David Graham said last week that his Catholic faith guided him in blowing the whistle on his employer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for its failure to pull Merck’s popular painkiller Vioxx off the market.
Merck voluntarily pulled the drug off the market in September after a study it conducted showed that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks.
“I’m a Catholic Christian, and though I continually fall short of modeling the Gospel in my life, I have always tried to do so,” Graham said in accepting the Joe. A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage last week in downtown Washington, D.C. “In reflecting on this award, I recall the verse from the New Testament scriptures where Jesus spoke to his disciples about service and instructed them to remember that we must remain humble, for there is no honor in doing what we were told to do.”
“To paraphrase this verse, I have done nothing more than my duty,” Graham said.
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Re: Devout Christian David Graham Details Showdown with FDA
yes, journalists tend to take “liberties” to emphasize their point ;)
I do admire the man for sticking to what he saw as the right thing to do. There have been more than a couple researchers at the FDA and NIH in the last 10 years who have similarly been at odds with their bosses because of conflicts between data uncovered and managerial positioning. Most either shut up to keep their jobs or quit and go into the private sector.
I was very disturbed to read of the recent court decision which decided that researchers working for the FDA, NIH and CDC who were not “statutory” employees of the Federal govt. (most are not civil servants but are hired consultants) are NOT deemed to be protected under whistle-blower laws and can be dismissed or otherwise sanctioned for reporting misconduct and other problems in their organizations.
That’s 1 step forward and 2 steps back…
Not sure he’d describe himself as devout…. p’raps just developing…