Drug and Food Risks - FDA Dirty Little Secrets
Drug and Food Risks - FDA Dirty Little Secrets
OUTRAGES! You just got to read this and be aware!
FDA “hides” old warning letters
The FDA Web site has made several changes that greatly decrease the
visibility of warning letters about products and safety violations.
Letters issued before January 2007 have been moved into a new
directory so that all incoming links to them from other sites have
been broken. This directory is also coded so that search engines
cannot index its contents. Searching for warning letters on the FDA
site is difficult because (a) the newer and older letters have to be
searched separately, (b) the search page for pre-2007 pages in not
easy to find. (c) letters are moved to the archive folder at
irregular intervals, and (d) many of the older letters are in PDF
format, which means that they will be found only if the searcher uses
specific keywords. The agency as become extremely slow in responding
to Freedom of Information Act requests. In August 2005, Dr. Barrett
asked for a document related to a warning letter. If one exists,
finding it would take only a few minutes. Barrett’s Congressman has
asked twice for the document, and FDA staff members have phoned
Barrett four times during the past year to find out whether he still
wants it. But it still has not come. Bloomberg News has reported that
in May 2007, the agency had 20,365 unfilled requests, including 1,924
that were more than three years old and that the the number of
workers filling requests has been cut even though the backlog had
been steadily rising. [Blum J. Drug, food risks stay secret as
inquiries to U.S. FDA pile up. Bloomberg News, June 19, 2007]
Link to the above information: FDA “hides” old warning letters
More interesting information:
Drug, Food Risks Stay Secret as Inquiries to U.S. FDA Pile Up - By Justin Blum
Filed under: Dare 2B Aware on March 14th, 2008
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