The FDA is apparently considering loosening the conflict-of-interest rules that apply to members of FDA advisory committee members. These rules have set limits on the financial arrangements that members can have with companies in the health care industry.
The Project on Government Oversight wrote about the issue last week.
If the perceived problem is that the FDA can’t find enough non-conflicted experts to serve on the committee, we wonder if they’re looking hard enough.
Here’s a letter sent to the FDA commissioner today by Shannon Brownlee, Jeanne Lenzer and me:
Here is the letter sent by the Project on Government Oversight to the FDA.
And here is Shannon Brownlee’s blog post on the topic, “Is There An Independent, Unbiased Expert in the House?”
Comments
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Barbara Duck
August 3, 2011 at 12:28 pmThis is tough topic and recently I actually gave the FDA a break on the device side with not being able to find enough engineers and companies all across the US have that problem as well. Intel had said they can’t find enough and need to find engineers over seas.
I don’t know if we truly have enough “experts” any more to use the name but we certain have a lot of smart people:) I think technology bites at the word expert quite often with the rapid pace we live in today.
The post I made a few weeks ago included a video from Robert Scoble and it’s probably one of his best as he gets personal about the talent search in this country. The pharma side may roll over into this a bit more too as so many are created with computers for a long way of the research before a wet lab is ever created too.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2011/07/fda-and-medical-devices-who-doesnt-get.html
Anyway on the device side of the FDA experts I gave them a bit of a break here and it’s a tough subject.
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