When the government agency entrusted with safeguarding life knowingly allows dangerous products to enter our homes, the moral outrage cannot be overstated. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, created to protect Americans from unsafe medicines, has instead permitted “more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the United States over the past dozen years” despite being manufactured in overseas factories that had been banned for critical safety violations, according to a stunning ProPublica investigation.
This isn’t a bureaucratic oversight. It’s a betrayal of public trust—one that has directly jeopardized human life. And for Catholics, who uphold the sanctity and dignity of every human person, this scandal is nothing short of an ethical catastrophe.
This is a question of moral responsibility
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that public authorities are “obliged to respect the fundamental rights of the human person” (CCC 2237). But what happens when that authority becomes complicit in endangering lives under the guise of regulation?
In 2008, tainted blood thinner from China killed or injured hundreds. Nearly two decades later, the FDA is still playing Russian roulette with our medicine cabinets. Factories in India—many of them repeat offenders—continue to ship drugs into the United States under vague “exemptions,” hidden in lengthy import alerts, with little public explanation. According to ProPublica, “the FDA does not keep a comprehensive list of drugs that have been exempted from bans over the years.” In other words, even the agency doesn’t seem to know the full extent of the risk they’ve authorized.
How did this moral failure take root?
By prioritizing bureaucratic convenience and international pharmaceutical relationships over truth and transparency. The FDA told ProPublica it required drugmakers “to conduct additional quality checks before the drugs were sent to the United States,” including bringing in third-party consultants. But this assurance rings hollow when the agency itself failed to routinely test the drugs or track whether consumers were harmed after distribution.
ProPublica identified more than 8,000 reports of adverse events related to these exempted drugs from 2010 to early 2025. These included product defects, quality issues, and reactions from consumers and healthcare professionals. Yet the FDA has minimized these events by claiming the reports are not verified and do not imply “a causal relationship.” But if even one life was endangered by these drugs—and the evidence suggests many were—then the cost is too high.
Catholic teaching demands that those in power act for the common good, not in service of pharmaceutical lobbyists or economic expediency. “To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men,” wrote Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The FDA’s silence and systemic concealment is a sin against truth, justice, and human life.
What should Catholics make of this?
We must not tolerate the moral decay embedded in the FDA’s practices. Catholics are called to defend life—not only in the womb, but in every hospital, every household, and every human body that unknowingly ingests a drug made in a banned facility. “You shall not kill” is not only a commandment against direct violence—it is a moral imperative to avoid endangering others through negligence or cowardice.
We should demand full transparency. We should call for independent testing of all imported drugs. And we should urge our elected officials—many of whom have been silent about this scandal—to remember their duty before God and country.
According to the report, journalists had to file a lawsuit against the FDA just to obtain public safety documents the agency tried to bury. The case remains ongoing in federal court. In the meantime, contaminated drugs remain on our shelves.
This is not just regulatory failure. It is moral rot.
Let us be clear: a society that gambles with the health of its most vulnerable has lost its soul. And if Catholics do not raise their voices now, we risk becoming complicit in that silence.
“The drugs we are taking are not always what we think they are,” warned Bottle of Lies author Katherine Eban in 2019. That lie is still being sold to us every day—with the FDA’s blessing.
Sources:
- ProPublica, “Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA’s Gamble on America’s Drugs”, June 2025
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
- Bottle of Lies by Katherine Eban, 2019
