Former FDA Reviewer Speaks Out About Intimidation, Retaliation and Marginalizing of Safety

“Devicegate” dates back at least to January 2009 when scientists in the FDAs Center for Devices and Radiological Health wrote President Obama that top FDA managers “committed the most outrageous misconduct by ordering, coercing and intimidating FDA physicians and scientists to recommend approval, and then retaliating when the physicians and scientists refused to go along.” Review procedures at the agency which approves stents, breast implants, MRIs, and other devices and machinery were so faulty that unsafe devices – including those that emit excessive radiation – were approved, charged the scientists, provoking an OSC investigation.

via Former FDA Reviewer Speaks Out About Intimidation, Retaliation and Marginalizing of Safety.

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The FDA Is Spying on Its Own Scientists – Tom Philpott | Mother Jones

Scores of internal agency documents made available to The New York Times show that agency managers sought to approve an application by General Electric to allow the use of CT scans for colon cancer screenings over the repeated objections of agency scientists, who wanted the application rejected.

Since then, according to an eye-popping Times story earlier this month, the FDA has done the following things: (1) approved GE’s application over the objection of those scientists; (2) launched an extraordinary surveillance campaign to monitor the computer activity of the scientists and their attempts to blow the whistle; and (3) fired several of them, who have in turn filed suit claiming they were axed in retaliation for whistle-blowing.

via http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/08/fda-spying-on-scientists