FDA Staff Travels on Drug Industry Dollars

[donsu]

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


FDA Staff Travels on Drug Industry Dollars
Groups tied to FDA-regulated industry paying for agency officials' trips


Through an apparent loophole in agency rules the Food and Drug Administration has allowed its employees to receive more than $1.3 million in sponsored travel since 1999 from groups closely tied to pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

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.

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More than a quarter of all of the trips reported were sponsored by five groups with ties to the pharmaceutical, biologic and medical device industries: the Drug Information Association, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the Parenteral Drug Association, the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering, and the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society. They were responsible for close to 1,000 excursions, spending more than $1.3 million to fly and host agency employees. Eleven drug safety board members were among the travelers sponsored by those groups. They took 55 trips costing approximately $75,000.

These groups do not describe themselves as trade associations. Instead, they promote themselves as scientific associations of individuals, apparently thereby skirting FDA travel sponsorship prohibitions.
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america is a crime scene

[Brazenly Liberal]

1. The FDA stopped serving the people long ago.

It has become Big Ag and Big Pharmco's taxpayer funded do-me.

[donsu]

2. agree

nt