FDA investigates brain researchers at Columbia
There’s a big front-page story in today’s New York Times about a series of investigations conducted by the Food and Drugs Administration into potentially illegal research being conducted on “patients with disorders like schizophrenia and severe depression,” among others. According to the article, doctors injected patients with radioactive chemicals that contained dangerous levels of impurities. (The radioactive chemicals themselves are not dangerous, the article said.)
The NYT goes on:
Agency investigators also found a forged document, a hard copy record that had been altered to hide a drug impurity that showed up clearly in the computer records.
Former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they worked in the imaging field or hoped to, said those practices were not only commonplace but also condoned. They described a center under such pressure to produce studies that it papered over and hid impurities in drugs to stretch its resources and went ahead with business as usual despite F.D.A. warnings.
The lab being targeted is the Kreitchman PET Center (whose website, curiously, cannot be accessed right now). The University says that it has conducted an internal inquiry into the matter.
Spectator will be following up with the investigations as more details emerge.
Thank you for the “caategories” block. I had no idea sports had its own area of the brain.
My brother went to shcool in Leeds in the late 90′s and I remember him telling the me that there was a huge police drug raid at the tenements right off campus. In response to the drug raid the residents rioted and burned down their flats. Which the government then had to rebuild at huge expense. That story gives me pause whenever I hear a snobby Englishman making fun of Americans.