And while it can suspend or revoke operating licenses, in the last four years the FDA has imposed those sanctions only 33 times - an average of eight times a year. Some inspectors still have not been trained to interpret results of AIDS tests, four years after blood banks started using them. The FDA has relied heavily on the blood industry in setting safety standards. The agency based its decision on recommendations from two industry-dominated advisory groups. Critics say there is a revolving door between the FDA and the blood industry.
Regulators leave the agency and go to work for blood banks, plasma manufacturers and trade groups.
Once there, they can use their access to influence government policy decisions and protect their new interests, critics say. We are either going to continue to be the country that holds before the world those ideas and standards of godly justice and liberty and decency for which so many of our patriots dies or we are going to turn into that power which plunges the world into a maelstrom of evil like nothing we have ever seen. I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it.