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Citizens Stripped of Protection |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jay Bookman
(No verified email address) |
03 Dec 2004
|
With government agencies already defanged, removing the danger of large court awards would leave private citizens with almost no recourse.
But that seems to be where we're headed. |
This is how the government works these days.
After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration discovered unsanitary conditions at a plant producing flu vaccine for the U.S. market, the agency refused to order a cleanup, nor did it inspect the plant to ensure that a cleanup was actually carried out. Instead, the FDA allowed the plant to "comply voluntarily." The vaccine later produced by the plant — 50 million doses, or half our expected supply — was so contaminated it was unusable.
The FDA also relies on "voluntary compliance" in asking drug companies to report evidence that their products might be harmful, and to withdraw drugs they believe might cause problems. Tragically, when the pharmaceutical giant Merck began to see evidence that its highly profitable arthritis drug Vioxx ($2.5 billion in sales in 2003) might be causing widespread heart problems, it ignored those findings. Dr. David Graham, associate director at the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, recently told Congress that by the time Merck withdrew the drug, Vioxx may have caused as many as 55,000 fatal heart attacks, or 18 times the death toll of the attacks of Sept. 11.
That behavior is hardly unique. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and every other federal agency charged with protecting consumers, patients, workers and customers have also become far less aggressive in enforcing the law.
For example, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration discovered this summer that the suspension system of the Saturn Vue collapsed during rollover testing, the NHTSA did not require a recall. Instead, by asking Saturn to conduct a voluntary "service campaign," NHTSA allowed the company to continue selling unrepaired Vues. It didn't even require Saturn dealers to notify potential buyers that the problem existed.
And then, of course, there's New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who continues to prosecute startling cases of systemic white-collar crime on Wall Street and elsewhere, crimes that federal authorities found beneath their notice. Spitzer has been accused by some of pursuing the cases to advance his political career, and that may be true. It is also true, however, that every charge brought by Spitzer has proved accurate. He hasn't had to reach to find serious cases that federal authorities ignored; he has simply picked the low-hanging fruit.
What we're witnessing, it seems, is the culmination of a conscious, long-term effort by business and its conservative allies to emasculate government protection of its citizens. Except in cases where they're pressured into it by publicity, federal agencies rarely enforce the law any longer. And without fear of enforcement, respect for the rules begins to erode and greed takes over. "Voluntary compliance" is a useful concept, but only when companies know that it's not really voluntary, and that they'll get punished if they get caught cheating.
The sole remaining restraint on corporate misbehavior may be the fear that unless businesses meet their public responsibilities, they may be dragged into court. Merck, for example, now faces class-action lawsuits filed by Vioxx users that could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, a sobering reality that no doubt makes other drug companies a little leery about pushing the envelope.
However, even that last bit of protection is now under attack by the so-called "tort reform" movement, which seeks to dramatically limit the financial penalties that juries can impose in cases of gross corporate misconduct or negligence. Corporate America has made passage of those bills its highest priority at the state and federal levels. With government agencies already defanged, removing the danger of large court awards would leave private citizens with almost no recourse.
But that seems to be where we're headed.
Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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