Inadequate FDA Reform Bill Moving in Senate

The Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions committee will hold a mark-up hearing Wednesday on FDA reform legislation that fails to adequately deal with many of the agency's flaws. Opinion pieces in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Boston Globe, widely circulated in committee chairman Ted Kennedy's home turf, have taken the bill to task.

Even the conflict of interest provisions fail to take into account recent proposed changes at the FDA (see this article from yesterday's Integrity in Science Watch from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which I edit). The question becomes: Why are the Democrats in the Senate going along with this clearly inadequate bill?