Zheng Xiaoyu Meet Lester Crawford
Zheng Xiaoyu meet Lester Crawford.Lester Crawford is the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Zheng Xiaoyu is the former head of China’s equivalent of the FDA.
Both have been convicted of crimes committed while in office.
Earlier this week, Zheng was sentenced to death.
Earlier this year, Crawford was sentenced to three years probation.
Zheng was sentenced to death for allegedly pocketing bribes from drug makers seeking fast track approval.
Zheng allegedly took cash and gifts from eight companies, either personally or routed through his wife and son, for approving fake medicine.
Zheng was convicted of the charges after a ten-day closed door trial.
And sentenced to death.
It was a political trial and a political sentence that came on the heels of news stories that threatened China’s export-driven economy.
What was concerning China’s political leadership?
Was it the bribery?
Was it the babies that died of malnutrition in Anhui province in 2004 after they were fed fake milk powder with no nutritional value?
Was it the antibiotic approved by the food and drug agency during Zheng’s tenure that killed at least 10 patients in 2006 before it was taken off the market?
No, no, and no.
It was the dead dogs and cats in the United States that were dying from contaminated pet food from China.
It was the exported contaminated toothpaste that contained a chemical used in antifreeze.
It was the Chinese medical products linked to deaths in Panama.
The news of exports from China killing abroad threatened the foundations of the Chinese economy.
And someone had to pay the price.
That would be Zheng Xiaoyu.
What message does our system send when the former head of our FDA gets his industry ties caught in the Justice Department’s grinder?
No jail.
Three years probation.
$90,000 fine.
Nice paying job at a pharma consulting firm.
Even a keynote address at Harvard University later this year on the topic of FDA compliance.
That of course would be the case of former FDA chief Lester Crawford.
It wasn’t his corporate ideology that got former Crawford in trouble last year.
It was trying to hide the extent of his corporate connections.
In October 2007, Crawford pled guilty to charges that he hid his ownership in stock in food and drug companies that the FDA regulates. He was sentenced earlier this year to three years probation and fined $90,000.
For the past year or so, Crawford has worked at a consulting firm, Policy Directions.
And he’s scheduled to appear as a keynote speaker later this year at the FDA Regulatory and Compliance Symposium at Harvard University.
Dr. Steve Nissen, for one, is troubled by the extent of the pharmaceutical industry’s ties to federal cops on the corporate crime beat.
Nissen is chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
He is concerned about the “imbalance of power between the FDA and industry.”
“When drug studies reveal toxicity or lack of efficacy, the FDA is not permitted to release the results and the findings are often not published, thereby denying patients and physicians access to vitally important safety information,” Nissen said in little reported comments last year at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The reason?
Conflicts of interest at the highest levels of the FDA.
The entire FDA budget for drug regulation is about $500 million and relies extensively on pharmaceutical industry user fees, Dr. Nissen said.
As a result, the FDA is financially indebted to the companies it must regulate.
Nissen pointed to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was sitting right next to him at the National Press Club event.
Gottlieb was deputy FDA commissioner at the time. He later resigned to join the corporate funded American Enterprise Institute.
“For years, we had an interim FDA Commissioner, Lester Crawford, who shortly after confirmation, abruptly resigns, apparently because he and his wife owned stock in regulated companies,” he says.
“Then the administration appointed Andrew Von Eschenbach as interim commissioner, creating another conflict,” Dr. Nissen says. “In his role as director of the National Cancer Institute, Von Eschenbach must seek FDA approval for human testing or approval of new cancer drugs, an obvious conflict.”
“Even worse, the administration appointed Scott Gottlieb as deputy commissioner,” Dr. Nissen says. “He came to this job with no regulatory experience, directly from Wall Street, where he served as a biotech analyst and stock promoter. Between them, Drs. Von Eschenbach and Gottlieb have whined incessantly about the need to speed drug development. So while the American people worry about the safety of drugs, the top FDA leadership tells us we need faster drug approval.”
When asked about his industry connections, Gottlieb said that he complied with all legal requirements.
But that wasn’t Nissen’s point.
It’s legal in the United States for the pharmaceutical companies to take over the FDA.
No death penalty needed.
© 2007 The Corporate Crime Reporter
Well, at least we can take small solace in the fact that big pharma CEO’s are getting their bonuses regularly and at ever increasing valuations. What’s a bit of distortion, deception and death when compared to the welfare of big pharma’s top dogs?
Come on y’all, let’s cut our own throats and let run our blood onto the altar of unfettered capitalism.
“Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it”
Henry Thomas Buckle
“I hate this “crime doesn’t pay” stuff. Crime in the United States is perhaps one of the biggest businesses in the world today.”
Peter Kirk
“The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibility for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires”
Edmund Burke
“He who profits by a crime commits it”
Seneca
“Obviously crime pays, or there’d be no crime.”
G. Gordon Liddy
“Crime is naught but misdirected energy.”
Emma Goldman
“We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business”
Will Rogers
“The greatest crimes are to associate another with God, to vex your father and mother, to murder your own species, to commit suicide, and to swear to lie”
Muhammad
“Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that is often considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business”
Robert Rice
“Crime is a product of social excess”
Vladimir Lenin
“Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.”
Warren E. Burger
“Petty laws breed great crimes”
Marie Louise De La Ramee
I think a death penalty might be a good deterrent right about now! FDA has been in bed with big pharma increasingly since Bush took office, offering a free pass to any money making industry. How many times has a diet drug been distributed–the US public its guinea pig population–only to be rescinded when enough data came in on its dangers? How about the immunizations and insanely rising rates of autism in children? Or the Diabetes epidemic being a windfall for big pharma. Why teach nutrition or moderation when you can have kids on costly “maintenance” programs for life! Now that’s brand loyalty! And let us not forget the recent recall of menopause drugs. How many women strain to maintain their youthful appearances and were given these ungodly drugs which have turned out to be the ones first to shorten their lifespans? Like EPA saying, “It’s all clear now. Come on out and play children, Wall St is open. The air in NYC is clear,” the US powers all bow to one god above all others, and that is mammon. Anything done to serve $ is seen as a fitting rationale, and while there once was no business like show business; now the US has realized war is far more profitable, and what a grand show it is! Theaters of war and all! Press button weapons. When the war god aligns with the god of profit, HELL is what mankind finds itself struggling with here on earth. Send in the clowns.
The death penalty is never ethical, never right, never a solution to anything. It barbarizes and makes everyone “guilty.” Rehabilitation is the way to go, and I’m not talking about “political crimes” so much as just all the poor people who were abused their whole life with no one caring, but the moment they recreated this behavior on someone important, they were locked up and killed.
obviously I was being facetious.
ezeflyer,
Some very good aphorism’s there. Especially the “society prepares the crime…” one. It recalls Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s purpose for the Catholic Worker movement - to create a “society where it is easy to be good”.
I once mentioned this to to my brother who is Catholic of a very different, right-wing sort. He practically had a stroke. He thought the idea of a society where it is easy to be good was the most evil thing he had ever heard of. I’m not kidding!
You can’t rehabilitate people who see nothing wrong in their actions.
Bu$h the inferior, his administration, and his supporters think the purpose of government is to divert money to their pockets. They think those who oppose them are just jealous.
They look at fines, jail, and probation as a cost of doing business for some of their associates. The true elite of course owns enough of the legal system that they have little fear of punishment.
Shakker: While it’s true the sociopath has no conscience, I have to believe that since we share a society with some pretty sane mores based on justice and fairness, that Bush and the neocons are QUITE aware of what they are doing. It’s their selfish disregard for others that is at play, and their narcissistic love of power that has them gazing into the pool of their own pseudo omnipotence… but there IS a price to pay for all this hell fire and damnation leveraged upon others, innocents. Where our attempts at justice fail, the higher lords of karma take over.
I really think Bu$h the inferior and the gang have the attitude that they are the only ones qualified to be consulted about running the world.
They feel that to make an omelet you need to break eggs. The broken eggs like the soldiers, taxpayers, illegal alien slaves are given lip service. Bu$h always expresses sorrow for loss much like the average person does when meeting a distant relative of the deceased at a funeral. The fact that his action directly caused the loss is not considered.
They use any method to get and maintain power because it is necessary. If you beat down your conscience with the thought that necessity forced you to make each decision then you make yourself noble and pure.
You are right about the karma though siouxrose. In the future these people will be consigned to the worst administration pile sifted by historians for the depths of their degradation.
On a personal level, I hope some day they get a clear look at themselves and think of how they wasted their lives. However, if justice was served Bu$h the inferior would be impeached and every initiative he ever pushed through, repealed. In his old age Bu$h could hear every politicians mistake called a dubya.
Shakker: The lies bush tells himself in no way grant impunity from the TRUTH. ANY human being shares in the family of mankind and I believe each human life is endowed with a soul, as gift from Creator. When the ego acts diametrically opposed to the soul, it may use many diversions to maintain this lie, but it is NOT entirely inured to that “still small voice within.” As for karma, there is NOTHING human beings can do to Bush, Cheney, etc that could come close to meeting the pain, sorrow, depravity, injustice and waste they have caused to so many. THIS is a legacy lifetimes must address; and at this point in time it’s arguable what size population this planet will be able to sustain in future centuries. Bush will have eons to figure it out, in other words. And while I depart from the Buddhists in that their concept of reincarnation includes species migration (the belief I support is that once a human, you pretty much stay on THAT trajectory) I think for Bush and his pals, the life of a snake or scorpion might be appropos for at least the next millennium. Can you picture Pat Robertson in his next lifetime as an impoverished third world woman who is fed up with her husband’s high libido and NO birth control, barely eking out a living to feed the live mouths in her family circle? THERE IS JUSTICE… but its span surpasses our mortal context, and therein lies the spiritual rub.
sometimes i think the whole concept of divine justice is a scam, designed by the greedy and powerful to insulate them from their victims’ demands for accountability. given the uncertainty around such cosmic questions, i’d prefer to see my justice done here and now.
Buddhism is much, much deeper than implied by the casual comments tossed about in some of these posts. Karma is merely the law of cause and effect and it operates like gravity - no creator, no third party making decisions. There is no Pat Robertson, there is merely a collection of factors that are now manifesting and changing even as we speak, and the label on that shifting collection of factors is now Pat Robertson. Justice is done every moment just as gravity exists every moment. The idea of waiting for a future time for a “being” to “get what he or she deserves” is ludicrous. The law of cause and effect works with perfection, all the time. How could it be otherwise? Current thoughts are merely the result of every previous thought, and there is no thinker behind any thought. One chain of thoughts leads to an execution, another chain of thoughts leads to three years probation and a fine. Different chains, different results. And the thoughts will go on.
I think if you waded in Bu$h the inferior’s conscience you would scarcely get your feet wet.
I think he buys more of his own BS than anyone else in the universe. He is a legend in his own mind and it is unlikely he will ever really see himself. It appears more likely he will go into total paranoia and don a tinfoil hat than have an actual introspective moment.