The cosy relationship between the Repugs and tobacco has NEVER been exploited well by the Dems. But, while FDA approval of drugs that kill is in the headlines, we should be making waves. For example, past CEO of drug co. G.D. Searle?? Don Rumsfeld.
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...from column by Arianna Huffington
November 24, 2004:
As Democrats continue to search heaven and earth for a moral values issue they can call their own, I have just the prescription: why not start with the immoral behavior of giant drug companies such as Merck that continue to sacrifice the health of the public on the altar of higher and higher profits?
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Arianna continues...
According to last week's Senate testimony by Dr. David Graham, associate director for science and medicine in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, as many as 55,000 patients may have died as a result of taking Vioxx. Shocking. But not to Merck, which had spent hundreds of millions of dollars convincing Americans to take its blockbuster pain pill even though the company's own studies showed that it greatly increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
If Democrats want to appeal to voters who believe in promoting what the president calls "a culture of life," they should make it a priority to put an end to the kind of corporate behavior that promotes a culture of death.
full column
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20599/