What happened: In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) succumbed to industry pressure and, in a press release, downplayed the results of an FDA study which showed that chickens treated with a pharmaceutical drug had high levels of arsenic in their bodies. Pharmaceutical representatives from a subsidiary company of Pfizer were granted what the deputy director of science policy at FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine termed “extremely unusual” access to review FDA’s front-facing materials on its arsenic-based veterinary drug, roxarsone, including allowing pharmaceutical representatives to edit a press release and the agency’s Q&A page about the drug.
Why it matters: It is a breach of scientific integrity for FDA officials to allow pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to modify the FDA’s front-facing materials on their products. The FDA allowed Pfizer to interfere with the process of communicating its research to the public, thereby misinforming the public of the potential health and safety concerns related to a veterinary medicine causing higher levels of arsenic in chickens.
Learn more about how the FDA undermined scientific integrity and allowed Pfizer to interfere with its communication to the public.