Bush's FDA is 'incapable of protecting the public'

This is why you don't elect people who don't believe in government to run the government.

Under George W. Bush, the Food and Drug Administration is such a withered husk of its former self, that it simply cannot carry out its mission to protect Americans against unsafe products.

The Food and Drug Administration is so understaffed that, at its current pace, the agency would need at least 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United States, 13 years to check every foreign drug plant and 1,900 years to examine every foreign food plant, according to government investigators.

Computer systems at the drug agency are so inadequate that it can only guess the number of the plants, and it cannot produce a list of those that have not been inspected. The situation is particularly dire in China, which has more drug and device plants than any other foreign nation but where FDA inspections are few.

These findings come from a series of reports by the Government Accountability Office — obtained by The New York Times — scheduled to be released Tuesday at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And make no mistake, this is not a failure of Republican governance. This is Republican governance. Bush and his partisans simply do not believe that government should do things like make sure that food is safe to eat, and that drugs will cure you instead of kill you. They have no use for regulations that affect the profit margins of their corporate masters.

"Our investigation has found ample evidence that FDA inspections across the board are sorely lacking," said Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the House committee. "How many more examples are needed to demonstrate that this agency is struggling and the public health is at risk?"

The Bush administration has reacted coolly to calls for more financing. Bush recently established an import safety working group to reform the system "within available resources."

Republicans are not in business to serve the public. Their bottom line is the bottom line.