Pushing Prescriptions: FDA Staff Travels on Drug Industry Dollars

[antigop]

This is from the Center for Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=792

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FDA policy bars employees from taking trips paid for by the drug, medical device and other companies the agency regulates or by their trade groups. But the Center for Public Integrity has found nonprofit associations that draw their members, their boards and even some of their funding from medical and pharmaceutical-related companies paying for the travel of hundreds of FDA employees.

The sponsor of the most trips was the Drug Information Association, which footed the bill for more than 600 trips taken by FDA employees. The nonprofit group made up of pharmaceutical and medical device employees, academics and government regulators boasts 13 members on its board of directors who work or have worked for the industry or its consulting groups.

The FDA has come under heavy criticism since Vioxx and other widely prescribed drugs were recalled for safety reasons. Members of Congress and government watchdog groups have charged that the regulatory agency is too close to the industry it oversees to impartially and effectively police the roughly 10,000 drugs on the market.

At the behest of Congress, the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services has investigated ties between the industry and the agencies that oversee it. Many of the top sponsors have membership or financial ties to medical and pharmaceutical-related companies. Nonprofit groups and universities with such ties paid for roughly a third of the more than 3,600 trips taken by agency officials, suggesting that the industry is indirectly subsidizing the travel taken by employees of the FDA.
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The Center identified 10 officials who took more than 25 trips each, often serving as speakers at the events they attended. Two of those officials are also members of the agency's new Drug Safety Oversight Board. After the recall pileup of Vioxx and other potentially dangerous medications, the safety board was established last year to independently monitor approved drugs. Seventeen of the board's 29 members have taken more than a combined 160 privately sponsored trips, at a total cost of more than $220,000.
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[mzmolly]

1. Oh goodness.

:( Recommending, thanks.