn’s disease, cancer, HIV, diabetes, Parkinson’s, Fibromyalgia, leukemia, and blood clotting disorders, including 22 new molecular entities and 18 orphan products
• tentatively approved the 64th anti-retroviral product under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
• issued more than 680 generic drug approvals or tentative approvals during FY 2007 – a 30 percent increase from the previous year
• approved new tests for blood typing and to detect malaria, West Nile Virus, certain breast cancers, respiratory viruses, and other infections
• identified Critical Path opportunities for generic drugs and conducted Critical Path workshops on cancer clinical trials and developing anti-cancer agents
• proposed new standards and a new UVA rating for sunscreen products
• released a report on science and regulatory issues associated with nanotechnology conducted enforcement actions to protect consumers against unapproved drugs and devices and from unsafe dietary supplements
• identified 25 drugs products that must submit safety plans under Title 9 of FDAAA.

http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2008/04/t20080415a.html

The 2007 achievements reported by the IRS in their 2009 budget brief include;

• Increased high-income audits by 29 percent;
• Increased total individual audits by 8 percent;
• Increased small business audits by 17 percent, and
• corporate audits by 3 percent; and
• Increased collection case closures by 12 percent and
  dollars collected by 13 percent.

http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/management/budget/budgetinbrief/fy2009/irs.pdf

The following is a list of notable facts and figures;

• Number of Heparin deaths in the US in 2008: 62
• Number of Salmonella deaths in the US in 2008: 11
• Number hospitalized with Samonella: 425
• Number of states reporting: 43
• Number of lots of Cosemetic products Recalled from the market due to safety concerns in 2008: 11
• Number of lots of Drugs Recalled from the market due to safety concerns in 2008: 90
• Number of lots of Food products Recalled from the market due to safety concerns in 2008: 30
• Average number of reproted adverse events prior to product recall: 10

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2008/safety08.htm

• The number of Adverse Events tracked by FDA in 2008: 441,367 (18% increase from 2007)

http://www.fda.gov/cder/aers/statistics/aers_received.htm

• The number of people who die or are hospitalized from failure to calculate their tax liability correctly: 0

The FDA is not lacking in expertise, the FDA is lacking in people and in funding.

The federal government feels that it requires 89% more people to enforce a tax code that they admit is too complex for the majority of tax payers to understand, than they feel are required to support medical growth and innovation or to protect the tax payers’ health and safety.

The majority of the American media no longer feels that uncovering injustice and informing the public are honorable goals.

There is cause for outrage, I hope there is an outcry, and I hope that it comes from an educated public, and that it demands not that the FDA be blamed, but that the FDA be supported.

Ask yourselves before you vote, how many lives could be saved if we eliminated the tax code, and the IRS, and instead invested in 11.4b in the FDA?