This was in reply to one of the posts that gave the opinion that McCullough would have a conflict of interest due to being involved in a company that sells supplements and that that is no different than having pharma people running government agencies - two people who posted seemed to view these as equal conflicts of interest, and I disagree:
This is totally different from those on the boards of large pharma companies. First of all, prescription drugs are regulated by U.S. government agencies, particularly the FDA, as to whether or not those drugs can be legally sold in the U.S. However, naturopathic products are not regulated by the FDA or by any of the US government agencies.
Secondly, pharma companies and pharma CEO’s, executive staff and researchers are paid vastly higher pay compared to anyone working in the supplement industry. Vastly. For example, Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, earned $33 million in compensation in 2023. Pfizer as a company made $100 billion in 2022 with $57 billion from the vaccines and Paxlovid; their total dropped to 58 billion dollars in 2023.
Here is why and how this matters: More often than not, heads of U.S. government health agencies (and many other employees), especially at the FDA, come from Pharma. If Albert Bourla wanted to give up his $33 million income to work at FDA, perhaps he still owns a lot of Pfizer stock, retains some Pfizer retirement plan, or if he were a scientist, he may have patents on things he has developed as a pharma researcher. When someone from pharma goes to work in one of the government health agencies, they have a conflict of interest. When they “regulate” products as to whether or not they can be sold to the public, their decision may impact their own income through their ties to the company they came from. If they approve a product and they own stock in the company, the value of their investments will increase. If their retirement compensation is related to how well the company is doing, if there is stock involved, again, the products they regulate will have a bearing on their future income. If they own patents on any of the processes used in making that drug, again, they will get royalties based on how much of that product is sold. But there is more.
Investigative James O’Keefe (now with OMG Media though he did this before founding OMG) made video recordings of a Vice President of Pfizer (now fired, but I did see the videos) in which the Pfizer guy said that the FDA really did not give Pfizer any difficulty about getting the Covid products approved, and he was surprised at how easy it was, but he said, the guys at the FDA know that later, Pfizer will give them jobs after they retire from the FDA. Like - FDA guy approves Prizer products, and Pfizer later will give them a cushy job as pay back so even while collecting US government retirement compensation, they can have an extra salary as payback for being nice to Pfizer instead being an honest regulator.
It is well known that that there is a revolving door between pharma and the FDA, and other agencies like, the CDC. Thus, what you have is the companies that are supposedly being regulated have their own people in place to help with the regulation. RFK Jr. used the term “regulatory capture on steroids” to describe this situation. I recall years ago having read that Merck, another large pharma company, had packed their people at the CDC. What they were doing there, I don’t know, since it’s really up to the FDA to say what new drugs can be approved to sell in the US, but there were a lot of Merck employees who had gone to work at CDC. Sure, their knowledge and skills could be used in government, but - there often is a conflict of interest, plus with all those billions, I am sure an ethical company would never bribe buy off anyone, that would never happen because… it just would not, and I am not accusing anyone of anything. But such a thing could NEVER happen with a nutraceutical / naturopathic supplement company because there is not that much money involved, it’s very, very small by comparison, PLUS, it is not the same conflict of interest because there are no royalties or patents involved in selling herbs. Also, the government does not regulate the dandelion greens or bits of groiund up plants, so it is not the case that the regulators would be regulating their own products - no conflict of interest whatsoever, The FDA does not say whether you can sell dandelion greens or roots, you can sell them anyway, and you won’t make billions though you could make a living, but working at the FDA you would be regulating pharma, not the plants that go into supplements. You would not be regulating your own self and there is no way to leverage your position to make “extra” money.
I just checked - at Moderna that gave us one of the other mRNA injections, Stephen Bancel, the CEO, earned $300.7 million dollars as his compensation for 2023. In contrast, I checked a popular supplement company and found the CEO earns about $150K per year - 150,000 dollars - and the VP of Finance earned less than $80,000. The regular employees start at $33,000 and may got up to $50,000 for some positions, but the they have 200 employees with sales in the millions, not billions of dollars. It is a vast difference in money, and they are really different industries. I would not consider them as part of the same industry. In any case, supplement makers are not regulated by the FDA; they don’t do research and pay the FDA to get their products approved, and because they use natural products that any company could use, they are not selling exclusive products that they have patented, for which health insurance will pay big bucks. And they will not be regulating their own products if they did leave to go to the FDA but they don’t have a huge of team of research scientists doing drug development and then patenting meds that may sell for $2000 per month. The things they do and the way they work, and the money they make - very different.