More Signs There Is No Intelligent Life At The FDA
The FDA continued is blundering and fumbling of as the protector of the American public from big pharma. The New York Times reports that “American consumers are waiting nearly a year longer for government regulators to approve new lower-priced generic drugs than they did in 2005.” Put another way, people who need access to prescription drugs pay billions of dollars a year more than they have to and this pushes health-care costs up. The expense of an increase in the FDA staff to shorten the process would be much less expensive that the cost of the delays in getting generics to market.
The Times reports that the head of the FDA said that “The generics industry has saved consumers nearly $750 billion over the last decade, Dr. Hamburg said at the conference. “On the “drugs that kill people but are approved by the FDA” front, two doctors from the agency say that “Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month.” The report is also from the Times. “The internal F.D.A. reports are part of a fierce debate within the agency over what to do about Avandia, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.” A debate over drugs that cause heart attacks, that is.
Douglas A. McIntyre