It's never good news when a global, multibillion-dollar industry is trying to convince Washington to put its profit-making interests above public health.
The medical device industry is doing just that by lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to take shortcuts that will put millions of lives at risk.
Tell your members of Congress to oppose these dangerous shortcuts in the medical device approval process.
For example, consider the defective artificial hips manufactured by the DePuy division of multinational pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. Two years ago, the company's metal-on-metal hip implants were recalled because they carried the risk of releasing metal toxins into the hip tissue, which caused inflammation and serious internal damage.
Just a few years after receiving the hips, which were implanted in 40,000 patients in the United States (and tens of thousands more worldwide), many patients required costly, painful and risky operations to replace the devices. (1)
This is just one of many examples of medical devices that fell through the cracks of our nation's system for regulating medical devices, injuring or killing thousands of patients.
Catastrophic failures like the all-metal hip implants show that the FDA approval process should be strengthened -- not weakened.
Tell Congress: Put patient safety before corporate profits.
Shockingly, lobbyists representing the powerful medical device industry are trying to persuade lawmakers to make the already-insufficient approval process even weaker than it is.
Their aim is to ram their products through a weakened process and get their products to market as quickly as possible, even without undergoing adequate testing to assure that they are reasonably safe for patients. In other words, profits first.
We're up against a powerful industry with tentacles of influence that reach deep into Capitol Hill. But with help from activists like you, we can fend of the attempts to weaken medical device regulation.
Please tell your members of Congress that the device approval process should be strengthened to protect the public, not abbreviated for industry profits.
Thanks for all you do,
Rick Claypool
Public Citizen's Online Action Team
action@citizen.org