"Drug companies are profit-driven," she explains, "and are loath to issue warnings about risks associated with their drugs, even those that become quite clear."
"Medicine is no longer about health," Ms Menzies notes, "its about market share and profits."
Since Bush took office, the FDA has sent out its legal squad to assert the preemption argument on behalf of drug companies in attempt to defeat private citizens in lawsuits numerous times. However, Ms Menzies' team of Baum Hedlund attorneys has knocked the FDA briefs out of the ball park in a several cases, including Witczak v Pfizer and Motus v Pfizer.
But "the FDA's legal arm has continued to intervene in private civil lawsuits on the side of drug companies," she says, "arguing that FDA's decisions should not be second-guessed by anyone, the federal preemption argument."
In the past 15 plus years, Ms Menzies notes, the FDA has been worse than 'comatose' as the New York Times recently described the agency. "It has sided with industry and become an adversary against consumers," she points out.
"And it is precisely for this reason," she says, "that the public is in such desperate need for an agency that advocates for them, rather than the drug industry."
In light of recent disasters like Vioxx that have resulted in large part due to a lack of regulatory oversight, Ms Menzies contends that the "FDA's decisions must be second-guessed for the safety of the public."
Medical experts agree that the FDA must be second-guessed. "With an FDA that regularly displays incompetence and negligence in its deliberations about the efficacy and safety of medications," says Dr Grace Jackson, author of, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide to Informed Consent, "it cannot possibly be the case that this federal agency possesses the institutional expertise to which courts or litigants should now defer."
"Indeed," she notes, "if the FDA is preempting anything, it is the sound practice of medicine, and the integrity of American health care."
It will truly be a fatal day for the concept of separation of powers when a federal agency like the FDA can wield the power to enact federal law by filing legal briefs in private lawsuits, funded by tax dollars, to defeat American citizens who are already up against one of the most profitable industries on earth.
Moreover, if FDA attorneys are going waste tax dollars, the least they can to is come up with a few valid arguments. The argument that drug companies are not allowed to warn the public by adding a new warning to a label when dangers become known because it would violate FDA regulations, is ridiculous. There is not now, and there has never been, a law that prevents a drug maker from strengthening a warning or labeling consistent with the company's specific regulatory ability to do so under 21 CFR 314.70(c)(6)(iii)(A).
The guy responsible for this silly argument is the FDA's former Chief Counsel, Daniel Troy, recruited straight off of Pfizer's legal team, who was Big Pharma's inside man until he quit the FDA in the fall of 2004. Instead of going after the drug companies for killing off citizens with lethal drugs in the name of profits, he devoted much of his time filing Joe Tax Payer funded briefs, on behalf of his former industry clients, and even invited drug company attorneys to submit their cases to him for amicus brief consideration.
On March 1, 2004, Jessica Rae Dart, an attorney involved in civil litigation against Pfizer, filed an affidavit in support of a plaintiff's motion and described a lecture she attended by Mr Troy that clearly shows him offering the FDA's services to trial lawyers representing drug companies.
On December 15, 2003, Ms Dart said, Daniel Troy, Chief Counsel of the FDA, headed a discussion for pharmaceutical firms and defense attorneys titled, "The Case for Preemption" at the 8th Annual Conference for the In house Counsel and Trial Attorneys, Drug and Medical Device Litigation" in New York City.
During Troy's "Case for Preemption" talk, she said, Troy stated that he was the initiator behind all the FDA Amicus Briefs and/or Statement of Interest filed on behalf of manufacturers "since the new administration" took over. Specifically, he stated, "I am not the only one who decides," but "I am the initial proposer."
According to the affidavit, Troy made it clear that he wanted to file more amicus briefs on behalf of the drug companies and actually invited members of the defense attorney's audience to approach him with requests for briefs, stating "we can't afford to get involved in every case," we have to "pick out shots," so "make it sound like a Hollywood pitch."
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