A Minnesota woman has been on a mission to hold Big Pharma accountable after her husband’s death. Kim Witczak believes the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement could finally make that happen. She joined Liz Collin on her podcast to discuss.
Witczak considers herself an “accidental advocate.” Alpha News first spoke to Witczak in 2022 about her husband’s death. Witczak’s husband, Woody, died in 2003—just five weeks after being prescribed Zoloft.
In speaking about the MAHA movement, Witczak explained, “Hope is one of the things I’ve held on to since Woody’s death in 2003. It’s the hope that we finally feel like we have somebody that might be in the office that will help get to the bottom of the disasters that we’ve had at the FDA for a long time. So I feel hopeful for the first time that we actually have somebody that has the right intention and will actually do something about it.”
A key issue for Witczak involves “black-box warnings”—the most serious of any of the warnings that the FDA can put on a medication to warn and inform the public. It’s estimated 128,000 Americans die each year as a result of taking medications as prescribed, Witczak explained, meaning it’s the fourth-leading cause of death among Americans.
“So we fought like hell to get the black-box warnings on antidepressants back in 2004, 2006, because unfortunately those warnings didn’t exist at the time that Woody got put on antidepressants. As much of a victory as it was, it was also kind of bittersweet again for us because we didn’t have that warning. But to think to this day that the warning for the dangers of antidepressants still does not extend to all ages and all ages need to be warned. That is why I think this constant reminder of telling the public about the serious side effects and potential for harms from these medications is so important, no matter what age you are,” Witczak said.
Along with the MAHA movement, Witczak supports Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hope to ban drug ads down the road. Witczak said, “I was very fortunate in that at least Woody’s story was told in the mainstream media because that was our media that we had out there … I’ve come to realize that when I learned that the U.S. is one of only two countries that allows drug ads, period, that ultimately does impact an advertiser.”
“I love that the MAHA Commission is actually, for the first time, looking at the role of psychiatric medicines in the increase of mental health because our mental health crisis is growing,” Witczak explained.
She also explained another key concept: informed consent.
“The other couple things [that I’d like to see] would be informed consent because I think informed consent is really the foundation of anything that we’re doing, which means that we have to have the good, bad, and ugly. If we don’t know everything about the vaccines, which has not really been my area of advocacy in the past, except for when COVID started, that’s really when my eyes became awakened to that system. But, you know, we need informed consent. Like if we have not had clinical trials, like let’s go in there and investigate, right? So I think that has to be a part of it,” Witczak said.
She mentioned reversing liability for vaccine manufacturers.
“Then the third one that I think is really important is we need to reverse liability for the vaccine manufacturers. I remember being shocked with COVID that they gave companies like Pfizer, who was the company in the manufacture of Zoloft, which is the drug Woody was on. I was able to hold them accountable and have a wrongful death failure to warn lawsuit. So I was shocked that our government gave these companies, one of the most egregious companies out there, complete legal liability-free, so as a consumer, if something happens, you can’t hold them accountable,” Witczak said.
You can follow Kim Witczak’s work on X.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
