For example, the FDA assures the public that it is committed to transparency, but the documents show that, privately, the agency denies many reporters access—including ones from major outlets such as Fox News—and even deceives them with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story. At the same time, the FDA cultivates a coterie of journalists whom it keeps in line with threats. And the agency has made it a practice to demand total control over whom reporters can and can’t talk to until after the news has broken, deaf to protests by journalistic associations and media ethicists and in violation of its own written policies.
This comes from that notorious conservative outlet, Scientific American.
In related news, Peter Thiel’s company is now being sued by the Obama administration for only hiring 44% Asians…amazing how that became a ?problem? after Thiel endorsed Trump.
Peter Thiel’s Palantir sued because only 45% of their hires are Asian —
http://www.unz.com/isteve/obama-admin-sues-cia-funded-palantir-for-only-hiring-44-asians/
Even Communist Hacker News is not buying it:
( news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12585250 )
I encourage you to follow the link for more background.
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I really think libertarians and universalists in general need to abandon their believe in impartial and objectively derived standards and laws. Politics is a power game between competing interest groups in which there are no rules. Universalism itself is just a tool for progressives to gain personal power over others.
If you really want low stakes elections marked by relative fairness, you need a high trust homogenous society in which most people have empathy for and can relate to each other through shared experiences, history, and behavioral traits (some of which seem genetic).
I’ll read the article in a moment, but it’s hard to believe the FDA is doing anything worse than the sort of sleazy, ruthless tactics that are common by pharma companies. See Marcia Angell’s The Truth About Drug Companies.
And, again, I’ll read the article in a moment, but as a general comment I’ll point out that Scientific American is hardly crankery-free in recent years.
Its ok for profit seeking corporations to be sleezy and ruthless, as long as they follow the law. It’s a completely different ball game for an administrative agency in a representative republic to do these kinds of things.
There’s a reason you can sue an administrative agency for acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, but not a private organization. Lots of reasons, actually.
I never said they follow the law. The book I mentioned included a chapter detailing the case of a major company threatening to destroy the life of an employee who threatened to blow the whistle on them for breaking the law as a matter of course.
Please stop moving the goal posts. You said you are talking about sleezy, ruthless tactics that are common.
If you had said that these are nothing compared to regular law-breaking by pharma companies, I would have pointed out that the the resources that are needed to prosecute a criminal drug company have nothing to do with the resources that are needed to correct the behavior of a dangerous FDA.
So your comment is still just blame shifting and obfuscating. Murdering people is bad. Undermining republican governance is bad.
But maybe having an honest and transparent FDA would help prevent some of the unlawfulness in drug companies…
I just thought it worth mentioning because the blog author’s solution as stated elsewhere is to get rid of the FDA .
California just passed ‘right to try’ legislation this week, and Senator Johnson introduced a similar bill in Congress back in May, and it was in the House last year.