Showing contempt for free speech rights of the First Amendment, FDA's press chief proposed that the agency develop an "end game" to silence its critics. If this end game against consumers succeeds, how much further will corporate control at FDA extend? Does Hamburg, for example, plan to retract mercury warnings on fish too, as a sop to the tuna industry?
While Obama's FDA under Hamburg and Sharfstein defend a 19th-century mercury product, the rest the world took another step forward this week in Geneva. The World Health Organization committed to a worldwide "phase down" of amalgam. So now we have the specter of an internationalist president pledging to reduce all mercury, the world's leading health body supporting the reduction of amalgam in particular - and the FDA granting carte blanche to Schein and other mercury sellers to market amalgam to American families without even disclosing that it's mainly mercury, not mainly silver.
President Obama needs appointees who adhere to his high ethical standards and work to fulfill his campaign promises, including protecting the public from unnecessary mercury exposure. If the administration feels it is too busy pushing for universal health-care coverage to keep its own house in order, it may fail at both.
[Charles G.] Brown, former attorney general of West Virginia, is national counsel of Consumers for Dental Choice, www.toxicteeth.org.
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