http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2076791 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Food and Drug Administration may be trying to hide information about its review of a Sanofi-Aventis antibiotic linked to liver damage in some users, a top Republican lawmaker charged on Wednesday.
"I smell a cover-up," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said after the FDA failed to make available one of its criminal investigators for questions about his probe of fraud in a study of the drug, Ketek.
The Iowa Republican told reporters he may hold a congressional hearing on the issue and call the investigator to testify. His committee began reviewing the FDA's approval of the antibiotic and subsequent monitoring of the drug's safety earlier this year.
The FDA said it was cooperating with Grassley's investigation and agency staff were providing more than 2 million pieces of paper with Ketek information to the committee.
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http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060614-125802-7252rU.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reportedly is not satisfied with the way regulators have handled his investigation of the antibiotic Ketek.
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee plans to personally confront staffers at the Health and Human Services Department, parent of the Food and Drug Administration, over information he says hadn't been disclosed, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal quoted Grassley saying his investigators were not allowed to interview an FDA special agent, although they had been told they could speak to other staff members.
The report said the agent was involved in the FDA's own probe of alleged problems in a study regarding the safety of the antibiotic. But despite those problems, the drug was approved by the FDA in 2004 based on other evidence, the report said.