Recent Developments in Health Law: FDA and Drug Safety: New Tufts Study Challenges Critics of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act

Abstract

In the wake of several highly publicized lawsuits over drugs recalled for safety – most notably, Vioxx and Paxil – the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the pharmaceutical industry have faced increasingly intense public scrutiny over the drug testing and approval process. Critics blame the FDA's shorter pre-market approval process that has resulted from the enactment of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which effected, among other changes, an increased number of reviewers, a higher review load for each reviewer, and the implementation of “user fees” from companies submitting drugs for review. While many have posited that the lack of safety in some FDA-approved drugs was caused by the enactment of PDUFA, the results of a recent study from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development have indicated that there is no statistically significant correlation between the number of drugs recalled for safety and the enactment of PDUFA.