Colleagues,
As reported in Genome Web News ... Two Democratic congressmen who chair powerful
committees this week called for increased funding for a US Food and
Drug Administration that they said lacks proper resources and has not
been able to keep up with increased demands caused in part by innovation
and globalization...
...In a letter to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius, Senator Tom Harkin (D – Ia.) and Representative Henry Waxman (D – Calif.) asked the secretary to boost her congressional request for funding for FDA's 2012 budget. They claim that flat funding in the middle of the last decade has left the agency playing catch-up in recent years and unprepared for a growing tableau of responsibilities including more drugs, new devices, and a growing global supply chain for food resources in the US...
..."The heparin contamination and the many food safety outbreaks are
some of the most notorious examples. Unfortunately, the FDA has become an agency that has been reduced to 'management by crisis,' continually forced to address the most recent crisis instead of preventing the next one," they added...
...The congressmen said that the $4.03 billion that FDA has sought for
its 2011 appropriation will not be enough for the agency to do what it is needed to perform its current duties and to prepare for its future ones...In 2010, FDA received $3.2 billion; in 2009, $2.7 billion; and in 2008, $2.4 billion...
Read on at: http://www.genomeweb.com//node/946929?hq_e=el&hq_m=781964&h...
ENJOY!
CC