[Stitcher]

F.D.A. on the Brink?

Dec 12 2007
http://www.portfolio.com/views/colum...A-on-the-Brink

A report says the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates $1 trillion worth of food and drugs, is dangerously underfunded and near collapse.

You know something is seriously amiss when industry scientists, consumer groups, and a bipartisan phalanx of senior government officials past and present call for infusions of cash to bolster a federal watchdog agency.
That's the situation at the Food and Drug Administration as one report after another—issued by groups ranging from the National Academy of Sciences to the Government Accountability Office—describes an agency that was once the envy of the world but is now in danger of melting down.

Businesses that create and sell F.D.A.-overseen products, from peanut oil to neuropharmaceuticals, are well aware that the F.D.A. is understaffed, underfunded, and generally overwhelmed.

The public is catching on too, after recent scandals and missteps: the Vioxx recall, for one, and the clumsy handling of last year's E. coli outbreak from bagged spinach. Last year, only 36 percent of Americans said they had confidence in the F.D.A., down from 80 percent in the 1970s, according to a Harris interactive poll.

The latest report was presented last week by a subcommittee of the F.D.A. Science Board—an advisory panel of scientists and industry experts—and was ordered by F.D.A. commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. "F.D.A. Science and Mission at Risk" compiles information gathered during a yearlong investigation overseen by a panel of top scientists, pharma executives and researchers, and senior U.S. officials from such agencies as the National Institutes of Health.

[jcitron]

Carolyn,

I wonder if the current administration has a lot to do with it. They don't like the FDA because of the watch-dog policies against big pharma and other big players in government, and have curtailed a substantial amount of funding and employment for the agency. They've also been hard on the EPA as well because that is the watch-dog agency for the chemical and petroleum industries.

So through a combination of funding cuts and stooge placement, they've crippled the agencies that were created to help with the health and wefare of the citizens, but GWB and company do not care about the rest of us. He's only interested in taking care of business, and are trying to turn the clocks back to the free-for-all times of the early 20th-century.



John