Your standing in line at your local drug store, head killing you, your face feels like it’s ready to explode, and you cannot breathe if your life depended on it. In short your allergies are making your life unbearable, and you are completely out of Sudafed. When you finally arrive at the pharmacist and ask for a box, you are asked for your driver’s license and then promptly turned away. Recent laws have you waiting one more week before purchasing anything that contains pseudoephedrine or ephedrine. Disgruntled and in pain, you walk away and as you leave the store you overhear the cashier tell a customer “instead of buying a pack a day, why don’t you just buy a carton?” Right about now the FDA’s “…goal of a healthier, safer nation…” ("Overview Of The FDA Mission", 2007) does not feel so accurate. The FDA’s regulations are unjust, because they place corporate profits above consumers’ safety, ban proven natural beneficial health medications, and allow the public’s lifestyle demands to alter their mission.
Placing Corporate Profits Above Consumers’ Safety
If the FDA’s mission is “protecting the public health by assuring that foods are safe, wholesome, sanitary and properly labeled; human and veterinary drugs, and vaccines and other biological products and medical devices intended for human use are safe and effective” ("Overview Of The FDA Mission", 2007). then “some of the ninety-two aspartame side effects listed by the FDA include: confusion, memory loss, paresthesias, convulsions, absences, blindness, and psychologic-phychiatric reactions like sever anxiety attacks and severe depression” ("Aspartame Symptoms Submitted To The FDA", 2006) wouldn’t be a concern for you when you reach for your favorite can of diet soda. Imagine these nice side effects while you reach for your blue packet of equal that you put in your coffee every morning. When aspartame was put in front of the FDA for approval it was denied eight times. In
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