FDA Should Have Announced Conflicts Among COX-2 Inhibitor Committee Members, Editorial States

Although "there was nothing illegal" about the appointment of scientists with past financial ties to... Pfizer, Merck and Novartis to a joint FDA advisory committee on the safety of COX-2 inhibitors, the agency "can be faulted for its failure to announce the conflicts at the time of the meeting," a New York Times editorial states (New York Times, 3/4). According to a recent review conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 10 members of the committee had past financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that market COX-2 inhibitors. The committee voted to recommend that FDA allow the COX-2 inhibitors Celebrex and Bextra, both manufactured by Pfizer, to remain on the market and that the agency allow the COX-2 inhibitor Vioxx, manufactured by Merck, to return to the market (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 2/28). According to the editorial, without the votes of those 10 scientists, the committee "would have favored withdrawing Bextra from the market and blocking the return of Vioxx" and would have recommended that FDA allow only Celebrex to remain on the market, the review found. However, the "deeper problem is that links between drug companies and medical researchers are pervasive," the editorial states. The editorial concludes, "Unless the FDA makes a more aggressive effort to find unbiased experts or medical researchers start severing ties with industry, a whiff of bias may taint the verdicts of many advisory panels" (New York Times, 3/4).


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View drug information on Bextra; Vioxx.