Foxes Guarding the Henhouse

Remember our cute, naive little friend, Dr. Graham over at the FDA? Turns out, there's more to the story.

In yet another example of the deadly joke that is our governmental watchdog apparatus, Dr. Graham was about to publish his study of Vioxx and, you know, how it kills people, when the powers-that-be at the FDA contacted him, tried to block the article, made him feel as though his job was threatened, etc. etc.

Just days before a medical journal was to publish a Food and Drug Administration-sponsored study that raised concerns about the safety of the arthritis drug Vioxx, an FDA official took the unusual step of calling the editor to raise questions about the findings' scientific integrity, suggests e-mail obtained by USA TODAY.

Lead author David Graham says the call was part of an effort to block publication of his research, an analysis of a database of 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente members showing that those who took Vioxx were more likely to suffer a heart attack or sudden cardiac death than those who took Celebrex, Vioxx's rival.

This is the fucking FDA! Not Merck. The taxpayer-funded, government agency, the Food and Drug Administration - trying to block a study that shows a drug is killing people.

Maybe we should just count our blessings that word got out at all...