Posted On:
December 9, 2009
"FDA Reluctant to Discipline Doctors Found Guilty of Criminal Activities"
The Alabama Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article that discusses the FDA's reluctance to discipline doctors and medical researchers who have committed crimes while carrying out research for the FDA.
According to government watchdog group, many of these criminally convicted health professionals are in charge of overseeing the safety of patients undergoing clinical trials, which calls into question how safe any of us are when it comes to medical research in general.
The article mentions one specific doctor who remained in practice for 11 years...
even though he had been convicted of 53 counts of criminal offense for, among other things, bribing an employee to conceal information about the attempted suicide of a clinical-trial patient and prescribing a drug without a license.
The FDA has the power to ban doctors from overseeing medical research if federal regulations are ignored while caring for clinical trial patients. The organization is also required to disqualify doctors who have been accused of other crimes, such as fraud.
The types of misconduct that can get a doctor debarred include submitting false information to the FDA, forging patient consent forms and not reporting when a patient has an adverse reaction to an experimental drug.
However, it may take as long as 4 years to apprehend the offending doctors.
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