Breaking News: Clowns Are Calling All the Shots

What do we do when the folks in charge of deciding what’s good for us are really, really bad at it?

Man, it’s been a weird week for news. In just the past few days, I’ve crossed paths with the following headlines: “Japanese company develops device that teaches plants to speak,” “Scientists discover new species of winged octopus living in the Amazon rainforest,” and “Harvest Produce engineers the world’s first square-shaped watermelon, making it easier to stack and transport.”

Of course, none of those things are true because I just made them up, but for at least a microsecond you were probably like, “Yeah, that is kind of crazy.” That’s because we are—all of us—so conditioned to believe something simply because we see or hear or read it, particularly if it’s surrounded by quotes and attributed to Brainy McKnowsitall, TBT [Took a Bunch of Tests] that half of us couldn’t recognize a Babylon Bee headline if it stung us in the buttocks.

Oh, how I wish this were true.

Case in point: Literally anything the FDA says.

The tweet that launched the deadly War on Ivermectin.

I’ll needlessly remind you that the Food and Drug Administration Furiously Deceptive Authority is a federal regulatory agency whose primary responsibility is “to protect and promote public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.”

I know. It’s a big job—that’s a lot of stuff to protect and promote and ensure!—so you can’t blame them for dropping the ball every once in a while. Or 2,739,726 literal times a day, as they did in 2022 when more than one billion units of consumer goods were recalled in the US for the second year running. These are products that the Food and Drug Administration Fraudulently Devious Asshats had previously given their prestigious safety blessing to, mind you, before realizing they’d accidentally missed a few trivial things like undeclared carcinogenic ingredients, listeria contamination, and obvious choking hazards.

Whoops.

Far more concerning are the products they don’t recall. You know, like the Covid-19 “vaccines” that are inexplicably still authorized for use in babies as young as six months old, despite being exponentially the deadliest pharmaceuticals brought to market since the Great Flood. What do you expect from the collective that kept Vioxx in circulation for five years (while it racked up 88,000 heart attacks and 38,000 deaths) and deserves almost exclusive credit for the opioid crisis?

Also on the Food and Drug Administration Fundamentally Deceitful Agency’s do-not-recall list is Ozempic, the weight loss wonder drug everyone from the suddenly-skeletal gal at your gym to Amy Schumer and Oprah is blaming thanking for their shrinking frames; the one whose active ingredient (semaglutide) the Food and Drug Administration Facebook Disinformation Arm gleefully approved in 2021 to help the shocking seventy percent of Americans who now qualify as plus-size shed some excess flesh. Never mind that the medication’s home page warns of “serious side effects including possible thyroid tumors and cancer,” or that Ozempic’s maker has been hit with dozens of lawsuits—from lawyers who claim that number will soon be thousands—on behalf of patients suffering adverse reactions ranging from stomach paralysis and gallbladder failure to having all of their teeth fall out. Quit being dramatic. No deadly side effect feels as bad as not being able to zip up your jeans from high school and the Food and Drug Administration Fictionalized Data Association knows it, okay? Besides, it’s FDA approved! Safe and effective! Well, at least until it’s not (meaning the fines and lawsuits outweigh—pun intended—the profits, but just think how many potential pounds you could drop in the meantime!).

Wait a skinny minute. Haven’t we been here before? Oh, yeah! Remember the weight loss miracle-turned-mishap known as Fen-Phen? American Home Products (later Wyeth) had a solid two and a half decade run before accumulating 600,000 lawsuits resulting in $7.65 billion in liability settlements.

*Holds breath waiting to get flogged for this one.

Protect, promote, ensure. The Fabricators and Deceivers Alliance should put that on hats!

Alas, if you ask the Internet a simple, straightforward does-FDA-approval-mean-diddly, the omniscient Oz responsible for aggregating literally all of the data in the universe and then summarizing it in a succinct reply—in a split, reassuring second, no less—churns out a 48-word response that’s about as trustworthy as a broken compass:

Is there anything in this answer that’s not a lie?

In case having the Food and Drug Administration Fiercely Dishonest Agency overseeing which experimental toxins are safe to inject wasn’t enough for you, they’re also in the process of finalizing their definition of the word “healthy” this ought to be good as it will be permitted to be used on food and beverages. (Spoiler: If it has a package on which to slap such a designation, it’s probably not, in fact, healthy. Also if you are committed to never giving up processed crap, do not search the web for “what is the FDA allowance for rat hair or insect parts?” You’re going to want to trust me on that.)

Do note that this task has been entrusted to the very same organization that allows Americans unfettered access to Twinkies, Ritz Crackers, Skittles, Stove Top Stuffing, and dozens of other frankenfoods that are literally banned around the world. Are you suggesting the Food and Drug Administration Falsified Documents Authority might be in bed with Big Food? You should probably adjust your tin foil hat before you blind somebody.

In all likelihood, the “healthy” designation will be based on the nutrient profiling system known as the Food Compass —basically the next gen Food Guide Pyramid—developed by [*cough-bullshit-cough*] researchers at Tufts University. In case you missed it, the Food Compass famously lists Frosted Mini Wheats, Honey Nut Cheerios, sweet potato fries, and nonfat frozen yogurt in the highest-rated “to be encouraged” category, and sticks eggs and ground beef in the bottom-feeder “to be minimized” bunch. Sure, people will eat ever more processed, sugar-coated cereals and gain a ton of weight if they follow this official-sounding drivel, but then they can take Ozempic, see? It’s almost as if the Food and Drug Administration Flagrantly Destructive Association has thought of everything.  

The bottom line is, when it comes to guidance, the source is essentially everything. Are you going to solicit flying advice from a turtle or take trombone lessons from a rock? If the cross-eyed carnie insisting he personally inspected the rickety rollercoaster is all the reassurance required to get you to climb on board, I probably can’t convince you to quit trusting our endlessly corrupt and patently captured “health agencies” and start using a bit of old-fashioned common sense.

Me, I’ll continue to take an opposite-day approach, avoiding anything the Food and Drug Administration Flibberdygibbet Dinglemajingle Abracadoodad recommends like a steaming pile of poodle poop on the sidewalk and embracing every last thing they tell me I shouldn’t.

Don’t forget to submit your heartfelt or hilarious essays for consideration in my upcoming anthology, Yankee Doodle Soup for the Fringy, Tin Foil Hat-Wearing Conspiracy Theorist’s Soul. It’s going to be epic. Click here to review the submission guidelines. And please share!