The Apr 26 latest news 'FDA Criticized On Drug Safety Monitoring' reported the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the United States criticized some divisions of the FDA of insufficient authority in post-market drug safety evaluation. Data of several researches are provided. The news is somewhat new to me, a Chinese resident, because of the term 'Government Accountability' and the institution of the corresponding agency.
Lacking an analogous agency that 'studies how the federal government spends taxpayer's dollars (or yuan in the case of China)', Chinese people have been suffering a hardly accountable government for years. It should be interesting, however, that why the government will set up an office of government accountability evaluation, if the government is governing the people, as is the case in China. Only when the people govern the government does the latter have to set up various watching agencies in favor of the former.
In China, in fact, scandals of unliable government also have their ways out via newspaper and TV. But these revelations do not increase the sense of safety of the public, with most of which conducted by informal investigations by journalists, unofficial organizations or individuals, and often in the wake of serious problems uncovered. The inflation of this kind of news, though marking a freer atmosphere of journalistic industry comparing years ago, only remind us that there may be more disgrace of the government uncovered. We will not feel safe and comfortable when we hear the news, until it says someone who is in charge of supervising government, just as GAO is, finds some discredit or disrepute from it for the tax-payers, and will always trying.
Supervision needs high authority; high authority begets high corruption; anti-corruption needs higher supervision again. What's the force out of this circle that can break it and start with a right one, I wonder?
