LAT: FDA Budget Malnourished: Food and drug safety threatened

[DeepModem Mom]

FDA Budget Malnourished
A study of ADHD drug risks may be halted as the agency struggles to keep up with demands.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer
October 7, 2006

WASHINGTON — When scientific advisors urged the Food and Drug Administration in February to put a strong warning about suspected cardiovascular risks on attention-deficit drugs taken by millions of children and adults, agency officials said more clinical evidence was needed.

Now, the FDA-funded study meant to authoritatively answer questions about the drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder may be halted in midstream. The reason: The agency doesn't have the money to finish it.

The threat to the study, as revealed in documents and interviews, stems from chronic shortchanging of the nation's drug safety program. It is one symptom of a federal agency increasingly constrained by a budget that has failed to keep up with costs. This crunch is even more dire in the food division, which tries to keep tainted foodstuffs from supermarket shelves.

Even as concerns grow, the agency has budgeted only $1.6 million for such safety studies of medications already on the market, and that number is scheduled to drop to $900,000 in the coming year. Outside experts estimate that the agency needs $20 million to $100 million a year to conduct such studies.

Recently, three former secretaries of Health and Human Services sounded a public alarm about what they saw as a dangerous squeeze on the overall FDA budget. Tommy G. Thompson, who served in President Bush's first term; Donna Shalala, who served under President Clinton; and Louis W. Sullivan, who served under President George H.W. Bush, joined consumer and industry groups in calling on the administration to substantially boost — perhaps double — the agency's $1.5-billion annual budget, which has increased only modestly in recent years....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fda7oct07,0,3224208.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Look, let's get real:

They don't care. As far as they are concerned, if their Big Pharma buddies can make more, then that's great. If more people die, then that's fine too. Cull the herd of one-fodder-units.

I am sure that both Dear Leader and Cheney both could not care less about dead folks and in some cases, quietly revel in the body counts.

All one has to do is look back to Dear Leader's tenure as Texas Gubnor and see that dead folks kinda give him a puffy one.

[allisonthegreat]

2. bring on the class action suits...n/t

[rodeodance]

3. How can this be taken up by Dems as a campaign issue?--Safty of our

drugs and food! for christs sake!

[rodeodance]

4. Send this post to the media --and to your Congresscritters

[rodeodance]

5. ....also hurt its ability to safeguard fresh produce,

The FDA's budget crunch has also hurt its ability to safeguard fresh produce, some critics say. That has become an issue in the aftermath of the E. coli outbreak traced to California spinach. The number of inspectors and field office staffers has been cut from 2,217 in 2003 to about 1,960.

"The agency is like a fire department running around with a little fire extinguisher," said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group. "The money situation for foods is probably worse than it's ever been."

Earlier this year, the FDA's food division announced that budget pressures had forced cuts in its headquarters workforce from 950 in 2003 to fewer than 850, with further reductions expected.

The FDA has "been presented with unique challenges, and we will not be able to take on the same large number of objectives we have identified in previous years," Robert E. Brackett, director of the food division, wrote in an unusually candid letter to consumer and industry groups. "The challenges are likely to continue and beyond for domestic agencies in the federal government."

[nealmhughes]

6. The market will correct everything in the long run. So there are a few

drugs or foodstuffs that may be "dangerous," every once in a while...does that absolve us from our duty to a free market? Won't the consumer make the appropriate decision and switch to something that does not make them ill or kill them after enough have been killed or made ill?

Advocating the food and drug industry was NOT the original intent of the framers! It is simply another ploy of the big government that needs to be drowned in the bathtub in order to prevent us from our natural right to privitize and invest instead of Big Government making us thralls of the state...

How was that for Uber-Rand cum Norquist talking points?

:evilgrin: :sarcasm:

[DeepModem Mom]

7. I think you've got it! nt