Shame, shame, shame on Keith Ellison for voting âyesâ in favor the 21st Century Cures Act â a horrible act that was lobbied for by 1300 pharmaceutical lobbyists. Why such a lobbying effort? Because itâs a bonanza for Big Pharma: the FDA will allow Big Pharma to cut corners in research and put drugs on the market that have not been rigorously tested.
Cut corners how? Big Pharma will save money by side-stepping the gold-standard of rigorous evidence-based clinical trials. Instead, the act will allow patient comments, gathered outside the framework of a randomized, controlled clinical trial, to be used in the formal FDA drug review process. Patient comments are easier and cheaper to collect, thus saving Big Pharma the cost of clinical trials, but, any researcher will tell you, patient comments are notoriously unreliable.
But the best part â and hereâs the reason we really need to connect the dots between domestic and foreign policies â is that the cost of this new initiative will be paid for by cuts to Medicaid and the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. So while weâre over in the Middle East killing people for their oil, our government will be selling its own oil to give Big Pharma more profits.
Note that Warren and Sanders voted against it!