Midwest Chick's Place

A couple of things have hit the news lately that have exposed another point of failure or, probably more accurate, a point of grift and power, between ‘private’ entities and the federal government.

Via Old NFO, the American Bar Association has been removed from essentially choosing which candidates make it through to be nominated into judicial positions. IMO, we’ve been seeing the results of this in the number of judicial actions designed to stymie the Executive branches’ actions.

From the FDA, pharmaceutical companies have been removed from advisory panels.

“While the FDA should be partnering with industry to ensure a user-friendly review process, the scientific evaluation of new products should be independent,” said Commissioner Makary. “Industry employees are welcome to attend FDA advisory committee meetings, along with the rest of the American public, but having industry employees serve as official members of FDA advisory committee members represents a cozy relationship that is concerning to many Americans. In fact, the FDA has a history of being influenced unduly by corporate interests.”

“Public trust in the healthcare-industrial complex is at an all-time low. We need to restore impeccable integrity to the process and avoid potential conflicts of interest,” said Commissioner Makary.

We all know that the American Federation of Teachers affected and wrote CDC policies on school closings even if they are backtracking like cockroaches when the lights come on.

“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the CDC’s “thought partner.”

“We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” Trautner continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance documents.”

It’s gotten so bad that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., had to send out a general letter to ‘health care providers’ telling them to disregard the ‘guidance’ from an organization with a very clear agenda (it’s in their name even).

Providers should disregard the “World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People,” Kennedy said.

…

WPATH’s standards of care were “fraudulent” and “marked *a clear departure from the principles of unbiased, evidence-driven clinical guideline,” Kennedy told health care providers.

In the last case, WPATH bypassed the feds and went straight to the professional organizations and got them on board. Interestingly enough, WPATH’s money leads back to the Pritzkers–as in JB, the governor of Illinois.

In the case of the feds, they invited the ABA and Big Pharma to the table. Maybe to make that revolving door turn more smoothly. Not sure how WPATH got such power.