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Sept. 25, 2006 -- A broad group of organizations and former health officials called for increased funding for the FDA Monday, warning that the agency's waning reputation won't improve without more spending.
The groups want Congress to greatly increase the FDA's nearly $2 billion budget, which they say lags far behind expanding responsibilities to police food safety and drug approvals at the agency.
The FDA has suffered intense public scrutiny over a series of problems, most notably an industry recall of Vioxx and related arthritisarthritis drugs known as Cox-2 inhibitors. Agency officials were also put on the defensive after safety problems at an FDA-regulated vaccine plant in England caused widespread fluflu vaccine shortages in 2004.
Public's View of the FDA
Those problems have helped lower the public's view of the FDA. An online poll conducted in May by Harris Interactive found that seven in 10 Americans had a negative opinion of the agency. More than eight in 10 said the agency's decisions are based on politics rather than science. The poll surveyed 2,371 U.S. adults.
The Institute of Medicine released a report Friday detailing organizational problems at the FDA and calling on Congress to give the FDA more power to oversee the safety of the U.S. prescription drug supply.
"These improvements are impossible without adequate funding," says Jim Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania.
Greenwood said that expanding responsibilities -- including regulating antibioterror agents and speeding up safety reviews of new drugs -- have left FDA scientists overworked and demoralized.
"We have enormous expectations. We do not fund them," says Ellen V. Sigal, PhD, chair of Friends of Cancer Research, a nonprofit group.