Report: FDA underfunded, understaffed

An FDA advisory committee has joined the chorus lamenting an underfunded, understaffed regulatory agency. Released Friday, the report not only castigates the FDA for its woeful understanding of current science, but said its staffing is inadequate for the job and its IT systems are obsolete, and therefore completely ineffective.

Believe it or not, FDA inspectors hand-write their reports. Other dangerous-product reports aren't analyzed or compared fast enough. And the agency doesn't have backup systems, so data gets lost in system crashes.

What would fix the problem? Doubling the agency's budget, for starters. Consumers pay 1.5 cents per day to operate the FDA, the report states, and 3 cents a day wouldn't be too much to ask.

- see this release on the findings
- read the report from USA Today

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