[Vision2020] Two indications of increase in government secrecy

[Jim Meyer]

All,
As a pharmacist I recently had the need to search for the incidence of 
adverse drug events for a certain drug. In the past, this data was 
freely searchable and available on the FDA website. Now, the information 
is available through expensive proprietary information services or for 
free if you beg for it via an FOI request (which may or may not be 
granted). It is also available as multiple datafiles downloadable from 
the FDA website and which cover multiple time periods.It might take me a 
week to put the data together into usable form and an average person 
could not makes any sense of it, period. What I also gather is that the 
consumer as well as myself are essentially excluded from meaningful 
information. It might be available with a paid subscription, but again 
that puts it out of reach of regular people. As a government agency the 
purpose of the FDA should be to disseminate information, not to create a 
data source for proprietary database companies. While technically making 
the information public, the government, for all intents and purposes, 
makes it secret, even to health professionals. I find this concept 
sickening and contrary to my idea that government should be benevolent 
protector of the average citizen. I don't know what this country is 
going toward, but I am truly afraid it is not good. (By the way, the 
argument for making this information difficult to access is that 
uninformed people will look at it without understanding, see deaths and 
injuries perhaps unrelated to the drug, and then start a webstorm 
against a particular drug. The contrary argument is the fact that the 
FDA and drug companies can not be counted on to protect consumers i.e. 
Vioxx)

For those of you with economics backgrounds it is very interesting that 
on March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 
will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate. See 
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/discm3.htm
This data is an indication of large and international related deposits 
and would be first indicator if foreign investors were to start dumping 
their U.S investments. (if I understand correctly--I do not have an 
economics background). This might be a truly scary indicator of hiding a 
pending economic meltdown.

Jim Meyer