Sunday, June 11, 2006

Government-corporate Dirty Dealings

In an episode reminiscent of an X-Files show, the chief investigator for Iowa Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley was attacked last November by an "assailant, dressed in black" who "clubbed her with what appeared to be a baseball bat." Senator Grassley, who has apparently earned a reputation as a champion of anti-corruption reform in the FDA, suspects she was attacked because of the unwelcome investigations she led on drug safety and other issues. "If they had knocked her out with the first hit, she'd be dead. She was able to just survive and fight back, and the guy got scared and ran off," the Senator commented.

Among other inappropriate FDA behavior, Grassley's office investigated an antibiotic developed by Sanofi Aventis that "the agency approved despite knowing a clinical trial investigator failed to report patients' side effects , back-dated documents, and falsified data."

[Diedtra Henderson, "Watching the watchdog," Boston Globe, June 8, 2006]

Tag: []

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home