Dropping Preemption, and Making Consumers Safe

Three related pieces of news show that our country is finally putting consumer safety ahead of corporate profits.

During the first eight years of this decade, the federal government adopted two policies that hurt consumers coming and going. First, federal regulations were given power to "preempt" state consumer safety laws. Second, the content of the federal regulations was watered down and the regulators themselves lacked proper expertise and interest in protecting consumer safety. The result: products that were more dangerous, along with declining rights for compensation when those products caused injuries and deaths.

That is finally changing. Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced that it will limit the situations where federal law preempts state law. Instead of attempting to force preemption on a wide array of state public safety laws, the Administration will do it "only with full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the states."

The administration is also beefing up the regulators themselves. The appointment of Dr. Margaret Hamburg to head the FDA, welcomed by consumer safety groups, is a step in the right direction.

And it couldn't come soon enough. While reading the paper this morning, I saw that a Medtronic-paid doctor, Dr. Timothy Kuklo, has been falsifying research and data in order to promote a Medtronic bone graft material called "Infuse." While receiving funds from Medtronic, the doctor forged names of his fellow doctors at Walter Reed in studies wrote. Those studies presented fabricated data about the product, making it look more effective than it really was.

Antics like this are why we need a stronger regulatory scheme and, when that scheme breaks down, the right to compensation through products liability laws. If a manufacturer knows that it can make a dangerous product, and then not be held accountable, who ends up paying for it? We do, through preventable injuries and deaths.