Word: one
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Deodorant soap, pacemakers, food-color additives, blood banks, coffee, tongue depressors, eyeglass screws, tampons and cancer drugs -- all come under the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA certifies the purity and safety of one-quarter of all U.S. consumer products, in addition to regulating the $400 billion food, pharmaceutical and medical-devices industries. But throughout the 1980s the FDA has been traumatized by budget and staff reductions, fusses over testing of drugs to combat AIDS, second- guessing over poisoned Chilean grapes, corrupt employees and controversies over the nutritional claims adorning food packages...
...more scandal: this summer investigators discovered that a few generic-drug developers had bribed underpaid FDA employees to speed up the agency's responses to the paperwork for their products. Three FDA reviewers have already pleaded guilty, and more prosecutions are expected. "This past year has been one of the most difficult in FDA's history," said Commissioner Frank Young last week...
With its meager funds, the FDA is responsible for monitoring 63,000 food firms, 14,000 drug companies, 13,000 medical-device manufacturers and 1,700 cosmetics houses. During the Reagan Administration, cutbacks at the FDA were seen by many probusiness advocates as one important means of unshackling industry. But now, with the number of staffers at the agency down to 7,500 from a 1980 high of 8,100, even business lobbyists are not so sure. "The problems at the FDA stem directly from the deregulatory process," says John Cady, president of the National Food Processors Association. "They just...
...thin line of inspectors has been forced to monitor increasing amounts of seafood, imported fruits and vegetables, and chicken and eggs. A number of spectacular food- tampering cases, like last March's poisoned Chilean grape case (only two tainted grapes were discovered), forced the agency to reassign up to one-third of all FDA inspectors for long periods of time. "When an emergency comes along," says one FDA official, "we stop doing things we were scheduled to do and divert people elsewhere...
Decaying labs and desperately low salaries have made hiring another FDA travail. Some important drug-review posts have an annual turnover rate of 20%. At least one former FDA official believes many new employees use their stint at the agency to bolster resumes that are then quickly circulated to industry...