Say It Isn’t So – Grassley May Leave Finance Committee

May 1st, 2009. By Evelyn Pringle

In what could be the best news in years for certain FDA officials, Big Pharma and drug company funded front groups, The Hill is reporting that Senator Charles Grassley is considering leaving his high ranking post on the US Senate Finance Committee to become the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The so-called “Key Opinion Leaders” in the field of psychiatry who are under fire for not disclosing Big Pharma money due to a Finance Committee investigation under Grassley’s leadership are no doubt hoping they can soon sleep easier as well.

The list of names for that gang so far includes Harvard University’s Joseph Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens; Charles Nemeroff from Emory; Melissa DelBello at the University of Cincinnati; Alan Schatzberg, president of the American Psychiatric Association from Stanford; Martin Keller at Brown University; Karen Wagner and Augustus John Rush from the University of Texas; and Fred Goodwin, the former host of a radio show called “Infinite Minds,” broadcast for years by National Pubic Radio.

The opening on the Judiciary panel is the result of a recent decision by the ranking Republican, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, to become a Democrat.

Senate Republican Conference rules bar Grassley from holding the top spot on both committees at the same time, the Hill points out. GOP term limits will force him to step down as the top Republican on the Finance Committee at the end of this Congress in 2010.

“To avoid a dramatic shake-up, Grassley is hoping to strike a deal with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that would allow him to serve out the next year and a half on Finance before moving to Judiciary,” the Hill reports.

Grassley told CongressDaily that he wants to stay on Finance to work on healthcare reform and move to Judiciary in 2011 “when I get done with Finance.”

“The potential sea change has had industry lobbyists buzzing today,” Alicia Mundy noted in the April 20, 2009 Wall Street Journal Health Blog. “One who represents a big drug company that has been under fire from Grassley said his client had called his home to ask about “the good news” around 6 a.m.,” she reports.

“A former FDA official also said that some current FDA leaders who have been dragged before the Senate to explain various crises at the agency in recent years were exchanging high-fives – seriously, he said — in the FDA headquarters at White Oak, Md.,” Mundy wrote.

Grassley has hammered the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry over the non-disclosure of serious health risks associated with a long list of drugs that includes Vioxx, Avandia, Ketek and SSRI antidepressants, to name just a few.

As recently as April 30, 2009, Grassley asked the FDA to explain how it justifies a decision not to hold the the device maker, Edwards Lifesciences, accountable for marketing a heart valve device without FDA clearance.

“Even though this heart valve device was eventually cleared by the FDA, the agency needs to implement better processes for making sure those devices are appropriately cleared before they’re used in patients,” he said in a letter to the FDA Commissioner. “An ad-hoc no harm, no foul attitude by the FDA doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the agency’s commitment to rigorous and even-handed clearance processes.”

The ring was implanted in an unknown number of patients at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, “despite allegedly lacking clearance or approval from the FDA,” he points out in the letter.

If Grassley gives up his position on Finance, it will likely go to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, according to Talking Points Memo reporter Josh Marshall. “And that’s a move that might make some FDA and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists very happy,” Marshall points out with link to a March 2, 2009 Washington Times article that explained:

“The pharmaceutical industry that long has benefited from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch’s legislative efforts has directed large sums of money to a charity he helped found — and still raises money for — while also hiring the Republican lawmaker’s son as a lobbyist.”

A tax form obtained by the Times, “shows that five pharmaceutical companies and the industry’s main lobbying group wrote checks in 2007 to the Utah Families Foundation — some as large as $40,000 — that far exceed what they could give publicly to Mr. Hatch‘s campaigns,” the Times reports.

“The donations, $172,500 in all, came at the same time that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) was paying one of Mr. Hatch’s sons, Scott, to be its lobbyist in Congress,” the article states.

“And if that weren’t enough political intrigue, the tax-exempt charitable foundation, which the senator … helped start in the 1990s and still vigorously supports, has been delinquent for nearly a decade in filing its required annual reports with Utah state officials,” a review by The Times found.

Tags: FDA

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