The longtime consumer advocate Dr. Sidney Wolfe has died at the age of 86. With Ralph Nader, he helped found the Health Research Group in 1971 as part of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. Dr. Wolfe spent decades fighting the Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical industry and is credited with helping to force 28 dangerous medications off the market. In a statement, Ralph Nader said millions of people benefited from Wolfe’s work. Dr. Sidney Wolfe last appeared on Democracy Now! in 2017.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe: “Fifty years ago, for the first time ever, this country decided that healthcare was a right for two groups of people: the old and the very poor. And we all hoped that shortly after that, something would happen to add more to those two vulnerable groups of people. And the only thing that’s happened in 50 years is President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which added about 20 more million people and put in important provisions, such as not discriminating against people because of preexisting illness. … So, to roll back the clock not only on the Affordable Care Act, but to start eroding Medicare and Medicaid, now 51 years old, is cruel, is not passionate and is not consistent with a doctor’s ethical duty to first do no harm.”