Pharma Blog Watch

FDA Transparency (Eye on FDA)
In his blog, Mark Senak discusses transparency in FDA advisory committees. He points out that one way the agency promotes transparency is by posting links on its website to committee members’ curricula vitae (CV). “That is a very good mechanism for both consumer protection groups as well as industry who want to analyze the makeup of a committee.”

“However, if you look at just the CBER and CDER committees, there are several exceptions. … Overall, between CBER and CDER there are 279 advisory committee members, 64 of whom are not linked to any information — a failure rate of about 25%,” he notes. “Transparency, in order to be genuine, has to be consistent.”