NEWS RELEASE For
Information:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Cari
Reisinger
(209)
736-6769
FDA: Consumer Watchdog
or Big Pharma Puppet?
Agency
jobs funded directly by pharmaceutical companies
LOS ANGELES, CA – With more Merck secrets exposed and
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) caught endangering the American public
with its weak regulatory practices, medical community heavy-hitters are calling
for immediate reform.
The timely documentary Money Talks: Profits Before
Patient Safety (now available on DVD) exposes how the drug industry's
financial ties to the FDA compromises healthcare. Featured interviewees include
Harvard’s Dr. John Abramson, author of Overdo$ed
“More than half
of the budget of the division of the FDA that approves new drugs and oversees
drug safety is being funded by the drug companies,” said Dr. John Abramson.
“The watchdogs are largely drugged.”
“Right now, our
government is not terribly interested in making any reforms that would be
useful, because they’re so beholden to drug companies,” said Dr. Jerome
Hoffman. “We have to have the clout,
influence and the organization to make it so that they can’t blithely go along
making the FDA be something that has been widely and famously called a servant
of the drug industry. We have to make
the FDA a servant to us.”
Filmmaker
Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau said, “I think the most shocking information to come
out of this documentary was the direct level of financial dependence the FDA
has on the pharmaceutical industry.”
“Agency jobs and
funding are sustained by the monetary success of new or existing drugs,” she
said. “This conflict of interest
significantly jeopardizes public safety.”
Money Talks: Profits Before
Patient Safety is
filmmaker Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau’s second film
about issues involving the pharmaceutical industry. Her debut feature, Side Effects, was a fictional treatment
of her decade working as a sales rep for two of the nation’s top drug
companies.
For more information on the important issues raised in Money Talks, visit www.moneytalksthemovie.com. To arrange an interview with filmmaker
Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, contact Cari Reisinger of Hummingbird Pictures at (209)
736-6769 or cari@hummingbirddistribution.com.
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