One Nation Under Drugs: How The FDA Is Sabotaging Your Health And The Environment

As a medicinal chemist, I tried to ignore my suspicion that an insidious and deliberate conspiracy to get each and every American hooked on drugs, while at the same time bankrupting them, existed between Big Pharma and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

I enjoyed my work. Drug design paid well and kept me comfortably isolated in a high-tech lab, fully equipped to help me bend and twist matter at will. The last thing I wanted to think of was a plot designed to sabotage health and wealth—while causing untold ecological damage—using my chemistry skills. But over time, experience confirmed my suspicion as fact and revealed something even scarier.

Deadly Profiteering
My passion for drug design arose from the miracle of emergency medicine, one of humankind’s greatest scientific achievements. Sadly though, medicine is no longer exclusive to emergency use. Today it’s being used in a deadly game of profiteering. Herein lies a story of deceit and a chemist’s abandonment of modern medicine.My doubts about modern medicine began while I was employed by Eli Lilly to design a new generation of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) drugs, a class which includestamoxifen and raloxifene. Initially, they were thought to block estrogen receptors and thereby halt breast cancer. As time progressed, it was learned that they were also capable of activating estrogen receptors and boosting cancer growth. The Journal of the American Medical Association recognized this trend and published, “Our data add to the growing body of evidence that recent long-term use of HRT is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and that such use may be related particularly to lobular tumors.”

My task was made clear: Design HRT ‘knock-offs’ that are effective without causing cancer. My attempt to design safer alternatives began with small alterations to the two-dimensional structure of tamoxifen. It was unsuccessful. All chemical cousins acted as cancer fertilizer and after one year, the project was ended. Access to tamoxifen and other HRT meds, however, was not. Despite its ability to inflame cancer, tamoxifen continued to be used as theGold-Standard in breast cancer treatment. As a young naïve chemist, I was determined to learn how such a dangerous drug could get through the prestigious FDA approval process.