regulatory-capture
36 stories tagged "regulatory-capture"
The Mucosal Immunologist His Own University Declared No COVID Expert
Robert Clancy spent his career on the airway immunity a shot in the arm was never built to raise. When the transmission promise collapsed, Newcastle had already ruled him no COVID expert.
InvestigationsNew York Keeps 51 Cents of Every Dollar Its Gamblers Lose, and the Addiction Tripwire It Just Proposed Doesn't Trip Until a $10,000 Single-Day Deposit
New York taxes sportsbooks on the money bettors lose at 51 percent and has booked $3.89 billion since 2022. The at-risk rules its Gaming Commission proposed October 9 adopt New Jersey's model, whose deposit trigger DraftKings already meets: more than $10,000 in a single day.
InvestigationsThe Mandatory Drug-Pricing Rule Nearly Every Major Drugmaker Was Allowed to Skip
Medicare's actuaries scored the final rule at $440 million in savings. The proposal they started with was worth $12 billion.
InvestigationsThe FDA Is Recruiting New Advisers Without Publishing the Rule for Who's Too Conflicted to Sit
Acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas is inviting scientists and 'consumer voices' onto the FDA's advisory panels. The agency has never published how it decides which of them carries a disqualifying conflict, thirteen years after Congress ordered it to.
InvestigationsThe MAHA Summit Charged Corporations Up to $300,000 for a Seat Beside the Officials Who Regulate Them
UnitedHealth got a panel. Grail, whose cancer test sat before the FDA, helped foot the bill. The regenerative ranchers and pesticide experts were nowhere on the program.
InvestigationsThe FDA Will Now Accept Real-World Evidence for Devices Without the Patient Records Behind It
The curation that turns raw medical charts into "regulatory-grade" evidence happens inside private vendors like Roche-owned Flatiron Health. The public record does not show who, if anyone, independently audits it.
Drugs & FDATrump's FDA Nominee Backed Cutting the Vaccine Schedule, Then Hid Behind 'Safe and Effective' Under Oath
Heidi Overton stood beside Trump as he cut the childhood vaccine schedule from 18 diseases to 11. At her confirmation hearing she spent two hours calling every FDA-approved vaccine 'safe and effective' and refused to defend the reform she coordinated.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA's New Fast Lane for Experimental Drugs Is Run by a Lawyer Who Defended the Food and Tobacco Industries
Operation TrialBlazer lets drug sponsors feed their first-in-human safety data to the FDA in pieces, on a rolling clock, to shave months off the wait. The review it speeds is the one that decides whether an untested drug can go into a person at all.
InvestigationsThe Study Being Used to Close the Vaccine-Death Question Can't Rule Out Zero Excess Deaths in New Zealand
New Zealand's headline pandemic death study was co-authored by one of the country's most visible COVID modellers, and its four-year estimate runs from 1,134 fewer deaths than expected to 2,927 more. The modellers are calling it settled.
InvestigationsBrain on Fire: Ottawa's Vaccine-Injury Program Spent More on Its Contractor Than on the Injured
Fifty injured Canadians testified in Ottawa over four days, and Health Canada did not show. The compensation program has spent more on its contractor's overhead than on the people it was built to pay.
InvestigationsFifty Sworn Witnesses, 1,400 Who Applied, and Not One Official From Health Canada
A sitting MP put Canadians who say the COVID shots injured them under oath on Parliament Hill. Health Canada, which authorized the products and tracks their harms, sent no one.
CancerA Top Cancer Researcher Logged 333 Tumor Reports After COVID Shots and Infection. Now He Wants the Study the Agencies Won't Fund.
Wafik El-Deiry helped map how the p53 gene guards against cancer. Now he has co-authored a review of 333 tumor reports that surfaced or came roaring back after COVID vaccination or infection, plus a blunt admission that no one has produced the population study to rule the vaccine link out.
Nutrition & FoodThe Study Clearing Sucralose Was Co-Written by the Company That Makes It
An independent lab found sucralose's byproduct breaks chromosomes and loosens the gut wall in cell experiments. The rebuttal telling you it's fine was co-written by the company that manufactures sucralose.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA's New Pilot Lets a Drug Sponsor Choose the Institution Helping Build Its First-in-Human Application, and Reviews the Pieces as They Arrive
The agency will select 8 to 10 sponsor-QRI pairs to co-develop first-in-human trial applications it reviews on a rolling basis, and its stated reason is that China and Australia get there faster.
InvestigationsThe Government Is Keeping Almost All of Abbott's $385 Million Formula Settlement. The Families of the Dead Infants Get Nothing.
Abbott will pay $385 million over the plant tied to two infant deaths. Almost every dollar reimburses Washington's own nutrition programs, three whistleblowers split $69 million, and the families get nothing. The DOJ dropped the criminal case after Abbott gave $500,000 to the president's inaugural f
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Approved a Breast Cancer Drug Its Own Advisers Had Just Rejected, 6 to 3
An FDA advisory panel voted 6 to 3 that AstraZeneca had not shown its breast cancer drug delivered a meaningful benefit. The agency approved it four months later anyway.
InvestigationsThe Government Calls the AMA's Codes a 'Monopoly.' The Government Made Them Mandatory.
Royalties bring the American Medical Association more than half its revenue, $301.4 million in 2024, and the code set behind them is one federal rules make mandatory. This summer, CMS asked the public what that arrangement costs.
InvestigationsThe Checklist Drove ICU Infections to Zero. The Federal Ethics Office Halted the Study.
A five-step checklist cut central-line infections 66 percent and was credited with 1,500 lives saved in Michigan ICUs. Then the federal office that guards research ethics ordered it halted, because the hospitals had never run it past an institutional review board.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Approved Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot for Seniors Without Proving It Works in Them
In February the FDA's own vaccine chief refused to even review it. One week later the agency reversed course, and the trial data never changed.
InvestigationsMonths Before Officials Told Pregnant Women the COVID Shot Was Safe, Fauci Privately Flagged a Theoretical First-Trimester Miscarriage Risk
Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul pulled the first messages off Fauci's government iPhone: a January 2021 chain in which he privately flagged a theoretical first-trimester miscarriage risk, months before official guidance told pregnant women the shot carried no such concern.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Said No to Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot in February. By August, the Two Men Who Said No Were Gone.
The FDA refused to even review Moderna's mRNA flu shot in February because it was never tested against the enhanced vaccines seniors are steered toward. The two officials who objected are gone, and the agency approved it anyway, for the oldest patients, on a promise to prove it works later.
InvestigationsBuilt to Find Nothing: Merck Tested Gardasil's Safety Against Its Own Aluminum Adjuvant
In ten of eleven pivotal trials, Merck's Gardasil 'placebo' was 225 micrograms of the same aluminum adjuvant that is in the vaccine, and serious harms counted only inside a 14-day window.
InvestigationsThe Phone-Radiation Study Everyone Called a Debunking Was Too Small to Find the Tumor
Japan and Korea spent two years 'validating' the NIH finding that cell-phone radiation gave rats heart tumors. They used one dose, one sex, and too few animals to detect it. Korea's rats grew the tumor anyway.
InvestigationsA Gene-Editing Trial Killed a Six-Year-Old. The Only Official Penalty Was a $3,500 Fine.
Xinhua Hospital paid about 24,000 yuan in September 2025. The death it was fined over stayed out of the medical literature for another ten months, and out of the Nature paper entirely.