FDA to Create Drug Safety Oversight Board

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=11&u=/nm/20050215/ts_nm/health_drugs_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) will announce on Tuesday it will create an independent drug safety oversight board as a new measure to strengthen the safety of drugs already in the marketplace, an administration official said.

Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Michael Leavitt and acting FDA (news - web sites) administrator Lester Crawford were to make the announcement at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT), the official said.


The White House announcement comes on the eve of a three-day FDA meeting called to discuss the safety of painkillers that have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease.


The board will include representatives from the FDA and medical oversight experts from other agencies like the Veterans Administration, the official said.

If they only pick drug company reps (many of whom work at the FDA now) we're doomed. The FDA is a tool of big pharma.

do what they say. Just more propaganda for this WH. Any words that flow from a Republican mouth are lies.

McClelland, the guy who has been the Acting Commissioner during the whole Vioxx controversy! I feel so much safer, don't you?

so that when their gambling debts mount up, they can go lobby for a few years and make some real money, then come back to their regulatory job.

Yes, I'm cynical.

The FDA was the drug saftey ovesight board.

-Hoot

Too bad the public is blind, deaf & dumb.

-Hoot

in the recent 2006 budget request sent to Congress, including 25 additional employees?
For a cash register and a rubber stamp? :wtf:



David Webster, a consultant at Webster Consulting Group, said the creation of the safety board may benefit drug companies as it will shift some of the burden of liability for safety from the pharmaceutical industry to the government.

That should actually read "it will shift some of the burden of liability for safety from the pharmaceutical industry to the government, where shrub-friendly judges will swing their gavels and yell 'DISMISSED!!'"

:eyes: