Lawmakers Say FDA Better Clean Up Its Act

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 5 of 9 page(s)

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Over the past couple of years, the suppression of the scientific process and the muzzling of scientific dissent at the FDA became evident first when officials forced Dr Andrew Mosholder to suppress a link he found between SSRI antidepressants and suicide in children, and Dr Graham went public with allegations about the FDA's mishandling of the Vioxx matter.

On March 10, 2005, Senator Grassley gave a speech to the Consumer Federation of America and said these two whistleblowers had done more to shake up a complacent FDA than probably anybody in recent history and relayed parts of the story saying:

"Early last year I heard that the FDA was muzzling one of its own scientists. In February 2004 the FDA held a meeting to decide whether there was a link between some antidepressant drugs and suicidal behavior in kids.

"Dr. Andrew Mosholder the FDA's expert in this area -- concluded there was a link. However, FDA management disagreed. So, when Dr. Mosholder stuck by his findings, his supervisors canceled his presentation to an advisory committee.

"Instead of allowing Dr. Mosholder to present his findings publicly and subject them to committee scrutiny, the scientific process and his peers, the FDA effectively muzzled him."

But despite the FDA's best efforts, Senator Grassley said, Dr Mosholder wouldn't be silenced and months later he was proven right.

Citing information from the Department of Justice, he told the audience that there are currently under seal in the neighborhood of 100 whistleblower cases involving allegations against over 200 drug companies.

"During the past four years," he stated, "the department recovered nearly 2 and a half billion dollars from whistleblower cases against drug companies."

Senator Grassley called Dr Mosholder and Dr Graham great patriots. "Think about the guts it takes to undermine your career, and to go against your supervisors at a huge federal agency," he said, "and in this case, the multi-billion-dollar drug companies."

In an August 30, 2005, interview with Manette Loudon, the lead investigator for Dr Gary Null, Dr Graham discussed how FDA officials attempted to suppress the results of his study on Vioxx a year earlier. According to Dr Graham, prior to his Senate testimony in mid-November of 2004, there was an orchestrated campaign by senior FDA managers to intimidate him so that he would not testify about the adverse affects of Vioxx to Congress.

One attack he says, came when the acting FDA Commissioner, Lester Crawford, contacted the editor of the Lancet, a UK medical journal, and told him that Dr Graham had committed scientific misconduct and that the journal should not publish the paper that he had written showing that Vioxx increased the risks of heart attack.

The second attack came from other high level officials, he said, who contacted Senator Grassley's office in attempt to prevent Senator Grassley from calling him as a witness.

And the third he says came from senior FDA officials who contacted Tom Devine, Dr Graham's attorney at the Government Accountability Project, and attempted to convince him that the GAP should not represent Dr Graham because he was guilty of scientific misconduct.

According to Dr Graham, these officials posed as whistleblowers themselves, and told Mr Devine that Dr Graham was a "bully," a "demigod," and a "terrible person" that could not be trusted.

In one more last ditch effort to thwart Dr Graham's testimony the week before he testified, he says, the acting Commissioner offered him a job in the Commissioner's Office to oversee the revitalization of drug safety if he would just leave the Office of Drug Safety.

"Obviously he had been tipped off," Dr Graham said in the interview, "by people in the Senate Finance Committee who are sympathetic to the FDA's status quo that I was going to be called as a witness."

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