November 18, 2004
Today's Washington Post article, "U.S. Knew Last Year of Problems at Vaccine Plant", is another example of not only Federal government mismanagement. It is also another example of that government finding it difficult to tell the truth about such a vital subject as public health.
I found several facts in the article astonishing. The first is that FDA knew about the problems at Chiron, the British serum manufacturer, in 2003, 16 months before Britain closed the site in August 2004. The second is that the FDA rebuffed the company's efforts to learn about what it could do to fix things; and refused to send inspectors to check up on these problems, preferring to use emails and phone calls. And, finally, when asked what could have been done by Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, Lester Crawford, head of FDA, said, "We couldn't have done anything about it". Finally, MHRA, Britain's equivalent to FDA which also knew about the problems in advance of their shuttering Chiron's operation are prevented by law from communicating to FDA without receiving permission from the company being inspected, Chiron.
For the most bogus reasons this coverup has made it difficult to impossible for me (and many, many others), a senior citizen with a compromised immune system from a 1980 bout with Hodgkins Disease, to obtain a flu serum.
But these revelations point to the many uncovered truths about so many things the US government has been doing since the Republicans took over in 2001. These include impacts on the environment such as oil speculation and tree cutting and other lapses in candor, in connection with the failure of the Defense Department to name the names of individuals in the Army's intelligence community who gave the orders that precipitated the horrors at Abu Gharib.
Are these matters strictly a matter of "need to know"? Everyone needs to know about public health, threats to the environment, and the conduct of the war. So, why doesn't the government feel that way?
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