Pharmaceutical Consultants Search Out Criminally Charged Doctors Working At Food And Drug Adminsitration

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 11:34 pm

The US Government Accountability Office GAO has used pharmaceutical consultants to look into people working for the FDA and the results are a damning criticism that the Food and Drug Administration hires criminally convicted doctors to work for it in clinical trials. This is a damning indictment of the FDA who has even been found to be breaking their own rules when they fail to debar these personnel when they are discovered to hold a criminal record.

On average, GAO found that it took the FDA an average of four years to get round to debarring doctors with a conviction. This is despite the fact that the administration is required by law to disqualify doctors who have been found guilty of fraud or other crimes. The FDA seems to be ignoring these laws to such an extent that one doctor worked at the FDA for 11 years even though he had been previously charged with 53 counts of criminal activity.

Prescribing medicine without a license, fraud and lying during clinical trials were other charges that doctors had been committed of. Three doctors continue to work for the FDA even though they have public criminal conviction charges.

presenting false data at clinical trials was the dominant charge amongst the doctors. Participants were made up, they had their consent forced on them and some of the doctors failed to stick to the research plan entirely. There is major concern over criminal doctors’ involvement in the criminal device industry. Under present FDA rules, a doctor who has been convicted of a criminal offence is not prohibited from practicing in the medical device industry, which could be putting the lives of millions of people at risk, especially since inhalers used to treat asthma are thought of as a medical device.

Because the FDA is already breaking its own rules and laws governing it, there seems little reason to implement new regulations. New reforms should instead be applied so that there is no room for these laws to be broken. Prosecutions for doctors found to be breaking the law, company executives barred from senior roles in the FDA and a stricter relationship between the FDA and drug companies.

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