Tale of Two Bureaucrats
August 22nd, 2006A few weeks ago, I wrote an email to the FDA — the story is here — and I will reproduce the email below:
Hi, I read this news story:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7BB160F5C6-58AA-4078-
A431-1A64F9F94D25%7DMy question is, What is the purpose of this task force, exactly? Does this
mean that, before, your organization never looked at Nanotechnology, or that
you’ll be putting forth more analysis into the subject, or what, exactly?
What type of recommendations will you be giving at the end of the force?
“Nanotechnology good? Nano-bad?”
I’d ridiculed the task force as being pointless and ill-conceived, and so I contacted the FDA to find out if I was wrong, and there really was a purpose beyond window-dressing to their panel. Still, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell the panel’s supposed to do, and the problem in perception is made worse by the FDA’s responses to my inquiry. First, they wrote back late to my inquiry, which is to say it took them a week. That’s unacceptable in the digital age, and it’s not as if the FDA’s doors are being banged down by people asking questions. Worse even than their timing, is the first response I received, reproduced as follows:
Mr. Pratt,
Are you a national reporter? I ask only because I want to get you to the
right person. It looks like you may work on the Hill? If so, I would like
to refer you to our Office of Legislation.
What a response! I suppose it must’ve terrified the FDA that Congress might be asking them questions, since that’s what the overall tone of her email gives off. “Oh God, if I say something wrong, this might embarrass the agency and endanger our funds!” Hey, I may be giving a sinister motive to the response I got, but it’s better than giving them the benefit of incompetence, isn’t it? My answer, in turn, was short and to the point, and her reply was, too, actually: “I am not a national reporter. I am a blogger. Who should I contact to get a simple answer to an easy question?”
Her answer to that? “I’m sorry. I don’t remember the question. Could you please re-send? Thanks[.]” What, don’t they have email archives? Whatever, I supposed it was a quick mistake — an effort to get back to me as soon as possible instead of in-a-week? — and then I resent my original question. Her answer was, “[BLANK] is the lead on this and will be back on Monday and will get back to you[.]” This was on Friday afternoon — a weekday, mind you — so I wrote her the following: “I don’t ask to be snarky or rude, but is Susan sick, on vacation, or on an FDA-related trip? I ask because I can’t think of any other reason why she wouldn’t be in on a Friday in the middle of the afternoon.”
Never got an answer to that. Never got an answer from anyone at the FDA yesterday. I guess they had some dangerous Corporate drug to approve or something. Next time, though, I’ll tell them I’m from the Office of the Independent Blogger — that‘ll scare ‘em good!