We can’t all have our own personal FDA. Not you. Not me. Not Senator Charles “I’m not a doctor but I play one on C-SPAN” Grassley, not Consumer Reports.
Consider Consumer Reports. Based on its “own” analysis of FDA data, it reached a significantly different conclusion than all of the scientists and food experts at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). Despite the fact that both the FDA and the EPA said that pregnant women should eat more fish — including tuna fish — Consumer Reports says the opposite. All the best science supports the FDA. All the lawyers support Consumer Reports. And who do you think gets the media coverage?
And as Senator Grassley moseys over to the Department of Health and Human Services today for another session of media-savvy grandstanding, we would all do well to remember the words of Dr. Mark Goldberger, director of FDA’s office of antimicrobial products:
“It’s more complex than it seems at first glance.”
Indeed.
