The Little Man
Congress furious at FDA
A House panel berated the agency over Avandia. Testimony from a whistle- blower heightened debate.
By Matthew Perrone
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Safety concerns about a GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug prompted some Democratic lawmakers yesterday to rebuke the Food and Drug Administration and call for increased regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.The controversy surrounding GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.'s Avandia intensified when a medical expert told Congress that executives threatened to sue him in 1999 when he first drew attention to heart-attack risks linked to the treatment.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, lambasted the FDA for not alerting consumers sooner about Avandia's potential dangers.
"Despite additional warnings from outside experts, despite the millions of patients who rely on Avandia to control their blood sugar, and despite the potential risks involved, FDA never required the manufacturer to conduct a thorough post-market study of its heart risks," Waxman said.
He called for yesterday's hearing after an analysis released by the New England Journal of Medicine concluded Avandia could raise patients' risk of heart attack more than 40 percent.
I'm working on a larger piece about the medical industrial complex and how little your actual health matters to whoever is in politics. You don't really matter to anyone in the "health" industry.