Cronyism Personified: Big Government, Big Pharma

Did you know that all three makers of the COVID-19 jabs have top executives and board members who were commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? Or, that those pharmaceutical companies now have former top officials working for or being considered for spots from President Joe Biden?

Of course, we all know the story from last week of Biden’s mouthpiece Jen Psaki violating the Hatch Act for words said at some podium. The corporate media, which is wholly owned by Big Pharma, loves to push the political theater stories while ignoring corruption right in front of them.

Another story from last week was that Biden is considering Robert Califf as the next FDA commissioner. Califf, as reported by the Revolving Door Project (RDP), “has a long history of playing politics and defanging regulators on behalf of the medical industry. He was literally seen by close observers as ‘too linked to the industry’ to be FDA Commissioner during the Obama administration.”

Calif was a regulatory consultant for Big Pharma when he was selected by Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2016.

“‘Regulatory consulting’ is D.C.-speak for shadow lobbying, an activity which just barely skirts the legal definition of lobbying and thus doesn’t need to be disclosed in detail,” according to RDP. “Califf’s cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical companies appears to have clouded his judgment in dangerous ways. He defended Merck when it came under fire over Vioxx, a painkiller which reportedly caused 88,000 heart attacks, a problem which it appears that Merck should have known about but marketed Vioxx anyway. Califf also played a key role in the Duke drug trial of the blood thinner, Xarelto. He supported the drug despite medical experts’ objections to Xarelto’s approval and 379 subsequent deaths.”

Biden already has a Big Pharma favorite in place, Elizabeth Fowler, who is the deputy administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as its innovation center director. She was a top executive of a Johnson & Johnson conglomerate prior to taking this spot.

“During Fowler’s time at J&J, the company faced multiple lawsuits over its decades-long efforts to mislead regulators and the public about its opioid painkiller and asbestos-tainted baby powder products,” RDP reports.

The revolving door between Big Pharma and Big Government is certainly not new to the Biden administration. There’s a long, bipartisan history of it.

The biggest of them all has got to be Scott Gottlieb. Gottlieb was appointed as FDA commissioner by President Donald Trump in 2017, and he maintained that spot into 2019. Shortly after leaving the FDA, Gottlieb took spots on various Big Pharma boards, including Pfizer, as well as playing vax pimp on corporate media as he has pushed the fear and paranoia of COVID-19 while declaring the jab our salvation.

As Laurance Vance writes: “I note that Scott Gottlieb… is a ‘resident fellow’ at the ‘conservative’ American Enterprise Institute. With conservatives like this who buy into the covid-19 insanity, who needs liberals?”

Jordan Schachtel has reported extensively on this unseemly revolving door. In October of 2020, he reported on the billions of taxpayer dollars funneled to Pfizer after Gottlieb joined its board in July of 2019. Gottlieb is making millions serving on not only Pfizer’s board but also the boards of Illumina and Tempus Labs as well as Aetion, which sell COVID-19 test kits and research policies.

“No man personifies the revolving door of government, lobbying, and private industry more than Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner whose pandemic panic proclamations have helped generate billions of dollars for his many employers, and have made him something of a media celebrity in 2020,” Schachtel wrote. “Gottlieb, an early prophet of COVID-19 doomsday projections and a longtime proponent of heavy lockdowns that have devastated the U.S. economy and society, is still, somehow, considered a trusted source for the latest information on COVID-19, and has become the media’s conductor of the Big Pharma pandemic panic train.”

Schachtel also reported on Stephen Hahn, who followed Gottlieb as FDA commissioner. He was appointed by Trump on Nov. 1, 2019 and left on Jan. 20, 2021. Hahn proved himself a good actor while with the FDA, then showing his true motive after leaving.

In October of 2020, Hahn released a statement shortly before the Big Pharma experiment began being injected into Americans. He stated: “As FDA Commissioner, I want to send a message, loud and clear, to the vaccine companies. If you come to us with an application to approve a vaccine for COVID-19, you’d better have your house in order. If you’re testing a vaccine that uses RNA or DNA technology, or any genetic modifications, we will demand solid evidence that your product does not cause harm…. Corporations are pretending they know what they’re doing. They want to unleash unproven technologies on our citizens. I will not allow this to happen. We always say we want transparency. Well now we’re going to get it.”

Strong words, right? Funny though, the FDA under Hahn’s watch did “unleash unproven technologies on our citizens” and is now profiting off of it. Hahn joined Flagship Pioneering as an executive after leaving the FDA. Flagship Pioneering founded Moderna and there’s “virtually no separation between Flagship and Moderna,” according to Schachtel.

Schachtel also noted that Mark McClellan has sat on the J&J board since 2013. He was FDA commissioner between 2002 and 2004 under President George W. Bush.

Say what you want about Psaki’s Hatch Act violation, but what is more important news? Why is this revolving door allowed to exist at all?